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A Study on Conscience: the Content and Function Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 1-1-2016 A Study on Conscience: The onC tent and Function Nalan Sarac Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Sarac, N. (2016). A Study on Conscience: The onC tent and Function (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/105 This One-year Embargo is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A STUDY ON CONSCIENCE: THE CONTENT AND FUNCTION A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College & Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Nalan Saraç August 2016 Copyright by Nalan Saraç 2016 A STUDY ON CONSCIENCE: THE CONTENT AND FUNCTION By Nalan Saraç Approved July 7, 2016 ________________________________ ________________________________ Ronald Polansky Thérèse Bonin Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Jennifer Ann Bates Professor of Philosophy Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James Swindal, Dean Ronald Polansky The McAnulty College and Graduate Chair, Department of Philosophy School of Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy iii ABSTRACT A STUDY ON CONSCIENCE: THE CONTENT AND FUNCTION By Nalan Saraç August 2016 Dissertation supervised by Ronald Polansky The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of conscience by critically examining turning points of the traditionalist approach that conceptualizes conscience primarily as a cognitive capacity. The basic assumption of this approach is that there is a built-in mechanism in human beings that enables us to judge the rightness of our actions. This mechanism is a part of reason that deals with the ethical value of the actions. Conscience judges an action with reference to a set of principles. These principles constitute the content of conscience. My study follows this track and puts forth its findings in terms of its content and function. The study starts with the examination of the emergence of the word conscience. Once I have enough evidence that enables me to fix the meaning and use of the word I turn to Plato and Aristotle and argue that although they do not write explicitly on iv conscience they establish the conceptual framework of the later studies on conscience. In the second chapter, I focus on Philip the Chancellor, Bonaventure, and Aquinas’ accounts of conscience and claim that the importance of these thinkers arises from the questions they ask regarding the relation between conscience and reason. They highlight the question that has to be answered in order to explain the mechanism of conscience. In the third chapter I focus on Kant’s understanding of conscience. He provides coherent answers to the questions about the distinction between reason and conscience. I argue that his Copernican Revolution in ethics enables him to re-secularize the concept of conscience that originally emerges as a secular one. In the fourth chapter, I consider Nietzsche’s criticism about conscience. I conclude that his criticism is not so controversial as it is thought and his main contribution to the studies on conscience is that the content of conscience may not be some necessary truths about the right thing to do but may come from contingent beliefs, which are imposed on us by the society in which we are brought up. In the conclusion, I claim that the authority of conscience arises neither from the contents, whatever they be, nor from the ways conscience derives conclusions, but from the belief that I could not live with myself if I do something wrong, so I have to scrutinize my actions and judgments. If I find something wrong about my past action I have to admit the guilt, or if I find something wrong about my future action, I should not do it. This belief originates from one’s awareness of one’s accountability for one’s actions. v DEDICATION For Ceren vi ACKNOWLEDGMENT I wish to give my heartfelt thanks to my dissertation director Dr. Ronald Polansky and committee members Dr. Jennifer Bates and Dr. Thérèse Bonin for helping me to develop my work. I also wish to thank my colleagues at the Koç University, Dr. Charilaos Platanakis and Dr. Eylem Özaltun and Dr. Hülya Şimga; for their comments and encouragement. And, finally, I would like to thank to my family: my parents Fahriye and Necdet Saraç, for their love and support, without their help I would not have been able to finish this study; my husband, Memduh Er, for encouraging me to start the PhD program and endure the hardship of this process, and my daughter, Ceren for her patience and inspiration. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Dedication .......................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................ vii Introduction ..........................................................................................................................x Chapter 1: From Ancient Greece to 1st Century Europe .....................................................1 1.1 Emergence of the term/phenomenon .......................................................................1 1.2 Plato ...................................................................................................................... 15 1.3 Aristotle.................................................................................................................. 23 1.4 Hellenistic Period ....................................................................................................31 1.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 43 Chapter 2: Medieval Understanding of Conscience ..........................................................45 2.1 Background of the Discussion ............................................................................... 45 2.2 Peter Lombard ........................................................................................................ 48 2.3 Philip the Chancellor ..............................................................................................51 2.4 Bonaventure ........................................................................................................... 65 2.5 Thomas Aquinas .................................................................................................... 78 2.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 93 Chapter 3: Kant ..................................................................................................................96 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 96 3.2 Conscience as a Moral Feeling ..............................................................................99 3.3. Conscience as an Inner Court of Moral Judgment ..............................................105 3.4 On the Possibility of an Erring Conscience .........................................................114 3.5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 119 Chapter 4: Nietzsche ........................................................................................................122 4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 122 viii 4.2 Nietzsche and Morality ........................................................................................ 123 4.3 Development of the Bad Conscience ................................................................... 125 4.4 Emergence of Conscience .................................................................................... 139 4.5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 142 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................144 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................153 ix Introduction Statement of the Problem Whenever there is a crisis involving apparent culpability people “appeal to conscience”. However, the phrase is ambiguous. First, it may mean an appeal to another person’s conscience in order to convince him to act in certain ways. Equally, it may refer to the invocation of one’s own conscience to interpret and justify one’s conduct to others. Finally, it may connote the role of conscience in debates with oneself about the right course of action, conscience being understood as a participant in the debate, a referee, or a final arbiter (Childress 1979, 315). The ambiguity of the phrase arises from the concept of conscience itself. According
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