Conscience

What is conscience?#

FoundationAQA 7062/1 Section B: ConscienceDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Theories of conscience

Fig. 1Theories divide into theological accounts (God-given or rational) and psychological accounts (constructed by upbringing).

Conscience is our sense of right and wrong — the inner faculty or activity by which we judge the morality of our own (and others') actions, feel guilt or approval, and are moved to act accordingly. But the word conceals a fundamental disagreement about what conscience is, and the whole topic is a contest between rival answers. Is conscience a God-given faculty that reveals divine moral truth (Newman)? The voice of reason working out moral requirements (Aquinas)? A supreme, intuitive principle of human nature (Butler)? Or is it a purely natural product — the internalised voice of parents and society (Freud's super-ego), or a stage of psychological development (Piaget)? These answers divide broadly into theological accounts, which see conscience as connected to God or to an objective moral order, and psychological accounts, which explain it as a construct of upbringing and mind.

The answers matter because they determine conscience's authority and reliability. If conscience is the voice of God or an infallible faculty, we ought always to follow it, and to disobey it is to disobey God. If it is the verdict of reason, we should follow it when it reasons well but can be mistaken (an 'erring conscience'), so it must be educated. If it is merely the internalised voice of authority (Freud) or a developmental stage (Piaget), then its deliverances have no special authority at all — they are the residue of childhood conditioning, and may need to be criticised or outgrown rather than obeyed. The practical question 'should I always follow my conscience?' cannot be answered without first settling the theoretical question 'what is conscience?'

Several further distinctions structure the debate. Conscience may be understood as innate (present from birth, whether God-given or part of human nature) or acquired (learned from parents, society and experience). It may be understood as a faculty (a standing power or part of the self) or as an activity (the exercise of reason or judgement in a particular case). And it may be understood as cognitive (delivering moral knowledge or truth) or as merely affective (a feeling of guilt or approval with no special claim to truth). Different theories combine these differently: Aquinas' conscientia is an acquired activity of reason that can be cognitive; Freud's super-ego is an acquired faculty that is largely affective and non-rational.

A recurring theme is the phenomenon of the guilty conscience — the feeling of remorse or the sense of a binding inner voice — which every theory must explain. The theological accounts explain it as the soul's response to objective moral reality or to God; the psychological accounts explain it as the super-ego's punishment of the ego, the internalised anger of the parent. That both kinds of theory can plausibly explain the same experience is what makes the debate genuinely open: the felt authority of conscience is compatible both with its being a window onto moral truth and with its being the deposit of early conditioning. A candidate who keeps the theological/psychological divide and the innate/acquired, faculty/activity, cognitive/affective distinctions in view can analyse any theory precisely.

Worked example

From 'what' to 'should I follow it?'

Show how the theory of conscience one holds determines whether one should always follow it.

Voice of God (Newman)
If conscience is God speaking, one ought always to follow it, and to disobey is to disobey God.
Reason (Aquinas)
If conscience is reason judging, one should follow it (even when mistaken, one is bound by it), but it can err and must be educated.
Super-ego (Freud)
If conscience is internalised parental authority, its verdicts have no special authority and may need to be criticised or outgrown.
Draw the lesson
The normative question ('follow it?') cannot be settled without the descriptive question ('what is it?') — the two are inseparable.

Result: Whether we should always follow conscience depends entirely on what conscience is: an infallible divine voice must be obeyed, fallible reason must be educated and followed, and a mere internalised construct must be critically examined.

Typical mistakes

Treating 'conscience' as one agreed thing; the whole topic is that the theories disagree fundamentally about what it is.
Assuming conscience is obviously the voice of God; this is only one theory (Newman) and is heavily contested by the psychological accounts.

Active revision

Explain the difference between theological and psychological accounts of conscience. (Structured AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Aquinas: synderesis and conscientia#

StandardAQA 7062/1 Section B: ConscienceDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Aquinas: synderesis and conscientia

Fig. 2The innate synderesis supplies the first principle; conscientia applies it to the case, and may err on an apparent good.

