Is Conscience Best Understood as a Particular Form of Consciousness? Theological and Ethical Reflections Inspired by the Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. A Preliminary Note on the Term “Conscience”
“I answer that, Properly speaking, conscience is not a power, but an act. This is evident both from the very name and from those things which in the common way of speaking are attributed to conscience. For conscience, according to the very nature of the word, implies the relation of knowledge to something: for conscience may be resolved into “cum alio scientia”, i.e., knowledge applied to an individual case. But the application of knowledge to something is done by some act. Wherefore from this explanation of the name it is clear that conscience is an act.”(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a.13)
“There are two rules for measuring human actions. One is more distant; the other is more immediate. The distant or material way of determining is from divine law. However, the immediate or formally correct way is through conscience…We will firstly consider the proximate rule which is conscience, and then the remote one which obviously concerns laws…Conscience can be defined: it is the judgement or practical instruction of reason by which we judge what is to be done here and now because it is good or avoided because it is evil.”
“Conscience is a judgement of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgement of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law…”(Catholic Church 1994, in Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994, para. 1778)
3. Consciousness in the Thought of Merleau-Ponty
3.1. Consciousness Is Embodied
3.2. Consciousness Is Reflexive
3.3. Consciousness Is Intentional
3.4. Consciousness Is Transcendent
4. Conscience as a Form of Consciousness
The reader will be relieved to hear that as S., shouting loudly, approached the boys, they ran off, maybe because they were so close to their school…S., a 24 year old mechanic, is going about his business in the world: sleeping, getting up, going to work, eating, talking, thinking, dreaming…He is in the natural attitude, vaguely aware of the world about him and vaguely aware of himself in his habitual behaviour. All of a sudden, passing in front of a school, he hears cries and screams and, turning, sees three full-grown boys beating up a younger boy. S. feels shock, indignation, horror, fear…he thinks about intervening…but there are three of them! …about seeking help…it would be too late…“no” he says to himself “I must”, and he intervenes…
4.1. Conscience Is Embodied
4.2. Conscience Is Reflexive
4.3. Conscience Is Intentional
4.4. Conscience Is Transcendent
5. Broader Ethical and Theological Reflections on Conscience as a Particular Form of Consciousness
6. Conclusions
Funding
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Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | “What then is time? If no one asks me I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know.” (Augustine 2006). |
2 | For those who feel the need of deepening their understanding of this term the introduction to Moran’s book (Moran 2000) on phenomenology provides an excellent, lucid and, above all, brief overview. Italian-readers will greatly benefit from the synthetic but profound study of Carlo Sini (Sini 2012), which takes the original form of numerous, short, thesis-like statements on key phenomenological themes. For a deeper and more extensive overview of contemporary phenomenological literature see Claude Romano’s impressive study (Romano 2010) or Carla Canullo’s specific study of Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry and Jean-Louis Chrétien (Canullo 2004). The vast question of the relationship between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences is well beyond the scope any one article and certainly of this one: those wishing to pursue this related but distinct question will find much of value in Natalie Depraz (2014). |
3 | Almost any major phenomenological thinker could be taken up in this same way, Merleau-Ponty is proposed here as a case in point to demonstrate the fecundity of examining traditional views of conscience in the light of phenomenology. |
4 | To mention but a few examples: Schockenhoff (2007), Fumagalli (2012), Reichlin (2019). Of particular interest for our specific theme is Curran (2004): it is disappointing to note that not one single phenomenological source is quoted in the entire bibliography published in this, otherwise valuable, collection. Thus more than a century after Husserl, esteemed moral theologians discuss conscience seemingly oblivious of a revolution that questions the philosophical adequacy of their ways of understanding this key moral category. |
5 | For the general historical background of this term and for a devastating critique of how the thought of Aquinas has been distorted on this point see (Lamont 2009). |
6 | The first edition of this work (1945) was published at the end of the Second World War. All references to the work in this article are to the collected works (Merleau-Ponty 2010). |
7 | “Ainsi la permanence du corps propre, si la psychologie classique l’avait analysée, pouvait la conduire au corps non plus comme objet du monde, mais comme moyen de notre communication avec lui, au monde non plus comme somme d’objets déterminés, mais comme horizon latent de notre expérience, présent sans cesse, lui aussi, avant toute pensée déterminante.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 772). |
