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6. Conscience

We have just expressed the opinion that the status of a "third faculty" - on a par with intellect and will - is not due to affectivity or feelings. An exaggerated predominance of mind and will can indeed spoil a person's affective development. But it is equally certain that one's affectivity cannot safely be allowed to dominate psychic or interior development. The person dominated by feelings is notably immature; to be unable to control one's feelings betrays a seriously undermined freedom and can turn a person into a slave of impulse. Feelings are necessary; but they can only achieve their full development and irreplaceable role when regulated by a properly formed mind and will.

However, the human person carries within another spiritual or psychic power, of such unique importance and of such independent status that a case might well be made for classifing it as a "third faculty". This is conscience.

Faculty, feeling, judgment?

Conscience is variously described. For some it is a sort of intuitive moral sense that operates through feelings of right and wrong. Others see it in intellectual terms, as a specific capacity for moral judgment. To describe it in terms of "feeling" may do justice to conscience's uncanny way of raising its voice spontaneously, and at times quite unwantedly; but it does not explain its peculiarity of speaking directly to the head, without any hint that it has come from the heart. The child that tells his first lie knows in his mind that he has done something "wrong", at the same time as he may be tempted in his heart not to own up to it.

Even though a person may be nagged by the thought, "I don't feel happy about what I've done", what he is expressing is not so much a feeling as a doubt or suspicion about an action. It is really a call to grow in self-awareness, to reflect more deeply on the true value and effect of his actions.

All in all, conscience does seem rather in the nature of an intellectual judgment: a "judgment of the [practical] intellect", as scholastic moralists are used to describe it. Yet this description could have its own inadequacy if taken to imply that the origins and workings of conscience are to be attributed just to the intellect. Conscience should be related not primarily to the mind, over which we can always exercise a certain control, but to truth, which stands above us and which we can accept or reject but not control. More than the voice of our intellect, conscience is an echo of a prior voice of truth. It stands behind and higher than our intellect. Its presence is something to wonder at. Anyone who takes conscience seriously must be seized by a sense of awe. "These are not just my thoughts; there is something higher, deeper, behind it all: in me - and yet above me".

To describe conscience as a judgment of the intellect could favor the conclusion that it derives its operation and authority simply from the inner workings of my mind. This conclusion is not adequate. Conscience is an interior voice; but it is not just the voice of my intellect. It speaks to my mind; but it does not come just from my mind. It is a voice that seems to echo thoughts or judgments that are not originally mine, for, though they come from within, they also come from above. Conscience is not just "what I think", and less still "what I want to think". In this sense, conscience claims an origin prior to both intellect and will. A person has only grasped the real dimension of his conscience and the respect due to it when he realizes that it is a reflection or resonance of truth coming from a higher, more aboriginal, source than his own mind.

Conscience does not present itself as a gradually elaborated intellectual judgment, the consequence of a previous study of an issue. It initially appears rather as a voice - from within and, we repeat, in some way from above - which questions an intention, an inclination, an action; and often urges us to examine the matter more deeply. It is not necessarily a clear light on the matter itself; but it does tend to be a clear admonition: take it easy - this needs looking into.

Conscience is not for times of clarity, but rather for moments of darkness or doubt. It appears as a ray or glimmer of light at the end of a tunnel. A person aware of the dark and looking for light can be drawn in that direction. Perhaps the ray indicates new directions as he goes. The sincerity with which he is prepared to change his course may in the end be the key giving access to fuller light.

Conscience then has its uniqueness in relation to both mind and will. It influences and is influenced by them; but it has its "a se" existence, and cannot be reduced to a merely intellectual or merely volitive category. It must necessarily be assigned a rightful "independence" from mind and will, which affectivity can never properly claim.

Conscience appears as a guardian of personal intimacy and integrity in the deepest aspect of their sincerity and authenticity. It is like an alarm system that enters into spontaneous action or reaction, whenever our way of acting can influence the type of person we are becoming. It is a sort of self-monitor that knows us from within, with a unique interior perspective on the value of our actions: informing on how they help us progress towards genuine human happiness - or lead us away from it. It is a monitor therefore of the process of our fulfillment (or frustration) [1].

