Conscience and Other Virtues
From Bonaventure to MacIntyre
Publication Year: 2000
Published by: Penn State University Press
Front Cover
Copyright Page
Contents
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pp. v-
Acknowledgments
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pp. vii-viii
Both Plato and Aristotle wrote on friendship, and they spent a considerable amount of time extolling its importance. In their works, an idyllic picture of friends discussing important ideas in restful circumstances emerges. In the midst of familial and professional duties, my friends and I discuss important and unimportant issues in whatever locale can be found, whether real or ...
Introduction
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pp. 1-4
Conscience has been ignored. Although we use it to guide our actions and we appeal to freedom of conscience in a variety of situations, in the last twenty-five years little has been written about conscience as a useful analytical concept. Why? It is easy to point to the atrocities of this century as reason to abandon the notion of conscience. Writers like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi have ...
Part I. Historical Background
1. Classical Background to Discussions of Conscience
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pp. 7-20
Our modern notion of conscience has had an unfortunate development. Today, most people regard conscience as a judging and punishing faculty. It judges the worth of a person's actions and influences how a person behaves by making the person experience guilt when wrong is done. As an internal judge, its pronouncements and punishments are limited to the person whose ...
2. Bonaventure's View of Conscience and Synderesis
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pp. 21-38
In their treatment of the virtues and conscience, the medieval schoolmen drew on the works of both Plato and Aristotle; but they were heavily influenced by Augustine's modification of the classical tradition. While acknowledging his debt to Plato and Aristotle, Augustine (d. 430) constantly criticized their views for failing to take into account the critical role of God in ...
3. Aquinas on Conscience, the Virtues, and Weakness of Will
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pp. 39-52
Bonaventure's voluntaristic view of synderesis and conscience presents synderesis as the drive to the good and places it in the appetitive faculty. In contrast, Aquinas (1225-74) claims that synderesis is in the rational part of human agents. It is a natural disposition of the human mind by which we apprehend without inquiry the basic principles of behavior; it is thus parallel ...
4. Scotus and Ockham on Synderesis and Conscience
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pp. 53-70
Lottin's research (in Psychologie et morale au XIIe et XIIIe siècles) reveals that the topics of conscience and synderesis were extensively treated from the time of Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236) to that of Henry of Ghent (d. 1293). It is consequently surprising that these topics receive little direct attention from either Duns Scotus (1265-1308) or William of Ockham (1280-1349). ...
5. Luther and the Rise of Conscience as a Faculty
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pp. 71-84
Two recent, complementary studies have investigated Martin Luther's (1483-1546) view of conscience. Michael G. Baylor's Action and Person traces Luther's reaction to scholastic discussions of synderesis and conscience and the development of his own innovative view that conscience has as object not only actions but also the whole person.1 Randall C. Zachman's ...
Part II. The Contemporary Dismissal of Conscience
6. Freud and Ryle on Conscience
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pp. 87-98
One of the major developments of the twentieth century is the theory of psychoanalysis. Although many have criticized the theory, it has become a fixed feature of the present intellectual landscape. The theory itself is the creation of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), but it has undergone continual revision. Psychoanalytic theory as it is practiced today is more of a synthetic ...
7. Conscience as Something Other Than a Faculty
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pp. 99-108
Although discussions of conscience in the philosophical literature of the last half of the twentieth century are rare, in general there are three different views about the nature of conscience in the literature.1 Some writers advocate a cognitive view of conscience. According to this view, conscience is the device by which one contemplates and evaluates one's own actions or ...
8. More Traditional Views of Conscience
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pp. 109-120
As Bernard Wand points out, the topic of conscience has been relegated to casual mention in the twentieth century. The important discussions in the Anglo-American tradition, which I have treated in the last two chapters, have tended toward reductionism or elimination. Yet, there are still champions of the existence of conscience in the twentieth century. The Roman ...
9. The Existence of Conscience
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pp. 121-132
At the root of many of the reductionistic criticisms of conscience examined in Chapter 7 was the assumption that conscience is a faculty. For example, Hunter's suggestion that the notion of conscience be taken as a convenient fiction is guided by the assumption that conscience is a moral knowledge-giving faculty. In fact, his pointing to its status as a faculty gives strength to ...
Part III. Conscience as a Key to Virtue Ethics
10. Conscience Among the Virtue Ethicists
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pp. 135-150
It is by now a commonplace to remark that, among philosophers, there has been during the last twenty years a resurgence of interest in the virtues.1 To be sure, many more articles and books espousing either a deontological or a consequentialist ethics are still being written than ones espousing a virtue ethics, yet the marked renewal of interest is undeniable. Many trace the ...
11. Conscience and Virtue Ethics
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pp. 151-172
Given this basic orientation, Louden claims that it is clear that the main focus of virtue ethics is on the question of what sort of person one should be. This attitude necessarily emphasizes long-term patterns of action and de-emphasizes particular actions. But this means that in a pure virtue ethics there can be no procedure for making practical decisions. No answer can be ...
12. Conscience and Other Virtues
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pp. 173-178
Influenced by the work of, among others, Butler, Kant, and Freud, many philosophers in this century accepted the view that conscience is to be regarded as a faculty. Having done this, they went on to argue that there is no conscience because there is no such faculty. At best, ‘conscience’ is shorthand for something else: moral reasoning, a personal monitor, emotive responses ...
Appendix: MacIntyre's Project
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pp. 179-184
Bibliography
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pp. 185-188
Index
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pp. 189-191
Back Cover
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p. 201-201
E-ISBN-13: 9780271052717
E-ISBN-10: 0271052716
Print-ISBN-13: 9780271027890
Print-ISBN-10: 0271027894
Page Count: 200
Publication Year: 2000