8 | Merleau-Ponty’s use of “ouverture” in this context follows Heidegger’s idea of “Erschlossenheit” as not just a feature of Dasein but as its defining characteristic. |
9 | To help avoid the strong temptation to fall back into thinking of the body as an object we will use the, admittedly cumbersome, term “body-subject”. |
10 | This terminology, not particularly happy in English, goes back to Edmund Husserl, usually considered the “founding father” of phenomenology. |
11 | “Le monde n’est pas un objet dont je possède par-devers moi la loi de constitution, il est le milieu et le champ de toutes mes pensées et de toutes mes perceptions explicites.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 661). |
12 | As we saw in Section 1, Aquinas (ST, 1, q. 79, a. 13) makes a similar linguistic point in his brief discussion of “conscientia”. |
13 | “En tant qu’il voit ou touche le monde, mon corps ne peut donc être vu ni touché. Ce qui l’empêche d’être jamais un objet, d’être jamais <<complètement constitué>>, c’est qu’il est ce par quoi il y a des objets.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 771). |
14 | “Disons donc plutôt…que la vie de la conscience—vie connaissante, vie du désir ou vie perceptive—est sous-tendue par un <<arc intentionnel>> qui projette autour de nous notre passé, notre avenir, notre milieu humain, notre situation physique, notre situation idéologique, notre situation morale, ou plutôt qu’il fait que nous soyons situés sous tous ces rapports.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 818). |
15 | “Ces éclaircissements nous permettent enfin de comprendre sans équivoque la motricité comme intentionnalité originale. La conscience est originairement non pas un <<je pense que>> mais un <<je peux>>.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 820). (The author explains in a footnote on this page that this latter term is common in the unpublished works of Husserl). |
16 | “Il y a là un solipsisme vécu qui n’est pas dépassable.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 1058). |
17 | “Nous appellerons transcendence ce mouvement par lequel l’existence reprend à son compte et transforme un situation de fait.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 856). |
18 | James Mensch offers this lucid explanation of this slippery term: “The most basic sense is that of <<surpassing>> or <<going beyond>>. It comes from the Latin, transcendere, which combines the sense of <<beyond>> (trans) and scandere <<to climb>>. The sense here is that of <<surmounting>> or <<overstepping>>. As such, it involves both limits and their surpassing.” (Mensch 2017, p. 478). |
19 | Levinas expresses this connection between intentionality and meaning, which stems from Husserl, with a certain profundity: “L’analyse intentionnelle est la recherche du concret. La notion, prise sous le regard direct de la pensée qui la définit, se révèle cependant implanté, à l’insu de cette pensée naïve, dans des horizons insoupçonnés par cette pensée; ces horizons lui prêtent un sens—voilà l’enseignement essentiel de Husserl”. (Levinas 1961, p. XVI). |
20 | An interesting answer to this question (based on the coherence of a life-narrative), that to a certain extent converges with our line of thought here, is presented by Alasdair MacIntryre in his important essay “Epistemological crises, dramatic narrative, and the philosophy of science” (MacIntyre 2006, pp. 3–23). |
21 | The imperative component, in a more cognitive fashion, is present in Aquinas’ version of conscience (ST, 1, q. 79, a. 13), particularly in the verbs ligare (bind) and instigare (goad). |
22 | This term even makes its way into the title of his work: Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’Exteriorité (Levinas 1961). |
23 | This was the declared purpose of Edmund Husserl (Husserl 1954) in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die tranzendentale Phänomenologie, first published in 1936. |
24 | A close reading of the definitions of conscience in Section 1 will suffice to confirm this tendency. |
25 | “C’est moi qui donne un sens et un avenir à ma vie, mais cela ne veut pas dire que ce sens et cet avenir soient conçus, ils jaillissent de mon présent et de mon passé et en particulier de mon mode de coexistence présent et passé.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 1153). |
26 | For an exhaustive account of Husserl on the intimate relationship between phenomenology and ethics see (De Gramont 2014, pp. 164–84). |
27 | As indicated in footnote 5 above, see (Lamont 2009). |
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McKeever, M. Is Conscience Best Understood as a Particular Form of Consciousness? Theological and Ethical Reflections Inspired by the Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Religions 2023, 14, 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010010
McKeever M. Is Conscience Best Understood as a Particular Form of Consciousness? Theological and Ethical Reflections Inspired by the Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Religions. 2023; 14(1):10. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010010
Chicago/Turabian StyleMcKeever, Martin. 2023. "Is Conscience Best Understood as a Particular Form of Consciousness? Theological and Ethical Reflections Inspired by the Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty" Religions 14, no. 1: 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010010