View source for Conscience

{{Short description|Moral philosophy or values of an individual}}
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{{Other uses}}{{Redirect|Scruples}}{{Distinguish|Consciousness|Conscientiousness}}
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{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
[[File:Vincent Willem van Gogh 022.jpg|thumb|[[Vincent van Gogh]], 1890. [[Kröller-Müller Museum]]. ''The Good Samaritan'' (after [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Good_Samaritan_(Delacroix_1849).jpg Delacroix]).]]
A '''conscience''' is a [[Cognition|cognitive]] process that elicits [[emotion]] and rational associations based on an individual's [[ethics|moral philosophy]] or value system. Conscience is not an elicited emotion or thought produced by associations based on immediate sensory perceptions and reflexive responses, as in sympathetic [[central nervous system]] responses. In common terms, conscience is often described as leading to feelings of [[remorse]] when a person commits an act that conflicts with their [[moral value]]s. The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such [[moral judgment]]s are or should be based on [[reason]] has occasioned debate through much of modern history between theories of basics in ethic of human life in juxtaposition to the theories of [[romanticism]] and other [[reactionary]] movements after the end of the [[Middle Ages]].

Religious views of conscience usually see it as linked to a morality inherent in all humans, to a beneficent universe and/or to [[divinity]]. The diverse ritualistic, mythical, doctrinal, legal, institutional and material features of religion may not necessarily cohere with experiential, emotive, [[spirituality|spiritual]] or [[contemplative]] considerations about the origin and operation of conscience.<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The World's Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations''. Cambridge University Press. 1989. pp. 10–21.</ref> Common [[secular]] or [[scientific]] views regard the capacity for conscience as probably [[genetics|genetically determined]], with its subject probably learned or [[imprinting (psychology)|imprinted]] as part of a [[culture]].<ref>Peter Winch. ''Moral Integrity''. Basil Blackwell. Oxford. 1968</ref>

Commonly used metaphors for conscience include the "voice within", the "inner light",<ref name="autogenerated2000">Rosemary Moore. ''The Light in Their Consciences: The Early Quakers in Britain 1646–1666''. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA. 2000. {{ISBN|978-0-271-01988-8}},</ref> or even Socrates' reliance on what the Greeks called his "[[Daemon (classical mythology)#Socrates|daimōnic]] sign", an averting (ἀποτρεπτικός ''apotreptikos'') inner voice heard only when he was about to make a mistake. Conscience, as is detailed in sections below, is a concept in national and international law,<ref name="autogenerated1948">{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Universal Declaration of Human Rights |url=https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=United Nations |language=en}}</ref> is increasingly conceived of as applying to the world as a whole,<ref name="autogenerated2001">Booth K, Dunne T and Cox M (eds). ''How Might We Live? Global Ethics in the New Century''. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge 2001 p. 1.</ref> has motivated numerous notable acts for the public good<ref name="artforamnesty1">[https://www.amnesty.org/en/blog/art-for-amnesty/ambassador-of-conscience Amnesty International. Ambassador of Conscience Award]. Retrieved 31 December 2013.</ref> and been the subject of many prominent examples of literature, music and film.<ref>Wayne C Booth. ''The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction''. University of California Press. Berkeley. 1988. p. 11 and Ch. 2.</ref>

==Views==
{{Further|Origins of morality|Morality}}

Although humanity has no generally accepted definition of conscience or universal agreement about its role in [[ethics|ethical]] decision-making, three approaches have addressed it:<ref name="autogenerated176">Langston, Douglas C. ''Conscience and Other Virtues. From Bonaventure to MacIntyre''. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2001. {{ISBN|0-271-02070-9}} p. 176</ref>

# [[religion|Religious views]]
# [[Secularism|Secular views]]
# [[philosophy|Philosophical views]]

===Religious===
{{Further|Religious belief|Philosophy of religion|Spirituality}}

[[File:SeatedBuddhaGandhara2ndCenturyOstasiatischeMuseum.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Seated [[Buddha]], [[Gandhara]], 2nd century CE. The Buddha linked conscience with compassion for those who must endure cravings and suffering in the world until right conduct culminates in right mindfulness and right contemplation.]]

In the literary traditions of the [[Upanishads]], [[Brahma Sutras]] and the [[Bhagavad Gita]], conscience is the label given to attributes composing knowledge about good and evil, that a [[Soul (spirit)|soul]] acquires from the completion of acts and consequent accretion of [[karma]] over many lifetimes.<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The World's Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations''. Cambridge University Press. 1989. p. 382</ref> According to [[Adi Shankara]] in his ''[[Vivekachudamani]]'' morally right action (characterised as humbly and compassionately performing the primary duty of good to others without expectation of material or spiritual reward), helps "purify the heart" and provide mental tranquility but it alone does not give us "direct perception of the Reality".<ref>Shankara. ''Crest-Jewel of Discrimination'' (''[[Vivekachudamani|Veka-Chudamani]]'') (trans Prabhavananda S and Isherwood C). Vedanta Press, Hollywood. 1978. pp. 34–36, 136–37.</ref> This knowledge requires discrimination between the eternal and non-eternal and eventually a realization in [[contemplation]] that the true self merges in a universe of pure consciousness.<ref>Shankara. ''Crest-Jewel of Discrimination'' (''[[Vivekachudamani|Veka-Chudamani]]'') (trans Prabhavananda S and Isherwood C). Vedanta Press, Hollywood. 1978. p. 119.</ref>

In the [[Zoroastrian]] faith, after death a soul must face judgment at the ''Bridge of the Separator''; there, [[evil]] people are tormented by prior denial of their own higher nature, or conscience, and "to all time will they be guests for the ''House of the Lie''."<ref>John B Noss. ''Man's Religions''. Macmillan. New York. 1968. p. 477.</ref> The [[China|Chinese]] concept of [[Ren (Confucianism)|Ren]], indicates that conscience, along with social etiquette and correct relationships, assist humans to follow ''The Way'' ([[Tao]]) a mode of life reflecting the implicit human capacity for goodness and harmony.<ref>AS Cua. ''Moral Vision and Tradition: Essays in Chinese Ethics''. Catholic University of America Press. Washington. 1998.</ref>

[[File:Bronze Marcus Aurelius Louvre.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Marcus Aurelius]] bronze fragment, Louvre, Paris: "To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness."]]
Conscience also features prominently in [[Buddhism]].<ref>Jayne Hoose (ed) ''Conscience in World Religions''. University of Notre Dame Press. 1990.</ref> In the [[Pali]] scriptures, for example, [[Buddha]] links the positive aspect of ''conscience'' to a pure heart and a calm, well-directed mind. It is regarded as a spiritual power, and one of the "Guardians of the World". The Buddha also associated conscience with compassion for those who must endure cravings and suffering in the world until right conduct culminates in right mindfulness and right [[contemplation]].<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The Religious Experience of Mankind''. Fontana. 1971 p. 118.</ref> [[Santideva]] (685–763 CE) wrote in the [[Bodhicaryavatara]] (which he composed and delivered in the great northern Indian Buddhist university of [[Nalanda]]) of the spiritual importance of perfecting virtues such as [[generosity]], [[forbearance]] and training the awareness to be like a "block of wood" when attracted by vices such as [[pride]] or [[lust]]; so one can continue advancing towards right understanding in meditative absorption.<ref>Santideva. ''The Bodhicaryavatara''. trans Crosby K and Skilton A. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1995. pp. 38, 98</ref> ''Conscience'' thus manifests in Buddhism as unselfish love for all living beings which gradually intensifies and awakens to a purer awareness<ref>Lama Anagarika Govinda in Jeffery Paine (ed) ''Adventures with the Buddha: A Buddhism Reader''. WW Norton. London. pp. 92–93.</ref> where the mind withdraws from sensory interests and becomes aware of itself as a single whole.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Steps Along the Path |url=https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/thate/stepsalong.html |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=www.accesstoinsight.org}}</ref>

The [[Roman Emperor]] [[Marcus Aurelius]] wrote in his ''[[Meditations]]'' that conscience was the human capacity to live by rational principles that were congruent with the true, tranquil and harmonious nature of our mind and thereby that of the Universe: "To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness&nbsp;... the only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts."<ref>Marcus Aurelius. ''Meditations''. Gregory Hays (trans). Weidenfeld and & Nicolson. London. 2003 pp. 70, 75.</ref>

[[File:Munqidh min al-dalal (last page).jpg|thumb|upright|Last page of [[Al-Ghazali|Ghazali]]'s autobiography in MS Istanbul, Shehid Ali Pasha 1712, dated [[Anno Hegirae|A.H.]] 509 = 1115–1116. Ghazali's crisis of epistemological skepticism was resolved by "a light which God Most High cast into my breast&nbsp;... the key to most knowledge."]]

The [[Islamic]] concept of ''[[Taqwa]]'' is closely related to conscience. In the [[Qur’ān]] verses 2:197 & 22:37 Taqwa refers to "right conduct" or "[[piety]]", "guarding of oneself" or "guarding against evil".<ref>Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick. ''The Vision of Islam''. I. B. Tauris. 2000. {{ISBN|1-86064-022-2}} pp. 282–85</ref> [[Qur’ān]] verse 47:17 says that God is the ultimate source of the believer's taqwā which is not simply the product of individual will but requires inspiration from God.<ref>Ames Ambros and Stephan Procházka. ''A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic''. Reichert Verlag 2004. {{ISBN|3-89500-400-6}} p. 294.</ref> In [[Qur’ān]] verses 91:7–8, God the Almighty talks about how He has perfected the soul, the conscience and has taught it the wrong (''fujūr'') and right (''taqwā''). Hence, the awareness of [[vice]] and [[virtue]] is inherent in the soul, allowing it to be tested fairly in the life of this world and tried, held accountable on the day of judgment for responsibilities to God and all humans.<ref>Azim Nanji. 'Islamic Ethics' in Singer P (ed). ''A Companion to Ethics''. Blackwell, Oxford 1995. p. 108.</ref>

[[File:Sura49.pdf|left|thumb|upright|[[Qur’ān]] Sura 49. Surah al-Hujurat, 49:13 declares: "come to know each other, the noblest of you, in the sight of God, are the ones possessing taqwá".]]

[[Qur’ān]] verse 49:13 states: "O humankind! We have created you out of male and female and constituted you into different groups and societies, so that you may come to know each other-the noblest of you, in the sight of God, are the ones possessing taqwā." In [[Islam]], according to eminent theologians such as [[Al-Ghazali]], although events are ordained (and written by God in ''al-Lawh al-Mahfūz'', the ''Preserved Tablet''), humans possess [[free will]] to choose between wrong and right and are thus responsible for their actions; the conscience being a dynamic personal connection to God enhanced by knowledge and practise of the [[Five Pillars of Islam]], deeds of [[piety]], [[repentance]], [[self-discipline]], and [[prayer]]; and disintegrated and metaphorically covered in blackness through [[sin]]ful acts.<ref>John B Noss. ''Man's Religions''. The Macmillan Company, New York. 1968 Ch. 16 pp. 758–59</ref> [[Marshall Hodgson]] wrote the three-volume work: ''The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization''.<ref>Marshall G. S. Hodgson. ''The Venture of Islam, Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam''. University of Chicago Press. 1975 {{ISBN|978-0-226-34686-1}}. Winner of [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] Prize.</ref>

[[File:William Holman Hunt - The Awakening Conscience - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[The Awakening Conscience]]'', [[William Holman Hunt|Holman Hunt]], 1853]]
In the [[Protestant]] Christian tradition, [[Martin Luther]] insisted at the [[Diet of Worms]] that his conscience was captive to the [[Bible|Word of God]], and it was neither safe nor right to go against conscience. To Luther, conscience falls within the ethical, rather than the religious, sphere.<ref name=Tillich>{{cite book|last1=Tillich|first1=Paul|title=Morality and Beyond|url=https://archive.org/details/moralitybeyond00till|url-access=registration|date=1963|publisher=Harper & Row, Publishers|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/moralitybeyond00till/page/69 69]}}</ref> [[John Calvin]] saw conscience as a battleground: "the enemies who rise up in our conscience against his Kingdom and hinder his decrees prove that God's throne is not firmly established therein".<ref>Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian religion'', Book 2, chapter 8, quoted in:{{cite book |last= Wogaman |first= J. Pilip |author-link= J. Philip Wogaman |title= Christian ethics: a historical introduction |year= 1993 |publisher= Westminster/John Knox Press |location= Louisville, Kentucky |isbn= 978-0-664-25163-5 |pages= [https://archive.org/details/christianethicsh0000woga/page/119 119, 340] |quote=the enemies who rise up in our conscience against his Kingdom and hinder his decrees prove that God's throne is not firmly established therein. |url= https://archive.org/details/christianethicsh0000woga/page/119 }}</ref> Many [[Christians]] regard following one's conscience as important as, or even more important than, obeying human [[authority]].<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The World's Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations''. Cambridge University Press. 1989. p. 376</ref> According to the Bible, as enunciated in Romans 2:15, conscience is the one bearing witness, accusing or excusing one another, so we would know when we break the law written in our hearts; the guilt we feel when we do something wrong tells us that we need to repent."<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The World's Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations''. Cambridge University Press. 1989. p. 364</ref> This can sometimes (as with the conflict between [[William Tyndale]] and [[Thomas More]] over the translation of the Bible into English) lead to moral quandaries: "Do I unreservedly obey my Church/priest/military/political leader or do I follow my own inner feeling of right and wrong as instructed by prayer and a personal reading of scripture?"<ref>Brian Moynahan. ''William Tyndale: If God Spare My Life''. Abacus. London. 2003 pp. 249–50</ref> Some contemporary Christian churches and religious groups hold the moral teachings of the [[Ten Commandments]] or of [[Jesus]] as the highest authority in any situation, regardless of the extent to which it involves responsibilities in law.<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The World's Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations''. Cambridge University Press. 1989. p. 353</ref> In the [[Gospel of John]] (7:53–8:11, [[King James Version]]), Jesus challenges those accusing a woman of [[adultery]]: "'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.' And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one" (see [[Jesus and the woman taken in adultery]]). Of note, however, the word 'conscience' is not in the original [[New Testament]] [[Koine Greek|Greek]] and is not in the vast majority of Bible versions. In the [[Gospel of Luke]] (10:25–37), Jesus tells the story of how a despised and heretical [[Samaritan]] (see [[Parable of the Good Samaritan]]) who (out of [[compassion]] or [[pity]]; the word 'conscience' is not used) helps an injured stranger beside a road, qualifies better for eternal life by loving his neighbor than a priest who passes by on the other side.<ref>Guthrie D, Motyer JA, Stibbs AM, Wiseman DLJ (eds). ''New Bible Commentary'' 3rd ed. Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester. 1989. p. 905.</ref>
[[File:Lytras nikiforos antigone polynices.jpeg|left|thumb|[[Nikiforos Lytras]], ''Antigone in front of the dead Polynices'' (1865), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Greece-Alexandros Soutzos Museum]]
This dilemma of obedience in conscience to divine or state law, was demonstrated dramatically in [[Antigone]]'s defiance of [[Creon of Thebes|King Creon]]'s order against burying her brother an alleged [[treason|traitor]], appealing to the "[[natural law|unwritten law]]" and to a "longer allegiance to the dead than to the living".<ref>Robert Graves. ''The Greek Myths: 2'' (London: Penguin, 1960). p. 380</ref>

