Joseph Butler and Cardinal Newman are two well known figures who believe that our conscience is like having the voice of God speaking directly to us. According to butler humans are motivated by two basic principles; self love (selfish) and Benevolence (seeking well being of others). The conscience encourages man away from selfish love and towards focussing on the interests and happiness of others. Butler held that the conscience enables us to judge and determine the rightness or wrongness of our actions. His belief was that it is given to intuitively and it exerts itself at the correct time without being called upon, or us making a conscious decision to ‘enable’ the conscience, Butler believed that it was the ultimate authority in moral judgements. This approach would seem to be an innate sense and knowledge of right and wrong that comes directly from God, he called it ‘our natural guide’, it was the final judge of right and wrong that must be obeyed. What our conscience says, we must do. The moral judgements that come from this intuitive conscience are given ultimate and binding authority, as he believed they originated from God. His idea was that God guides humanity through their conscience and the understanding that it gives them towards their morality, it comes from God and so must be obeyed.
However to an extent people can use Butler’s approach and understanding of the conscience to justify almost any action, but it is important to note that Butler believed that people will know intuitively what is the right thing to do in every situation and therefore not every action could be justified and mistakes can not be made. He also condemned people who claimed a wrong action was right and claim that their conscience told them so.
Cardinal Newman agreed with Aquinas that the conscience is the ability to appreciate and apply moral principles; however this approach was more intuitive like Butler than rational like Aquinas. He believed that when someone is following their conscience they are to an extent following a divine law as given by God. When our conscience speaks to us, Newman believes that it is God’s voice giving us moral direction and that it is more than just a sense of reason. He said that conscience foes not create truth, but it does detect truth that already exists. It is the responsibility of a person to intuitively decide what truth God is guiding them towards. So for Newman following conscience was following divine law and one that must be followed at all times. This can be seen in a statement that is attributed to him, ‘I toast the Pope, but I toast conscience first’
In opposition to these three scholars there are those who argue that the Conscience does not come directly from God. Sigmund Freud developed several theories concerning the human personality and how it deals with issues of conflict or disorder. He believed that conscience was the construct of the mind that sought to make sense of disorder and to deal with the conflict that guilt brought. He believed that during our early upbringing we accept certain values and beliefs about morality and society, which may at some stage be rejected by our moral reasoning. However these early formed values and beliefs still continue to influence our morality through the consciences that seeks to deal with the conflict that early beliefs and later beliefs bring. Freud believed that the human personality consists of three areas, the id, which is part of the unconscious personality driven by impulses to seek pleasure, the ego, which is the part of the personality that experiences and reacts to the world and the superego, which is the part of the personality that seeks to censor and restrain the ego, for example feelings of guilt. In essence Freud believed that our experiences are what make us who we are; they decide our path. There cannot be any definite moral code of conduct or absolute moral law as our individual consciences are shaped by our own experiences. That is why there are so many ethical codes within societies.
Piaget also believed that our conscience comes from our upbringing, not God. He thought that before the age of ten children take their morality from their parents (heteronymous morality), but that after this stage their own moral reasoning becomes more prominent due to increasing awareness of morality and society around them, known as autonomous conscience. This development is essentially due to a child’s cognitive development. Piaget’s approach suggests that the development of conscience is something that is learned from external influences but also that it is naturally occurring.
Erich Fromm believed that our moral centre also came from those around us who exert their authority over us, for example parents, the media and friends. Their authority involves reward and punishment for our actions, and over time these authorities that we have internalised become central to our understanding of morality. He had two views of the conscience. His first, was that guilty consciences were the result of displeasing those in authority therefore we fear some sort of rejection from them and the influence that this has over us is what Fromm called the authoritarian conscience. Gradually Fromm’s perspectives on the conscience evolved and developed over the years and he began to develop another healthier perspective of conscience, this is what he called the humanistic conscience. He said that our conscience enables us to assess our success as a human being by evaluating our behaviour.
Those three scholars all argue against the theory that our conscience is the voice of God, and is rather something developed and created by the society we live in. Theses theories perhaps explain why and how different cultures live by different values, surely if out conscience was God given we would all live by the same values.
It can even be argued that there is no proof of any conscience existing, the conscience given by God seems almost like a tangible part of the human body, but there is no evidence for it. Surely it is more likely that we decide what is right and wrong using reason and our mind, not a tangible, God given ‘substance’.
In conclusion, I believe that our conscience is something that is heavily influenced by society. We learn from those around us and what we see as right and wrong develop through life experiences, I feel there cannot be a voice of God controlling what we do or even influencing what we do because there is obviously know universal way to react to every situation, even people of the same religion act differently so how can there be a God telling or advising us what to do?
Dom Ansell
6PWL