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Morality Prior To Conscience

Chapter 3

The Faculty To Which Conscience Belongs

23. Because conscience is a moral judgment (cf. 19, 20), it belongs to moral reason,(10) the faculty for deducing all laws from the first law.(11)

24. The faculty of moral reason has different functions, but what has been said indicates that conscience belongs to reflection. Conscience is a judgment about the morality of our actions, that is, about the morality of our practical judgment which is their foundation. Clearly, therefore, we have to reflect upon this practical judgment in order to evaluate its morality.

25. It is more difficult, however, to determine the level of reflection to which moral conscience belongs. We know that the theory of knowledge assigns different levels to reflections. The first level is the reflection on our direct knowledge, but we can in turn reflect on this level itself, thus producing a second level. We can then reflect on this second level and arrive at a third level with new information, a process that can be continued indefinitely.(12) To which of these levels, therefore, does conscience belong?

To answer clearly, we must review the successive steps which lead to morality in human acts and to our conscience about this morality. If we are able to view the whole process generating the quality which makes our acts moral and known to be moral, we will be able to note precisely where and how the interior act of conscience properly originates.

 26. The process by which morality comes about in human actions has been described in Principles of Ethics. Our description, which faithfully observes and follows nature, has prepared the way for us. The process, as described in the book, is:

1. We possess the supreme Law, which is ideal-indeterminate being, the measure of all determinate and real beings [App. no. 1].

2. As soon as we experience sensible impressions, we apprehend real beings intellectively, as beings. This first apprehension is entirely spontaneous, lacking any deliberation and constituting direct knowledge. As yet there is nothing moral in human acts; at this stage they are purely intellective because they are spontaneous, necessary products of the understanding, not of the will.

3. We reflect upon the beings apprehended. As long as this reflection is merely speculative, it does not generate any morality. But if the practical energy with which the will is endowed (cf. 18) is associated with it, there takes place what I call the willed, practical acknowledgement of beings. This is the source of morality.

27. In our willed acknowledgement we can be just or unjust (cf. 19). If we acknowledge the perceived beings simply for what they are, that is, according to the precise level of good each has (a level equal to the grade of their being), then we are just. Otherwise, we willingly err and contradict the truth, or direct knowledge, in us. It is in this first practical, willed reflection that the morality of our actions begins and defines itself; their morality, in its origin and essence, consists precisely 'in the rectitude and truthfulness which the human being places in the willed acknowledgement we are speaking of.' In this acknowledgement the value of the things conceived in their idea is not dissimulated, nor is a value invented for them (the value of things is expressed generally as a quantity of being because the quantity of being constitutes the quantity of good in everything).(13)

28. It has been shown(14) that all human morality takes its origin from our first willed judgment on the value of what is perceived, in other words from the first practical reflection on our direct knowledge. We saw that intellective, affective and external actions in human beings are interconnected as links of a chain and have for their point of reference the willed, reflective judgment which esteems known objects. The source of human morality, therefore, is to be found solely in this first esteem, the effect of the first reflective judgment, an essentially moral act, generating affections and movements which, together with the actions that follow affections and movements, share in its morality. Hence sacred scripture says: 'Let an UPRIGHT WORD go before all your works.'(15) This word is internal, an acknowledgement of the truth (that is, of the direct knowledge), a willed judgment we pronounce to ourselves before positing an act. Clearly then morality belongs to the first reflection. A personal, actual morality, beginning at the level of our first reflections, is possible in every human being.

29. In passing, we may note that we commonly say a person has attained the use of reason when his actions indicate morality. Hence we generally call it the age of 'discretion' of good and evil. Reason does of course begin to develop in us from the first moments of our existence, but only gradually. It first has to acquire perceptions of feelable things, from which it must then separate ideas and eventually form the idea of intelligent being to which moral value refers (cf. 28).(16) Because seven years are normally allowed for this, we say that human beings reach the use of reason at seven years of age. But we then explain this by adding that the child at that age can discern good and evil.

30. Morality begins at the first level of practical reflections (cf. 26). To establish the level at which conscience originates, we recall that 'conscience is a judgment on the morality of our actions' or 'a speculative judgment on the morality of our practical judgment.' But if the morality of actions is based in the practical judgment, which belongs to the first level of reflections, conscience, in order to judge about morality, must reflect on the first level of reflections, to which morality belongs. The judgment, then made by conscience, is a later reflection than that of morality; it is at least a second-level reflection. Conscience, therefore, cannot begin before we have reached at least the second level of reflections in our development.

31. I say at least the second level because, although actual morality begins at the first level of reflections, it can take place just as easily at all higher levels. Thus, conscience, although it begins with the second level of reflections, belongs equally to the third, fourth, or any higher level.

Notes

(10) In PE (cf. 184, 185) I distinguished moral reason from both eudaimonological and practical reason. I pointed out that reason is a single power. However, when judging moral matters it is called 'moral'; when judging useful things, it is called 'eudaimonological'; when judging with effective energy what should be done here and now, all things being considered, it is called 'practical', and as such is the true beginning of human actions.

(11) The faculty of the first law is the moral intellect. Cf. PE, 183.

(12) Cf. Certainty, 1149-1157.

(13) PE, 20-45.

(14) op. cit., 114-181.

(15) Eccl 37: 20.

(16) PE, 101-105.