{{anchor|ConscienceInCatholicTheology}}[[Catholic]] [[theology]] sees conscience as the last practical "judgment of reason which at the appropriate moment enjoins [a person] to do good and to avoid evil".<ref>{{anchor|CCC}}''[[Catechism of the Catholic Church]]'' – English translation (U.S., 2nd edition) (English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica, copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. – Libreria Editrice Vaticana) (Glossary and Index Analyticus, copyright 2000, U.S. Catholic Conference, Inc.). {{ISBN|1-57455-110-8}} paragraph 1778</ref> The [[Second Vatican Council]] (1962–65) describes: "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, tells him inwardly at the right movement: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. His dignity lies in observing this law, and by it he will be judged. His conscience is man’s most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."<ref>Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1992. ''Gaudium and Spes'' 16. Cfr. Joseph Ratzinger, ''On Conscience'', San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2007</ref> Thus, conscience is not like the will, nor a habit like prudence, but "the interior space in which we can listen to and hear the truth, the good, the voice of God. It is the inner place of our relationship with Him, who speaks to our heart and helps us to discern, to understand the path we ought to take, and once the decision is made, to move forward, to remain faithful"<ref>{{Cite web |title=Whispers in the Loggia: "Jesus Always Invites Us. He Does Not Impose." |url=http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2013/06/jesus-always-invites-us-he-does-not.html |access-date=2022-12-13 |language=en}}</ref> In terms of logic, conscience can be viewed as the practical conclusion of a moral syllogism whose major premise is an objective norm and whose minor premise is a particular case or situation to which the norm is applied. Thus, Catholics are taught to carefully educate themselves as to revealed norms and norms derived therefrom, so as to form a correct conscience. Catholics are also to examine their conscience daily and with special care before [[Confession (religion)|confession]]. Catholic teaching holds that, "Man has the right to act according to his conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters".<ref>''[[#CCC|Catechism of the Catholic Church]]'', paragraph 1782</ref> This right of Conscience allows one to form their Morality from sincere and traditional sources and form their opinions from therein. Thus, the Church teaches that one must form their morality and then follow it to the best of their ability. Nevertheless it is taught in more than one area, that the conscience can, and sometimes should, stand against the teaching of the Church. Thus the Church teaches that the Conscience is a supreme authority, even above that of the Popes, Bishops, and Priests. Thus while the Conscience does grant man a great degree of freedom, if one is going to disagree with conventional morality or with the teachings of the Church, it is absolutely necessary to make sure that one's conscience is well formed and certain of what it is claiming or not claiming. <ref>Thomas Aquinas, Sentences, Book IV, Distinction 38, Question 2, Article 4.</ref><ref>Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), commentary on Gaudium et Spes, in: Herbert Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 5, Burns & Oates, 1969, p. 134</ref><ref>John Henry Newman, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk 1875</ref><ref>Riley Clare Valentine, Overturning the Catechism: A Catholic Argument for Abortion</ref><ref>The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, commissioned by the Canon Law Society of America, edited by James A. Coriden, Joseph Abellán, and Thomas Green, Paulist Press, 1985, p. 548.</ref><ref>Charles E. Curran, “Ten Years Later,” Commonweal, vol. 105, July 7, 1978, p. 429.</ref> A sincere conscience presumes one is diligently seeking moral truth from authentic sources, whether that be from the Church, or from Scripture, or from the numerous [[Church Fathers]]. Nevertheless, despite one's best effort, "[i]t can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed&nbsp;... This ignorance can, but not always, be imputed to personal responsibility, This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good", or in other words, puts forth very little effort and does not take the forming of the Conscience seriously.  In such cases, the person is culpable for the [[evil|wrong]] he commits." Not necessarily because of the error itself, but because of the bad faith or miniscule effort put forth by the one whos Conscience is in question.<ref>''[[#CCC|Catechism of the Catholic Church]]'', paragraph 1790–91</ref> {{Citation needed span|text=|date=March 2021}} The [[Catholic Church]] has warned that "rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching&nbsp;... can sometimes be at the source of errors in judgment in [[moral]] conduct".<ref>''[[#CCC|Catechism of the Catholic Church]]'', paragraph 1792</ref> An example of someone following his conscience to the point of accepting the consequence of being condemned to death is Sir [[Thomas More]] (1478-1535).<ref>Samuel Willard Crompton, "Thomas More: And His Struggles of Conscience" (Chelsea House Publications, 2006); Marc D. Guerra, 'Thomas More's Correspondence on Conscience', in: ''Religion & Liberty'' 10(2010)6 <https://acton.org/thomas-mores-correspondence-conscience>; Prof. Gerald Wegemer, "Integrity and Conscience in the Life and Thought of Thomas More" [21 aug. 2006]<http://thomasmoreinstitute.org.uk/papers/integrity-and-conscience-in-the-life-and-thought-of-thomas-more/>; http://sacredheartmercy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/A-Reflection-on-Conscience.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170911120158/http://sacredheartmercy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/A-Reflection-on-Conscience.pdf |date=11 September 2017 }}</ref> A theologian who wrote on the distinction between the 'sense of duty' and the 'moral sense', as two aspects of conscience, and who saw the former as some feeling that can only be explained by a divine Lawgiver, was [[John Henry Cardinal Newman]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Newman |first=John Henry |url=http://archive.org/details/a599830700newmuoft |title=An essay in aid of a grammar of assent |date=1887 |publisher=London : Longmans, Green |others=Saint Mary's College of California}}</ref> A well known saying of him is that he would first toast on his conscience and only then on the pope, since his conscience brought him to acknowledge the authority of the pope.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Newman Reader - Letter to the Duke of Norfolk - Section 5 |url=https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section5.html |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=www.newmanreader.org}}</ref>
This relates to the concept of the different types of heresy as understood within Church teaching. The Church distinguishes between Material Heresy and Formal Heresy. Material Heresy occurs when an individual, after sincere and thorough study of the Church’s moral teachings and a genuine effort to form their conscience in accordance with those teachings, concludes—respectfully and in good faith—that the Church is mistaken on one or more moral issues. In such cases, if the individual maintains their personal belief despite their best efforts to understand and accept Church doctrine, they are considered a Material Heretic. However, because their error stems from a well-intentioned and conscientious process, no sin is imputed to them.<ref> Oderberg, David S. (2011). "heresies". In Kurian, George T (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization. Vol. 1. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 1119. doi:10.1002/9780470670606.wbecc0652. ISBN 9781405157629. Heresy being a choice, the element of intent is essential to culpability. Theologians commonly distinguish between 'formal' and 'material' heresy. The distinction is between the matter of heresy, viz. an utterance expressing a proposition that does in fact contradict a dogma, and the formal element, viz. the utterance of the proposition in full knowledge that it contradicts the faith and that the church has proposed the opposite as a dogma. Hence a theologically uneducated person who denies, say, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin (defined in 1950), in ignorance of its being a dogma, has uttered the matter of heresy, but is in no wise a heretic strictly speaking. If it is pointed out to him that the Assumption is a dogma and he still denies it, though the proof put to him is clear, he will have committed formal heresy, i.e. heresy in the strict sense. Even if a person is doubtful about a proof put to him as to the existence of a dogma, as long as his rule of faith is to believe whatever the church teaches, he cannot be called a heretic even if he denies a de fide proposition. In other words, one does not have to be theologically well educated or informed to avoid heresy. Even the simplest peasant, as theologians are fond of putting it, can have the faith and avoid all heresy simply by having the interior disposition, not con- tradicted by habitual external action, to believe whatever the church teaches. Hence the term 'material heretic' is like the term 'rubber duck': a material heretic is not a heretic, he is only responsible for uttering a statement that is, in its content, objectively contrary to the faith. Moreover, canon law requires pertinacity, that is, an obstinate refusal to accept church teaching, not a one-off denial or expression of doubt. This follows the instruction of St. Paul in the letter to Titus (3:10): 'A man that is a heretic [haereti'kon], after the first and second admonition avoid, knowing that such a person is subverted, and sins, being condemned by his own judgment.'</ref><ref>"Heresy". Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. 1912. Retrieved 6 March 2017. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.</ref>
Formal Heresy, by contrast, involves a willful and culpable rejection of Church teaching despite recognizing its truth. In this case, the individual acknowledges that the Church's doctrine is correct but chooses to reject it knowingly, often out of pride, defiance, malice, or other forms of vice. This rejection constitutes a grave moral fault because it entails acting against one’s own conscience and embracing falsehood knowingly. As such, Formal Heresy is considered a sin, as it reflects both an intentional departure from truth and a deliberate act of dishonesty. One must maintain the seperation between Material Heresy and Formal Heresy, simply for the fact that one is sinful, and the other is not.<ref>"Heresy". Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. 1912. Retrieved 6 March 2017. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.</ref>

[[Judaism]] arguably does not require uncompromising obedience to religious authority; the case has been made that throughout [[Jewish history]], [[rabbis]] have circumvented laws they found unconscionable, such as capital punishment.<ref>Harold H Schulweis. ''Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey''. Jewish Lights Publishing. 2008.</ref> Similarly, although an occupation with national destiny has been central to the Jewish faith (see [[Zionism]]) many scholars (including [[Moses Mendelssohn]]) stated that conscience as a personal revelation of scriptural truth was an important adjunct to the [[Talmudic]] tradition.<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The Religious Experience of Mankind''. Collins. NY. 1969 pp. 395–400.</ref><ref>Levi Meier (Ed.) ''Conscience and Autonomy within Judaism: A Special Issue of the Journal of Psychology and Judaism''. Springer-Verlag. New York {{ISBN|978-0-89885-364-3}}.</ref> The concept of [[inner light]] in the [[Religious Society of Friends]] or [[Quaker]]s is associated with conscience.<ref name="autogenerated2000"/> [[Freemasonry]] describes itself as providing an adjunct to religion and key symbols found in a [[Freemason]] Lodge are the ''[[steel square|square]]'' and ''[[compass (drafting)|compasses]]'' explained as providing lessons that Masons should "square their actions by the square of conscience", learn to "circumscribe their desires and keep their passions within due bounds toward all mankind."<ref name="spoilt">{{cite journal
| last = Gilkes
| first = Peter
|date=July 2004
| title = Masonic ritual: Spoilt for choice
| journal = Masonic Quarterly Magazine
| issue = 10
| url = http://www.mqmagazine.co.uk/issue-10/p-61.php
| access-date =7 May 2007}}</ref> The historian [[Manning Clark]] viewed ''conscience'' as one of the comforters that religion placed between man and death but also a crucial part of the quest for grace encouraged by the [[Book of Job]] and the [[Book of Ecclesiastes]], leading us to be paradoxically closest to the truth when we suspect that what matters most in life ("being there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for") can never happen.<ref>Manning Clark. ''The Quest for Grace''. Penguin Books, Ringwood. 1991 p. 220.</ref> [[Leo Tolstoy]], after a decade studying the issue (1877–1887), held that the only power capable of resisting the evil associated with materialism and the drive for social power of religious institutions, was the capacity of humans to reach an individual spiritual truth through reason and conscience.<ref>Aylmer Maude. ''Introduction to Leo Tolstoy. On Life and Essays on Religion'' (A Maude trans) Oxford University Press. London. 1950 (repr) pxv.</ref> Many prominent [[religious]] works about conscience also have a significant philosophical component: examples are the works of [[Al-Ghazali]],<ref name="autogenerated1966">{{cite journal | last1 = Najm | first1 = Sami M. | year = 1966 | title = The Place and Function of Doubt in the Philosophies of Descartes and Al-Ghazali | journal = Philosophy East and West | volume = 16 | issue = 3–4| pages = 133–41 | doi = 10.2307/1397536 | jstor = 1397536 }}</ref> [[Avicenna]],<ref name="autogenerated67">Nader El-Bizri. "Avicenna's De Anima between Aristotle and Husserl" in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed) ''The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming''. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Dordrecht 2003 pp. 67–89.</ref> [[Aquinas]],<ref name="autogenerated145">Henry Sidgwick. ''Outlines of the History of Ethics''. Macmillan. London. 1960 pp. 145, 150.</ref> [[Joseph Butler]]<ref name="autogenerated365">Rurak, James (1980). "Butler's Analogy: A Still Interesting Synthesis of Reason and Revelation", ''Anglican Theological Review'' 62 (October) pp. 365–81</ref> and [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]]<ref name="autogenerated24">Dietrich Bonhoeffer. ''Ethics''. Eberhard Bethge (ed.) Neville Horton Smith (trans.) Collins. London 1963 p. 24</ref> (all discussed in the philosophical views section).

===Secular===
{{Further|Psychology|Sociology}}

[[File:Chifflart - Das Gewissen - 1877.jpeg|thumb|upright|Illustration of [[François Chifflart]] (1825–1901) for ''La Conscience'' (by [[Victor Hugo]])]]
[[File:Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron, c. 1868.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Charles Darwin]] thought that any animal endowed with well-marked social instincts would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as its intellectual powers approximated man's.]]

The secular approach to conscience includes [[psychology|psychological]], [[physiology|physiological]], [[sociology|sociological]], [[humanitarianism|humanitarian]], and [[authoritarianism|authoritarian]] views.<ref name="autogenerated1983">{{cite journal | last1 = May | first1 = L. |  year = 1983 | title = On Conscience | journal = American Philosophical Quarterly | volume = 20 | pages = 57–67 }}</ref> [[Lawrence Kohlberg]] considered ''critical conscience'' to be an important psychological stage in the proper moral development of humans, associated with the capacity to rationally weigh principles of responsibility, being best encouraged in the very young by linkage with humorous personifications (such as [[Jiminy Cricket]]) and later in adolescents by debates about individually pertinent moral dilemmas.<ref>Lawrence Kohlberg. "Conscience as principled responsibility: on the philosophy of stage six" in Zecha G and Weingartner P (Eds). ''Conscience: An Interdisciplinary View''. D. Reidel, Dordrecht. 1987 {{ISBN|90-277-2452-0}} pp. 3–15.</ref> [[Erik Erikson]] placed the development of ''conscience'' in the 'pre-schooler' phase of his eight stages of normal human personality development.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Wurgaft | first1 = LD. |  year = 1976 | title = Erik Erikson: from Luther to Gandhi | journal = Psychoanalytic Review | volume = 63 | issue = 2| pages = 209–33 | pmid = 788015 }}</ref> The psychologist [[Martha Stout]] terms ''conscience'' "an intervening sense of obligation based in our emotional attachments."<ref>Martha Stout. ''The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus The Rest of Us''. Broadway Books. {{ISBN|0-7679-1581-X}}. {{ISBN|978-0-7679-1581-6}}. 2005.</ref> Thus a good conscience is associated with feelings of integrity, psychological wholeness and peacefulness and is often described using adjectives such as "quiet", "clear" and "easy".<ref>Childress JF. ''Appeals to Conscience''. Ethics 1979; 89: 315–35.</ref>

[[Sigmund Freud]] regarded ''conscience'' as originating psychologically from the growth of [[civilisation]], which periodically frustrated the external expression of [[aggression]]: this destructive impulse being forced to seek an alternative, healthy outlet, directed its energy as a [[superego]] against the person's own "ego" or selfishness (often taking its cue in this regard from parents during childhood).<ref>Erich Fromm. ''Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought''. Jonathan Cape, London. 1980. pp. 126–27.</ref> According to Freud, the consequence of not obeying our conscience is [[guilt (emotion)|guilt]], which can be a factor in the development of [[neurosis]]; Freud claimed that both the cultural and individual super-ego set up strict ideal demands with regard to the moral aspects of certain decisions, disobedience to which provokes a 'fear of conscience'.<ref>Sigmund Freud. "The Cultural Super-Ego" in P Singer (ed). ''Ethics''. Oxford University Press. NY 1994</ref>

[[Antonio Damasio]] considers conscience an aspect of [[extended consciousness]] beyond survival-related dispositions and incorporating the search for truth and desire to build norms and ideals for behavior.
<ref>{{cite book
 |last=Damasio
 |first=Antonio
 |title=The Feeling of What Happens
 |isbn=978-0-15-100369-3
 |year=1999
 |publisher=Harcourt
 |url=https://archive.org/details/feelingofwhathap00dama
 }}</ref>

====Conscience as a society-forming instinct====
[[File:Jeremy Bentham by Henry William Pickersgill.jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[Jeremy Bentham]]: "[[Fanaticism]] never sleeps&nbsp;... it is never stopped by ''conscience''; for it has pressed ''conscience'' into its service."]]

[[Michel Glautier]] argues that conscience is one of the [[instincts]] and drives which enable people to form societies: groups of humans without these drives or in whom they are insufficient cannot form societies and do not reproduce their kind as successfully as those that do.<ref>Michel Glautier. ''[http://www.shepheard-walwyn.co.uk/product/the-social-conscience/ The Social Conscience]''. Shepheard-Walwyn, London. 2007. {{ISBN|978-0-85683-248-2}}</ref>

[[File:WP Eichmann Passport.jpg|thumb|upright|War criminal [[Adolf Eichmann]] in passport used to enter Argentina: his conscience spoke with the "respectable voice" of the indoctrinated wartime German society that surrounded him.]]

[[Charles Darwin]] considered that ''conscience'' evolved in humans to resolve conflicts between competing natural impulses-some about self-preservation but others about safety of a family or community; the claim of conscience to [[moral authority]] emerged from the "greater duration of impression of social instincts" in the struggle for survival.<ref>Compare
{{cite book
|last= Rachels
|first= James
|author-link= James Rachels
|title= Created from animals: the moral implications of Darwinism
|series= Oxford paperbacks
|year= 1990
|publisher= Oxford University Press
|location= Oxford
|isbn= 978-0-19-217775-9
|pages= 160–62, 245
}}
</ref> In such a view, behavior destructive to a person's [[society]] (either to its structures or to the persons it comprises) is bad or "evil".<ref>Milton Wessel. ''Science and Conscience''. Columbia University Press, New York 1980</ref> Thus, conscience can be viewed as an outcome of those biological drives that prompt humans to avoid provoking [[fear]] or [[contempt]] in others; being experienced as [[guilt (emotion)|guilt]] and [[shame]] in differing ways from society to society and person to person.<ref>D'Arcy, Eric. ''Conscience and Its Right to Freedom''. Sheed and Ward, New York 1961.</ref> A requirement of conscience in this view is the capacity to see ourselves from the point of view of another person.<ref>Eva Fogelman. ''Conscience & courage: rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust''. New York: Anchor Books, c1994</ref> Persons unable to do this ([[psychopathy|psychopaths]], [[Psychopathy#Psychopathy vs. sociopathy|sociopaths]], [[narcissistic personality disorder|narcissists]]) therefore often act in ways which are "evil".<ref>George Kateb. ''Hannah Arendt: politics, conscience, evil''. Martin Robertson, Oxford. 1984.</ref>

Fundamental in this view of conscience is that humans consider some "other" as being ''in a social relationship''. Thus, [[nationalism]] is invoked in conscience to quell [[tribal]] conflict and the notion of a Brotherhood of Man is invoked to quell [[war|national conflicts]]. Yet such crowd drives may not only overwhelm but redefine individual ''conscience''. [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] stated: "communal solidarity is annihilated by the highest and strongest drives that, when they break out passionately, whip the individual far past the average low level of the 'herd-conscience.'"<ref>Friedrich Nietzsche "The Origins of Herd Morality" in P Singer (ed). ''Ethics''. Oxford University Press. NY 1994</ref> [[Jeremy Bentham]] noted that: "[[fanaticism]] never sleeps&nbsp;... it is never stopped by ''conscience''; for it has pressed ''conscience'' into its service."<ref>Jeremy Bentham. ''Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation''. (Burns JH and Hart HLA eds), Athlone Press. London. 1970 Ch 12 p. 156n.</ref> [[Hannah Arendt]] in her study of the trial of [[Adolf Eichmann]] in Jerusalem, notes that the accused, as with almost all his fellow Germans, had lost track of his ''conscience'' to the point where they hardly remembered it; this wasn't caused by familiarity with atrocities or by psychologically redirecting any resultant natural pity to themselves for having to bear such an unpleasant duty, so much as by the fact that anyone whose ''conscience'' did develop doubts could see no one who shared them: "Eichmann did not need to close his ears to the voice of conscience&nbsp;... not because he had none, but because his conscience spoke with a "respectable voice", with the voice of the respectable society around him".<ref>Hannah Arendt. ''Eichmann in Jerusalem''. Penguin Books, New York. 1994 {{ISBN|0-14-018765-0}}. pp. 95, 103, 106, 116, 126.</ref>

[[Sir Arthur Keith]] in 1948 developed the [[Amity-enmity complex]]. We evolved as tribal groups surrounded by enemies; thus conscience evolved a dual role; the duty to save and protect members of the [[in-group]], and the duty to show hatred and aggression towards any [[Ingroups and outgroups|out-group]].

