71PUESTA EN MARCHA DEL MOTOR

If conscientization is defined as the cultivation of critical consciousness and conscience, the project of incorporating the cultivation of conscience into conscientization necessitates a study of both the notion of conscience and its relationship with consciousness. Therefore, the origin and the historical development of conscience are explored for a clear grasp of the notion of conscience; and the conflict and the unity between conscience and consciousness are examined to illuminate how the two concepts are dialectically interconnected. The chapter concludes with the unifying role that conscience plays in the conscience-consciousness relation.

The Notion of Conscience and its Development

There are three articulations of human experience appear to be at the foundation of the western notion of conscience: 1) the writings of Cicero, 2) the Hebrew Scriptures, and 3) the writings of Paul (Despland, 1987).

Cicero is believed to be the first western philosopher who coined the word conscientia (Despland, 1987). For him, conscience or conscientia, as an inner testimony or an internal moral authority on important issues, is most of time consciousness of something: agreeable consciousness of good deeds while, the bite of conscience, disagreeable consciousness of bad deeds (Martyn, 1972). That is, conscience has the great power for bliss or bane; or, one may have a good conscience or a bad one. As Cicero (1991) argues, a bad conscience is from the influence

of others and public opinion while a good conscience is often from the isolated self-approval. Accordingly, he often speaks of conscience in a rhetorical context but with moralizing intent; to be more exact, he inveighs against human evil, commends good deeds, and appeals the assurance one’s own worth.

Unlike Cicero, the articulation of conscience in the Hebrew Scriptures has more to do with one’s heart. God, as the supreme judge, knows and evaluates one’s entire being by performing the function of guiding the human heart. Take the following verse from Psalms (Ps.139: 23-24) for example: “search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my anxieties! And see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” The similar expression can also be found in Proverbs, “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts” (Prv.20:27). In this sense, according to the prophet Jeremiah, without divine protection and scrutiny, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?”(Jer.17:9). Briefly, one can find safety, goodness and security of one’s heart only under God’s protection.

In the New Testament, with common moral reflections, Paul uses conscience on a daily basis. For him there is a good conscience as well as a weak and defiled conscience. Take a verse for instance: “to the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled” (Titus, 1:15). If read closely, like David, Paul has a unyielding good conscience, not disturbed by feelings of guilt, but struggles with his physical handicap and particularly, his inner pains. Paul’s inner self is bruised by a number of factors, such as his despairing self-humiliation, his own divided will, his bodily disobedience against him, his convictions challenged by adversaries, his feeling of being caught up in a

passing age or time, and his feeling impotent and worthless. All of these inner troubles not only interiorize the death of Christ but also reflect a cosmic crisis. However, this kind of eschatological turmoil or despair, for Paul, is a necessary form of suffering one must experience and pass before they share the new resurrected life with Christ because God likes a contrite or broken heart (Despland, 1987). Paul’s feeling of suffering and unrest, to some extent, supports Arendt’s (1972,1978) view that only those who affirm a commitment to applying moral standards but hindered by a bad conscience will be troubled with remorse, guilt or shame when they try to regain integrity and wholeness of the self as their need; and bad people will seldom feel regretful.

Influenced by Paul, Church Fathers accept the notion of conscience as an inner voice of divine origin and assume that all human beings have it but only Christians obey it; hence, conscience can lead Christians to obey God rather than humans and to live for a godly purpose rather than worldly reasons (Despland, 1987). For example, Augustine takes conscience as a tribunal in the mind and confirms it as the synthesis of “divine judgment, moral self-evaluation and the troubled forays into the hidden recesses of one’s heart”, these three notions of conscience initiated by Paul (Despland, 1987, p.46). In this religious context, martyrdom is accepted with joy because God welcomes self-rejection.

According to Langston (2006), apart from Paul’s impacts, Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings on virtues, practical wisdom, and the weakness of will influenced the conceptualization of the notion of conscience in the medieval ages. The development of the notion of conscience or conscientia, is closely related to another term synderesis. The two terms used at that time designate two different functions. Synderesis basically refers to the faculty being able to know

the moral law while conscientia is primarily a habitus of practical intellect that can apply the moral law to concrete cases.

The clarification of the distinction between synderesis and consceintia owes to Bonaventure and Aquinas primarily. According to Potts (1980), Bonaventure sees synderesis and consceintia as interpenetrating one another. Bonaventure locates synderesis, spark of conscience, in the potentia affective that stimulates a human being to the good while he places conscience within the rational faculty, or a part of practical reason when connected to the will, emotions and performance of actions. Hence, there are two parts in conscience. The first part, which is innate and cannot err, is to discover the truth of general practical principles; by contrast, the second part, also innate but erring, is to apply general principles to particular situations. These two distinctive functions from two parts of conscience open up the possibility of developing new general principles through experience so that the contents of synderesis can be enriched over time. Although Bonaventure places synderesis and consceintia in different parts of a human being, he does not isolate the two: conscience is driven by synderesis and also directs synderesis.

