Conscience
Conscience is something that tells people if what they are doing is right or wrong. Having it can make people sad about what they have done. It is the sense of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good.
Origin of word
Middle English (also in the sense ‘inner thoughts or knowledge’): via Old French from Latin conscientia, from conscient- ‘being privy to’, from the verb conscire, from con- ‘with’ + scire ‘know’.
Conscience Media
Marcus Aurelius bronze fragment, Louvre, Paris: "To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness."
Nikiforos Lytras, Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Greece-Alexandros Soutzos Museum
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.
Jeremy Bentham: "Fanaticism never sleeps ... it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service."
Related pages
Other websites
- A chapter on Conscience Archived 2007-05-16 at the Wayback Machine From Parenting For Everyone, by S.Soloveychik, 1986