For Aquinas, conscience is not a special faculty or a voice but the activity of reason applied to moral decisions — 'reason making right decisions', not a feeling or an inner voice of God. He distinguishes two components. Synderesis is the innate disposition or habit of the practical reason to know and pursue the first principle of morality — 'good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided' — and the basic precepts of the natural law that flow from it. Synderesis is reliable and cannot err: it is our natural inclination towards the good. Conscientia is the actual application of this knowledge to a particular situation — the act of judging that this particular action is good and to be done, or evil and to be avoided. Conscience in the everyday sense is conscientia, the concrete moral judgement.

Because conscientia is an act of reason working from general principles to a particular verdict, it can go wrong: reason may reason badly, or start from mistaken beliefs about the facts or about what is truly good. This gives Aquinas his important doctrine of the erring conscience. He holds, strikingly, that we are always bound to follow our conscience even when it is mistaken — to act against one's sincere conscientia is always wrong, because it means acting against what one believes to be right. However, we are culpable for a mistaken conscience if the error is due to negligence (vincible ignorance — ignorance we could and should have corrected), and not culpable if the error was genuinely unavoidable (invincible ignorance). This nuanced position — bound to follow conscience, but responsible for forming it well — is one of the most examinable parts of the topic.

Central to Aquinas' account is the distinction between real and apparent goods (met in the natural-law topic). Conscience can err because human beings, through faulty reasoning or disordered desire, pursue an apparent good — something that seems good but does not truly fulfil human nature — mistaking it for a real good. The adulterer does not pursue evil as such, but a real good (pleasure, companionship) sought in a wrong way, under a mistaken judgement of reason. Moral error is therefore typically a failure of reason (a mistaken conscientia) rather than sheer malice, which is why the education and correction of conscience — informing the reason — is so important for Aquinas.

Aquinas' account has notable strengths and weaknesses. Its strengths are that it takes moral reasoning seriously (conscience is not blind feeling but the intellect judging), it explains moral error without making people simply wicked (they misjudge the good), and it gives a coherent account of why we must follow conscience yet can be blamed for a badly formed one. Its weaknesses are that it depends on the contested apparatus of natural law and the natural inclination to the good (does synderesis really never err?), that it may be too optimistic about human reason's grasp of the good (it underplays self-deception and the psychological forces the Freudians emphasise), and that the claim that we must always follow even a mistaken conscience can license terrible acts done in sincere but erroneous conviction. Whether conscience is best understood as reason, as Aquinas holds, or as something non-rational, is the question his account sets up.

Worked example

The erring conscience

According to Aquinas, must we follow a mistaken conscience, and are we to blame for it?

The binding rule
We must always follow our sincere conscientia: to act against what we believe to be right is always wrong.
But it can err
Conscientia can misjudge, e.g. through mistaken facts or faulty reasoning about the good.
Vincible ignorance
If the error was due to negligence we could have corrected, we are culpable for the mistaken conscience and its acts.
Invincible ignorance
If the error was genuinely unavoidable, we are not culpable, though the act is objectively wrong.
Assess
This coherently combines the duty to follow conscience with responsibility to form it well, but the rule 'always follow even a mistaken conscience' can justify grave acts done in sincere error.

Result: For Aquinas one must always follow one's conscience but is responsible for forming it rightly; culpability turns on whether the error was vincible or invincible — a subtle position whose difficulty is that sincere but mistaken conscience can still command terrible acts.

Typical mistakes

Describing Aquinas' conscience as 'the voice of God' — for Aquinas conscience is reason judging, not a voice or feeling (that is closer to Newman).
Confusing synderesis (reliable, innate principle) with conscientia (the fallible act of judgement).

Active revision

'For Aquinas, conscience is simply reason making moral decisions.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Butler and Newman#

StandardAQA 7062/1 Section B: ConscienceDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Butler's hierarchy of human nature

Fig. 3For Butler the particular passions are regulated by self-love and benevolence, all under the supreme authority of conscience.

Joseph Butler, in his Fifteen Sermons (1726), gives conscience a central and exalted place in human nature. Butler holds that human nature is a hierarchy: at the bottom are the particular passions (hunger, anger, desire); above them are the two 'regulating principles' of self-love (concern for one's own long-term happiness) and benevolence (concern for others); and at the summit is conscience, the supreme guiding principle. Conscience, for Butler, is a natural, God-given faculty that reflects on our actions and approves or disapproves of them, and it has intrinsic authority: it is meant to govern, so that to act against conscience is to act against our own nature. 'Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.' Butler's conscience is thus an intuitive, authoritative moral sense implanted by God as our guide to right action, and following it is following our true nature.