An interesting area of research in this context concerns the similarities between our relationships and those of [[animal]]s, whether animals in human society ([[pets]], [[working animal]]s, even animals grown for food) or in the wild.<ref>Anonymous. {{cite web
 |title      = Wild Justice and Fair Play: Animal Origins of Social Morality
 |url        = http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/02_Events/Lectures/2003/02_Lecture_2003_1016.pdf
 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070628111520/http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/02_Events/Lectures/2003/02_Lecture_2003_1016.pdf
 |url-status   = dead
 |archive-date = 28 June 2007
 |access-date = 16 January 2007
}}</ref> One idea is that as people or animals perceive a social relationship as important to preserve, their ''conscience'' begins to respect that former "other", and urge actions that protect it.<ref>{{cite book
 |last=Linden
 |first=Eugene
 |author-link = Eugene Linden (author)
 |title=The Parrot's Lament: And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity
 |isbn=978-0-452-28068-7
 |year=2000
 |publisher=Plume
 |location=New York}}</ref><ref>{{cite book
 |last=Von Kreisler
 |first=Kristin
 |title=The Compassion of Animals: True Stories of Animal Courage and Kindness
 |isbn=978-0-7615-1808-2
 |year=1999
 |publisher=Prima
 }}</ref> Similarly, in complex territorial and cooperative breeding [[bird]] communities (such as the [[Australian magpie]]) that have a high degree of etiquettes, rules, hierarchies, play, songs and negotiations, rule-breaking seems tolerated on occasions not obviously related to survival of the individual or group; behaviour often appearing to exhibit a touching gentleness and tenderness.<ref>[[Gisela Kaplan]]. ''Australian Magpie: Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird''. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood. 2004. pp. 83, 124.</ref>

==== Evolutionary biology ====
Contemporary scientists in [[evolutionary biology]] seek to explain conscience as a function of the [[brain]] that evolved to facilitate [[altruism]] within societies.<ref>Susan Greenfield. ''The Quest For Identity in the 21st Century''. Sceptre. London. 2008 p. 223.</ref> In his book ''[[The God Delusion]]'', [[Richard Dawkins]] states that he agrees with [[Robert Hinde]]'s ''Why Good is Good'', [[Michael Shermer]]'s ''The Science of Good and Evil'', [[Robert Buckman]]'s ''Can We Be Good Without God?'' and [[Marc Hauser]]'s ''Moral Minds'', that our sense of right and wrong can be derived from our [[Darwinian]] past. He subsequently reinforced this idea through the lens of the [[gene-centered view of evolution]], since the unit of natural selection is neither an individual organism nor a group, but rather [[The Selfish Gene|the "selfish" gene]], and these genes could ensure their own "selfish" survival by, ''inter alia'', pushing individuals to act altruistically towards its kin.<ref>Richard Dawkins. ''The God Delusion''. Bantam Press. London 2006 p. 215-216.</ref>

====Neuroscience and artificial conscience====

Numerous case studies of [[brain damage]] have shown that damage to areas of the [[brain]] (such as the anterior [[prefrontal cortex]]) results in the reduction or elimination of [[social inhibition|inhibitions]], with a corresponding radical change in behaviour.<ref>Tranel, D. 'Acquired sociopathy': the development of sociopathic behavior following focal brain damage. Prog. Exp. Pers. Psychopathol. Res. 1994; 285–311.</ref> When the damage occurs to adults, they may still be able to perform moral reasoning; but when it occurs to children, they may never develop that ability.<ref>Greene, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M. & Cohen, J. D. The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron 2004; 44, 389–400.</ref><ref>Jorge Moll, Roland Zahn, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, Frank Krueger & Jordan Grafman. [http://www.visioncircle.org/archive/004733.html The Neural Basis of Human Moral Cognition] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060822005450/http://www.visioncircle.org/archive/004733.html |date=22 August 2006 }}. Vision Circle 10 October 2005 accessed 18 October 2009.</ref>

Attempts have been made by neuroscientists to locate the [[free will]] necessary for what is termed the 'veto' of conscience over unconscious mental processes (see [[Neuroscience of free will]] and [[Benjamin Libet]]) in a scientifically measurable awareness of an intention to carry out an act occurring 350–400 microseconds after the electrical discharge known as the 'readiness potential.'<ref>Libet B, Freeman A and Sutherland K (eds). ''The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will''. Imprint Academic. Thorverton. 2000.</ref><ref>AC Grayling. "Do We Have a Veto?" ''Times Literary Supplement''. 2000; 5076 (14 July): 4.</ref><ref>Batthyany, Alexander: Mental Causation and Free Will after Libet and Soon: Reclaiming Conscious Agency. In Batthyany und Avshalom Elitzur. Irreducibly Conscious. Selected Papers on Consciousness, Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg 2009, pp.135ff</ref>

Jacques Pitrat claims that some kind of artificial conscience is beneficial in [[artificial intelligence]] systems to improve their long-term performance and direct their [[introspection|introspective]] processing.<ref>{{cite book
 |last=Pitrat
 |first=Jacques
 |title=Artificial Beings: The Conscience of a Conscious Machine)
 |isbn=978-1-84821-101-8
 |year=2009
 |publisher=Wiley}}</ref>

===Philosophical===
{{Further|Free will|Compatibilism and incompatibilism|Determinism|Libertarianism (metaphysics)|Theory of justification|Virtue ethics|Metaethics|Moral motivation|Normative ethics}}

The word "conscience" derives etymologically from the Latin ''conscientia'', meaning "privity of knowledge"<ref>''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', second edition, 1989.</ref>
or "with-knowledge". The [[English language|English]] word implies internal awareness of a moral standard in the mind concerning the quality of one's motives, as well as a consciousness of our own actions.<ref>Little, W, Fowler HW, Coulson J, Onions CT. ''The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles''. 3rd ed. Vol 1 Clarendon Pres. Oxford. 1992. pp. 402–03.</ref> Thus ''conscience'' considered philosophically may be first, and perhaps most commonly, a largely unexamined "gut feeling" or "vague sense of guilt" about what ought to be or should have been done.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Strawson |first1=Galen |title=A hundred years of consciousness: "a long training in absurdity" |journal=Estudios de Filosofía |date=January 2019 |issue=59 |pages=9–43 |doi=10.17533/udea.ef.n59a02|doi-access=free }}</ref> Conscience in this sense is not necessarily the product of a process of rational consideration of the moral features of a situation (or the applicable [[normative]] principles, rules or laws) and can arise from parental, peer group, religious, state or corporate [[indoctrination]], which may or may not be presently consciously acceptable to the person ("traditional conscience").<ref>Peter Singer. ''Practical Ethics''. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1993 pp. 292–95.</ref> ''Conscience'' may be defined as the [[practical reason]] employed when applying moral convictions to a situation ("critical conscience").<ref>Peter Singer. ''Democracy and Disobedience''. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1973. p. 94</ref> In purportedly morally mature mystical people who have developed this capacity through daily [[contemplation]] or [[meditation]] combined with selfless service to others, ''critical conscience'' can be aided by a "spark" of intuitive insight or revelation (called [[marifa]] in [[Islamic]] [[Sufi]] philosophy and [[synderesis]] in medieval Christian [[scholasticism|scholastic]] [[moral philosophy]]).<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The Religious Experience of Mankind''. Collins. New York 1969 pp. 511–12.</ref><ref name="Langston34">Langston, Douglas C. ''Conscience and Other Virtues: From Bonaventure to MacIntyre''. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2001. {{ISBN|0-271-02070-9}} p. 34</ref> ''Conscience'' is accompanied in each case by an internal awareness of 'inner light' and [[wikt:approbation|approbation]] or 'inner darkness' and condemnation as well as a resulting conviction of right or duty either followed or declined.<ref>Campbell Garnett A. "Conscience and Conscientiousness" in Feinberg J (ed) ''Moral Concepts''. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1969 pp. 80–92</ref>

====Medieval====

The medieval [[Islamic]] scholar and mystic [[Al-Ghazali]] divided the concept of ''[[Nafs]]'' ([[Soul (spirit)|soul]] or [[self (spirituality)]]) into three categories<ref name="autogenerated1966"/> based on the [[Qur’an]]:

#Nafs Ammarah (12:53) which "exhorts one to freely indulge in gratifying passions and instigates to do evil"
#Nafs Lawammah (75:2) which is "the conscience that directs man towards right or wrong"
#Nafs Mutmainnah (89:27) which is "a self that reaches the ultimate peace"

The medieval Persian philosopher and physician [[Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi]] believed in a close relationship between ''conscience'' or spiritual integrity and physical health; rather than being self-indulgent, man should pursue knowledge, use his intellect and apply justice in his life.<ref>A.J. Arberry (transl.). ''The spiritual Physik of Rhazes'' (London, John Murray 1950).</ref> The medieval Islamic philosopher [[Avicenna]], whilst imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near [[Hamadhan]], wrote his famous isolated-but-awake "Floating Man" [[sensory deprivation]] [[thought experiment]] to explore the ideas of human [[self-awareness]] and the substantiality of the [[Soul (spirit)|soul]]; his hypothesis being that it is through [[intelligence]], particularly the [[active intellect]], that God communicates [[truth]] to the human [[mind]] or conscience.<ref name="autogenerated67"/> According to the Islamic [[Sufis]] conscience allows [[Allah]] to guide people to the [[marifa]], the peace or "light upon light" experienced where a Muslim's prayers lead to a melting away of the self in the inner knowledge of God; this foreshadowing the eternal Paradise depicted in the [[Qur’ān]].<ref>Ninian Smart. ''The Religious Experience of Mankind''. Collins. New York. 1969. pp. 511–12</ref>

[[File:Jan Van Ruysbroeck.jpg|thumb|upright|The Flemish mystic [[Jan van Ruysbroek (scholar)|Jan van Ruysbroeck]] viewed a pure conscience as facilitating "an outflowing losing of oneself in the abyss of that eternal object which is the highest and chief blessedness".]]

Some medieval Christian [[scholasticism|scholastics]] such as [[Bonaventure]] made a distinction between conscience as a rational faculty of the mind ([[practical reason]]) and inner awareness, an intuitive "spark" to do good, called ''[[synderesis]]'' arising from a remnant appreciation of absolute good and when consciously denied (for example to perform an evil act), becoming a source of inner torment.<ref name="Langston34"/> Early modern theologians such as [[William Perkins (Puritan)|William Perkins]] and [[William Ames]] developed a syllogistic understanding of the conscience, where God's law made the first term, the act to be judged the second and the action of the conscience (as a rational faculty) produced the judgement. By debating test cases applying such understanding conscience was trained and refined (i.e. [[casuistry]]).<ref>Ceri Sullivan. ''The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan''. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2008 {{ISBN|978-0-19-954784-5}}</ref>

[[File:Avicenna.jpg|left|thumb|upright|The medieval Persian philosopher [[Ibn Sina]] ([[Avicenna]]) developed a sensory deprivation thought experiment to explore the relationship between conscience and God.]]

In the 13th century, [[Aquinas|St. Thomas Aquinas]] regarded ''conscience'' as the application of moral knowledge to a particular case (S.T. I, q. 79, a. 13).  Thus, conscience was considered an act or judgment of practical reason that began with [[synderesis]], the structured development of our innate remnant awareness of absolute good (which he categorised as involving the five primary precepts proposed in his theory of [[Natural Law]]) into an acquired habit of applying moral principles.<ref name="autogenerated145"/> According to Singer, Aquinas held that conscience, or ''conscientia'' was an imperfect process of judgment applied to activity because knowledge of the [[natural law]] (and all acts of natural virtue implicit therein) was obscured in most people by education and custom that promoted selfishness rather than fellow-feeling (''Summa Theologiae'', I–II, I).<ref name="Thomas Aquinas pp. 247-249">Thomas Aquinas. "Of the Natural Law" in P Singer (ed). ''Ethics''. Oxford University Press. NY 1994 pp. 247–49.</ref> Aquinas also discussed conscience in relation to the virtue of [[prudence]] to explain why some people appear to be less "morally enlightened" than others, their weak will being incapable of adequately balancing their own needs with those of others.<ref>Saarinen, R. ''Weakness of the Will in Medieval Thought From Augustine to Buridan''. Brill, Leiden. 1994</ref>

Aquinas reasoned that acting contrary to conscience is an [[evil]] action but an errant conscience is only blameworthy if it is the result of culpable or [[vincible ignorance]] of factors that one has a duty to have knowledge of.<ref name="Thomas Aquinas pp. 247-249"/> Aquinas also argued that conscience should be educated to act towards real goods (from [[God]]) which encouraged [[Eudaimonia|human flourishing]], rather than the apparent goods of sensory pleasures.<ref name="Thomas Aquinas pp. 247-249"/> In his ''Commentary'' on [[Aristotle]]'s [[Nicomachean Ethics]] Aquinas claimed it was weak will that allowed a non-virtuous man to choose a principle allowing pleasure ahead of one requiring moral constraint.<ref>Brain Davies. ''The Thought of Thomas Aquinas''. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1992</ref>

[[Thomas A Kempis]] in the medieval [[contemplative]] classic ''[[The Imitation of Christ]]'' (ca 1418) stated that the glory of a good man is the witness of a good conscience. "Preserve a quiet conscience and you will always have joy. A quiet conscience can endure much, and remains joyful in all trouble, but an evil conscience is always fearful and uneasy."<ref>Thomas à Kempis. "The Imitation of Christ". [[Leo Sherley-Price]] (trans) Penguin Books. London. 1965 Bk II, ch. 6 ''On The Joys of a Good Conscience''. p. 74.</ref> The anonymous medieval author of the Christian [[mystical]] work ''[[The Cloud of Unknowing]]'' similarly expressed the view that in profound and prolonged [[contemplation]] a soul dries up the "root and ground" of the [[sin]] that is always there, even after one's [[Confession (religion)|confession]] and however busy one is in [[holy]] things: "therefore, whoever would work at becoming a [[contemplative]] must first cleanse his [or her] conscience."<ref>Anonymous. ''The Cloud of Unknowing''. Clifton Wolters (trans.) Penguin Books. London 1965 ch. 28 p. 88</ref> The medieval Flemish mystic [[John of Ruysbroeck]] likewise held that true conscience has four aspects that are necessary to render a man just in the active and contemplative life: "a free spirit, attracting itself through love"; "an intellect enlightened by grace", "a delight yielding propension or inclination" and "an outflowing losing of oneself in the abyss of&nbsp;... that eternal object which is the highest and chief blessedness&nbsp;... those lofty amongst men, are absorbed in it, and immersed in a certain boundless thing."<ref>John of Ruysbroeck. ''The Kingdom of the Lovers of God''. Kegan Paul. London. 1919. ch. III pp. 14–15 and ch XLIII p. 214</ref>

====Modern====
[[File:Arthur Schopenhauer Portrait by Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl 1815.jpeg|thumb|upright|[[Arthur Schopenhauer|Schopenhauer]] considered that the good conscience we experience after an unselfish act verifies that our true self exists outside our physical person.]]
<div style="float:left;clear:left;">
[[File:Spinoza.jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[Baruch Spinoza|Benedict de Spinoza]]: moral problems and our emotional responses to them should be reasoned from the perspective of eternity.]]
[[File:Immanuel Kant portrait c1790.jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[Immanuel Kant]]: the moral law within us has true infinity.]]
</div>

[[Baruch Spinoza|Benedict de Spinoza]] in his [[Ethics (Spinoza)|''Ethics'']], published after his death in 1677, argued that most people, even those that consider themselves to exercise [[free will]], make moral decisions on the basis of imperfect sensory information, inadequate understanding of their mind and will, as well as emotions which are both outcomes of their contingent physical existence and forms of thought defective from being chiefly impelled by self-preservation.<ref>Spinoza. ''Ethics''. Everyman's Library JM Dent, London. 1948. Part 2 proposition 35. Part 3 proposition 11.</ref> The solution, according to Spinoza, was to gradually increase the capacity of our reason to change the forms of thought produced by emotions and to fall in love with viewing problems requiring moral decision from the perspective of eternity.<ref>Spinoza. ''Ethics''. Everyman's Library JM Dent, London. 1948. Part 4 proposition 59, Part 5 proposition 30</ref> Thus, living a life of peaceful conscience means to Spinoza that reason is used to generate adequate ideas where the mind increasingly sees the world and its conflicts, our desires and passions ''sub specie aeternitatis'', that is without reference to time.<ref>Roger Scruton. "Spinoza" in Raphael F and Monk R (eds). ''The Great Philosophers''. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. London. 2000. p. 141.</ref> [[Hegel]]'s obscure and [[mystical]] [[Philosophy of Mind]] held that the absolute right of ''freedom of conscience'' facilitates human understanding of an all-embracing unity, an absolute which was rational, real and true.<ref>Richard L Gregory. ''The Oxford Companion to the Mind''. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1987 p. 308.</ref> Nevertheless, Hegel thought that a functioning State would always be tempted not to recognize conscience in its form of subjective knowledge, just as similar non-objective opinions are generally rejected in science.<ref>Georg Hegel. ''Philosophy of Right''. Knox TM trans, Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1942. para 137.</ref> A similar idealist notion was expressed in the writings of [[Joseph Butler]] who argued that conscience is [[God]]-given, should always be obeyed, is intuitive, and should be considered the "constitutional monarch" and the "universal moral faculty": "conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it."<ref>Joseph Butler "Sermons" in ''The Works of Joseph Butler''. (Gladstone WE ed), Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1896, Vol II p. 71.</ref> Butler advanced ethical speculation by referring to a duality of regulative principles in human nature: first, "self-love" (seeking individual happiness) and second, "benevolence" (compassion and seeking good for another) in ''conscience'' (also linked to the [[agape]] of [[situational ethics]]).<ref name="autogenerated365"/> Conscience tended to be more authoritative in questions of moral judgment, thought Butler, because it was more likely to be clear and certain (whereas calculations of self-interest tended to probable and changing conclusions).<ref>Henry Sidgwick. ''Outlines of the History of Ethics''. Macmillan, London. 1960 pp. 196–97.</ref> [[John Selden]] in his ''Table Talk'' expressed the view that an awake but excessively scrupulous or ill-trained ''conscience'' could hinder resolve and practical action; it being "like a horse that is not well wayed, he starts at every bird that flies out of the hedge".<ref>John Selden. ''Table Talk''. Garnett R, Valee L and Brandl A (eds) The Book of Literature: A Comprehensive Anthology. The Grolier Society. Toronto. 1923. Vol 14. p. 67.</ref>

