Sunday, January 31, 2010
Conscience
Hegel spoke of not needing to examine the conscience because the conscience examines itself. This is an idea i find very interesting. When someone is self-conscience they examine every aspect of their actions and what they do. The conscience's main objective, it would seem, is to evaluate. It evaluates us and keeps us in check. The conscience lets us know when we are acting out of place or drawing attention to ourselves. If it weren't for our conscience, we wouldn't be able to reflect on any action we perform. When someone is described as not having a conscience, it usually means they did something particularly nasty that other people would not have done had they evaluated their actions. The conscience is our watchdog. There are times when we observe other people's actions and don't understand why they would act a certain way and tell ourselves we wouldn't do the same thing. The conscience is that insurance that always watches to make sure we don't do the same thing. Surely we would be considered hypocrites if we shunned actions by a person and then engaged in such action ourselves. The conscience adds reason to our actions, without it we would only act upon inclination like barbarians.
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Kipp, I like your idea that the conscience acts as our "watchdog," and the idea that indeed it is a self sufficient entity present in all humans keeping us from acting out and becoming detrimental to society. The conscience acts as the core of 'humanity.' That being said I would like to pose the question: If a person consistently acts against his conscience, [or acts without a conscience as you stated] does that consistent behavior cause such a person to lose their humanity?
ReplyDeleteI must confess this is my first time reading Hegel, but from what I understand you are referring mostly to a moral conscience while Hegel is dealing with something different, although it perhaps it encompasses a moral conscience. Colin, as to your question, which I believe also refers to a moral conscious, I would argue that humanity is based upon the capacity to reason and not moral action, and so no matter how much one acts against his conscience he will remain human because he is consciously acting against it (kind of like Descartes “I think, therefore I am”).
ReplyDeleteI feel that Paul is right in trying to explain these two seemingly different notions of "consciousness". The "watchdog" aspect pertains to what we are aware of, but i think Hegel uses consciousness as an entity that helps itself overcome its own deficiency to understand the rationality of the world.
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