Butler adds that conscience is generally reliable and that we can trust its immediate deliverances: when we reflect calmly on an action, our conscience's approval or disapproval is an authoritative guide, needing no further justification. He also argues against psychological egoism (the view that all action is ultimately selfish), holding that benevolence is as natural to us as self-love and that the two, properly ordered under conscience, coincide in the well-lived life. Butler's account is influential because it gives conscience objective authority grounded in human nature and in God, while remaining broadly rationalist and moderate.

John Henry Newman, in the nineteenth century, gives the strongest theological account: conscience is the voice of God within us. For Newman, conscience is not merely a moral sense or the verdict of reason but 'the aboriginal Vicar of Christ', a messenger of God who speaks to us directly, and the experience of moral obligation — the sense of being commanded, and of guilt when we disobey — points beyond ourselves to a Lawgiver. The very phenomenology of conscience (that it commands with authority, that we feel shame and responsibility before it as before a person) is, for Newman, evidence of God: 'if, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible.' Newman thus turns conscience into an argument for God's existence and makes following conscience a religious duty — to obey conscience is to obey God.

These theological accounts have shared strengths and weaknesses. Their strength is that they honour the felt authority and command-character of conscience — the sense that its voice is not merely our own preference but binds us — and, in Newman's case, connect ethics directly to God. Their weakness is that the psychological accounts (Freud especially) offer an alternative explanation of exactly the same phenomena: the 'authoritative voice' and the guilt Newman takes as evidence of God can be explained as the internalised voice of parents (the super-ego), and the fact that consciences differ radically between individuals and cultures, and often command cruelty (the conscientious persecutor, the terrorist convinced of duty), sits badly with the idea of a single divine voice. If conscience were the voice of God it should be more uniform and more reliably good than it is. Whether the command-character of conscience is best explained by God/nature (Butler, Newman) or by conditioning (Freud) is the central evaluative contest.

Worked example

Newman's argument from conscience to God

Reconstruct Newman's argument that conscience points to God, and assess it.

The phenomenon
Conscience commands us with authority and produces guilt, shame and fear when we disobey — as before a person, not a mere rule.
The inference
Feeling responsible and ashamed 'before' conscience implies there is One to whom we are responsible — a personal Lawgiver, God.
Strength
It takes seriously the command-character and personal quality of conscience that a mere feeling-theory struggles to explain.
Objection
Freud explains the same authoritative 'voice' and guilt as the internalised parent (super-ego); and consciences differ and command evil, unlike a reliable divine voice.
Judgement
Newman's inference is suggestive but not compelling: the data (command, guilt) are equally well explained by conditioning, so conscience points to God only for one already inclined to read it theologically.

Result: Newman's argument captures the authoritative, personal character of conscience, but because Freud's super-ego explains the same phenomena naturally, and consciences vary and err, the inference from conscience to God is suggestive rather than compelling.

Typical mistakes

Confusing Butler (conscience as an intuitive faculty atop human nature) with Aquinas (conscience as reason applying principles).
Presenting Newman's 'voice of God' as an established fact rather than an argument that the psychological accounts directly challenge.

Active revision

'Conscience is the voice of God.' Discuss with reference to Newman. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Freud: the super-ego#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section B: ConscienceDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Freud: conscience as the super-ego

Fig. 4The super-ego, formed by internalising parental authority, is the seat of conscience and produces guilt when its standards are transgressed.

Sigmund Freud gives the most influential psychological account, on which conscience is not the voice of God or reason but the super-ego — a part of the mind formed by the internalisation of external authority. Freud's model of the psyche has three parts: the id (the unconscious reservoir of instinctual drives, seeking pleasure), the ego (the conscious, rational self mediating between the id and reality), and the super-ego (the internalised moral authority). The super-ego develops in early childhood, especially through the resolution of the Oedipus complex, when the child internalises the moral prohibitions and commands of the parents (and, through them, of society). Conscience is the critical, punishing aspect of the super-ego: when we transgress its standards, it punishes the ego with guilt, and when we conform, it rewards with a sense of self-approval (the ego-ideal).