As the sacred texts of ancient [[Hindu]] and [[Buddhist]] philosophy became available in German translations in the 18th and 19th centuries, they influenced philosophers such as [[Schopenhauer]] to hold that in a healthy mind only deeds oppress our ''conscience'', not wishes and thoughts; "for it is only our deeds that hold us up to the mirror of our will"; the ''good conscience'', thought Schopenhauer, we experience after every disinterested deed arises from direct recognition of our own inner being in the phenomenon of another, it affords us the verification "that our true self exists not only in our own person, this particular manifestation, but in everything that lives. By this the heart feels itself enlarged, as by egotism it is contracted."<ref>Arthur Schopenhauer. ''The World as Will and Idea''. Vol 1. Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1948. pp. 387, 482. "I believe that the influence of the Sanskrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the 15th century." p xiii.</ref>

[[Immanuel Kant]], a central figure of the [[Age of Enlightenment]], likewise claimed that two things filled his mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily they were reflected on: "the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me&nbsp;... the latter begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity but which I recognise myself as existing in a universal and necessary (and not only, as in the first case, contingent) connection."<ref>Kant I. "The Noble Descent of Duty" in P Singer (ed). ''Ethics''. Oxford University Press. NY 1994 p. 41.</ref> The 'universal connection' referred to here is Kant's [[categorical imperative]]: "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."<ref>Kant I. "The Categorical Imperative" in P Singer (ed). ''Ethics''. Oxford University Press. NY 1994 p. 274.</ref> Kant considered ''critical conscience'' to be an internal court in which our thoughts accuse or excuse one another; he acknowledged that morally mature people do often describe contentment or peace in the [[Soul (spirit)|soul]] after following conscience to perform a duty, but argued that for such acts to produce virtue their primary motivation should simply be duty, not expectation of any such bliss.<ref>Kant I. "The Doctrine of Virtue" in ''Metaphyics and Morals''. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 1991. pp. 183 and 233–34.</ref> Rousseau expressed a similar view that conscience somehow connected man to a greater [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] unity. [[John Plamenatz]] in his critical examination of [[Rousseau]]'s work considered that ''conscience'' was there defined as the feeling that urges us, in spite of contrary passions, towards two harmonies: the one within our minds and between our passions, and the other within society and between its members; "the weakest can appeal to it in the strongest, and the appeal, though often unsuccessful, is always disturbing. However, corrupted by power or wealth we may be, either as possessors of them or as victims, there is something in us serving to remind us that this corruption is against nature."<ref>John Plamenatz. ''Man and Society''. Vol 1. Longmans. London. 1963 p. 383.</ref>

[[File:JohnLocke.png|thumb|upright|[[John Locke]] viewed the widespread social fact of conscience as a justification for natural rights.]]
[[File:AdamSmith1790b.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Adam Smith]]: conscience shows what relates to ourselves in its proper shape and dimensions]]
[[File:Samuel Johnson by John Opie.jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[Samuel Johnson]] (1775) stated that "No man's conscience can tell him the right of another man."]]
Other philosophers expressed a more sceptical and pragmatic view of the operation of "conscience" in society.<ref>Hill T Jr "Four Conceptions of Conscience" in Shapiro I and Adams R. ''Integrity and Conscience''. New York University Press, New York 1998 p. 31.</ref>
[[John Locke]] in his ''Essays on the Law of Nature'' argued that the widespread fact of human conscience allowed a philosopher to infer the necessary existence of objective moral laws that occasionally might contradict those of the state.<ref>[[Roger Woolhouse]]. ''Locke: A Biography''. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2007. p. 53.</ref> Locke highlighted the [[metaethics]] problem of whether accepting a statement like "follow your ''conscience''" supports [[subject (philosophy)|subjectivist]] or [[objectivity (philosophy)|objectivist]] conceptions of conscience as a guide in concrete morality, or as a spontaneous revelation of eternal and immutable principles to the individual: "if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men with the same bent of conscience prosecute what others avoid."<ref>John Locke. ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding''. Dover Publications. New York. 1959. {{ISBN|0-486-20530-4}}. Vol 1. ch II. pp. 71-72fn1.</ref> [[Thomas Hobbes]] likewise pragmatically noted that opinions formed on the basis of ''conscience'' with full and honest conviction, nevertheless should always be accepted with humility as potentially erroneous and not necessarily indicating absolute knowledge or truth.<ref>Thomas Hobbes. ''Leviathan'' (Molesworth W ed) J Bohn. London, 1837 Pt 2. Ch 29 p. 311.</ref> [[William Godwin]] expressed the view that ''conscience'' was a memorable consequence of the "perception by men of every creed when the descend into the scene of busy life" that they possess [[free will]].<ref>William Godwin. ''Enquiry Concerning Political Justice''. Codell Carter K (ed), Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1971 Appendix III 'Thoughts on Man' Essay XI 'Of Self Love and Benevolence' p. 338.</ref> [[Adam Smith]] considered that it was only by developing a ''critical conscience'' that we can ever see what relates to ourselves in its proper shape and dimensions; or that we can ever make any proper comparison between our own interests and those of other people.<ref>Adam Smith. ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments''. Part III, section ii, Ch III in Rogers K (ed) Self Interest: An Anthology of Philosophical Perspectives. Routledge. London. 1997 p. 151.</ref> [[John Stuart Mill]] believed that idealism about the role of ''conscience'' in government should be tempered with a practical realisation that few men in society are capable of directing their minds or purposes towards distant or unobvious interests, of disinterested regard for others, and especially for what comes after them, for the idea of posterity, of their country, or of humanity, whether grounded on sympathy or on a conscientious feeling.<ref name="Mill193-194">John Stuart Mill. "Considerations on Representative Government". Ch VI. In Rogers K (ed) ''Self Interest: An Anthology of Philosophical Perspectives''. Routledge. London. 1997 pp. 193–94</ref> Mill held that certain amount of ''conscience'', and of disinterested public spirit, may fairly be calculated on in the citizens of any community ripe for [[representative government]], but that "it would be ridiculous to expect such a degree of it, combined with such intellectual discernment, as would be proof against any plausible fallacy tending to make that which was for their class interest appear the dictate of justice and of the general good."<ref name="Mill193-194"/>

[[Josiah Royce]] (1855–1916) built on the [[transcendental idealism]] view of conscience, viewing it as the ideal of life which constitutes our moral personality, our plan of being ourself, of making common sense ethical decisions. But, he thought, this was only true insofar as our ''conscience'' also required loyalty to "a mysterious higher or deeper self".<ref>John K Roth (ed). ''The Philosophy of Josiah Royce''. Thomas Y Crowell Co. New York. 1971 pp. 302–15.</ref>
In the modern Christian tradition this approach achieved expression with [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] who stated during his imprisonment by the [[Nazis]] in [[World War II]] that ''conscience'' for him was more than practical reason, indeed it came from a "depth which lies beyond a man's own will and his own reason and it makes itself heard as the call of human existence to unity with itself."<ref>Dietrich Bonhoeffer. ''Ethics''. (Eberhard Bethge (ed) Neville Horton Smith (trans) Collins. London 1963 p. 242</ref> For Bonhoeffer a ''guilty conscience'' arose as an indictment of the loss of this unity and as a warning against the loss of one's self; primarily, he thought, it is directed not towards a particular kind of doing but towards a particular mode of being. It protests against a doing which imperils the unity of this being with itself.<ref name="autogenerated24"/> ''Conscience'' for Bonhoeffer did not, like shame, embrace or pass judgment on the morality of the whole of its owner's life; it reacted only to certain definite actions: "it recalls what is long past and represents this disunion as something which is already accomplished and irreparable".<ref name="Bonhoffer66">Dietrich Bonhoeffer. ''Ethics''. (Eberhard Bethge (ed) Neville Horton Smith (trans) Collins. London 1963 p. 66</ref> The man with a ''conscience'', he believed, fights a lonely battle against the "overwhelming forces of inescapable situations" which demand moral decisions despite the likelihood of adverse consequences.<ref name="Bonhoffer66"/> [[Simon Soloveychik]] has similarly claimed that the ''truth'' distributed in the world, as the statement about human [[dignity]], as the affirmation of the line between [[good and evil]], lives in people as conscience.<ref>[[Simon Soloveychik]]. ''Parenting For Everyone''. Ch 12 [http://www.parentingforeveryone.com/book2part2ch12 "A Chapter on Conscience"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070516020813/http://www.parentingforeveryone.com/book2part2ch12 |date=16 May 2007 }}. 1986. Retrieved 23 October 2009.</ref>

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[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R0211-316, Dietrich Bonhoeffer mit Schülern.jpg|thumb|left|[[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] (1932)]]
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As [[Hannah Arendt]] pointed out, however, (following the utilitarian [[John Stuart Mill]] on this point): a bad conscience does not necessarily signify a bad character; in fact only those who affirm a commitment to applying moral standards will be troubled with remorse, guilt or shame by a bad ''conscience'' and their need to regain integrity and wholeness of the self.<ref>Hannah Arendt. ''Crises of the Republic''. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. New York. 1972 p. 62.</ref><ref>John Stuart Mill. "Utilitarianism" and "On Liberty" in ''Collected Works''. University of Toronto Press. Toronto. 1969 Vols 10 and 18. Ch 3. pp. 228–29 and 263.</ref> Representing our soul or true self by analogy as our house, Arendt wrote that "conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home."<ref name="autogenerated191">Hannah Arendt. ''The Life of the Mind''. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York. 1978. p. 191.</ref> Arendt believed that people who are unfamiliar with the process of silent critical reflection about what they say and do will not mind contradicting themselves by an immoral act or crime, since they can "count on its being forgotten the next moment;" bad people are not full of regrets.<ref name="autogenerated191"/> Arendt also wrote eloquently on the problem of languages distinguishing the word [[consciousness]] from ''conscience''. One reason, she held, was that ''conscience'', as we understand it in moral or legal matters, is supposedly always present within us, just like ''consciousness'': "and this conscience is also supposed to tell us what to do and what to repent; before it became the ''lumen naturale'' or [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]]'s practical reason, it was the voice of God."<ref>Hannah Arendt. ''The Life of the Mind''. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York. 1978. p. 190.</ref>
[[File:Albert Einstein Head Cleaned N Cropped.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Albert Einstein]] associated conscience with suprapersonal thoughts, feelings and aspirations.]]
[[Albert Einstein]], as a self-professed adherent of [[humanism]] and [[rationalism]], likewise viewed an enlightened religious person as one whose ''conscience'' reflects that he "has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Einstein|first=A.|year=1940|title=Science and religion |journal= [[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |volume=146 |pages=605–07|doi=10.1038/146605a0 |issue=3706 |bibcode=1940Natur.146..605E|s2cid=9421843|doi-access=free}}</ref>
Einstein often referred to the "inner voice" as a source of both moral and physical knowledge: "[[Quantum mechanics]] is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not the real thing. The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings one closer to the secrets of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice."<ref>Quoted in Gino Segre. ''Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics and the Birth of the Nuclear Age''. Pimlico. London 2007. p. 144.</ref>

[[Simone Weil]] who fought for the French resistance (the [[Maquis (World War II)|Maquis]]) argued in her final book ''[[The Need for Roots]]: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind'' that for society to become more just and protective of liberty, obligations should take precedence over rights in moral and political philosophy and a spiritual awakening should occur in the ''conscience'' of most citizens, so that social obligations are viewed as fundamentally having a transcendent origin and a beneficent impact on human character when fulfilled.<ref>Simone Weil. ''The Need For Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind''. Routledge & Kegan Paul. London. 1952 (repr 2003). {{ISBN|0-415-27101-0}} pp. 13 et seq.</ref><ref>Hellman, John. ''Simone Weil: An Introduction to Her Thought''. Wilfrid Laurier, University Press, Waterloo, Ontario. 1982.</ref> [[Simone Weil]] also in that work provided a psychological explanation for the mental peace associated with a ''good conscience'': "the liberty of men of goodwill, though limited in the sphere of action, is complete in that of conscience. For, having incorporated the rules into their own being, the prohibited possibilities no longer present themselves to the mind, and have not to be rejected."<ref>Simone Weil. ''The Need For Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind''. Routledge & Kegan Paul. London. 1952 (repr 2003). {{ISBN|0-415-27101-0}} p. 13.</ref>

Alternatives to such [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] and [[idealism|idealist]] opinions about conscience arose from [[philosophical realism|realist]] and [[materialism|materialist]] perspectives such as those of [[Charles Darwin]]. Darwin suggested that "any [[animal]] whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or as nearly as well developed, as in man."<ref>Charles Darwin. "The Origin of the Moral Sense" in P Singer (ed). ''Ethics''. Oxford University Press. NY 1994 p. 44.</ref> [[Émile Durkheim]] held that the [[Soul (spirit)|soul]] and conscience were particular forms of an impersonal principle diffused in the relevant group and communicated by [[totemic]] ceremonies.<ref>Émile Durkheim. ''The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life''. The Free Press. New York. 1965 p. 299.</ref> [[A. J. Ayer]] was a more recent realist who held that the existence of ''conscience'' was an empirical question to be answered by sociological research into the moral habits of a given person or group of people, and what causes them to have precisely those habits and feelings. Such an inquiry, he believed, fell wholly within the scope of the existing [[social sciences]].<ref>A. J. Ayer. "Ethics for Logical Positivists" in P Singer (ed). ''Ethics''. Oxford University Press. NY 1994 p. 151.</ref> [[George Edward Moore]] bridged the idealistic and sociological views of 'critical' and 'traditional' conscience in stating that the idea of abstract 'rightness' and the various degrees of the specific emotion excited by it are what constitute, for many persons, the specifically 'moral sentiment' or ''conscience''. For others, however, an action seems to be properly termed 'internally right', merely because they have previously regarded it as right, the idea of 'rightness' being present in some way to his or her mind, but not necessarily among his or her deliberately constructed motives.<ref>GE Moore. ''Principia Ethica''. Cambridge University Press. London. 1968 pp. 178–79.</ref>

The French philosopher [[Simone de Beauvoir]] in ''A Very Easy Death'' (''Une mort très douce'', 1964) reflects within her own ''conscience'' about her mother's attempts to develop such a moral sympathy and understanding of others.<ref>Simone de Beauvoir. ''A Very Easy Death''. Penguin Books. London. 1982. {{ISBN|0-14-002967-2}}. p. 60</ref>
{{Quote box
| width = 30em
| bgcolor = #c6dbf7
| align = right
| quote = "The sight of her tears grieved me; but I soon realised that she was weeping over her failure, without caring about what was happening inside me&nbsp;... We might still have come to an understanding if, instead of asking everybody to pray for my soul, she had given me a little confidence and sympathy. I know now what prevented her from doing so: she had too much to pay back, too many wounds to salve, to put herself in another's place. In actual doing she made every sacrifice, but her feelings did not take her out of herself. Besides, how could she have tried to understand me since she avoided looking into her own heart? As for discovering an attitude that would not have set us apart, nothing in her life had ever prepared her for such a thing: the unexpected sent her into a panic, because she had been taught never to think, act or feel except in a ready-made framework."
| source = — Simone de Beauvoir. ''A Very Easy Death''. Penguin Books. London. 1982. p. 60.
}}
[[Michael Walzer]] claimed that the growth of religious toleration in Western nations arose amongst other things, from the general recognition that private conscience signified some inner divine presence regardless of the religious faith professed and from the general respectability, piety, self-limitation, and sectarian discipline which marked most of the men who claimed the rights of conscience.<ref>Michael Walzer. ''Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship''. Clarion-Simon and Schuster. New York. 1970. p. 124.</ref> Walzer also argued that attempts by courts to define conscience as a merely personal moral code or as sincere belief, risked encouraging an anarchy of moral egotisms, unless such a code and motive was necessarily tempered with shared moral knowledge: derived either from the connection of the individual to a universal spiritual order, or from the common principles and mutual engagements of unselfish people.<ref>Michael Walzer. ''Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship''. Clarion-Simon and Schuster. New York. 1970. p. 131</ref> [[Ronald Dworkin]] maintains that constitutional protection of [[freedom of conscience]] is central to democracy but creates personal duties to live up to it: "Freedom of conscience presupposes a personal responsibility of reflection, and it loses much of its meaning when that responsibility is ignored. A good life need not be an especially reflective one; most of the best lives are just lived rather than studied. But there are moments that cry out for self-assertion, when a passive bowing to fate or a mechanical decision out of deference or convenience is treachery, because it forfeits dignity for ease."<ref>Ronald Dworkin. ''Life's Dominion''. Harper Collins, London 1995. pp. 239–40</ref> [[Edward Conze]] stated it is important for individual and collective moral growth that we recognise the illusion of our conscience being wholly located in our body; indeed both our conscience and wisdom expand when we act in an unselfish way and conversely "repressed compassion results in an unconscious sense of guilt."<ref>Edward Conze. ''Buddhism: Its Essence and development''. Harper Torchbooks. New York. 1959. pp. 20 and 46</ref>

[[File:Peter Singer - Effective Altruism -Melb Australia Aug 2015.jpg|left|thumb|[[Peter Singer]]: distinguished between immature "traditional" and highly reasoned "critical" conscience]]
The philosopher [[Peter Singer]] considers that usually when we describe an action as conscientious in the critical sense we do so in order to deny either that the relevant agent was motivated by selfish desires, like greed or ambition, or that he acted on whim or impulse.<ref>Peter Singer. ''Democracy and Disobedience''. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1973. p. 94.</ref>

