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Conscience – An Essay in Moral Psychology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2009

William Lyons
William Lyons
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Abstract

The ultimate aim of this essay is to suggest that conscience is a very important part of human psychology and of our moral point of view, not something that can be dismissed as merely ‘a part of Christian theology’. The essay begins with discussions of what might be regarded as the two most influential functional models of conscience, the classical Christian account of conscience and the Freudian account of conscience. Then, using some insights from these models, and from some comparatively recent work in psychology and especially psychiatry, the author argues for a quite different model of conscience that might be called the personal integrity account of conscience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 477 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2009

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References

1 See, for example, Santrock, John W.'s Adolescence (Boston, McGraw Hill, 8th.ed. 2001)Google Scholar where the subject index itself ‘gives the game away’ with its only entry on conscience being ‘Conscience, and superego, 403’. More usual is a textbook like Gerrig, Richard R. and Zimbardo, Philip G., Psychology and Life (Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 16th ed. 2002)Google Scholar where the subject index contains no entry at all for conscience.

2 Samuel 24:6. See also Job 27:6 – ‘My heart shall not reproach me’.

3 See also Leviticus 3:4, 10, 15, where, with kelayoth, the reference is to the ‘choice’ or ‘gastronomically select’ innards of an animal, and also Job 19:27 and Proverbs 23:16, where the reference is ‘more modern’ in that it is a reference to the seat of emotion.

4 The Apology, in The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Tredennick, (Penguin, 2nd.edit., 1959), 74.

5 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 26, 1 and 57, 1; and Enchiridion, 22, 81.

6 Aquinas, De Veritate, 16.2. See also Davies, Brian, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, (Oxford University Press, 1992), 233 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 John Calvin, Christianae Religionis Institutio, Bk.III, ch.19, sect.15.

8 John Henry Newman, Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations, Disc. No.5.

9 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ch.3, sects. 7–9.

10 Ibid. ch.3, sects.22–23.

11 Freud, Sigmund, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. Strachey, J., ed. Strachey, and Richards, , (Penguin, 1973), 93–4Google Scholar. These lectures were never delivered but were a reworking of his earlier ‘Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis’ that were delivered at the University of Vienna in 1915–17.

12 Ibid. 95. Italics mine.

13 Ibid. 92.

14 Ibid. 197–99.

15 In these politically-correct times, a psychopath is sometimes relabelled as a ‘sociopath’ or, more recently, ‘someone with anti-social personality disorder’.

16 Rees, W.L. Linford, Short Textbook of Psychiatry, (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2nd.edit. 1976), 223Google Scholar.

17 Rodger, T. Ferguson, et al. Lecture Notes on Psychological Medicine, (Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone), 1976, 17–18Google Scholar.

18 Hare, R.D., The Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R), (Toronto, Ontario, Multi-Health Systems, 2nd.edit. 2003)Google Scholar. See also Hare, R.D., Psychopathy: Theory and Research, (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1970)Google Scholar; Gelder, M., Gath, D., and Mayou, R., (eds.) (Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, Oxford University Press, 2nd.ed. 1991)Google Scholar; and Blair, James, Mitchell, Derek, and Blair, Karina, The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain, (Blackwell, 2005)Google Scholar.

19 Cleckley, H.M., The Mask of Sanity, St Louis, Missouri, Mosby, 1941Google Scholar. Cleckley also wrote, with Corbett Thigpen, a book about multiple personality disorder, The Three Faces of Eve (1956), which was made into a very successful film in 1957, with Joanne Woodward in the leading role.

20 Kohlberg, Lawrence, ‘Stage and Sequence: the cognitive-developmental approach to socialization’, in Goslin, D.A. (ed.) Handbook of Socialization, Theory and Research, (Chicago, Illinois, Rand McNally, 1969)Google Scholar. See also Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., and Hewer, A., Moral Stages: A current formulation and a response to critics (Basel, Karger, 1983)Google Scholar.

21 See Turiel, Elliot, The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

22 See Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.