Freud On Conscience

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Whether conscience is the voice of God depends on our interpretation and meaning of what a conscience really is. Conscience is something inside of us which distinguishes good from evil and makes us make moral decisions and when we don’t, we feel guilty. Many philosophers and scholars have various different views on the nature of conscience. Freud and Piaget state that conscience is the result of environmental factors, and Freud links it to our own fears of punishment and guilt. However, Freud’s definition of conscience is quite unreliable for decision making as it seems like the decision is just made out of fear of disapproval and not to be right or wrong. Then, there is also always the Christian approach such as Cardinal Newman, where he says that conscience is innate or the voice of God. Aquinas argued for conscience as the power of reason, god given and exercised by people. He believed we have a natural disposition to do good and avoid evil - he called this the synderesis rule. Joseph Butler said conscience was the ultimate moral decision maker and that it is placed within us by God, therefore it must be obeyed. He says conscience is the supreme authority in human nature and we should disregard it.

Freud and Piaget believe that the conscience is introduced by society and authority figures such as …show more content…
However, his view of conscience being innate, makes us question whether or not our conscience is instructing us to act in a way that most would argue was morally wrong. The conscience is then misled which causes us to act immorally. Therefore anyone could use this excuse to justify any action and thus, making conscience seem like an unreliable guide to ethical decision making. Consequently, the Catholic Church focuses more on Thomas Aquinas’ approach to conscience which allows the possibility of error where the conscience is quite ignorant and directs a person to go against the law of

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