On this account, the authoritative 'voice' of conscience that Newman took to be God, and the guilt Butler took to be nature's disapproval, are really the internalised voice of one's parents and culture, laid down in childhood before the age of reason and operating largely unconsciously. Conscience is therefore neither divine nor rational nor reliable: it varies with upbringing (children of harsh parents may have harsh, punitive consciences; children of permissive parents weak ones), it can be irrational and excessive (pathological guilt, obsessional neurosis), and its commands reflect the values of the particular family and society that formed it, not any objective moral truth. Freud's account thus directly undercuts the theological view: the very features (authority, guilt) offered as evidence of God are explained as the deposit of childhood conditioning.

Freud's account has real explanatory strengths. It fits the observable fact that conscience varies with upbringing and culture (which the 'voice of God' view struggles to explain), it explains pathological and irrational guilt (which a purely rational or divine conscience should not produce), and it grounds conscience in the developmental and unconscious processes that psychology has independently studied. It also has practical purchase: therapy can relieve the crippling guilt of an over-severe super-ego, treating conscience as something to be understood and sometimes moderated rather than simply obeyed. For anyone impressed by the diversity and occasional cruelty of consciences, Freud offers a powerful demystification.

The account faces serious objections, however. Empirically, Freud's specific theory — the Oedipus complex, the developmental timetable — is scientifically contested and hard to test or falsify, and rests on a narrow evidence base (a small number of case studies). Philosophically, even if conscience originates in internalised authority, this does not show its deliverances are false — to infer that conscience is unreliable or that morality is illusory from its psychological origin is the genetic fallacy (origin does not determine validity). Later psychology (e.g. Piaget and Kohlberg on moral development, and Fromm's distinction between authoritarian and humanistic conscience) refines or challenges Freud, and it is possible to accept that upbringing shapes conscience while still holding that a mature, rational conscience can discern real moral truths. Whether Freud demystifies conscience or merely describes one influence on it is the evaluative crux.

Worked example

The genetic fallacy in Freud's account

Assess whether Freud's account shows that conscience is an unreliable moral guide.

State the account
Conscience is the super-ego, the internalised voice of parents/society, formed before reason and operating unconsciously.
The sceptical inference
So conscience's commands merely reflect childhood conditioning, not moral truth, and should not be trusted as a guide.
Spot the fallacy
Inferring that conscience is unreliable or that its deliverances are false from its psychological origin is the genetic fallacy — origin does not determine truth.
Concede the insight
Freud rightly shows upbringing shapes conscience and explains variation and pathological guilt, so naive 'always follow conscience' is unwise.
Judgement
Freud demystifies the claim that conscience is an infallible divine voice, but does not show that a mature, educated conscience cannot track real moral truths.

Result: Freud shows that conscience is shaped by upbringing and undercuts the 'infallible voice of God' view, but the inference that conscience is therefore an unreliable guide to moral truth commits the genetic fallacy, so his account limits rather than abolishes conscience's authority.

Typical mistakes

Saying Freud proved conscience is 'just' conditioning and morality an illusion — inferring falsity from origin is the genetic fallacy.
Confusing the super-ego (the internalised moral authority/conscience) with the id (the instinctual drives).

Active revision

'Conscience is nothing more than the internalised voice of authority.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Fromm, Piaget and evaluation#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section B: ConscienceDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Theological and psychological conscience compared

Fig. 5Theological accounts ground conscience in God or reason; psychological accounts in upbringing and development — a synthesis is possible.

Erich Fromm developed the psychological tradition beyond Freud with a crucial distinction between two kinds of conscience. The authoritarian conscience is the internalised voice of external authority (close to Freud's super-ego): we obey its commands out of fear of punishment and desire for approval, and it can be manipulated by those in power — Fromm, writing in the shadow of Nazism, was alarmed by how readily people surrender their conscience to an external authority (as Milgram's later obedience experiments seemed to confirm). The humanistic conscience, by contrast, is the authentic voice of the whole self, our reaction to how well we are living up to our own potential and integrity; it is not obedience to an external authority but the self's judgement of its own flourishing. Fromm urges the development of the humanistic over the authoritarian conscience — a mature conscience is one we own and reason with, not one we merely obey.