As Potts (1980) notes, Aquinas advocates an intellectualistic view of the relationship between synderesis and conscientia and sees conscience as application of knowledge from synderesis to activity. Concerning the weakness of will, or the evaluation of the sensible or pleasures from senses dragged by passion, Aquinas tried to link conscience with prudence and virtues. While synderesis motivates and orients people to the good, conscientia controls, judges and decides what is good to do. In the other words, conscientia informs people of what they have or have not done and what they should and should not do, so it functions as a witness and an accuser. For

Aquinas, conscience seems to indicate a concomitant of all moral actions rather than merely an occasional voice or an emotional impulse at critical moments.

The authority of conscience had gained its fullest religious legitimacy in the medieval ages. The intellectual clarification of conscience was accompanied by a system of practical guidance of fostering a good conscience. For example, it is an obligation, made by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, for all Christians to confess one’s own sins and receive the sacrament, which is known as the tribunal of conscience (Despland, 1987). According to Nelson (1981), this system of spiritual direction was under a three-fold heading: conscience, casuistry and the cure of souls. Since the moral law is universal, yet the individual is different from each other, casuistry is just to study the cases of conscience or individual consciences; therefore, some practical ways of administering souls in a therapeutic way and the education of conscience were involved in the pastoral care and church services. However, in the twelfth and the thirteen centuries, due to urbanization, increasing royal power and people’s awakening national consciousness, particularly in England and France, there is also a shift of the meaning from the self’s conscience to the social relevance of conscience ─ such as forming a good and secure society and having a collective and civil conscience of common peace and universal justice (Despland, 1987).

The development of conscience in the modern ages, in particular from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, was ignited by the religious reformers. As Despland (1987, p.49) points out, “in the middle ages conscience was a function: people had more or less of it, and tried more or less to exercise it”. However, for the reformers, conscience is a fact of spiritual life: “People had a troubled or joyful one; it became an individual organ ─ you have your conscience and I

have mine, just as each of us has his own stomach. This conscience was said to be infallible and generally philanthropic. It was inviolate.” (p.49)

Impacted by the Protestant Reformation, although conscience was one of the most militant terms at that time, a big change took place when people applied the term: conscience was more about individuals’ human innerness as it met God than its casuistry practices (Despland, 1987). The human relationship with God was individuals’ business and people did not need human beings like Church Fathers or pastors to build an indirect bridge between God and them. As Christians, they could know God personally and establish a rapport with God by themselves. Therefore, all the reformers would agree that those who have faith would have good conscience, and accordingly, could walk correctly in the paths of righteousness. According to Wogaman (1994), the medieval burden of being trapped by a guilty conscience was thrown off; the system of the tribunal of conscience was rejected, and Christians were no longer accountable to ecclesiastical authorities. For example, in Calvin’s understanding, the enemies who rose up in one’s conscience against God’s Kingdom and hindered God’s decrees only proved that God’s throne was not firmly established therein; and conscience could never be confused with “police”. This change indicates that the Protestant Reformation gave more subjective assurance to the notion of conscience. As Wogaman (1994) notes, moral aspirations made Christians believe the world could be transformed by conscientious energies. On this background, the scientific revolution started to offer objective certainty and the concept of the individual began to emerge.

From the sixteen century to the eighteenth century in Europe, the notion of conscience also gained rigorous and fresh articulation with its ample philosophical underpinnings.

Montaigne is one of the writers who inaugurated the venture and art of writing for oneself the story of an honest and observant conscience. The approach Montaigne took is an inward or introspective self-discovery by self-examination of the role and social relations in which the self is involved (Taylors, 1989). For him, human experience, human likes and dislikes move to the front stage while the dramas of acceptance and rejection at the hands of biblical God recede in background (Montaigne, 1958). “God must touch our hearts. Our conscience must amend itself by strengthening of our reason, not by the weakening of our appetites. Sensual pleasures are neither pale nor colourless in themselves because they seem so to dull and bleary eyes.” (Montaigne, 1958, p.249)

Therefore, the means like work or what you do in a day should not be taken as the end of life. Human life per se “is not only the fundamental, but the most noble of your occupations”; to reflect it, to control it, and above all, to accept it, is “the greatest work of all” (Montaigne, 1958, p.397). As He claims:

Our duty is to compose our character, not to compose books, to win not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live properly. All other things − to reign, to lay up treasure, to build − are at the best but little aids and additions. (Montaigne, 1958, p.397)

For Montaigne then, conscience is a better means to know oneself and one’s life more critically, inwardly, and genuinely.

Descartes made a distinction between mind and body and stressed the role of thinking. According to Descartes (1955), thinking could bridge the deep abyss between the material world and the spiritual world and transcend the material finite world including human beings and human experience. He claimed that, as a thinking being, “God” is the “author of my existence”

(Descartes, 1996, p.86). As Despland (1987) comments, Descartes set the analysis of conscience as the centre of his philosophy. Although his conscience was also in turmoil, troubled by the experiential fallibility of human conscience and by the idea of the infinite, he strongly believed that only the goodness of God can amend the fallibility and imperfection of conscience for human experience and connect mortal finite human beings with the infinity ordained by holiness.