Only a superficial and thoughtless person would not want to know himself. Socrates held that "the unexamined life is not worth living". Whoever does not try to be deeply sincere with himself may gain the respect of others who see him from the outside; but he can never know what actual respect he can justifiedly have with regard to himself.

In what way is "my" conscience mine?

Conscience is always singular; we cannot properly speak of a "collective" or "social" conscience. Conscience is always personal and individual to each one of us. Yet "my" conscience is not always mine as I might wish. It is not mine to do what I like with. It possesses its own integrity. Conscience is not a rump parliament, sitting just to ratify the decisions or preferences of its "master", i.e. the person as whose faculty it appears, and who, we might think, stands higher than it. It maintains a constitutional independence from the "ego" or self. It passes its own judgments, commanding and forbidding, and will not let itself be reduced to a rubber stamp level without some form of internal struggle that in itself suggests a constitutional violation.

A conscience that never enjoins or forbids - you have to do that; you ought not to do this - does not merit the name of conscience.

Conscience commands or forbids with mysterious authority; and so, - we insist - it appears as a faculty that in some way stands above a person. If it can be said to be at his service, it is with what appears to be an independent mandate proceeding from some higher jurisdiction. However we describe conscience, what is most striking about it is this status of an internal independent court of judgment.

Conscience judges; its function, moreover, is to judge not the actions of other people, but one's own actions. Judging other people's deeds is a frequent tendency, and more often than not a bad habit. In any case, it remains a purely voluntary act; a person judges because he wants to and chooses to. The person who chooses not to judge others can learn not to do so without extraordinary difficulty. Dealing with conscience is not so easy. Conscience has its own power and autonomy. It functions: judging us, at times despite ourselves. We can want not to judge ourselves, we can gradually bring ourselves not to listen to our conscience; but conscience speaks with a voice that is not easily silenced. Deep down inside the person, it still makes itself audible. Prolonged effort is needed to muzzle it. Conscience "kicks" to survive; because its survival is necessary for us. Conscience cannot be shaken around like a stuffed marionette, or punched into shape like a pillow. It is conscience that does the shaking, and it is we whom it tries to punch into shape.

It has been said that the best way to keep one's conscience clean is not to use it ... The principle doesn't work, for conscience itself will not go along with such cynicism. The less conscience is "used", the more dirt and disquiet grow inside - despite the pretense that they are not there.

It is not possible for someone to tell a lie unconsciously. A person lies, perhaps on the spur of the moment, and immediately the awareness is there: that was a lie. It may be that nobody else knows; we ourselves may not want to know, but we know. There remains an accusing voice inside - which is nothing but the self-judgment of conscience - that is very hard to ignore. This, as we have said, is true of the youngest child possessed of a minimal power of reflection; the child who lies to his parents knows he has done something "wrong". His sense of guilt is the natural reaction to a closing in on self. Conscience protests against any shrinkage of self through a rejection of values.

It is inadequate, therefore, to try to explain conscience as a monitor implanted as a result of education or indoctrination. It is naturally present in every person from the outset of his conscious life. It may indeed be neglected or ignored by its possessor. The more it is neglected or unheeded, the more easily can it be manipulated or deformed by others. In any case, this can only be a gradual process. A serious deformation of conscience seems inconceivable without personal acquiescence.

The mind needs to listen to the voice of conscience in order, if possible, to achieve a clear grasp of what it forbids or commands. It is not always easy to know if what I call my conscience ("my conscience tells me") is really such, or is simply the voice of my preferences which a self-indulgent will is trying to get my mind to rationalize.

One sign of not wanting to reduce conscience to the level of an acquiescent "yes-man" to personal whims is that I listen sincerely to its reproaches for what I have done or omitted, and am prepared to follow its positive or negative commands regarding my conduct.