Moral anti-realists debate whether the moral facts necessary to activate conscience [[supervenience|supervene]] on natural facts with ''[[Empirical evidence|a posteriori]]'' necessity; or arise ''a priori'' because moral facts have a primary intension and naturally identical worlds may be presumed morally identical.<ref>David Chalmers. ''The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory''. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1996 pp. 83–84</ref> It has also been argued that there is a measure of [[moral luck]] in how circumstances create the obstacles which ''conscience'' must overcome to apply moral principles or human rights and that with the benefit of enforceable property rights and the [[rule of law]], access to [[universal health care]] plus the absence of high adult and [[infant mortality]] from conditions such as [[malaria]], [[tuberculosis]], [[HIV/AIDS]] and [[famine]], people in relatively prosperous developed countries have been spared pangs of ''conscience'' associated with the physical necessity to steal scraps of food, bribe tax inspectors or police officers, and commit murder in [[guerrilla]] wars against corrupt government forces or rebel armies.<ref>Nicholas Fearn. ''Philosophy: The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions''. Atlantic Books. London. 2005. pp. 176–177.</ref> [[Roger Scruton]] has claimed that true understanding of ''conscience'' and its relationship with ''morality'' has been hampered by an "impetuous" belief that philosophical questions are solved through the analysis of language in an area where clarity threatens vested interests.<ref>Roger Scruton. ''Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey''. Mandarin. London. 1994. p. 271</ref> [[Susan Sontag]] similarly argued that it was a symptom of [[psychological]] immaturity not to recognise that many morally immature people willingly experience a form of delight, in some an erotic breaking of [[taboo]], when witnessing violence, suffering and pain being inflicted on others.<ref>Susan Sontag. ''Regarding the Pain of Others''. Hamish Hamilton, London. 2003. {{ISBN|0-241-14207-5}} pp. 87 and 102.</ref> [[Jonathan Glover]] wrote that most of us "do not spend our lives on endless landscape gardening of our self" and our ''conscience'' is likely shaped not so much by heroic struggles, as by choice of partner, friends and job, as well as where we choose to live.<ref>Jonathan Glover. ''I: The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity''. Penguin Books, London. 1988. p. 132.</ref> [[Garrett Hardin]], in a famous article called "[[The Tragedy of the Commons]]", argues that any instance in which society appeals to an individual exploiting a commons to restrain himself or herself for the general good—by means of his or her ''conscience''—merely sets up a system which, by selectively diverting societal power and physical resources to those lacking in ''conscience'', while fostering guilt (including anxiety about his or her individual contribution to over-population) in people acting upon it, actually works toward the elimination of conscience from the race.<ref name="hardin68">Garrett Hardin, [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243 "The Tragedy of the Commons"], ''Science'', Vol. 162, No. 3859 (13 December 1968), pp.&nbsp;1243–48. Also available here [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/162/3859/1243.pdf] and [http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html here.]
</ref><ref>Scott James Shackelford. 2008. [https://ssrn.com/abstract=1407332 "The Tragedy of the Common Heritage of Mankind"]. Retrieved 30 October 2009.</ref>

[[File:John Ralston Saul in 2006 (cropped).jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[John Ralston Saul]]: consumers risk turning over their conscience to technical experts and to the ideology of free markets]]

[[John Ralston Saul]] expressed the view in ''The Unconscious Civilization'' that in contemporary developed nations many people have acquiesced in turning over their sense of right and wrong, their ''critical conscience'', to technical experts; willingly restricting their moral freedom of choice to limited consumer actions ruled by the ideology of the free market, while citizen participation in public affairs is limited to the isolated act of voting and private-interest lobbying turns even elected representatives against the public interest.<ref>John Ralston Saul. ''The Unconscious Civilisation''. Massey Lectures Series. Anansi Pres, Toronto. 1995. {{ISBN|0-88784-586-X}} pp. 17, 81 and 172.</ref>

Some argue on religious or philosophical grounds that it is blameworthy to act against ''conscience'', even if the judgement of ''conscience'' is likely to be erroneous (say because it is inadequately informed about the facts, or prevailing moral (humanist or religious), professional ethical, legal and human rights norms).<ref>Alan Donagan. ''The Theory of Morality''. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1977. pp. 131–38.</ref> Failure to acknowledge and accept that conscientious judgements can be seriously mistaken, may only promote situations where one's conscience is manipulated by others to provide unwarranted justifications for non-virtuous and selfish acts; indeed, insofar as it is appealed to as glorifying ideological content, and an associated extreme level of devotion, without adequate constraint of external, altruistic, normative justification, '''conscience''' may be considered morally blind and dangerous both to the individual concerned and humanity as a whole.<ref>Beauchamp TL and Childress JF. ''Principles of Biomedical Ethics''. 4th ed. Oxford University Press, New York. 1994 pp. 478–79.</ref> Langston argues that philosophers of [[virtue ethics]] have unnecessarily neglected ''conscience'' for, once conscience is trained so that the principles and rules it applies are those one would want all others to live by, its practise cultivates and sustains the virtues; indeed, amongst people in what each society considers to be the highest state of moral development there is little disagreement about how to act.<ref name="autogenerated176"/> [[Emmanuel Levinas]] viewed conscience as a revelatory encountering of resistance to our selfish powers, developing morality by calling into question our naive sense of [[freedom of will]] to use such powers arbitrarily, or with [[violence]], this process being more severe the more rigorously the goal of our self was to obtain control.<ref name="Levinas">Emmanuel Levinas. ''Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority''. Lingis A (trans) Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA 1998. pp. 84, 100–01</ref>
In other words, the welcoming of the ''Other'', to Levinas, was the very essence of ''conscience'' properly conceived; it encouraged our ego to accept the fallibility of assuming things about other people, that selfish [[freedom of will]] "does not have the last word" and that realising this has a transcendent purpose: "I am not alone&nbsp;... in conscience I have an experience that is not commensurate with any a priori [see [[a priori and a posteriori]]] framework-a conceptless experience."<ref name="Levinas"/>

==Conscientious acts and the law==
{{Further|Conscientious objector|Civil disobedience|Natural law|Natural rights|Nonviolence|Nonviolent resistance|Protest|Prisoner of conscience|Keeper of the King's Conscience}}

[[File:Lester Ott.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Lester Ott]], [[conscientious objector]] during the [[First World War]]]]

In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, English litigants began to petition the [[Lord Chancellor]] of England for relief from unjust judgments.<ref name="Watt_Page_5">{{cite book |last1=Watt |first1=Gary |title=Trusts and Equity |date=2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780198854142 |page=5 |edition=9th |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uKXaDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA5}}</ref>  As [[Keeper of the King's Conscience]], the Chancellor intervened to allow for "merciful exceptions" to the King's laws, "to ensure that the King's conscience was right before God".<ref name="Watt_Page_5" /> The Chancellor's office evolved into the [[Court of Chancery]] and the Chancellor's decisions evolved into the body of law known as [[Equity (law)|equity]].<ref name="Watt_Page_5" />

English humanist lawyers in the 16th and 17th centuries interpreted conscience as a collection of universal principles given to man by god at creation to be applied by reason; this gradually reforming the medieval [[Roman law]]-based system with forms of action, written pleadings, use of juries and patterns of litigation such as [[Demurrer]] and [[Assumpsit]] that displayed an increased concern for elements of right and wrong on the actual facts.<ref>Knafla LA. Conscience in the English Common Law Tradition. University of Toronto Law Journal 1976; 26:1–16</ref> A [[conscience vote]] in a [[parliament]] allows legislators to vote without restrictions from any political party to which they may belong.<ref>Jeremy Lee. ''Conscience Voting''. Veritas Pub. Co. Morley, W.A. 1981.</ref> In his trial in Jerusalem [[Nazi]] [[war crime|war criminal]] [[Adolf Eichmann]] claimed he was simply following legal orders under paragraph 48 of the German Military Code which provided: "punishability of an action or omission is not excused on the ground that the person considered his behaviour required by his conscience or the prescripts of his religion".<ref>Hannah Arendt. ''[[Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil]]''. Penguin Books, New York. 1963. {{ISBN|0-14-018765-0}}. p. 293.</ref> The [[United Nations]] [[Universal Declaration on Human Rights]] (UDHR) which is part of [[international customary law]] specifically refers to ''conscience'' in Articles 1 and 18.<ref name="autogenerated1948"/> Likewise, the United Nations [[International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]] (ICCPR) mentions ''conscience'' in Article 18.1.<ref>International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2200A [XX1]. 16 December 1966 U.N.T.S. No. 14668, vol 999 (1976), p. 171.</ref>{{Blockquote|All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood|United Nations|''[[Universal Declaration on Human Rights]] Article 1''}}{{Blockquote|Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance|United Nations|''[[Universal Declaration on Human Rights]] Article 18''}}{{Blockquote|Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching|United Nations|''[[International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]] Article 18.1''}} It has been argued that these articles provide international legal obligations protecting [[conscientious objectors]] from service in the military.<ref>Emily Miles. [http://www.wri-irg.org/books/co-guide-un.htm  ''A Conscientious Objector's Guide to the UN Human Rights System''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080515162443/http://www.wri-irg.org/books/co-guide-un.htm |date=15 May 2008 }}. [[Quaker United Nations Office]], Geneva & CONCODOC, London. 2000. Retrieved 22 October 2009.</ref>
[[File:Minnesota anti-war protesters in Washington DC.jpg|thumb|[[Nonviolent]] protestors in [[Washington, D.C.]] in 2010 opposed to the [[Iraq War]]]]
[[File:Faroe stamp 131 amnesty international.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Amnesty International protects prisoners of conscience. Stamp from Faroe Islands, 1986.]]
[[John Rawls]] in his ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'' defines a [[conscientious objector]] as an individual prepared to undertake, in public (and often despite widespread condemnation), an action of [[civil disobedience]] to a legal rule justifying it (also in public) by reference to contrary foundational social virtues (such as justice as liberty or fairness) and the principles of morality and law derived from them.<ref name="John Rawls 1971. pp. 368–70">John Rawls. ''A Theory of Justice''. Oxford University Press. London 1971. pp. 368–70</ref> Rawls considered civil disobedience should be viewed as an appeal, warning or admonishment (showing general respect and fidelity to the [[rule of law]] by the non-violence and transparency of methods adopted) that a law breaches a community's fundamental virtue of justice.<ref name="John Rawls 1971. pp. 368–70"/> Objections to Rawls' theory include first, its inability to accommodate conscientious objections to the society's basic appreciation of [[justice]] or to emerging moral or ethical principles (such as respect for the rights of the [[natural environment]]) which are not yet part of it and second, the difficulty of predictably and consistently determining that a majority decision is just or unjust.<ref>Peter Singer. ''Democracy and Disobedience''. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1973. pp. 86–91</ref> ''Conscientious objection'' (also called conscientious refusal or evasion) to obeying a law, should not arise from unreasoning, naive "traditional conscience", for to do so merely encourages infantile abdication of responsibility to calibrate the law against moral or human rights norms and disrespect for democratic institutions.<ref>Peter Singer. ''Democracy and Disobedience''. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1973 pp. 94–99.</ref> Instead it should be based on "critical conscience' – seriously thought out, conceptually mature, personal moral or religious beliefs held to be fundamentally incompatible (that is, not merely inconsistent on the basis of selfish desires, whim or impulse), for example, either with all laws requiring [[conscription]] for military service, or legal compulsion to fight for or financially support the State in a particular war.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Spitz | first1 = D. |  year = 1954 | title = Democracy and the problem of 'civil disobedience' | journal = American Political Science Review | volume = 48 | issue = 2| pages = 386–403 | doi = 10.2307/1951202 | jstor = 1951202 | s2cid = 145099462 }}</ref> A famous example arose when [[Henry David Thoreau]] the author of ''[[Walden]]'' was willingly jailed for refusing to pay a tax because he profoundly disagreed with a government policy and was frustrated by the corruption and injustice of the democratic machinery of the [[State (polity)|state]].<ref>Henry David Thoreau. ''Civil Disobedience''. 1848. reprinted Signet Classic, New York. 1960 pp. 228, 229, 236.</ref> A more recent case concerned [[Kimberly Rivera]], a private in the [[US Army]] and mother of four children who, having served three months in [[Iraq War]] decided the conflict was immoral and sought refugee status in Canada in 2012 (see [[List of Iraq War resisters]]), but was deported and arrested in the US.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Army Deserter Arrested at Border; Opposed Iraq War |url=http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/army-deserter-arrested-at-border-opposed-iraq-war |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=ABC News |language=en}}</ref>

<div style="float:left;clear:left;">
[[File:Benjamin D. Maxham - Henry David Thoreau - Restored - greyscale - straightened.jpg|thumb|upright|left|[[Henry David Thoreau]]: Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?]]
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{{Quote box
| width = 30em
| bgcolor = #c6dbf7
| align = right
| quote = "Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavour to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?&nbsp;... A man has not everything to do but something; and because he cannot do ''everything'', it is not necessary that he should do ''something'' wrong&nbsp;... It is for no particular item in the tax bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar if I could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with—the dollar is innocent—but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance&nbsp;... Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?"
| source = — Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience. 1848. reprinted Signet Classic, New York. 1960 pp. 228, 229, 236.
}}
In the [[Second World War]], [[Great Britain]] granted conscientious-objection status not just to complete [[pacifist]]s, but to those who objected to fighting in that particular war; this was done partly out of genuine respect, but also to avoid the disgraceful and futile persecutions of [[conscientious objectors]] that occurred during the [[First World War]].<ref>Hayes D. ''Challenge of Conscience: The Story of the Conscientious Objectors''. Allen & Unwin. London 1949.</ref>

[[Amnesty International]] organises campaigns to protect those arrested and or incarcerated as a [[prisoner of conscience]] because of their conscientious beliefs, particularly concerning intellectual, political and artistic freedom of expression and association.<ref>For example see Jan Brabec, Václav Havel, Ivan Lamper, David Nemec, Petr Placak, Joska Skalnik et al. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4151 "Prisoners of Conscience"]. ''New York Review of Books''. 1989; 36 (1) 2 February. Retrieved 18 October 2009.</ref> [[Aung San Suu Kyi]] of Burma, was the winner of the 2009 [[Amnesty International]] [[Ambassador of Conscience Award]]. In legislation, a [[conscience clause (medical)|conscience clause]] is a provision in a statute that excuses a health professional from complying with the law (for example legalising surgical or pharmaceutical [[abortion]]) if it is incompatible with religious or conscientious beliefs.<ref>Katherine White. "Crisis of Conscience: Reconciling Religious Health Care Providers' Beliefs and Patients' Rights", ''Stanford Law Review'' 1999; 51: 1703–24.</ref>
Expressed justifications for refusing to obey laws because of conscience vary. Many conscientious objectors are so for religious reasons—notably, members of the [[peace churches|historic peace churches]] are pacifist by doctrine. Other objections can stem from a deep sense of responsibility toward humanity as a whole, or from the conviction that even acceptance of work under military orders acknowledges the principle of [[conscription]] that should be everywhere condemned before the world can ever become safe for real [[democracy]].<ref>Howard Moore. ''Plowing My Own Furrow''. Syracuse University Press. 1993 {{ISBN|0-8156-0276-6}} p. 208.</ref> A conscientious objector, however, does not have a primary aim of changing the law.<ref name="John Rawls 1971. pp. 368–70"/> [[John Dewey]] considered that conscientious objectors were often the victims of "moral innocency" and inexpertness in moral training: "the moving force of events is always too much for conscience".<ref name="Dykhuizen, George 1978. p. 165">Dykhuizen, George. ''The Life and Mind of John Dewey''. Southern Illinois University Press. London. 1978. p. 165</ref> The remedy was not to deplore the wickedness of those who manipulate world power, but to connect ''conscience'' with forces moving in another direction- to build institutions and social environments predicated on the [[rule of law]], for example, "then will conscience itself have compulsive power instead of being forever the martyred and the coerced."<ref name="Dykhuizen, George 1978. p. 165"/> As an example, [[Albert Einstein]] who had advocated ''conscientious objection'' during the [[First World War]] and had been a longterm supporter of [[War Resisters' International]] reasoned that "radical pacifism" could not be justified in the face of [[Nazi]] rearmament and advocated a world federalist organization with its own professional army.<ref>Walter Isaacson. ''Einstein: His Life and Universe''. Simon and Schuster. New York. 2008. p. 414.</ref>
[[Samuel Johnson]] pointed out that an appeal to conscience should not allow the law to bring unjust suffering upon another. ''Conscience'', according to Johnson, was nothing more than a conviction felt by ourselves of something to be done or something to be avoided; in questions of simple unperplexed morality, ''conscience'' is very often a guide that may be trusted.<ref name="Life of Johnson 505">[[James Boswell]]. ''[[Life of Johnson]]''. Oxford University Press. London. 1927 Vol. I 1709–1776. p. 505.</ref> But before ''conscience'' can conclusively determine what morally should be done, he thought that the state of the question should be thoroughly known.<ref name="Life of Johnson 505"/> "No man's conscience", said Johnson "can tell him the right of another man&nbsp;... it is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another."<ref name="Life of Johnson 505"/>

