Notes on Conscience

CONSCIENCE. what is it??

Conscience and Other Virtues: From Bonaventure to MacIntyre. By Douglas C. Langston.
^ an article (or perhaps a book review) by Rory Fox

• Conscience itself, according to most scholastic writers, was to be thought of as ajudgement about the application of principles to concrete examples.
• Bonaventure: "Improving our reasoning processes or even our understanding of moral principleswould be just as likely to lead to development of greater sophistication in theapplication of conscience."
• For experience tohave value in shaping a conscience it must be validated by reasoning, otherwise it isliable to err and the only dynamism it will offer will be in terms of confusion andmisunderstanding.
• In general, scholastic writers viewed conscience as an intellectual, and to someextent volitional, process.
• With the reformation a very different model of conscience developed. i.e. Martin Luther (viewed conscience as a distinct faculty within human beings), Joseph Butler, Immanuel Kant
• It is this model that has come down to us in popular142 BOOK REVIEWSculture construing conscience as ‘a voice’ or ‘guide’ within us showing us the way toact and do what is right in each situation.
• having a relational existence in the nexus between reason, will and psychology. (...?!?)
• Notheory of conscience can afford to suggest that any and every feeling, view or reasonthat a person believes arises from their conscience is in fact a genuine andauthoritative utterance of conscience.
• conscience needs virtueethics in order to function properly. (Langston)
• Without virtue ethics conscience is blind, withvirtue ethics conscience has the wisdom of society on which to base its judgements andreasoning processes.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aristotl.htm#H6 (Aristotle on politics) (I think this would be a really good site for people doing prompt #2 - look at the Ethics section)

• The state in fact is no mere local union for the prevention of wrong doing, and the convenience of exchange. It is also no mere institution for the protection of goods and property. It is a genuine moral organization for advancing the development of humans.
• The classification of constitutions is based on the fact that government may be exercised either for the good of the governed or of the governing, and may be either concentrated in one person or shared by a few or by the many. There are thus three true forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and constitutional republic. The perverted forms of these are tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. The difference between the last two is not that democracy is a government of the many, and oligarchy of the few; instead, democracy is the state of the poor, and oligarchy of the rich. Considered in the abstract, these six states stand in the following order of preference: monarchy, aristocracy, constitutional republic, democracy, oligarchy, tyranny.
• But though with a perfect person monarchy would be the highest form of government, the absence of such people puts it practically out of consideration. Similarly, true aristocracy is hardly ever found in its uncorrupted form. It is in the constitution that the good person and the good citizen coincide. Ideal preferences aside, then, the constitutional republic is regarded as the best attainable form of government, especially as it secures that predominance of a large middle class, which is the chief basis of permanence in any state. With the spread of population, democracy is likely to become the general form of government.
• Law, for Aristotle, is the outward expression of the moral ideal without the bias of human feeling.
• Such education should not be left to private enterprise, but should be undertaken by the state. Indeed all true education is, as Plato saw, a training of our sympathies so that we may love and hate in a right manner.

Editorial - Leadership and Recent Controversies over Religious Liberty by Wallace L. Daniel

• The struggle for religious liberty and the rights of free consciencehad been a long, difficult, and momentous effort, whose history, Truettrecommended to his listeners, they should study. This struggle, at itscore, involved the clash between authoritarianism and individualism,between the demand for state conformity and the desire for"unrestricted religious liberty."
• He cited James Madison'sMemorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, that thegovernment must not "force a citizen to contribute three pence only ofhis property for the support of any one establishment" of a religiousorganization.26 The "payment of three pence" and freedom ofconscience, Justice Souter maintained, coufd not be separated, butwere part of the same constitutional principle.