A "person with a conscience" is a person subject to a factor of self-restraint - arising within himself. Therefore, according to one's evaluation of the concept of self-restraint, conscience can be seen as a nuisance or an advantage. We could recall here what was mentioned about the "selfishness of the will". The will that lets itself be captivated by a pleasant option may be strongly tempted not to heed a possible negative moral valuation presented by conscience.

Rights of conscience

This is a topic which is invoked and discussed today, as never before. Yet the discussion is not always carried on with sufficient depth. For instance, there is little or no reflection on the fact that the very "quasi-independence" of conscience - its position as a sort of higher tribunal judging the person from within - suggests that "rights of the person" and "rights of conscience" are not to be simply identified. Insofar as conscience can be considered a faculty, then one might say that rights of conscience are rights of the faculty, more than powers of the person. Conscience has the right to command the person, whereas the person does not have the right to control conscience.

Everyone has the right to listen to and follow his conscience; however he has no right over his conscience. His right to follow his conscience, as we will see in a moment, becomes in some cases a duty. An appeal to "conscience" (as conferring a right) is generally no defense for an action that needs to be justified, unless the person can show that his conscience not merely spoke to him of a right of action, but imposed on him a strict duty to act.

The first right of conscience is in fact the right to be respected and obeyed by the person himself. If a person does not see and observe this, then he is speaking without true understanding when he invokes the rights of conscience.

Only a sophist would argue that it is all right to proceed in an action which is the object of his own interior disapproval. Therefore, while there can be violations of conscientious rights from outside, the worst violation of conscience is interior and is committed by the person who refuses to obey it. If he perseveres in such a violation and tries to justify it, his whole system of moral defense can collapse. Raskolnikov, in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, commits murder. His drama (which ends positively and leads to his "salvation") derives from the fact that he cannot escape from the interior judgment of his conscience. If he had done so - if he had managed to do so - he might well have gone on to further crimes. Facing his conscience, without dodging or denying it, he is salvaged from the wreckage of a life and led to a new self-realization.

"Rights of conscience" cannot mean that each one has the right to do whatever he likes or claims to consider justified. His thoughts are his own; he may think what he freely chooses to think (independently of whether his thoughts are "right" or "wrong", make him "better" or "worse", freer or less free). But his actions often impinge on others; and may affect their freedom. Then his rights must in some way be conditioned by theirs.

Duties toward conscience

We hear almost exclusively about "rights of" conscience. But it is just as important to examine duties towards conscience that we are all bound by. These duties can be enunciated in two main principles:

- One must follow one's conscience - because it offers the first and most intimate and accessible norm of action for each one. There is, however, a clear and fundamental qualification that needs to be added immediately. One must follow one's conscience when it commands or prohibits a course of action. One cannot however speak of a duty to follow a conscience that merely "permits" (i.e. that sees nothing to the contrary), offering a neutral judgment - or no judgment - on a possible action. In such a case, the exercise of one's right (not one's duty) to follow one's conscience must be tempered by respect for the rights of others.

- One must form one's conscience, because its judgments are not infallible; they can be wrong. Conscience, in the case of the person who is not constantly concerned with its formation, can become an organ of self-deception [2]. There is little depth or self-awareness in the person who lacks this concern to form his conscience and to correct its possible errors.

Since conscience is frequently a nuisance, we can be tempted to change its nature, or to silence it. The nervous system of the body at times also appears as a nuisance. It can be neutralized or anaesthetized; this, as a temporary measure, may be a necessary aid to health. But a permanently anaesthetized nervous system would leave us defenseless against serious and perhaps mortal harm to our body. So an anaesthetized conscience, with regard to a person's psychic and moral health.

Conscience can be warped; then it needs to be straightened and put right. What it cannot be is ignored. No one can ignore the voice of conscience and still claim to take himself seriously.