[[File:Gandhi in Noakhali 1946.jpg|thumb|Gandhi in Noakhali, 1946: civil resistance or [[satyagraha]]]]
[[File:2009-11-30 - Chicago Climate Justice activists in Chicago - Cap'n'Trade protest 003.jpg|thumb|[[Global warming]] protestors in Chicago 2008]]
[[File:Sugihara b.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Chiune Sugihara]] practised ''conscientious noncompliance'' in issuing visas to fleeing Jews in Lithuania in 1939.]]
[[File:NASA Scientist James Hansen Arrested.jpg|thumb|upright|left|NASA climate scientist [[James Hansen]] arrested in 2011 for civil disobedience against laws allowing a tar sands oil pipeline]]
[[Civil disobedience]] as [[nonviolent protest]] or [[civil resistance]] are also acts of conscience, but are designed by those who undertake them chiefly to change, by appealing to the majority and democratic processes, laws or government policies perceived to be incoherent with fundamental social virtues and principles (such as justice, equality or respect for intrinsic human dignity).<ref>John Rawls. ''A Theory of Justice''. Oxford University Press. London 1971. pp. 364–65.</ref> Civil disobedience, in a properly functioning [[democracy]], allows a minority who feel strongly that a law infringes their sense of [[justice]] (but have no capacity to obtain legislative amendments or a referendum on the issue) to make a potentially apathetic or uninformed majority take account of the intensity of opposing views.<ref>Peter Singer. ''Democracy and Disobedience''. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1973 p. 85.</ref> A notable example of civil resistance or [[satyagraha]] ("satya" in [[sanskrit]] means "truth and compassion", "agraha" means "firmness of will") involved [[Mahatma Gandhi]] making salt in [[India]] when that act was prohibited by a [[United Kingdom|British]] statute, in order to create moral pressure for law reform.<ref>Bondurant, Joan V. ''Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict''. Princeton UP, 1988 {{ISBN|0-691-02281-X}}</ref> [[Rosa Parks]] similarly acted on conscience in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama refusing a legal order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger; her action (and the similar earlier act of 15-year-old [[Claudette Colvin]]) led to the [[Montgomery bus boycott]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Brinkley|first=Douglas|title=Rosa Parks|series=Penguin Lives|publisher=Viking|location=New York|year=2000|isbn=978-0-670-89160-3|url=https://archive.org/details/rosaparks00brin}}</ref> [[Rachel Corrie]] was a US citizen allegedly killed by a bulldozer operated by the [[Israel Defense Forces]] (IDF) while involved in [[direct action]] (based on the nonviolent principles of [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] and [[Mahatma Gandhi]]) to prevent demolition of the home of local [[Palestinian people|Palestinian]] pharmacist Samir Nasrallah.<ref>Greg Myre. [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/17/world/israeli-army-bulldozer-kills-american-protesting-in-gaza.html "Israeli Army Bulldozer Kills American Protesting in Gaza"]. ''The New York Times'', 17 March 2003. Retrieved 20 October 2009.</ref> [[Al Gore]] has argued "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."<ref>Michelle Nichols. [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE48N7AA20080924 "Gore urges civil disobedience to stop coal plants"]. Reuters. Wed, 24 September 2008. Retrieved 27 January 2010.</ref> In 2011, NASA climate scientist [[James E. Hansen]], environmental leader [[Phil Radford]] and Professor [[Bill McKibben]] were arrested for opposing a tar sands oil pipeline<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=2011-11-11 |title=NASA Scientist Hansen Arrested at Tar Sands Protest - A Grim Sign of the Times {{!}} Jeff Goodell {{!}} Rolling Stone |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |url=http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/nasa-scientist-hansen-arrested-at-tar-sands-protest-a-grim-sign-of-the-times-20110831 |access-date=2022-12-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111111021254/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/nasa-scientist-hansen-arrested-at-tar-sands-protest-a-grim-sign-of-the-times-20110831 |archive-date=11 November 2011 }}</ref><ref>Bill McKibben. "The keystone pipeline revolt: why mass arrests are just the beginning". ''Rolling Stone''. 28 September 2011. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-keystone-pipeline-revolt-why-mass-arrests-are-just-the-beginning-20110928 (accessed 29 December 2012)</ref> and Canadian renewable energy professor [[Mark Jaccard]] was arrested for opposing mountain-top coal mining;<ref>Anti-coal protestors arrested in Little Rock. CBC news Mat y 6 2012 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/anti-coal-protesters-arrested-in-white-rock-1.1210172 (accessed 29 December 2012)</ref> in his book [[Storms of my Grandchildren]] Hansen calls for similar [[civil resistance]] on a global scale to help replace the 'business-as-usual' [[Kyoto Protocol]] [[cap and trade]] system, with a progressive [[carbon tax]] at emission source on the oil, gas and coal industries – revenue being paid as dividends to low [[carbon footprint]] families.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2009-01-02 |title=Nasa climate expert makes personal appeal to Obama |url=http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/02/obama-climate-change-james-hansen |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref><ref name="TellTruth">James Hansen. Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth. {{cite web |url=http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_Obama_revised.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2009-12-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090106094410/http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_Obama_revised.pdf |archive-date=6 January 2009}} accessed 10 December 2009.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Nature Climate Change |url=https://www.nature.com/nclimate/ |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=Nature |language=en}}</ref>

Notable historical examples of ''conscientious noncompliance'' in a different professional context included the manipulation of the visa process in 1939 by Japanese Consul-General [[Chiune Sugihara]] in Kaunas (the temporary capital of [[Lithuania]] between Germany and the Soviet Union) and by [[Raoul Wallenberg]] in Hungary in 1944<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/readings/wallenberg.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010913171830/http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/readings/wallenberg.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=13 September 2001 |title= The Wallenberg Effect |access-date=2007-02-15 |publisher = The Journal of Leadership Studies}}</ref> to allow Jews to escape almost certain death.<ref>Lee, Dom; Mochizuki, Ken. ''Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story''. New York: Lee & Low Books. 2003. {{ISBN|1-58430-157-0}}</ref> [[Ho Feng-Shan]] the Chinese Consul-General in Vienna in 1939, defied orders from the Chinese ambassador in Berlin to issue Jews with visas for Shanghai.<ref>University of Minnesota. [http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/exhibitions/rescuers/fengShanHo.html Center from Holocaust and Genocide Studies]. Retrieved 18 October 2009.</ref> [[John Rabe]] a German member of the [[Nazi Party]] likewise saved thousands of Chinese from massacre by the Japanese military at [[Nanjing Massacre|Nanjing]].<ref>Erwin Wickert (editor). ''The Good German of Nanjing: The Diaries of John Rabe''. Knopf. 1998. {{ISBN|0-375-40211-X}}</ref> The [[White Rose]] German student movement against the Nazis declared in their 4th leaflet: "We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!"<ref>{{Cite web |title="The White Rose Leaflets" Revolt & Resistance www.HolocaustResearchProject.org |url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/wrleaflets.html |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=www.holocaustresearchproject.org}}</ref> ''Conscientious noncompliance'' may be the only practical option for citizens wishing to affirm the existence of an international moral order or 'core' historical rights (such as the [[right to life]], [[right to a fair trial]] and [[freedom of opinion]]) in states where [[non-violent protest]] or [[civil disobedience]] are met with prolonged [[arbitrary detention]], [[torture]], [[forced disappearance]], [[murder]] or [[persecution]].<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Sohn | first1 = LB |  year = 1982 | title = The new international law: Protection of the rights of individuals rather than states | journal = American University Law Review | volume = 32 | page = 1 }}</ref>
The controversial [[Milgram experiment]] into [[obedience (human behavior)|obedience]] by [[Stanley Milgram]] showed that many people lack the [[psychological]] resources to openly resist [[authority]], even when they are directed to act callously and inhumanely against an [[innocent]] victim.<ref>S Milgram. ''Obedience to Authority''. New York. 1974.</ref>

==World conscience==
{{Further|Comparative religion|Universalism|World government|Cosmopolitanism|Common heritage of humanity}}

World conscience is the [[universalism|universalist]] idea that with ready global communication, all people on [[earth]] will no longer be morally estranged from one another, whether it be culturally, ethnically, or geographically; instead they will conceive ethics from the [[utopian]] point of view of the [[universe]], [[eternity]] or [[infinity]], rather than have their duties and obligations defined by forces arising solely within the restrictive boundaries of "blood and territory".<ref name="autogenerated2001"/>

Often this derives from a [[spirituality|spiritual]] or [[natural law]] perspective, that for [[world peace]] to be achieved, ''conscience'', properly understood, should be generally considered as not necessarily linked (often destructively) to [[fundamentalist]] religious ideologies, but as an aspect of [[universal consciousness]], access to which is the [[common heritage of humanity]].<ref>Bede Griffiths. ''A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian Faith''. Fount. London. 1992. p. 276.</ref> Thinking predicated on the development of ''world conscience'' is common to members of the [[Global Ecovillage Network]] such as the [[Findhorn Foundation]], international conservation organisations like [[Fauna and Flora International]], as well as performers of [[world music]] such as [[Alan Stivell]].<ref>William Thompson. ''Passages About the Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture''. Rider and Co. London. 1974. Ch 7. 'To Findhorn and Lindisfarne' pp. 150–83.</ref> [[Non-government organizations]], particularly through their work in agenda-setting, policy-making and implementation of human rights-related policy, have been referred to as the conscience of the world<ref>P willets 'Introduction' in P. Willetts (ed) The Conscience of the World. The Influence of Non-Governmental Organizations in the UN System. Hurst & Co, London (1996) p. 11.</ref>

[[Edward O Wilson]] has developed the idea of [[consilience]] to encourage coherence of global moral and scientific knowledge supporting the premise that "only unified learning, universally shared, makes accurate foresight and wise choice possible".<ref>Edward O Wilson. ''Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge''. Abacus. London. 2003 {{ISBN|0-349-11112-X}} p. 332.</ref> Thus, ''world conscience'' is a concept that overlaps with the [[Gaia hypothesis]] in advocating a balance of moral, legal, scientific and economic solutions to modern transnational problems such as [[global poverty]] and [[climate change|global warming]], through strategies such as [[environmental ethics]], [[climate ethics]], [[conservation (ethic)|natural conservation]], [[ecology]], [[cosmopolitanism]], [[sustainability]] and [[sustainable development]], [[biosequestration]] and legal protection of the [[biosphere]] and [[biodiversity]].<ref>[[EF Schumacher]]. ''[[Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered]]''. Abacus London. 1974. p. 112.</ref><ref>[[Edward Goldsmith]]. ''The Way''. Shambhala, Boston. 1993. p. 64.</ref><ref>James Lovelock. ''Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth''. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1979 p. 123.</ref><ref>Geoff Davies. ''Economia: New Economic Systems to Empower People and Support the Living World''. ABC Books. Sydney. 2004. pp. 202–03.</ref><ref>Cabrera, Luis. ''Political Theory of Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Case for the World State''. London, Routledge. 2006.</ref> The NGO [[350.org]], for example, seeks to attract world conscience to the problems associated with elevation in atmospheric [[greenhouse gas]] concentrations.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-may-15-oe-mckibben15-story.html |title=Can 350.org save the world?|work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |access-date=2009-09-18 | first=Bill | last=McKibben | date=15 May 2009}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=McKibben |first=Bill |date=2009-09-25 |title=Why 350 is the most important number on the planet {{!}} Opinion |url=http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/sep/26/350-carbon-atmosphere-copenhagen-mckibben |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Internet map 1024.jpg|left|thumb|upright|Internet Map. [[Ninian Smart]] predicts global communication will facilitate ''world conscience''.]]
The [[microcredit]] initiatives of [[Nobel Peace Prize]] winner [[Muhammad Yunus]] have been described as inspiring a "war on poverty that blends social conscience and business savvy".<ref>Editorial. [http://www.nextbillion.net/news/microcredit-movement-tackling-poverty-one-tiny-loan-at-a-time "Microcredit Movement Tackling Poverty one Tiny Loan at a Time"]. ''San Francisco Chronicle''. 3 October 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2009.</ref>

The [[Green party]] politician [[Bob Brown]] (who was arrested by the [[Tasmanian]] state police for a conscientious act of [[civil disobedience]] during the [[Franklin Dam]] protest) expresses ''world conscience'' in these terms: "the universe, through us, is evolving towards experiencing, understanding and making choices about its future'; one example of policy outcomes from such thinking being a global tax (see [[Tobin tax]]) to alleviate global poverty and protect the biosphere, amounting to 1/10 of 1% placed on the worldwide speculative currency market.<ref>Bob Brown. ''Memo For a Saner World''. Penguin Books. Melbourne. 2004. pp. 12–13.</ref> Such an approach sees ''world conscience'' best expressing itself through political reforms promoting democratically based [[globalisation]] or ''planetary democracy'' (for example [[internet]] voting for global governance organisations (see [[world government]]) based on the model of "one person, one vote, one value") which gradually will replace contemporary market-based globalisation.<ref>James Norman. ''Bob Brown: Gentle Revolutionary''. Allen & Unwin. Sydney. 2004. p. 180.</ref>

[[File:Operation Crossroads Baker Edit.jpg|thumb|Underwater American [[nuclear test]] in the Pacific. Worldwide expressions of 'conscience' against such explosions caused the French Government to cease atmospheric tests at [[Mururoa]] for political reasons.]]

The American cardiologist [[Bernard Lown]] and the Russian cardiologist [[Yevgeniy Chazov]] were motivated in ''conscience'' through studying the catastrophic public health consequences of [[nuclear war]] in establishing [[International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War]] (IPPNW) which was awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]] in 1985 and continues to work to "heal an ailing planet".<ref>Nick Lewer. ''Physicians and the Peace Movement''. Frank Cass, London. 1992. pp. 78–80 and 107.</ref><br />Worldwide expressions of ''conscience'' contributed to the decision of the French government to halt atmospheric [[nuclear tests]] at [[Mururoa]] in the Pacific in 1974 after 41 such explosions (although below-ground nuclear tests continued there into the 1990s).<ref>Danielsson, Bengt. ''Moruroa, Mon Amour''. Penguin Books Australia, Ringwood, Vic. 1977. {{ISBN|0-14-004461-2}}</ref>

A challenge to ''world conscience'' was provided by an influential 1968 article by [[Garrett Hardin]] that critically analyzed the dilemma in which multiple individuals, acting independently after rationally consulting self-interest (and, he claimed, the apparently low 'survival-of-the-fittest' value of ''conscience''-led actions) ultimately destroy a shared limited resource, even though each acknowledges such an outcome is not in anyone's long-term interest.<ref name=hardin68/> Hardin's conclusion that commons areas are practicably achievable only in conditions of low population density (and so their continuance requires state restriction on the freedom to breed), created controversy additionally through his direct deprecation of the role of ''conscience'' in achieving individual decisions, policies and laws that facilitate global justice and peace, as well as [[sustainability]] and [[sustainable development]] of world commons areas, for example including those officially designated such under [[United Nations]] treaties (see [[common heritage of humanity]]).<ref>Axelrod, Robert. (1984). ''The Evolution of Cooperation''. New York: Basic Books, {{ISBN|0-465-02121-2}}</ref> Areas designated [[common heritage of humanity]] under [[international law]] include the [[Moon]], [[Outer Space]], deep [[sea bed]], [[Antarctica]], the world cultural and natural heritage (see [[World Heritage Convention]]) and the [[human genome]].<ref>Kemal Baslar. ''The Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind in International Law''. Martinus Nijhoff. 1998. {{ISBN|978-90-411-0505-9}}</ref> It will be a significant challenge for ''world conscience'' that as world oil, coal, mineral, timber, agricultural and water reserves are depleted, there will be increasing pressure to commercially exploit [[common heritage of mankind]] areas.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Joyner | first1 = Christopher C. |  year = 1986 | title = Legal Implications of the Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind | journal = International and Comparative Law Quarterly | volume = 35 | page = 190 | doi=10.1093/iclqaj/35.1.190}}</ref>

[[File:Darfur refugee camp in Chad.jpg|thumb|[[Darfur]] [[refugee camp]] in [[Chad]]: a challenge to the world's conscience.]]
The philosopher [[Peter Singer]] has argued that the [[United Nations]] [[Millennium Development Goals]] represent the emergence of an ethics based not on national boundaries but on the idea of one world.<ref>Peter Singer. ''One World: The Ethics of Globalisation''. Text Publishing. Melbourne. 2002 p. 213.</ref> [[Ninian Smart]] has similarly predicted that the increase in global travel and communication will gradually draw the world's religions towards a pluralistic and transcendental humanism characterized by an "open spirit" of empathy and compassion.<ref>Ninian Smart. ''Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilisation''. Collins, London. 1981. p. 313.</ref>
[[File:Sombrero Galaxy in infrared light (Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope).jpg|left|thumb|[[Sombrero Galaxy]]: A [[United Nations]] treaty declares [[Outer Space]] the [[common heritage of humanity]]. [[Garrett Hardin]] doubted the capacity of ''conscience'' to protect such commons areas]]
[[Noam Chomsky]] has argued that forces opposing the development of such a world conscience include [[free market]] ideologies that valorise [[corporate greed]] in nominal electoral [[democracies]] where [[advertising]], [[shopping malls]] and indebtedness, shape [[citizens]] into [[apathetic]] [[consumer]]s in relation to information and access necessary for democratic participation.<ref>RW McChesney. "Introduction to Noam Chomsky". ''Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order''. Seven Stories Press. New York. 1999. pp. 9–11.</ref> [[John Passmore]] has argued that mystical considerations about the global expansion of all human consciousness, should take into account that if as a species we do become something much superior to what we are now, it will be as a consequence of ''conscience'' not only implanting a goal of moral perfectibility, but assisting us to remain periodically anxious, passionate and discontented, for these are necessary components of care and compassion.<ref>John Passmore. ''The Perfectibility of Man''. Duckworth, London. 1972. pp. 324–27.</ref> The ''Committee on Conscience'' of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has targeted [[genocide]]s such as those in [[Rwanda]], [[Bosnia]], [[Darfur]], the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|Congo]] and [[Chechnya]] as challenges to the world's conscience.<ref>[http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/ US Holocaust Memorial Museum]. Retrieved 18 October 2009.</ref> [[Oscar Arias Sanchez]] has criticised global [[arms industry]] spending as a failure of conscience by nation states: "When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach. This is not a necessary or inevitable state of affairs. It is a deliberate choice" (see [[Campaign Against Arms Trade]]).<ref>Anonymous. [http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices/11664335-1.html "The Global Arms Trade: Strengthening International Regulations. Interview with Oscar Arias Sanchez"]. ''Harvard International Review''. 1 July 2008. Retrieved 10 February 2010</ref> US House of Representatives Speaker [[Nancy Pelosi]], after meeting with the [[14th Dalai Lama]] during the [[2008 Tibetan unrest|2008 violent protests in Tibet]] and aftermath said: "The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world."<ref>Jonathan Allen. [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSSP602820080321 "Tibet challenges world conscience, U.S. Speaker says"]. Reuters. Fri, 21 March 2008. Retrieved 18 October 2009.</ref> [[Nelson Mandela]], through his example and words, has been described as having shaped the conscience of the world.<ref>{{Cite web |title=How Mandela shaped the conscience of the world |url=https://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/09/how-mandela-shaped-the-conscience-of-the-world/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131209205918/http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/09/how-mandela-shaped-the-conscience-of-the-world/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=9 December 2013 |access-date=2022-12-13 |language=en}}</ref> <br /> The [[Right Livelihood Award]] is awarded yearly in Sweden to those people, mostly strongly motivated by ''conscience'', who have made exemplary practical contributions to resolving the great challenges facing our planet and its people.<ref>[http://www.rightlivelihood.org/ Right Livelihood Award]. Retrieved 18 October 2009.</ref> In 2009, for example, along with [[Catherine Hamlin]] ([[obstetric fistula]] and see [[fistula foundation]])), [[David Suzuki]] (promoting awareness of [[climate change]]) and Alyn Ware ([[nuclear disarmament]]), [[René Ngongo]] shared the [[Right Livelihood Award]] "for his courage in confronting the forces that are destroying the [[Congo Basin]]'s rainforests and building political support for their conservation and sustainable use".<ref>[http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/greenpeace-staff-member-wins-a-131009 Greenpeace. Press Release] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091016081308/http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/greenpeace-staff-member-wins-a-131009 |date=16 October 2009 }}. 13 October 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009.</ref><ref>Mu Xuequan. [http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/13/content_12225588.htm "Alternative Nobel awards go to Congo, New Zealand, Australia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091017231429/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/13/content_12225588.htm |date=17 October 2009 }}. www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-13 22:35:19. Retrieved 18 October 2009</ref> [[Avaaz]] is one of the largest global on-line organizations launched in January 2007 to promote conscience-driven activism on issues such as [[climate change]], [[human rights]], [[animal rights]], corruption, poverty, and conflict, thus "closing the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want".<ref>{{cite news|last=Pilkington|first=Ed|title=Avaaz faces questions over role at centre of Syrian protest movement|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/avaaz-activist-group-syria|access-date=27 November 2012|newspaper=The Guardian|date=2 March 2012}}</ref>

