Flashcards
Conscience: Augustine, Aquinas, Butler, Newman and Freud
Cards in this deck (7)
- 1Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430)Our conscience is the voice of God.
conscience is Gods love being poured forth to humans.
when God's love and moral virtue are revealed, human beings experience their own inadequacy. - 2Aquinas (1255-1274)Aquinas believed that our conscience could go wrong either 'invincibly', through no fault of their own, or 'vincibly' - through our own fault. It isn't a 'feeling' in your heart, like the guilt you feel when confronted with a homeless man.
It is the process of reasoning, moving from the Primary Precepts (such as 'It is right to protect and preserve the innocent') to secondary precepts (such as 'It is wrong to give money to people who beg on the streets').
- 3Butler (1692 –1752)we have a God-given ability to reason.
we must listen to our conscience because it allows us to act as a moral judge.
It is not an intuitive feeling about what is right - instead, it is an ability to use reason to weigh up factors in a moral decision (natural guide).
conscience is the ultimate authority of decisions made of instinct (ultimate authority)
- 4NewmanNewman was an Anglican theologian who converted to Roman Catholicism and became a Cardinal.
conscience can be seen as intuitionist.our conscience is "the voice of God" completely distinct from our will or desires. It is an innate principle planted in us before we had the ability to reason.
Newman described conscience as a 'law of the mind'.
the mind is not a set of commandments to follow it is a clear indication of what is right.
the conscience should have ultimate authority.
'I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.
- 5Freud (1856-1939)Freud was a psychiatrist he saw the conscience as part of the unconscious mind, and believed that it arose as a result of bad experiences early in life, as well as disapproval from parents and society.
The conscience is not from God.
- 6Piaget (1896-1980)Piaget was a developmental psychologist. He believed that by studying human behaviour, you could see how conscience develops over time. It certainly isn't something that humans are born with.
◾0-2 years. During this stage, babies would learn about the world around them through their senses and by moving about. They become able to differentiate themselves from the world around them, and learn about the permanence of objects.
◾2-7 years. During this stage, children develop language, although they find it hard to see the world from a viewpoint other than their own. They classify things by single shared features.
◾8-11 years. They are able to think logically to develop explanations about the world around them.
◾11-15 year. They can reason using abstract concepts. They begin to think about the future, the hypothetical and ideological issues.
According to this model, a person doesn't have a fully functioning conscience before the age of 11.
- 7Fromm (1900-!9The authoritarian conscience is the internalised voice of the external authority.
This internal voice may be backed up by fear of punishment, or spurred on by admiration or can even be created because I idolise an authority figure.
the voice of the authoritarian conscience is obeyed not because it is good but because it is in authority.
This authoritarian conscience can come from:
• Projection onto someone of an image of perfection.
• The experience of parental rules or expectations.
• An adopted belief system, such as a religion, with its own authority structure.
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- Flashcards on Untitled, created by loveday_joshua on 09/10/2015.
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