CONSCIENCE

 

 

 

The very idea of “moral truth” is a puzzlement and offense to many of our contemporaries. We are now paddling in the murky sea of “modern emotivism.”

Morality has become almost totally a matter of feelings and preferences. You have yours and I have mine. If I say that something is “wrong,” I am expressing no more than my personal preference. “I am not comfortable with that.” “I feel that is not right.” “I would prefer you not do that.” In short, the making of arguments is replaced by the expression of emotions. In such a cultural context, the appeal to “conscience” is only an appeal to my personal preference. Conscience, I this view, does not discern moral truth but subjectively establishes the truth. This deep shift in the understanding of conscience and truth is addressed in the 1993 encyclical of John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth).

         

                    Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt           freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would   then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines      which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly       atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a    supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical         and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that    one has a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the           affirmation that one’s moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it           has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable        claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and “being at peace with oneself”, so much         so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivist conception          of moral judgment.

                   As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the          good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its          primordial reality as an act of a person’s intelligence, the function of    which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific   situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to     be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the       individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an      outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each      individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others.        Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a           denial of the very idea of human nature.

                    These different notions are at the origin of currents of thought    which posit a radical opposition between moral law and conscience,    and between nature and freedom.

The liberal idea of conscience dispenses with truth.

 

On Conscience

(Notes taken while reading ON CONSCIENCE by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Ignatius

 Conscience, the highest norm that man is to follow even in opposition to authority. If this were the case, it would mean that there is no truth, at least not in moral and religious matters.

One must follow a certain conscience or at least not act against it.

Some would argue that we should be grateful to God that He allows so many unbelievers in good conscience. For if their eyes were opened and they became believers, they would not be capable, in this world of ours, of bearing the burden of faith with all its moral obligations. But as it is, since they can go another way in good conscience, they can still reach salvation.

According to this view, faith would not make salvation easier but harder. Being happy would mean not being burdened with having to believe or having to submit to the moral yoke of the faith of the Catholic Church. The erroneous conscience, which makes life easier and marks a more human course, would then be the real grace, the normal way to salvation. Untruth, keeping truth at bay, would be better for man than truth.  

If this were the state of affairs, how could faith give rise to joy? Who would have the courage to pass faith on others? Would it not be better to spare them the truth or even keep them from it?

Is conscience subjectivity’s protective shell, into which man can escape and hide from reality?

Conscience is a window through which one can see outward to that common truth that finds and sustains all, and so makes possible through the common recognition of truth the community of wants and responsibilities.

Conscience is man’s openness to the ground of his being, the power of perception for what is highest and most essential.

The liberal idea of conscience dispenses with truth. It becomes the justification of our subjectivity, which would not like to have itself called into question. Similarly, it becomes the justification for social conformity. As mediating value between the different subjectivities, social conformity is intended to make living together possible. The obligation to seek the truth terminates as do any doubts about the general inclination of society and what it has become accustomed to. Being convinced  of oneself, as well as conforming to others, is sufficient. Man is reduced to his superficial conviction, and the less depth he has, the better for him.

The Nazi SS would be justified and we should seek them in heaven, since they carried out all their atrocities with fanatic conviction and complete certainty of conscience. Since they followed their (albeit mistaken) consciences, one would have to recognize their conduct as moral and as a result, should not doubt their eternal salvation.

That is the  justifying power of the subjective conscience. Firm, subjective conviction and the lack of doubts and scruples that follow from it do not justify man.

To identify my conscience with the “I,” with its subjective certainty about itself and its moral behavior would make my conscience a mere reflection of the social surroundings and the opinions in circulation. On the other hand, this consciousness might also derive from a lack of self-criticism, a deficiency in listening to the depths of one’s own soul.

The identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves.

Whoever equates conscience with superficial conviction identifies conscience with a pseudo-rational certainty, a certainty that in fact has been woven from self-righteousness, conformity, and lethargy.