Butler, a British philosopher, saw world as a moral order. He took conscience as a sentiment of the understanding as well as the foundation for his whole moral system (Cunliffe, 1992). He took human life as in the presence of God and this life is a prelude to a future life. According to Butler (1898), there are various parts to human nature that are arranged hierarchically. Conscience, as the voice of God, sits at the top of this hierarchy to direct human virtue. Thus, conscience is an ideal bridge or merger between self-interest and the common good. However, Butler did not count on the divine authority in asserting the supremacy, the universality or the reliability of conscience; he took the autonomy of the conscience as a secular organ of knowledge (Cunliffe, 1992). Butler is so influential that even today the Oxford English Dictionary (p.754) still follows his definition of conscience as “inward knowledge” and “consciousness of right and wrong”.

In the eighteenth century, the whole European world was undergoing a number of tremendous changes such as the industrial revolution and urbanization enhanced by increasingly developed science and technology; yet, the social contradictions then were not lessened but intensified. Traditional moral codes maintained by Christianity were challenged by empiricist ethics. However, this kind of social milieu did not hinder the development of the notion of conscience. Conscience reached its highest level in the eighteenth century through two key philosophers, Rousseau and Kant.

Rousseau’s political philosophy is about the free, conscious, virtuous social interaction among autonomous and independent individuals (Bloom, 1979). According to him, human beings are naturally good and innocently born, but are socialized in a bad society; in his own words, “God makes all things good, man [sic] meddles with them and they become evil” (Rousseau, 1911, p.5). Rousseau believed he could derive the norms of political life for autonomous and independent individuals in spite of the fact that society was decaying (Bloom, 1979). For him, education is the only hope for human beings to return to the natural status of being good; and the key to a good education is to isolate a baby from an evil society and to stop her or him from being polluted by the outside world. Rousseau wrote Emile to show how to do so. Conscience is also a key theme in the book.

According to Rousseau (1979), to exist is to sense. One’s sensibility is incontestably anterior to one’s intelligence; that is, people have sentiments before ideas. “Whatever the cause of our being, it has provided for our preservation by giving us sentiments suitable to our nature”; hence, these sentiments, “at least, are innate” (Rousseau, 1979, p.290). Conscience lies at the bottom of these human sentiments such as “the love of self, the fear of pain, the horror of death, [and] the desire of well-being”. As Rousseau argues:

There is in the depths of souls, then, an innate principle of justice and virtue according to which, in spite of our own maxims, we judge our actions and those of others as good or bad. It is to this principle that I give the name conscience. (Rousseau, 1979, pp.289-290) He continues to elaborate how conscience works:

But if, as cannot be doubted, man is by his nature sociable, or at least made to become so, he can be so only by means of other innate sentiments relative to his species; for if we consider only physical need, it ought certainly to disperse men instead of bring them together. It is from the moral system formed by this double relation to oneself and to

one’s fellows that the impulse of conscience is born. To know the good is not to love it; man does not have innate knowledge of it, but as soon as his reason makes him know it, his conscience leads him to love it. It is this sentiment which is innate. (Rousseau, 1979, p.290)

Although human beings are “ignorant and limited but intelligent and free”, through conscience, a “divine instinct” and “immortal and celestial voice” and “infallible judge of good and bad”, they are led unto God (p.290). For Rousseau, conscience brings excellence to human nature and morality to human actions. As he notes, “I sense nothing in me that raises me above the beasts” without conscience (p.290). If people lack conscience, they would go astray “from error to error with the aid of an understanding without rule and a reason without principle” (p.290).

It is clear that, for Rousseau, taking off from social or relational and affective nature, conscience connects itself to reason, its rational character. As Davies (1990) comments, for Rousseau, conscience involves not only “inner conviction” of conscientia as to fully accept the underlying moral principle the self shares with others but also “sentiment interieur” of one’s heart to feel, to know, to understand the good and to live it out with the aid of reason based on self-awareness.

Kant pursued the point of Rousseau’s autonomous and independent individuals with theoretical thoroughness. He fought strongly against empiricist ethics prevailed in his time (Paton, 1948). As Kant (1963) remarks, those inner principles of actions that one does not see are more important than actions that one sees. Accordingly, Kant attempts to look for the supreme principle of morality, or the categorical imperative, which is of the utmost importance to all who are concerning the struggle of the good against the evil (Paton, 1963). For him, the good will is the only thing that is good in itself without limitation and condition, so all moral actions from the good will are conscientious (Kant, 1963). In this good will, conscience never errs but works as a

conscientious agent. This accounts for why Kant takes conscience based on the good will as the foundation of morality.

According to Kant (1873), everybody has conscience originally within her or him. Hence, conscience is not something that can be acquired or a duty to acquire, nor is something man and woman can make for them arbitrarily; it is incorporated in their being as “an inward judge which