Freedom of conscience

Mark Twain, as so often, had his tongue in his cheek when he remarked: "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them". What freedom of speech means is fairly clear. But what does freedom of conscience mean? Freedom to tell ourselves that we can do whatever we want to? - or freedom to shape our principles or actions according to our own sincere interior weighing of what we consider right or wrong? The latter is freedom of conscience properly so called.

It follows, as part of the inviolable dignity of each person, that no one can be obliged by any authority to do things which violate the moral imperatives of his conscience. This, as we shall see in a moment, does not confer a right to carry out externally any action a person holds to be licit. But it does mean that no one can be forced to perform an action or embrace a belief which he sincerely holds to be wrong.

It is important here not to confuse freedom of conscience with "freedom of action", for they are quite different concepts. All of us have a certain freedom of action, although within definite limits imposed upon us by our condition as finite beings. Each one is physically free to do what he wants and is capable of, and to incur the unavoidable consequences: free to throw himself out of a twentieth-floor window, and to suffer the physical consequence of bashing his brains out on the pavement below; free to defraud the tax collector or rob a bank and - if discovered - to suffer the penal consequences. All this is freedom of action, not of conscience.

The swindler or robber can be fully aware not only that his action is illegal (it breaks the laws of the State), but also that it is immoral (it goes against some norm which his conscience presents to him as just and binding, over and above the positive law, and which he himself recognizes as such). If in such a situation he asserts his freedom of action in order to rob, he is violating and perhaps enchaining his conscience, thus trampling on a part of himself that is a key to his freedom and fulfillment.

While freedom of thought and freedom of conscience do not imply quite the same thing, a brief comment on freedom of thought could be useful here. We need to bear in mind that thinking is for concluding; otherwise a person would never decide anything, never choose, never move or progress. "Freedom of thought" therefore means freedom to reach - or at least to want to reach - a conclusion. Freedom of thought that cannot or does not want to come to any conclusion is a frustrated and useless freedom.

In any event freedom of thought has a wider scope than freedom of action; but not without any limit. If the concept of freedom of thought is to retain any human meaning, it is that a person has the right to follow any line of thought which appears to him to be true. One has the power - not the right - to pursue a line of thinking which one realizes is leading to false conclusions; but that is an indication of human fallibility or weakness, not the reflection or expression of any human right or dignity.

With regard to external action, however, it is not possible to sustain the idea that freedom has no limit. Any society approving such a principle could not survive for long in a civilized way. If someone claims the right to hold personally that racial discrimination or the elimination of the unfit or the commercial traffic of drugs to adolescents are good things, society may feel no call, and indeed have no way, to restrain his private thoughts. It would be different, however, if he wished to go further, claiming that his right to think these views gives him the right to propagate them or to act externally in accordance with them. Then the rights of others are affected, and public authority has to face up to its mission of seeing how conflicting rights - or claims of "rights" - are to be harmonized according to some valid principle of the common good.

Some people, it is true, use "freedom of conscience" or "freedom of thought" as slogans under which to claim freedom of another kind: that of doing whatever they want and judging it interiorly as an act of a positive ethical nature, even though some external authority - the civil law, religious moral teaching, etc. - declares it wrong. What is being claimed here in the last analysis is the freedom to set up each individual conscience as the ultimate determining standard of right and wrong, also in a person's external behavior.

The question of the possible sincerity or otherwise of such consciences can be raised; but it does not have to be solved in order to realize how dangerous this approach would be if it gained any general acceptance. If "freedom of conscience" in this sense leads people to hold (sincerely, so they assert) that child abuse is legitimate, are they not to be bound by civil laws which seek to control, even with penal threats, their freedom of external action in such an area? [3]

Self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-fulfillment.

The consciousness of never having done wrong may appear as a marvelous gift; but who has it? Which, then, is better: to have done wrong things and never to admit (not even to self) that they are wrong? Or to have done wrong things and to admit it, at least to self, and try to set them right or at least to wish you had never done them? There is more self-respect in the latter attitude.