==Notable examples of modern acts based on conscience==
{{Further|List of nonviolence scholars and leaders|List of whistleblowers|}}
[[File:Naji al Ali Graffiti, Ramallah, 2012..jpg|thumb|[[Graffiti]] portrait in [[Ramallah]] of murdered Arab cartoon artist [[Naji al-Ali]]]]

In a notable contemporary act of conscience, Christian bushwalker [[Brenda Hean]] protested against the flooding of [[Lake Pedder]] despite threats and that ultimately led to her death.<ref>Dick Jones. "The Pedder Tragedy" in ''Roger Green: Battle for The Franklin''. Fontana. ACF. Sydney 1981 p. 53</ref> Another was the campaign by [[Ken Saro-Wiwa]] against oil extraction by multinational corporations in Nigeria that led to his execution.<ref>Chinua Achebe, G.F. Michelsen, Ben Okri, Harold Pinter, Norman Rush, Susan Sontag et al. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1913 "The Case of Ken Saro-Wiwa"]. ''New York Review of Books''. Volume 42, Number 7 · 20 April 1995 accessed 17 October 2009.</ref> So too was the act by the [[Tank Man]], or the [[Unknown Rebel]] photographed holding his shopping bag in the path of tanks during the protests at Beijing's [[Tiananmen Square]] on 5 June 1989.<ref>Pico Iyer. [https://web.archive.org/web/20000511034802/http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/rebel.html "The Unknown Rebel: with a single act of defiance, a lone Chinese hero revived the world's image of courage"]. ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]''. 13 April 1998. Retrieved 23 October 2009.</ref> The actions of [[United Nations]] Secretary General [[Dag Hammarskjöld]] to try to achieve peace in the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|Congo]] despite the (eventuating) threat to his life were strongly motivated by conscience as is reflected in his diary, ''[[Vägmärken]]'' (''Markings'').<ref>Henry P Van Dusen. ''Dag Hammarskjöld: A Biographical Interpretation of Markings''. Faber and Faber London. 1967</ref> Another example involved the actions of Warrant Officer [[Hugh Thompson, Jr]] to try to prevent the [[My Lai massacre]] in the [[Vietnam War]].<ref>Trent Angers. ''The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story''. Acadian House Publishing, 1999</ref> Evan Pederick voluntarily confessed and was convicted of the [[Sydney Hilton bombing]] stating that his conscience could not tolerate the guilt and that "I guess I was quite unique in the prison system in that I had to keep proving my guilt, whereas everyone else said they were innocent."<ref>Ben Hills. The Hilton Fiasco. SMH 12 February 1998, p. 11 {{cite web |url=http://www.benhills.com/articles/articles/SCM38a.html |title=Articles |access-date=2012-07-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121104002047/http://www.benhills.com/articles/articles/SCM38a.html |archive-date=4 November 2012}} (Retrieved 6 September 2010)</ref> [[Vasily Arkhipov (vice admiral)|Vasili Arkhipov]] was a Russian naval officer on out-of-radio-contact [[Soviet submarine B-59]] being depth-charged by US warships during the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] whose dissent when two other officers decided to launch a nuclear torpedo (unanimous agreement to launch was required) may have averted a nuclear war.<ref>{{Cite web |title=SOVIETS CLOSE TO USING A-BOMB IN 1962 CRISIS, FORUM IS TOLD |url=https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/sovietsbomb.htm |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=www.latinamericanstudies.org}}</ref> In 1963 Buddhist monk [[Thich Quang Duc]] performed a famous act of [[self-immolation]] to protest against alleged persecution of his faith by the Vietnamese [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] regime.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2043123,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110121132834/http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2043123,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=21 January 2011|title=A Brief History of Self-Immolation|date=20 January 2011|magazine=Time |first=Josh|last=Sanburn}}</ref>
[[File:Mogila Anna Politkovskaya.jpg|left|thumb|upright|Gravesite of [[Anna Politkovskaya]] in Russia]]
Conscience played a major role in the actions by [[anaesthetist]] [[Stephen Bolsin]] to whistleblow (see [[list of whistleblowers]]) on incompetent [[paediatric]] [[cardiac surgeons]] at the [[Bristol Royal Infirmary]].<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Smith | first1 = Richard |  year = 1998 | title = All changed, changed utterly | journal = British Medical Journal | volume = 316 | issue = 7149| pages = 1917–18 | pmid = 9641922 | pmc = 1113398 | doi=10.1136/bmj.316.7149.1917}}</ref> [[Jeffrey Wigand]] was motivated by conscience to expose the [[Big Tobacco]] scandal, revealing that executives of the companies knew that cigarettes were addictive and approved the addition of carcinogenic ingredients to the cigarettes.<ref>Marie Brenner. "The Man Who Knew Too Much". ''Vanity Fair''. May 1996.</ref> [[David Graham (epidemiologist)|David Graham]], a [[Food and Drug Administration]] employee, was motivated by conscience to whistleblow that the [[arthritis]] pain-reliever [[Vioxx]] increased the risk of [[cardiovascular]] deaths although the manufacturer suppressed this information.<ref>"Whistler-Blower Guardians Say FDA Officials Tried to Undermine Critic". ''San Francisco Chronicle''. 24 November 2004</ref> [[Rick Piltz]], from the U.S. [[Climate change|global warming]] Science Program, blew the whistle on a [[White House]] official who ignored majority scientific opinion to edit a [[climate change]] report ("Our Changing Planet") to reflect the [[Presidency of George W. Bush|Bush administration]]'s view that the problem was unlikely to exist.<ref>Andrew Revkin. [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html "Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming"]. ''The New York Times''. 8 June 2005. Retrieved 18 October 2009.</ref> [[Muntadhar al-Zaidi]], an [[Iraq]]i journalist, was imprisoned and allegedly [[tortured]] for his act of conscience in throwing his shoes at [[George W. Bush]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=2008-12-15 |title=Iraqi shoe-throwing reporter becomes the talk of Iraq |language=en |work=Reuters |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-bush-shoes-idUSTRE4BE28Q20081215 |access-date=2022-12-13}}</ref> [[Mordechai Vanunu]], an [[Israel]]i former nuclear technician, acted on conscience to reveal details of [[Israel]]'s [[nuclear weapon]]s program to the [[United Kingdom|British]] press in 1986; was kidnapped by Israeli agents, transported to Israel, convicted of treason and spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement.<ref>Gilling, Tom and John McKnight. ''Trial and Error – Mordechai Vanunu and Israel's Nuclear Bomb''. 1991 Monarch Publications. {{ISBN|1-85424-129-X}}</ref>

[[File:6-Kao.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Gao Zhisheng]] human rights lawyer abducted in China]]
[[File:Neda Agha-Soltan gravesite in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Iran.jpg|left|thumb|Gravesite of [[Neda Agha-Soltan]] in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Iran]]
[[File:Delhi protests-India Raped, says one young woman's sign.jpg|thumb|Protests in India against the [[2012 Delhi gang rape case]]]]
At the awards ceremony for the [[200 metres]] at the [[1968 Summer Olympics]] in [[Mexico City]] [[John Carlos]], [[Tommie Smith]] and [[Peter Norman]] ignored death threats and official warnings to take part in an anti-[[racism]] protest<ref>{{cite news |author=Hurst, Mike |date=7 October 2006 |title=Peter Norman's Olympic statement |url=http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,20541398-10389,00.html |newspaper=The Courier-Mail |access-date=28 October 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091119061605/http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0%2C%2C20541398-10389%2C00.html |archive-date=19 November 2009}}</ref> that destroyed their respective careers.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2012-02-08 |title=50 stunning Olympic moments No13: Tommie Smith and John Carlos salute {{!}} Simon Burnton |url=http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2012/feb/08/olympic-moments-tommie-smith-john-carlos |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref> [[W. Mark Felt]] an agent of the United States [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] who retired in 1973 as the Bureau's Associate Director, acted on conscience to provide reporters [[Bob Woodward]] and [[Carl Bernstein]] with information that resulted in the [[Watergate scandal]].<ref>Felt, W. Mark. ''[[The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside]]''. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979. ({{ISBN|0-399-11904-3}})</ref> Conscience was a major factor in US Public Health Service officer [[Peter Buxtun]] revealing the [[Tuskegee syphilis experiment]] to the public.<ref>Jones JH. "The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment" in Emanuel EJ et al. ''The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics''. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2008. pp. 86–96 at 94.</ref> The 2008 attack by the [[Israeli military]] on civilian areas of [[Palestinian territories|Palestinian]] [[Gaza Strip|Gaza]] was described as a "stain on the world's conscience".<ref>Martin Khor. [http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/gtrends/gtrends195.htm "Gaza, under attack again, a stain on world's conscience"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090703174329/http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/gtrends/gtrends195.htm |date=3 July 2009 }}. Third World Network. Tuesday, 4 March 2008. Retrieved 18 October 2009.</ref> Conscience was a major factor in the refusal of [[Aung San Suu Kyi]] to leave [[Burma]] despite [[house arrest]] and [[persecution]] by the [[military dictatorship]] in that country.<ref>Stewart, Whitney (1997). ''Aung San Suu Kyi: fearless voice of Burma''. Twenty-First Century Books. {{ISBN|978-0-8225-4931-4}}.</ref>
''Conscience'' was a factor in [[Peter Galbraith]]'s criticism of fraud in the 2009 [[Afghanistan]] election despite it costing him his [[United Nations]] job.<ref>James Bone. "Sacked envoy Peter Galbraith accuses UN of 'cover-up' on Afghan vote fraud". ''The Times''. 1 October 2009.</ref> Conscience motivated [[Bunnatine Greenhouse]] to expose irregularities in the contracting of the [[Halliburton]] company for work in [[Iraq]].<ref>Neely Tucker. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801796.html "A Web of Truth. Whistle-Blower or Troublemaker, Bunny Greenhouse Isn't Backing Down"]. ''The Washington Post''. Wednesday, 19 October 2005</ref> [[Naji al-Ali]] a popular cartoon artist in the Arab world, loved for his defense of the ordinary people, and for his criticism of repression and despotism by both the [[Israeli military]] and [[Yasser Arafat]]'s [[PLO]], was murdered for refusing to compromise with his conscience.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/22/newsid_2516000/2516089.stm|title=On This Day 1950–2005, 22 July, 1987: Cartoonist shot in London street|date=22 July 1987|publisher=BBC}}</ref> The journalist [[Anna Politkovskaya]] provided (prior to her murder) an example of conscience in her opposition to the [[Second Chechen War]] and then-[[Russia]]n President [[Vladimir Putin]].<ref>Politkovskaya, Anna (2003) ''A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya'', translated by Alexander Burry and Tatiana Tulchinsky, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, {{ISBN|0-226-67432-0}}</ref> Conscience motivated the Russian [[human rights]] activist [[Natalia Estemirova]], who was abducted and murdered in [[Grozny]], [[Chechnya]] in 2009.<ref>Natalya Estemirova: "I'm sure that human rights defenders are murdered on authorities' blessing", Vyacheslav Feraposhkin, Caucasian Knot, Memorial, 15 July 2009</ref> The [[Death of Neda Agha-Soltan]] arose from conscience-driven protests against the [[2009 Iranian presidential election]].<ref>Tait, Robert and Weaver, Matthew (22 June 2009). [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/22/neda-soltani-death-iran "How Neda Soltani became the face of Iran's struggle"]. ''The Guardian''. Retrieved 17 October 2009.</ref> Muslim lawyer [[Shirin Ebadi]] (winner of the 2003 [[Nobel Peace Prize]]) has been described as the 'conscience of the Islamic Republic' for her work in protecting the human rights of women and children in [[Iran]].<ref>Scott MacLeod. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080306070419/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994036,00.html  "Shirin Ebadi: For Islam and Humanity"]. ''Time''. 26 April 2004. Retrieved 28 November 2009</ref> The human rights lawyer [[Gao Zhisheng]], often referred to as the 'conscience of China' and who had previously been arrested and allegedly tortured after calling for respect for human rights and for constitutional reform, was abducted by Chinese security agents in February 2009.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Schiller |first1=Bill |title='Conscience of China' comes home |url=https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2010/04/10/conscience_of_china_comes_home.html |access-date=25 August 2020 |work=The Star |date=10 April 2010}}</ref> 2010 [[Nobel Peace Prize]] winner [[Liu Xiaobo]] in his final statement before being sentenced by a closed Chinese court to over a decade in jail as a political [[prisoner of conscience]] stated: "For hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit."<ref>McKey, Robert (8 October 2010) [http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/jailed-chinese-dissidents-final-statement/ Jailed Chinese Dissident's 'Final Statement'], ''The New York Times'' accessed 8 November 2010</ref> [[Sergei Magnitsky]], a lawyer in Russia, was arrested, held without trial for almost a year and died in custody, as a result of exposing corruption.<ref>{{cite news |title= Dying in agony: his reward for solving a $230 million fraud |author= Margarette Driscoll |newspaper= [[The Sunday Times]] |date= 14 November 2010}} http://www.justiceforsergei.com/download.php?id=16 (accessed 29 December 2012)</ref> On 6 October 2001 Laura Whittle was a naval gunner on [[HMAS Adelaide (FFG 01)]] under orders to implement a new border protection policy when they encountered the SIEV-4 (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel-4) refugee boat in choppy seas. After being ordered to fire warning shots from her 50 calibre machinegun to make the boat turn back she saw it beginning to break up and sink with a father on board holding out his young daughter that she might be saved (see [[Children Overboard Affair]]). Whittle jumped without a life vest 12 metres into the sea to help save the refugees from drowning thinking "this isn't right; this isn't how things should be."<ref>David Leser. Children Overboard. Two Women, Two Stories. ''WW'' 2007; August: pp. 76–82 {{cite web |url=http://davidleser.com/slippages/uploads/download/file/df-9-128-18.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2011-07-26 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120521211455/http://davidleser.com/slippages/uploads/download/file/df-9-128-18.pdf |archive-date=21 May 2012}} (Retrieved 26 July 2011).</ref> In February 2012 journalist [[Marie Colvin]] was deliberately targeted and killed by the [[Syrian Army]] in [[Homs]] during the [[Syrian Revolution|Syrian uprising]] and [[Siege of Homs]], after she decided to stay at the "epicentre of the storm" in order to "expose what is happening".{{citation needed|date=January 2020}} In October 2012 the [[Taliban]] organised the attempted murder of [[Malala Yousafzai]] a teenage girl who had been campaigning, despite their threats, for female education in Pakistan.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Synovitz |first=Ron |date=2012-10-12 |title=Malala Yousafzai, the Girl Shot by the Taliban, Becomes a Global Icon |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/malala-yousafzai-the-girl-shot-by-the-taliban-becomes-a-global-icon/263527/ |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}}</ref> In December 2012 the [[2012 Delhi gang rape case]] was said to have stirred the collective conscience of India to civil disobedience and public protest at the lack of legal action against rapists in that country (see [[Rape in India]])<ref>{{cite web|last=IANS|title=Government waging 'war' against people: Arvind Kejriwal|url=http://ibnlive.in.com/news/government-waging-war-against-people-arvind-kejriwal/312011-37-64.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121231012934/http://ibnlive.in.com/news/government-waging-war-against-people-arvind-kejriwal/312011-37-64.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=31 December 2012|publisher=[[CNN-IBN]]|access-date=24 December 2012|date=24 December 2012}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-01-01 |title=India's collective conscience is finally stirred |url=https://www.arabnews.com/india%E2%80%99s-collective-conscience-finally-stirred |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=Arab News |language=en}}</ref> In June 2013 [[Edward Snowden]] revealed details of a US [[National Security Agency]] internet and electronic communication [[PRISM (surveillance program)]] because of a conscience-felt obligation to the freedom of humanity greater than obedience to the laws that bound his employment.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-06-11 |title=Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations |url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-06-10 |title=Edward Snowden: I Acted To Protect 'Basic Liberties' |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/edward-snowden-basic-liberties_n_3414824 |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=HuffPost |language=en}}</ref>

