With Good Reason Moral Conscience - Part II

Jul 29, 2008

Last week I began a series of reflections on the nature of moral conscience.  I sketched out four typical conceptions of conscience (labeled (a) thru (d)) which have come down to us over time through various channels, whether moral philosophy, psychology, or another related field. I would like now to offer a critique of the fourth notion of conscience (d) which I sketched out last week in the following terms: 

 

Conscience is simply that process by which I give consideration to moral matters and come up with my best judgment - essentially my opinion - about what I or others ought to do or not do.  When I am convinced of this judgment, it enjoys primacy over all other moral points of reference and trumps any other considerations. As such, it is basically infallible: my conscience - that is, my best formed opinion on moral matters - is my moral compass, period.

 

Notion (d) requires careful analysis due to the several valid elements it contains, for its degree of overlap with the natural law (NL) notion of conscience, but especially because - as I hold - it is the predominant view, representing what most people consider conscience to be.  It has arguably engendered considerable confusion, uncertainty, anxiety and befuddlement in the moral lives of millions of people, particularly Catholics.  Its highly problematic reduction of conscience to the level of moral opinion, however, sets it deeply at odds with a more perennial Catholic, natural law understanding of conscience. 

 

In the NL tradition, conscience is a judgment about a choice made or an action already accomplished (retrospective conscience). Conscience more importantly can and should also be directed at choices yet to be made (prospective conscience), choices that is about which one is still deliberating or at least considering. 

 

Prospective conscience, then, presents itself as a judgment with regard to the pending choice to accomplish or refrain from committing a possible action, the consideration of which is the result of our deliberation process.    Through deliberation, we come up with options.  We may be leaning toward choosing one of those options, when the authentic voice of conscience kicks in: "this option is good; go ahead, choose it and do it; this other option is wrong, so shun it, turn away from it, do not choose it." In the virtuous individual, if we find ourselves deliberating about a morally objectionable course of action, the judgment of conscience will make itself present then and there and direct us not even to consider such possibilities, and suspend that part of our deliberation process.

 

Thomas Aquinas held that conscience in the strict sense was as a judgment emitted by human reason with regard to our choices and actions.  I like to explain conscience as the interior resounding of reason. Conscience is reason's awareness of a choice or action's harmony or disharmony with the kind of behavior which truly leads to our genuine well being and flourishing. Tradition has come to describe morally good behaviors in the form of virtues; morally objectionable behaviors are indicated by specific moral norms which also express the manner in which such behaviors are contrary to the corresponding virtues.  The tradition recognizes, for instance, specific moral norms against sexual relations outside of marriage (contrary to chastity and marital fidelity), against the deliberate destruction of embryonic human life (against the virtues of charity and justice), and so on. If our choice or action is not in accord with the judgment of a rightly formed and active conscience, then that judgment will linger in our conscious awareness and present itself as a felt disharmony between the choice and the moral norm (and corresponding virtue) being violated.

 

Now, I mentioned moral norms and virtues.  While the experience of conscience is, indeed, something intimate and personal, the tradition holds that conscience will always require points of reference which can be acquired through education and moral training. These points of reference are normally embodied in moral norms or specific virtues. The virtues and norms reflect what the tradition holds to be reasonable human behavior: human behavior in accord with our true flourishing and happiness.  These are aspects of human experience that are anchored in reality and which transcend one's own personal subjectivity.  Reference to them does not have to take the form of a kind of legalism (as represented by notion (b) of conscience, which I described last week); rather, docility to these moral norms and the acquisition of corresponding virtues is an expression of healthy, sound, indeed, reasonable living. 

 

Some of those norms are so basic that they are accessible to all sane human beings: do no harm to the innocent; treat others as you would have them treat you; do not commit adultery.  Other norms and virtues deal with more specific aspects of the moral life.

 

Now we are hopefully poised to draw into clearer distinction the difference between mere opinion about moral matters vs. the genuine judgment of conscience. Note first of all that the process of arriving at both might have many elements in common:

 

(1)    Both will require the exercise of the virtue of prudence - and the more that opining about moral matters seeks the guidance of prudence, the closer it comes to being a genuine effort to get in touch with the judgment of conscience. More on prudence next week.

 

(2)    Both require deliberation, and often the input from friends, the knowledge of current opinions on the matter, and as thorough a knowledge as possible of all the relevant facts.

 

(3)    Both will take the form of a judgment; and to complicate matters, we will often express our genuine conscience judgments in the form of opinion statements.

 

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(4)    Both processes will seek input from objective moral principles and norms; again here, the more people refer to those objective moral norms (and in the case of Catholics, the more they refer to the Church's moral teaching for guidance), the more they will be approximating the formulation of a genuine judgment of conscience.

 

It goes without saying that most often persons who end up with a mere opinion on moral matters do so in good faith. As far as they are concerned, they have genuinely exercised conscience or done so to the best of their abilities.  They are earnestly convinced that the judgment they have arrived at is genuinely the voice of their conscience. 

 

That notwithstanding, how then would the NL tradition distinguish genuine conscience from mere moral opinion? Consider the following examples of what are arguably the expression of mere opinions on moral matters:

 

• "If I were Uncle Charlie, I wouldn't want to be hooked up to that feeding tube; I think we should have them remove it."

 

• "Whether my college-age kids are sexually active is none of my business."

 

• "We know what the Church teaches, but my wife and I think contraception is what we need to do right now."

 

Again, one could, in good faith, hold any of these determinations to be a sound and genuine judgment of conscience, especially if arrived at after a good deal of deliberation, consultation with friends, even prayer.  They could also be, on the contrary, the articulation of "gut feelings," and otherwise rather superficial assessments - mere opinion - about what is right for Uncle Charlie, or my kids, or me and my wife. The process here may have been somewhat muddled; there may be an oblique reference to a relevant moral norm or - as in the third instance - to "what the Church teaches," but perhaps without reasonable effort to understand the reasons for the Church's teaching before discarding them. Such expressions could also come encased in an impenetrable sense of infallibility: "that's my judgment, case closed."  

 

Authentic moral conscience, however, is not merely something that I roll up my sleeves and produce, the product of having weighed my feelings, likes, dislikes, my friend's opinion on the matter, advice from others, and so on.  While all of this might serve to help me arrive at a genuine judgment of conscience, that judgment - if sound and genuinely proceeding from conscience - will proceed from the core of my being, and will correspond to objective moral norms anchored in a rich tradition of moral thought. It will be a weighty and carefully distilled judgment of what is reasonably required of me (or someone else) in the present circumstance.  Genuine conscience is, above all, cautious; it is aware that it can, in fact, err, and seeks direction from objective moral norms.  Such a judgment - when based on those objective norms - will have a far greater solidity than a mere opinion about what's right or wrong in a given situation. One might even discover upon closer examination that the authentic judgment of conscience is at odds with one's opinion, or that in arriving at that opinion, one never made genuine contact with one's conscience at all.

 

More to follow next week.