In 19th-century society, the Christian framework of morality was by and large still accepted. What was sinful and wrong in the past was generally still considered sinful. For Victorian sensitivity, however, sin was to be avoided more because it offended society ("Establishment morality") than because it offended any higher order. According to a more interior criterion it was to be condemned particularly because it takes away self-esteem and "tranquillity of conscience". A dominant principle of conduct for Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was to do only what "conscience and self-respect will permit" [4]. She admired the (rather Calvinist) zeal and virtue of St. John Rivers, "yet he did not appear [to her] to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist" [5].

Charlotte Brontë is here echoing one of Dr. Samuel Johnson's axioms: "All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience". One recalls, without necessarily agreeing with its caustic character, Hilaire Belloc's comment: "I would argue with the Doctor - if he were alive and before me now, and promised not to roar too loud [Samuel Johnson did roar a bit, but had died a hundred years before Belloc's time] - upon that matter of a quiet conscience. I do not believe that good men have quiet consciences. I hold that an uneasy conscience - at any rate nowadays - is the first requisite for Heaven, and that an inflamed, red, feverish, angry conscience is a true mark of increasing virtue. I have met many men with quiet consciences, not all of them wholly unintelligent, but nearly all of them scoundrels" [6].

A quiet conscience, then, is not always a good sign, especially if it lasts too long. Just as a person who never feels any physical pain may have the questionable advantage of possessing very thick skin.

We wonder if what a modern author writes is altogether valid, at least if it is applied to our context: "The happy man is at peace with himself ... Being at peace means to live in a calm and serene tranquillity ... The balanced personality is at peace with himself, being at the same time inserted into reality; this means that he is master of himself within his cultural context" [7].

If conscience becomes the monitor of self-respect, and self-respect the measure of conscience, then conduct can be quite elastic. Certainly the contemporary turn-of-millennium approach allows very considerable latitude of action compatible with the preservation of self-respect.

What has become particularly important today is that if a person has happened to do something wrong (or, to put it more impersonally, as some prefer to do, if "something wrong has happened" in a person's life), a process of healing is needed, which seems to mean the gradual recovery of self-esteem over a period of time sufficient to allow the faux pas to slip into simple oblivion. Not just the offense against any higher order, but the very concept of repentance, has disappeared from the moral horizon. It is interesting, although perhaps not politically correct, to dig to the Victorian roots of this mindset.

Today the concern for a "good image" (or "self-image") has intensified - and been interiorized - to a quasi-pathological degree. Political figures, cinema stars, big commercial firms have always had their Public Relations agents, whose efforts have in part impressed the public at large, and in part left it skeptical, knowing that the image tends to be different from the truth. But now each individual has become his own public relations agent; and it is not only the exterior audience - the public of the street - he would like to please, but also and especially his inner audience: that is, himself. Each one wants to be able to hold a pleasing personal image before the mirror of his own eyes; and to be convinced or have others persuade him that this image corresponds to the truth: that he really is a person above reproach.

Self-esteem is to be achieved and maintained at all costs - even at that of unlimited self-deception. These are, of course, ideal dispositions for developing what psychiatrists designate as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, nor can it be a matter of surprise that the American Psychiatric Association says that this disorder "appears to be more common recently than in the past" [8]

Probably nothing could be more alien to this way of thinking than Santayana's suggestion that "the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself" [9]. Bernard Nathanson, having come to a crisis point in his autobiography, quotes this dictum of the Spanish-American philosopher and, looking back in judgment at his own troubled life, condenses his self-estimation into one flat statement: "I despised myself" [10]. Much of contemporary psychology would regard such an admission as destructive of all psychological health and of any sense of personal dignity [11]. For Nathanson it marked a decisive beginning in the recovery of both.

