5. Significant Ideas: Conscience

Significant ideas in religious and moral thought, through comparison of the works of two key scholars from the field of religion and ethics.

5.1 Content

• Aquinas’ theological approach
• Freud’s psychological approach

5.2 Knowledge

• details of Aquinas’ approach, including:
– ratio (reason placed in every person as a result of being created in the image of God)
– synderesis (inner principle directing a person towards good and away from evil)
– conscientia (a person’s reason making moral judgements)
– vincible ignorance (lack of knowledge for which a person is responsible)
– invincible ignorance (lack of knowledge for which a person is not responsible)

• details of Freud’s approach, including:
– psychosexual development (early childhood awareness of libido)
– id (instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in pleasure)
– ego (mediates between the id and the demands of social interaction)
– super-ego (contradicts the id and, working on internalised ideals from parents and society, tries to make the ego behave morally)

5.3 Issues as the basis of exam questions

Learners should have the opportunity to discuss issues related to ideas about conscience, including:
• comparison between Aquinas and Freud:
– on the concept of guilt
– on the presence or absence of God within the workings of the conscience and super-ego
– on the process of moral decision-making
• whether conscience is linked to, or separate from, reason and the unconscious mind
• whether conscience exists at all or is instead an umbrella term covering various factors
involved in moral decision-making, such as culture, environment, genetic predisposition and education

5.4 Suggested scholarly views, academic approaches and sources of wisdom and authority

For reference, the ideas of Aquinas and Freud listed above can be found in:
• Aquinas, Summa Theologica I–I 79
• Freud, S. The Ego and the Id

Learners will be given credit for referring to any appropriate scholarly views, academic approaches and sources of wisdom and authority, however the following examples may prove useful:
• Fromm, E. (1947) Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics London: Routledge, IV.2
• Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Sigmund Freud, http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/
• Strohm, P. (2011) Conscience: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Chapters 1 and 3