| Appeals to conscience are frequently used to justify actions. "I followed my conscience" or "my conscience is clear" are common phrases, but these expressions often imply an individual or subjective decision and suggest that the work of conscience takes place in a discrete moment. These misconceptions of conscience fail to appreciate that conscience is not an autonomous authority nor is it merely a decision-maker in moments of crisis, and conscience does not always or even necessarily provide resolution. Rather, conscience apprehends, maintains, and navigates the challenges of the moral life. This dissertation argues that conscience is a term for the whole of the moral life and for developing moral character and best captures the continuous moral labor in which every human being ought to be engaged over a lifetime, not only when crises arise but in day-to-day life. Moreover, freedom of conscience is not individual license, but neither is it strict adherence or obedience to an external source of morality; freedom of conscience is representative of the work we need to do in forming ourselves as persons. This dissertation analyzes and reconstructs conscience around three focal points, each of which is clarified and advanced in relation to a thinker. Thomas Aquinas enables an understanding of conscience as a "virtue" related to the whole of life and illuminates the rigorous labor of the moral life. John Paul II sustains the connection between freedom of conscience and moral truth. Lisa Sowle Cahill provides the contextual nature and multiple sources of the labor of conscience. The project culminates in a synthetic presentation of conscience as openness to and apprehension of the transcendent reality of goodness as well as the work that is required in habituating ourselves to virtuous action. |
