Conscience facts for kids

Vincent van Gogh, 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum. The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix).

Conscience is an ability or a faculty that distinguishes whether one's actions are right or wrong. It leads to feelings of remorse when a human does things that go against his/her moral values, and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when actions conform to such norms. It is also often viewed as the attitude which informs moral judgment before an action is performed. The extent to which such moral judgments are, or should be, based wholly in reason has been a matter of controversy almost throughout the history of Western philosophy. Commonly used metaphors refer to the "voice within" and the "inner light".

Religious, secular and philosophical views about conscience

Although there is no generally accepted definition of what conscience is or its role in ethical decision-making, three overlapping factors are generally relevant.

1. Religious views
2. Secular views
3. Philosophical views

Related pages

• Conscientious objector
• Consciousness
• Guilt
• Ethics
• Freedom
• John Locke
• Morality
• Reason

Images for kids

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  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.

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  Marcus Aurelius bronze fragment, Louvre, Paris: "To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness."

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  The Awakening Conscience, Holman Hunt, 1853

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  Nikiforos Lytras, Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Greece-Alexandros Soutzos Museum.

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  Illustration of François Chifflart (1825–1901) for La Conscience (by Victor Hugo)

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  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.

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  Jeremy Bentham: "Fanaticism never sleeps ... it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service."

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  The Flemish mystic 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"

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  The medieval Persian philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna) developed a sensory deprivation thought experiment to explore the relationship between conscience and God

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  Schopenhauer considered that the good conscience we experience after an unselfish act verifies that our true self exists outside our physical person

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  Benedict de Spinoza: moral problems and our emotional responses to them should be reasoned from the perspective of eternity.

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  Immanuel Kant: the moral law within us has true infinity.

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  John Locke viewed the widespread social fact of conscience as a justification for natural rights.

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  Adam Smith: conscience shows what relates to ourselves in its proper shape and dimensions

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  Samuel Johnson (1775) stated that "No man's conscience can tell him the right of another man."

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  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1932)

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  Albert Einstein associated conscience with suprapersonal thoughts, feelings and aspirations.

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  Peter Singer: distinguished between immature "traditional" and highly reasoned "critical" conscience

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  John Ralston Saul: consumers risk turning over their conscience to technical experts and to the ideology of free markets

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  Lester Ott, conscientious objector during the First World War

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  Nonviolent protestors in Washington, D.C. in 2010 opposed to the Iraq War

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  Amnesty International protects prisoners of conscience. Stamp from Faroe Islands, 1986.

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  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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  Gandhi in Noakhali, 1946: civil resistance or satyagraha

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  Global warming protestors in Chicago 2008

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  Chiune Sugihara practised conscientious noncompliance in issuing visas to fleeing Jews in Lithuania in 1939

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  NASA climate scientist James Hansen arrested in 2011 for civil disobedience against laws allowing a tar sands oil pipeline

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  Internet Map. Ninian Smart predicts global communication will facilitate world conscience.

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  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.

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  Darfur refugee camp in Chad: a challenge to the world's conscience.

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  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

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  Graffiti portrait in Ramallah of murdered Arab cartoon artist Naji al-Ali

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  Gravesite of Anna Politkovskaya in Russia

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  Gao Zhisheng human rights lawyer abducted in China

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  Gravesite of Neda Agha-Soltan in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Iran

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Tretyakov Gallery.

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  Vincent van Gogh, 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum. On the Threshold of Eternity.

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  J.S. Bach. Original page from Credo (Symbolum Nicenum) section of Mass in B minor

See also

In Spanish: Conciencia para niños