Jean Piaget approached conscience developmentally, studying how children's moral reasoning changes with age. He found a movement from heteronomous morality (in younger children, roughly up to age 10) — where rules are seen as fixed, external and handed down by authority, and wrongness is judged by consequences and punishment — to autonomous morality (in older children) — where rules are understood as human agreements that can be examined and changed, intention matters more than consequences, and morality is internalised and reasoned. Lawrence Kohlberg extended this into six stages across three levels (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional). These developmental accounts support the view that conscience is acquired and matures through cognitive and social development, not simply implanted by God or present fully formed.

Bringing the theories together, the evaluation should weigh the theological and psychological accounts against each other, noting that they need not be wholly exclusive. The theological accounts (Aquinas' reason, Butler's supreme faculty, Newman's voice of God) capture the felt authority of conscience and its claim to bind us to objective moral truth, and they alone explain why we should take conscience's commands seriously as more than conditioning. The psychological accounts (Freud, Fromm, Piaget) capture the manifest facts that conscience varies with upbringing and culture, develops with age, can be irrational or cruel, and can be manipulated — facts the theological accounts struggle to explain if conscience is a uniform divine voice. The strongest position may be a synthesis: conscience is a natural human capacity for moral judgement (as the psychologists describe) that is shaped by upbringing and develops with maturity, but which, when educated and rational (as Aquinas and Fromm's humanistic conscience suggest), can discern genuine moral truths — perhaps, for the theist, truths grounded in God.

The most defensible judgement will take a position on both the nature and the authority of conscience. On its nature, the evidence of variation, development and manipulability tells strongly against conscience being a simple, uniform voice of God (Newman's strongest claim), and favours understanding conscience as a natural, acquired and educable capacity for moral reasoning (closer to Aquinas and Fromm). On its authority, it follows that conscience should be followed but not blindly: because it can err and be conditioned, a mature agent must inform and examine their conscience (educate it, in Aquinas' terms; make it humanistic, in Fromm's) rather than simply obey its first promptings. A theist may add that a rightly formed conscience is how God's moral truth is apprehended, reconciling the accounts; a naturalist will hold that conscience tracks (imperfectly) whatever moral truths there are, or merely the values of one's culture. What matters at A-Level is a sustained argument weighing the theological and psychological accounts to a justified conclusion about what conscience is and how far it should be followed — a conclusion that connects to the free-will debate (is conscience a free rational faculty or a determined product?) and to the dialogue between religion and ethics.

Worked example

Model evaluation plan: what is conscience?

Plan an essay judging whether conscience is God-given or a product of development.

Thesis
Conscience is best understood as a natural, acquired and educable capacity for moral reasoning, which (for the theist) can discern God-grounded moral truths — not a uniform divine voice.
Case for theological
Butler/Newman capture conscience's felt authority and command-character; Aquinas grounds it in reason and objective good.
Case for psychological
Freud/Fromm/Piaget explain variation, development, pathological guilt and manipulability, which a uniform divine voice cannot.
Weigh
Variation and error tell against Newman's strong claim; the felt authority tells against pure conditioning — favouring a synthesis (educable rational capacity).
Judgement
Conclude conscience is a developed, fallible capacity that should be educated and followed critically; the theist may add it apprehends God's moral order when rightly formed.

Result: The weight of evidence favours conscience as a natural, developing and educable capacity for moral judgement rather than a uniform voice of God, so it should be followed but only after being informed and examined — a synthesis that honours both the theological sense of authority and the psychological facts of formation.

Typical mistakes

Presenting the theological and psychological accounts as simply opposed, missing the possible synthesis (a natural, educable capacity that can discern real moral truths).
Concluding 'we should always follow our conscience' or 'never trust it' without the nuance that a fallible, conditioned conscience must be educated and examined.

Active revision

'Conscience is not the voice of God but a product of human development.' Evaluate this claim. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Key points

From 'what' to 'should I follow it?'

Key points

The erring conscience

Key points

Newman's argument from conscience to God

Key points

The genetic fallacy in Freud's account

Key points

Model evaluation plan: what is conscience?

Sources

Conscience

Key points

From 'what' to 'should I follow it?'

Key points

The erring conscience

Key points

Newman's argument from conscience to God

Key points

The genetic fallacy in Freud's account

Key points

Model evaluation plan: what is conscience?

Sources