An Examination of the Freudian Theory of the Moral Sense

Abstract

One of the perplexing problems in the field of the psychology of human personality concerns the phenomenon of "conscience". The term itself is usually avoided, being replaced by newly-coined words or phrases which are capable of more exact definition, or, if the word is used at all, it it set in inverted commas thus: "conscience" - as if the writer is half-apologetic for his use of so ill-defined a term. The problem posed by the phenomenon of conscience arises partly out of the history of the word in its use. It is a Biblical word, and has been at the centre of many hotly-contested theological battles. It stands in the Authorised Version of the Bible with the diffuse meaning which it possessed in the early 17th century, and reflects the psychological misunderstandings of that time. The Latin "conscientia", from which the word is derived, and its Greek equivalent of which "conscience" is the invariable translation in the New Testament, have originally the more general meaning of "consciousness", that is, the knowledge of any mental state. Most of the Scriptural references, however, denote more particularly the concept of a moral faculty, the power by which moral truth is apprehended and recognised as having the authority of moral law. The religious approach and the scientific approach to the nature and the origin of conscience begin at different points. Religion assumes an act or revelation of God as the basis of conscience. While the scientific approach describes clinically observable facts which can be demonstrated, and proven or denied, the truth of religion cannot finally be scientifically denied or proven. There seems to be no real contradiction between the two approaches; they work at different levels, and with different major premises.