==In literature, art, film, and music==
{{Further|Philosophy and literature}}
[[File:Chekhov 1898 by Osip Braz.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Anton Pavlovich Chekhov]]. Tretyakov Gallery.]]
[[File:Dostoevsky 1872.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Fyodor Dostoevsky]], author of ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'']]
The ancient epic of the Indian subcontinent, the [[Mahabharata]] of [[Vyasa]], contains two pivotal moments of ''conscience''. The first occurs when the warrior [[Arjuna]] being overcome with compassion against killing his opposing relatives in war, receives counsel (see [[Bhagavad-Gita]]) from [[Krishna]] about his spiritual duty ("work as though you are performing a sacrifice for the general good").<ref>Vyasa (Kamala Subramaniam abr.). ''Mahabharata''. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay. 1989. pp. 430–32</ref> The second, at the end of the saga, is when king [[Yudhishthira]] having alone survived the moral tests of life, is offered eternal bliss, only to refuse it because a faithful dog is prevented from coming with him by purported divine rules and laws.<ref>Vyasa (Kamala Subramaniam abr.). ''Mahabharata''. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay. 1989. p. 742.</ref> The French author [[Montaigne]] (1533–1592) in one of the most celebrated of [[Essays (Montaigne)|his essays]] ("On experience") expressed the benefits of living with a clear conscience: "Our duty is to compose our character, not to compose books, to win not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live properly".<ref>Michel de Montaigne. ''Essays''. Cohen JM (trans.) Penguin Books. Ringwood. 1984. p. 397.</ref> In his famous Japanese travel journal ''[[Oku no Hosomichi]]'' (''Narrow Road to the Deep North'') composed of mixed [[haiku]] poetry and prose, [[Matsuo Bashō]] (1644–94) in attempting to describe the eternal in this perishable world is often moved in ''conscience''; for example by a thicket of summer grass being all that remains of the dreams and ambitions of ancient warriors.<ref>Matsuo Bashō. (Yuasa N (trans.) ''Narrow Road to the Deep North''. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. 1966. p. 118.</ref> [[Chaucer]]'s "[[Franklin's Tale]]" in ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' recounts how a young suitor releases a wife from a [[rash promise]] because of the respect in his ''conscience'' for the freedom to be truthful, gentle and generous.<ref>Geoffrey Chaucer. ''The Franklin's Prologue and Tale'' (Spearing AC intro.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1997. p. 42.</ref>
[[File:Eugène Delacroix - Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard - WGA6199.jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[Eugène Delacroix]], ''[[Hamlet]] and Horatio in the Graveyard'' (1839, oil on canvas)]] The critic [[A. C. Bradley]] discusses the central problem of [[Shakespeare]]'s tragic character [[Hamlet]] as one where conscience in the form of moral scruples deters the young Prince with his "great anxiety to do right" from obeying his father's hell-bound ghost and murdering the usurping King ("is't not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm?" (v.ii.67)).<ref>AC Bradley. ''Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth''. Macmillan and Co. London. 1937. pp. 97–101</ref>
Bradley develops a theory about Hamlet's moral agony relating to a conflict between "traditional" and "critical" conscience: "The conventional moral ideas of his time, which he shared with the Ghost, told him plainly that he ought to avenge his father; but a deeper conscience in him, which was in advance of his time, contended with these explicit conventional ideas. It is because this deeper conscience remains below the surface that he fails to recognise it, and fancies he is hindered by [[cowardice]] or [[Sloth (deadly sin)|sloth]] or [[passion (emotion)|passion]] or what not; but it emerges into light in that speech to Horatio. And it is just because he has this nobler moral nature in him that we admire and love him".<ref>AC Bradley. ''Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth''. Macmillan and Co. London. 1937 p. 99.</ref> The opening words of Shakespeare's [[Sonnet 94]] ("They that have pow'r to hurt, and will do none") have been admired as a description of ''conscience''.<ref>Manning Clark. ''A Discovery of Australia: 1976 Boyer Lectures''. Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney. 1976. p. 37.</ref> So has [[John Donne]]'s commencement of his poem ''[[:s:Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward]]'': "Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is;"<ref>Joan Bennett. ''Five Metaphysical Poets''. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1971. p. 33.</ref>

[[Anton Chekhov]] in his plays ''[[The Seagull]]'', ''[[Uncle Vanya]]'' and ''[[Three Sisters (play)|Three Sisters]]'' describes the tortured emotional states of doctors who at some point in their careers have turned their back on conscience.<ref>Stephen Grecco. "A physician healing himself: Chekhov's treatment of doctors in the major plays" in ER Peschel (ed). ''Medicine and Literature'' (1980) pp. 3–10.</ref> In his short stories, [[Anton Chekhov|Chekhov]] also explored how people misunderstood the voice of a tortured conscience. A promiscuous student, for example, in ''The Fit'' describes it as a "dull pain, indefinite, vague; it was like anguish and the most acute fear and despair&nbsp;... in his breast, under the heart" and the young doctor examining the misunderstood agony of compassion experienced by the factory owner's daughter in ''From a Case Book'' calls it an "unknown, mysterious power&nbsp;... in fact close at hand and watching him."<ref>Anton Chekhov. ''Selected Stories'' (J Coulson, trans.) Oxford University Press. London. 1963 p. 249.</ref> Characteristically, Chekhov's own conscience drove him on the long journey to [[Sakhalin]] to record and alleviate the harsh conditions of the prisoners at that remote outpost. As Irina Ratushinskaya writes in the introduction to that work: "Abandoning everything, he travelled to the distant island of [[Sakhalin]], the most feared place of exile and forced labour in Russia at that time. One cannot help but wonder why? Simply, because the lot of the people there was a bitter one, because nobody really knew about the lives and deaths of the exiles, because he felt that they stood in greater need of help that anyone else. A strange reason, maybe, but not for a writer who was the epitome of all the best traditions of a Russian man of letters. Russian literature has always focused on questions of '''conscience''' and was, therefore, a powerful force in the moulding of public opinion."<ref>Anton Chekhov. ''The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin'' (L and M Terpak trans) Century. London 1987 p. ix.</ref>

[[E. H. Carr]] writes of [[Dostoevsky]]'s character the young student Raskolnikov in the novel ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' who decides to murder a 'vile and loathsome' old woman money lender on the principle of transcending conventional morals: "the sequel reveals to us not the pangs of a stricken ''conscience'' (which a less subtle writer would have given us) but the tragic and fruitless struggle of a powerful intellect to maintain a conviction which is incompatible with the essential nature of man."<ref>EH Carr. ''Dostoevsky. 1821–1881''. Unwin Books. London. 1962 pp. 147–52.</ref> [[File:Hermann Hesse 1927 Photo Gret Widmann.jpg|thumb|upright|left|[[Hermann Hesse]], author of ''[[Siddhartha (novel)|Siddhartha]]'']]<nowiki> </nowiki>[[Hermann Hesse]] wrote his ''[[Siddhartha (novel)|Siddhartha]]'' to describe how a young man in the time of the [[Buddha]] follows his ''conscience'' on a journey to discover a transcendent inner space where all things could be unified and simply understood, ending up discovering that personal truth through selfless service as a ferryman.<ref>Ralph Freedman. ''Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis''. Jonathan Cape, London 1978. pp. 233–37.</ref> [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] in his epic ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' describes how only the [[hobbit]] [[Frodo]] is pure enough in ''conscience'' to carry the ring of power through war-torn [[Middle-earth]] to destruction in the [[Cracks of Doom]], Frodo determining at the end to journey without weapons, and being saved from failure by his earlier decision to spare the life of the creature [[Gollum]].<ref>Paul Kocher. ''Master of Middle Earth: The Achievement of JRR Tolkien''. Thames and Hudson, London. 1973. p. 120.</ref> [[Conor Cruise O'Brien]] wrote that [[Albert Camus]] was the writer most representative of the Western consciousness and conscience in its relation to the non-Western world.<ref>Conor Cruise O'Brien. Camus. Fontana/Collins. London 1970 p. 84.</ref> [[Harper Lee]]'s 1960 novel ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'' portrays [[Atticus Finch]] (played by [[Gregory Peck]] in the classic film from the book (see ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird (film)|To Kill a Mockingbird]]'')) as a lawyer true to his conscience who sets an example to his children and community.<ref>At Your Library 'To Kill a Mockingbird http://atyourlibrary.org/culture/kill-mockingbird-world-needs-him-now-atticus-finch-continues-inspire accessed 3 November 2012</ref>

The [[Robert Bolt]] play ''[[A Man for All Seasons (play)|A Man For All Seasons]]'' focuses on the conscience of Catholic lawyer [[Thomas More]] in his struggle with King [[Henry VIII]] ("the loyal subject is more bounden to be loyal to his conscience than to any other thing").<ref>Robert Bolt. ''A Man For All Seasons: A Play of Sir Thomas More''. Heinemann. London 1961 p. 92.</ref> [[George Orwell]] wrote his novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' on the isolated island of [[Jura, Scotland]] to describe how a man (Winston Smith) attempts to develop ''critical conscience'' in a totalitarian state which watches every action of the people and manipulates their thinking with a mixture of [[propaganda]], endless war and thought control through language control (''double think'' and ''newspeak'') to the point where prisoners look up to and even love their torturers.<ref>Michael Shelden. ''Orwell: The Authorised Biography''. Heinemann, London. 1991. {{ISBN|0-434-69517-3}} pp. 469–73.</ref> In the Ministry of Love, Winston's torturer (O'Brien) states: "You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable".<ref>George Orwell. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Penguin Books, Ringwood. 1974. pp. 214–15, 216
</ref>

A tapestry copy of [[Picasso]]'s ''[[Guernica (painting)|Guernica]]'' depicting a massacre of innocent women and children during the [[Spanish Civil War]] is displayed on the wall of the [[United Nations]] building in [[New York City]], at the entrance to the [[Security Council]] room, demonstrably as a spur to the conscience of representatives from the [[nation states]].<ref>Arnheim, Rudolf. ''The Genesis of a Painting: Picasso's Guernica''. London: University of California Press. 1973. {{ISBN|978-0-520-25007-9}}</ref> [[Albert Tucker (artist)|Albert Tucker]] painted ''Man's Head'' to capture the moral disintegration, and lack of conscience, of a man convicted of kicking a dog to death.<ref>Albert Tucker. [http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=33520 ''Man's Head'']. National Gallery of Australia. Accn No: NGA 82.384. Retrieved 23 July 2009.</ref>

[[File:Van Gogh - Trauernder alter Mann.jpeg|thumb|upright|[[Vincent van Gogh]], 1890. [[Kröller-Müller Museum]]. ''[[At Eternity's Gate|On the Threshold of Eternity]]''.]]
The [[Impressionist]] painter [[Vincent van Gogh]] wrote in a letter to his brother Theo in 1878 that "one must never let the fire in one's soul die, for the time will inevitably come when it will be needed. And he who chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure and will hear the voice of his '''conscience''' address him every more clearly. He who hears that voice, which is God's greatest gift, in his innermost being and follows it, finds in it a friend at last, and he is never alone!&nbsp;... That is what all great men have acknowledged in their works, all those who have thought a little more deeply and searched and worked and loved a little more than the rest, who have plumbed the depths of the sea of life."<ref>''The Letters of Vincent van Gogh''. Ronald de Leeuw selected and ed, [[Arnold Pomerans]] trans. Penguin Books, London. 1997. {{ISBN|0-14-044674-5}}. p. 54.</ref>

The 1957 [[Ingmar Bergman]] film ''[[The Seventh Seal]]'' portrays the journey of a [[medieval]] [[knight]] (Max von Sydow) returning disillusioned from the [[crusades]] ("what is going to happen to those of us who want to believe, but aren't able to?") across a [[plague (disease)|plague]]-ridden landscape, undertaking a game of [[chess]] with the [[Personifications of death|personification of Death]] until he can perform one meaningful altruistic act of conscience (overturning the chess board to distract Death long enough for a family of jugglers to escape in their wagon).<ref>Ingmar Bergman. ''The Seventh Seal''. Touchstone. New York. 1960 p. 146</ref><br /> The 1942 ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]'' centers on the development of conscience in the cynical American Rick Blaine ([[Humphrey Bogart]]) in the face of oppression by the [[Nazis]] and the example of the resistance leader [[Victor Laszlo]].<ref>Aljean Harmetz. ''Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca''. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London. 1992.</ref><br />The [[David Lean]] and [[Robert Bolt]] screenplay for ''[[Doctor Zhivago (film)|Doctor Zhivago]]'' (an adaptation of [[Boris Pasternak]]'s novel) focuses strongly on the conscience of a doctor-poet in the midst of the [[Russian Revolution (1917)|Russian Revolution]] (in the end "the walls of his heart were like paper").<ref>Robert Bolt. ''Doctor Zhivago'' (screenplay). Collins and Harvill Press. London. 1965 p. 217</ref><br />The 1982 [[Ridley Scott]] film ''[[Blade Runner]]'' focuses on the struggles of conscience between and within a bounty hunter (Rick Deckard ([[Harrison Ford]])) and a renegade [[replicant]] [[android (robot)|android]] (Roy Batty ([[Rutger Hauer]])) in a future society which refuses to accept that forms of artificial intelligence can have aspects of being such as conscience.<ref>Joseph Francavilla "The Android as [[Doppelganger]]" in Judith B. Kerman (ed). ''Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'' Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Bowling Green, Ohio. 1991 p. 4 at 6.</ref>

[[File:Bwv232-credo.jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[Johann Sebastian Bach|J.S. Bach]]. Original page from Credo (Symbolum Nicenum) section of [[Mass in B minor]]]]

[[Johann Sebastian Bach]] wrote his last great choral composition the [[Mass in B minor]] (BWV 232) to express the alternating emotions of loneliness, despair, joy and rapture that arise as ''conscience'' reflects on a departed human life.<ref>J.S. Bach. Messe H-Moll/Mass in B minor BWV 232. Balthasar-Neumann-Choir. Freiburger Barockorchester. [[Thomas Hengelbrock]]. BMG Music. 1997.</ref> Here JS Bach's use of [[counterpoint]] and [[contrapuntal]] settings, his dynamic discourse of melodically and rhythmically distinct voices seeking forgiveness of sins ("''Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis''") evokes a spiraling moral conversation of all humanity expressing his belief that "with devotional music, God is always present in his grace".<ref>Christoph Wolff. ''Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician''. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2000. pp. 8, 339, 438–42.</ref>

[[Ludwig van Beethoven]]'s meditations on illness, conscience and mortality in the [[Late String Quartets (Beethoven)|Late String Quartets]] led to his dedicating the third movement of String Quartet in A Minor (1825) Op. 132 (see [[String Quartet No. 15 (Beethoven)|String Quartet No. 15]]) as a "Hymn of Thanksgiving to God of a convalescent".<ref>JWN Sullivan. ''Beethoven: His Spiritual Development''. George Allen & Unwin, London. 1964 p. 120.</ref><ref>Ludwig van Beethoven. The Late Quartets Vol II. String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. Quartetto Italiano. Phillips Classics Productions 1996.</ref> [[John Lennon]]'s work "[[Imagine (John Lennon song)|Imagine]]" owes much of its popular appeal to its evocation of conscience against the atrocities created by [[war]], [[religious fundamentalism]] and [[politics]].<ref>Ben Urish and Kenneth G. Bielen. ''The Words and Music of John Lennon''. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2007 pp. 99–100.</ref> [[The Beatles]] [[George Harrison]]-written track "[[The Inner Light (song)|The Inner Light]]" sets to Indian [[raga]] music a verse from the ''[[Tao Te Ching]]'' that "without going out of your door you can know the ways of heaven'.<ref>George Harrison. ''I, Me, Mine''. Chronicle Books. 2007. {{ISBN|0-8118-3793-9}} p. 118.</ref> In the 1986 movie ''[[The Mission (1986 film)|The Mission]]'' the guilty conscience and penance of the slave trader Mendoza is made more poignant by the haunting oboe music of [[Ennio Morricone]] ("On Earth as it is in Heaven")<ref>James Schofield Saeger. ''The Mission and Historical Missions: Film and the Writing of History''. The Americas. 1995; 51(3):393–415.</ref> The song [[Sweet Lullaby]] by [[Deep Forest]] is based on a traditional [[Baeggu language|Baegu]] [[lullaby]] from the [[Solomon Islands]] called "Rorogwela" in which a young orphan is comforted as an act of conscience by his older brother.<ref>Al Weisel, "Deep Forest's Lush Lullaby", ''Rolling Stone'', 21 April 1994, 26</ref> The [[Dream Academy]] song 'Forest Fire' provided an early warning of the moral dangers of our 'black cloud' 'bringing down a different kind of weather&nbsp;... letting the sunshine in, that's how the end begins."<ref>Dream Academy. 'Forest Fire'. Lyrics  {{cite web |url=http://www.lyricstime.com/the-dream-academy-forest-fire-lyrics.html |title=The Dream Academy - Forest Fire Lyrics |access-date=2012-12-06 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080327132311/http://www.lyricstime.com/the-dream-academy-forest-fire-lyrics.html |archive-date=27 March 2008}} (accessed 7 December 2012)</ref>

The [[American Society of Journalists and Authors]] (ASJA) presents the [[Conscience-in-Media Award]] to [[journalists]] whom the society deems worthy of recognition for demonstrating "singular commitment to the highest principles of journalism at notable personal cost or sacrifice".<ref>Valk, Elizabeth P. (24 February 1992). [https://web.archive.org/web/20071107115411/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974934,00.html "From the Publisher"]. ''Time''. Retrieved 20 October 2009.</ref>

The [[Ambassador of Conscience Award]], [[Amnesty International]]'s most prestigious [[human rights]] award, takes its inspiration from a poem written by Irish [[Nobel prize]]-winning poet [[Seamus Heaney]] called "The Republic of Conscience".<ref name="artforamnesty1"/>

==See also==
{{Div col|colwidth=30em}}
* [[Amity-enmity complex]]
* ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]'', chapter XXVII: "Of Identity and Diversity"
* [[A Tale for the Time Being]]
* [[Altruism]]
* [[Confidant]]
* [[Conscientious objector]]
* [[Conscientiousness]]
* [[Consciousness]]
* [[Consciousness of guilt]]
* [[Ethics]]
* [[Evolutionary ethics]]
* [[Evolution of morality]]
* [[Free will]]
* [[Guilt (emotion)|Guilt]]
* [[Inner light]]
* [[Jiminy Cricket]], symbol of conscience in [[Pinocchio (1940 film)|''Pinocchio'' (1940 film)]]
* [[List of nonviolence scholars and leaders]]
* [[Mind–body problem]]
* [[Moral emotions]]
* [[Moral value]]
* [[Morality]]
* [[Outline of self]]
* [[Philosophy of mind]]
* [[Rationality and power]]
* [[Rationality]]
* [[Reason]]
* [[Sraosha]], Deity of Conscience
* [[Social conscience]]
* [[Subtle body]]
* [[Synderesis]]
{{div col end}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite book|chapter=[[s:A_manual_of_moral_theology_for_English-speaking_countries/Book_2|Book 2: On Conscience]]|title=A manual of moral theology for English-speaking countries|year=1925|publisher=Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd.|first=Thomas|last=Slater S.J.}}

==References==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Conscience}}
* {{wiktionary-inline}}
* {{wikiquote-inline}}

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[[Category:Concepts in social philosophy]]
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[[Category:Philosophy of life]]
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