Nathanson here places himself at the opposite pole to the "new people of the future", whom Charles Reich so fervently depicted in his 1970 best-selling The Greening of America. A major characteristic of that lucky and complacent generation is the total acceptance of self and the rejection of any notion of self-dissatisfaction. "The new generation says, 'Whatever I am, I am'. He may have hang-ups of all sorts, insecurities, inadequacies, but he does not reject himself on that account. There may be as many difficulties about work, ability, relationships, and sex as in any other generation, but there is less guilt, less anxiety, less self-hatred. [He] says, 'I'm glad I'm me' ..." [12]

"I'm glad I'm me!". Why, yes: that would seem to be a good mood as a point of departure. But if it really means, "I'm glad no one is asking me - nor will I let anyone ask me - to be better than I find myself right now", then it is a formula for self-imposed mediocrity. Far from placing the person at a point of departure, it settles him in a dead end. It is the antithesis of the attitude of G. K. Chesterton on taking up the unfinished work of his brother, who had been killed in the First World War and towards whom he entertained unlimited admiration: "Even though I can never be as good as my brother, I can be better than myself".

The self-regarding, self-justifying person is both very vulnerable and very incurable. In dealing with narcissism as a mental disorder, the American Psychiatric Association notes this vulnerability: "Vulnerability in self-esteem makes individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder very sensitive to "injury" from criticism or defeat" [13]. A number of ironies could emerge here. The APA comment might be taken to suggest that the ideal, for mental health, is invulnerable self-esteem ... While this indeed renders a person totally impervious to criticism or defeat, one may ask whether such a disposition is an advantage, or not rather a considerable disadvantage, for the acquisition of true personal worth. Further, if unqualified self-esteem is a virtue [14], it is hard to see on what grounds, or in what measure, narcissism is to be considered a defect.

The more narcissistic society becomes, the less will it tolerate being told that narcissism is a disorder. Sooner or later the APA may have to decide whether it will bow to what it perceives as the dominant cultural outlook and remove narcissism from its official listing of mental disorders, as it has already done with homosexuality [16].

While psychiatrists are sorting this out, the fact remains that the right to placid and unimpeachable self-esteem is fast becoming the most inviolable of personal rights. Insofar as it implies the determination to "accept" oneself and to be accepted - absolutely and unconditionally, as one is at any given moment - , it is, anthropologically speaking, a paralyzing attitude. It canonizes the "static me", turns self-satisfaction (which is often no more than empty conceit) into the equivalent of self-fulfillment, and puts a halt to any real and dynamic personal progress or growth.

Notes
[1] As monitor of our every action, conscience is a checkpoint at which our thoughts and impulses and projects should stop, so as to see if they can be let pass or not.
[2] "That strange thing, the conscience, can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve, if you begin its education early enough and stick to it": Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn, x.
[3] So we cannot always underwrite the principle so well put by Atticus Finch: "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience" (Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird, Pt. 1, ch. 11).
[4] Jane Eyre, Ch. 29, and elsewhere.
[5] ib. Ch. 30.
[6] On "Rasselas".
[7] E. Rojas, Una Teoria della Felicità, pp. 358; 364.
[8] DSM-III-R, p. 350.
[9] George Santayana, Spinoza's Ethics, Introduction.
[10] Bernard N. Nathanson, The Hand of God, p. 190.
[11] The proponents of modern self-sufficiency have always found it necessary - and difficult - to counter all awareness of self-deficiency. "As chief apostle of the emerging cult of self-confidence, [Ralph Waldo] Emerson would spend his life in a complex effort to shut out the voices of self-contempt": Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture, p. 20.
[12] Greening ... p. 235.
[13] DSM-IV, p. 659.
[14] We do not intend to imply that balanced self-esteem is a defect. On the contrary, it is necessary for personal growth: always provided it consists in true self-estimation, i.e. an awareness of both the positive and the negative aspects of one's personal character and life. See the author's study, "Self-esteem: Why?; Why not?": www.cormacburke.or.ke/node/994.
[15] cf. C. Burke: "Psychiatry: A "Value-Free" Science?": The Linacre Quarterly, vol. 67 (2000), pp. 59-88.