conscience (Lat. conscentia, 'knowledge with another', 'knowledge within oneself'). The word has followed its Lat. predecessor in acquiring a moral significance, and now denotes the capacity for judging the rightness of actions, either considered generally, or actually proposed or already performed. Christians agree that it is unique to man and that its effectiveness is increased by experience and through grace.
NT writers adopted the equivalent term syneidesis from Hellenistic Greek philosophers, who seem to have understood it mainly as an index of moral failings or as a moral dissuasive; on this view it never gives positive encouragement: a good conscience is a quiet conscience. The NT associates the good conscience with faith and with the Holy Spirit.
In medieval Western thought it became usual to distinguish between the general knowledge of moral principles (termed synteresis after a copyist's error for syneidesis) and its application to particular cases, called conscientia in a stricter sense. The former presupposed a moral discernment left untouched by the Fall, and opinions differed as to whether its source lay in the affections and the will, as the Franciscans held, or in the practical reason, as St Thomas Aquinas and the Dominicans taught. (Some modern writers suggest that the affections, will, and reason are all involved, as in much other mental activity.) The Reformers reacted strongly against the theory of an uncorrupted natural power to discern good and evil, and emphasised the dependence of the Christian conscience upon faith.
More recent thinkers have been sharply divided on the reality and authority of conscience. English writers on ethics influenced by T Hobbes and D Hume have tended to discard the concept and speak simply of moral judgement; others, esp. Bp. J. Butler, have seen in conscience a kind of moral sense, in the exercise of which man becomes aware of a Being higher than himself. Such an idea was reinforced by Protestant teaching on the 'internal witness' of the Holy Spirit. In the teaching of I Kant conscience is the awareness of the universal claim of the moral dictates of reason (the 'Categorical Imperative'). Religion is the recognition of this claim as the will of God, but, since the ground on which the claim is recognised is that it is rational, man, as a rational being, remains (or becomes) autonomous in submitting himself to it. From such a point of view conscience can be considered as a mediator between the Law of God and the will of man, or even as the voice of God (an influential idea found in the writings of some of the early Fathers and in much popular teaching); it is also by following the dictates of conscience that man realises his independence of purely conventional and social codes. Such ideas have been seriously challenged by modern psychology (esp. the teaching of S. Freud) which regards conscience as the activity of the super-ego, which is formed in childhood and represses drives that are socially unacceptable.
In much modern philosophy it is suggested that where conscience passes beyond moral judgement it is simply an internalised moral habit formed in response to social pressures. Nevertheless, a critical attitude to such social pressures (and an increased awareness of their relativity), combined with the sense that man's freedom implies some kind of ultimate autonomy, has meant that the notion of conscience has seemed useful where an individual's sense of value conflicts with those imposed by the state or society. Moral theologians have stressed the need for conscience to he informed by attention to the teaching of Scripture and the church; conscience, thus informed, is to be followed. If the resulting action is faulty as a result of invincible ignorance, the imperfection in conscience is excusable. Nevertheless, it is wrong for a person to do what he thinks wrong, even if apparently legitimate authority seems to require it. To follow one's conscience in such circumstances (e.g. conscientious objection to military service), is now increasingly regarded as legitimate. Since the Enlightenment, freedom of religious belief and practice has also come to be seen as a matter of conscience which the state has no right to restrict; the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776, for instance, insists that 'all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience' (§ t6), and the same right is embodied in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1949 (Art. 18). In contrast to much earlier teaching of the RC Church (e.g. in the Syllabus Erratum, 1864), the Second Vatican Council in 1965 affirmed the rights of conscience in matters of religion (Dignitatis Hunianue Personae, 3).
In much modern philosophy it is suggested that where conscience passes beyond moral judgement it is simply an internalised moral habit formed in response to social pressures. Nevertheless, a critical attitude to such social pressures (and an increased awareness of their relativity), combined with the sense that man's freedom implies some kind of ultimate autonomy, has meant that the notion of conscience has seemed useful where an individual's sense of value conflicts with those imposed by the state or society. Moral theologians have stressed the need for conscience to he informed by attention to the teaching of Scripture and the church; conscience, thus informed, is to be followed. If the resulting action is faulty as a result of invincible ignorance, the imperfection in conscience is excusable. Nevertheless, it is wrong for a person to do what he thinks wrong, even if apparently legitimate authority seems to require it. To follow one's conscience in such circumstances (e.g. conscientious objection to military service), is now increasingly regarded as legitimate. Since the Enlightenment, freedom of religious belief and practice has also come to be seen as a matter of conscience which the state has no right to restrict; the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776, for instance, insists that 'all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience' (§ t6), and the same right is embodied in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1949 (Art. 18). In contrast to much earlier teaching of the RC Church (e.g. in the Syllabus Erratum, 1864), the Second Vatican Council in 1965 affirmed the rights of conscience in matters of religion (Dignitatis Hunianue Personae, 3).