Morality Prior To Conscience
Chapter 1
Definition Of Conscience
9. Conscience means consciousness; moral conscience [which in English we normally call 'conscience'] means moral consciousness.Properly speaking, we know other things but are conscious of what we ourselves do and of what takes place at the level of our interior feeling. We take the word conscience in this sense, and use it to indicate knowledge of ourselves. Etymology provides the same meaning for conscience. The prefix con denotes union or conjunction, and tells us of knowledge we have with ourselves, knowledge furnished by our inner feeling. We may notice in passing that etymology, especially if it still governs words in use, shows us the concept that ordinary people possess of the thing signified by a word. This is of considerable importance because ordinary usage is almost the sole authority we have for deciding the meaning of words.
10. However, we must subject the word conscience to a careful analysis in order to clarify its meaning more carefully. And to do this, we first recall the distinction between direct and reflective knowledge which we encountered when we studied the foundations of epistemology.(3)
When we carry out any first intellective act, we do not know the act itself although it is the means by which we know the object of our knowledge. This first knowledge, in which we know immediately the object of our act but not the act itself of our spirit (means of knowledge), is called direct knowledge.
After direct knowledge has been acquired, reflection takes place. But reflection is of two kinds. We can either reflect upon the objects of direct knowledge, or we can reflect upon the act of the spirit by which the spirit knows. If we reflect only upon the objects of knowledge, we acquire reflective knowledge of the objects of our knowledge, but not of the act of the spirit which is the means of knowledge. If we reflect upon both the object of knowledge and the act of our spirit (the means of knowledge), we acquire consciousness, that is, a general conscience of our intellective act in relationship with the object to which it refers.
11. We must note that this consciousness or general conscience is the effect of reflection which terminates simultaneously in the cognitive act of the spirit and in the first object of that act. As far as the object is concerned, our resulting knowledge is certainly reflective, but the same cannot be said, strictly speaking, about the act of our spirit, of which we knew nothing prior to the act itself. We come to know the act only as a result of our reflection.(4)
12. We should also note in passing that our distinction between reflecting only upon the objects of knowledge and reflecting upon the act of the spirit (which thus becomes an object itself) is extremely important and provides an explanation of a great number of otherwise inexplicable psychological facts. In particular, it throws light upon the difficulty experienced by the spirit in reflecting upon its own feelings — a difficulty rarely experienced when it reflects upon its own ideas.
13. Certainly, transient feelings occur in us without our reflecting upon them in any way, and very great care is needed if we are to succeed in paying proper attention to them.
But attending to feelings which remain constantly present to us is even more difficult than grasping transient feelings. Lasting feelings are connatural and intimate; they form our nature and constitute our being. But that which is most natural in us and most consistent with our nature is least easy to observe. Our attention is attracted rather by what is novel and unusual, not by what is customary, innate and constant. Our ideas, moreover, in so far as almost all of them are acquired, add something new to our nature and more easily become objects of our reflection.
14. If we now ask ourselves which of our ideas we reflect upon most easily, we soon see that reflection becomes more difficult as the distance between ideas and their first, natural source increases. The first principles of reason, for instance, which are the nearest to the common fount of our ideas, are almost the last to enter our sphere of reflection. On the other hand,perceptions and specific ideas, which are the furthest from their natural source, possess the greatest freshness and are most foreign to our nature, but are the easiest to reflect upon.
This law also explains why reflection upon the idea of being, the source of all other ideas, is difficult in the extreme. Instead of constituting the immediate object of our reflection, this idea is considered reflectively only after it has been separated from partial ideas.
15. We said that conscience, in the general sense, is a reflection. But it is not any kind of reflection. It is not that which takes place simply on our ideas or concepts and constitutes reflective knowledge properly so-called; it is reflection turned upon ourselves, making us know what we do or what is done in us. Nevertheless, even this is not sufficient to give us a full, clear concept of conscience in the moral sense of the word.
We act with our understanding, with our affectivity and with our body, and can become conscious of all these different activities. But our conscience, in so far as it tells us only what we do historically, is not yet moral. Rather, it is what we may call historical conscience.
When does moral conscience begin in us?
In my opinion moral conscience is not restricted to making us conscious of
what we do, and nothing more. It also offers a judgment about our
actions which makes us conscious of their quality.
We can go further. Interior judgments about our actions can vary enormously
according to the rule that we use in formulating them. For example, if I judge
that a certain action is going to be economically harmful to me, I have judged
it according to economic standards; if I judge that an action is going to
diminish my political influence, I have judged this action by a political norm;
and so on for every judgment according to the norms I use in
qualitatively assessing actions.
Moreover, these norms can be classified. By gradually reducing them to their most general classifications, we find that we can allocate them to two supreme genera formed by the utility and rectitude of the action under consideration. If we judge our action according to the norm of utility, in so far as it brings us nearer to or distances us from happiness, we say that we have made a eudaimonological judgment. If we judge our action according to the norm of rectitude, in so far as it makes us virtuous or evil by conforming to or differing from the law, we say that we have made a moral judgment. These two kinds of judgment, to which we can submit all our actions, allow us to acquire two types of consciousness. We can become conscious of having posited either a utilitarian or an upright action.
Consequently, there are two kinds of conscience: eudaimonological conscience and moral conscience.
16. We are now in a position to view the entire concept of moral conscience. By summarising the elements we have seen to be included in it, we find that they can be reduced to the following:
1. an intellectual, affective or external action of our own;
2. historical consciousness of this action;
3. direct knowledge of the moral law;
4. simultaneous reflection upon the law and upon our action for the sake of
comparing one with the other;
5. the comparision between the action and the law;
6. the conclusion we draw from this comparison. This conclusion consists in the
judgment we make about the uprightness of the action whether it is done or not.
17. At this point we have to add another observation. Moral conscience is formed in us only when we are doing, or have already done, an action. If the action has not been done, or is not yet started, we can know it, but we cannot be conscious of it (cf. 9). It follows that a conscience concomitant with and subsequent to an action can be formed, but not properly speaking a conscience antecedent to an action, or at least antecedent to a projected action.
Nevertheless we have to remember that before the action is done or even before deliberation about actually carrying it out, we have normally thought about it and made a judgment concerning its uprightness. Although we have not yet decided whether to carry it out or not, we have made the action seem our very own by representing it as a possibility open to our deliberation. We then say, improperly, that we have a conscience about the action. This is the conscience theologians call antecedent.
Notes
(3) Certainty, 1258-1263.
(4) It must be noted that when I assert our ignorance of the cognitive act of the spirit prior to reflection upon the act, I am not denying to our spirit a feeling of the cognitive act. On the contrary I admit that our spirit, which is essentially sensitive, has a feeling of each of its acts. But it has no knowledge of them until, reflecting upon them, it makes them the object of its knowledge. Denying that the spirit has a feeling of its acts would render reflection on the acts inexplicable because the spirit would have no object on which to fix its attention.