Most people understand conscience as something which tells us right from wrong, it is generally seen as a moral faculty, sense or feeling which compels individuals to believe that particular activities are morally right or wrong. Many ethical debates have been addressed on whether conscience is innate or developed. When conscience is described as innate, it means that it is inborn within you. From a religious viewpoint, an innate conscience is one which is God given or the voice of reason as a moral guide to what is right and wrong, whereas if it is argued that the conscience is not innate then it is described as being learned or developed according to psychologists. If conscience is innate and God given then does that mean God has told people to act immorally? However if Conscience is not innate then the blame for people acting immorally is shifted to society. St Thomas Aquinas, Joseph Butler and Cardinal John Newman are key scholars who believe that conscience is innate and inborn within a person. Key scholars and psychologists who believe that conscience is not innate are Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Erich Fromm and Humanist.
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) did not think of conscience as being the voice of God but as the natural ability of people to understand the difference between right and wrong. He believed that all people aim for what is good and try to avoid evil he called this the synderesis rule. Aquinas said that it was innate to seek good because sin is falling short of God’s ideals, seeking apparent goods because they are not using their powers of reason properly. He argued that conscience “was the mind of man making moral judgements” and described it as containing two essential parts synderesis and conscientia. Synderesis means the repeated use of what Aquinas termed ‘right’ reason, by which a person acquires knowledge of basic moral principles and understands of doing good and avoiding evil. Conscientia is the actual ethical judgement or decision a person makes which leads them the action. Conscience is therefore, for Aquinas is being able to distinguish right from wrong and being able to decisions when being confronted with difficult moral situations. Aquinas said that your conscience could be mistaken and he did not see it advisable to follow our conscience at all times as even though we may think that we are carrying out a correct moral action, our reasoning may be flawed which will result in an apparent good rather than a real good. Conscience is weighing up the good and bad and coming to the right decision and when Aquinas said you follow your conscience he means that it is always right to apply moral principles to each situation as best as you can. Your conscience is reasoning used correctly to find what God sees is good, this suggests that our conscience is innate. Aquinas theory can also be followed regardless of religious beliefs therefore it can be argued that all people can be held to be morally responsible for there actions making it universal. His theory explains evil – our conscience can sometimes be wrong, so explains why there are bad people in the world. Aquinas theory also agrees with Piaget’s idea that the conscience is manufactured from experiences and conditioning as Aquinas argued that children do not have fully formed conscience. However Butler would argue that the conscience should always be followed no matter what unlike Aquinas who says that the conscience can be mistaken or misguided. It can also be argued that following our conscience can lead us to make a moral decision and that reason can also result us to making different decisions this suggest that our conscience may be wrong and if it is God given how can it be wrong if God is omnipotent? And if the conscience is God-given, why is it fallible?

The 18th century Anglican Priest and philosopher Joseph Butler saw human nature as hierarchical and at the top is conscience it is a innate gift from God which must be followed (ultimate authority) as it is not wrong. Our conscience is what sets us apart from animals. According to Butler, humans are motivated by two basic principles; self-love and benevolence. The conscience encourages people to move away from self-love and strive towards benevolence and focusing on keeping other people happy. When making a decision, conscience is the final decision maker as it is the ultimate authority in the authoritative hierarchy. He said that as conscience is a direct knowledge from God, convincing yourself that wrong actions are good ones is self-deception which interferes with God’s purpose for an individual. A person could go their whole life saying that they acted negatively because their conscience told them to, but is it believable that God would guide people into making bad moral decisions? Also Does not explain how we know what our conscience is, and how we listen to it. It also doesn’t explain why people do evil if we have an infallible conscience which is innate and God-given. However our conscience cannot be mistaken as it is God-given, therefore we must listen to it. Butler’s theory is clear-cut: “follow your conscience as it is the ultimate authority.”
19th century theologian Cardinal John Henry Newman uses intuition rather than reason and he believes that conscience is innate and a direct order from God as it is the “Voice of God.” It should override other influences as it is always right. It does not invent the truth, but at its best it detects the truth. Newman agreed with Aquinas that conscience is the ability to apply moral principles however; this approach was more intuitive than rationalistic like Butler’s. Newman believed that conscience was God’s voice giving us direction and that following this conscience given to us by God was the same as following the Divine Law. The Cardinal also said “I toast the Pope, but I toast conscience first”. This implies that conscience is the ultimate authority rather than the Pope. For many Christian’s this is seen as being extremely controversial as the Pope has a direct link to God and are supposed to be of infallible ultimate authority. However, he does argue that conscience is innate and inborn within us, given to us by God as a moral guide for doing what is right and what is wrong this suggests that conscience is innate. Newman theory is simple and easy – the conscience is always right, so you can’t make the wrong decision by following it as it innate and God given. His theory also overrides all influences so there is no issue of knowing what to follow this suggest that our conscience is innate and not developed/learned or influenced by other factors such as parents or religion. However some people may use this to their advantage and lie and say their conscience ‘told them’ to do something wrong. His theory does not how we know what our conscience is, or how to use our intuition.
The main issue with religious beliefs is that, if conscience was is the voice of God then why do different religions and sections of Christianity believe different things about issues such as sex and abortion? Surely, if conscience was the infallible voice of God then all religions of all cultures would have the same morals for all issues. This suggests that conscience is not as clear cut. Another problem with the idea of having an innate conscience is that it assumes the existence of God. What about atheists and people that do not believe in God? Are we assuming that they have no conscience and they are the immoral people of the world? This poses a huge problem, as it infers that individuals that follow a religion and more superior than those who do not, as they do not have the innate moral guide to be able to distinguish right from wrong.
On the other hand, there are various secular beliefs to what conscience is. These beliefs all describe conscience as being learned and developed, not innate. Sigmund Freud was a psychologist who posed a secular approach to what he thought conscience was. He believed that conscience was a part of the mind that strived to make sense of disorder and to deal with guilt. Freud said that during our childhood we are subject to accepting certain values and beliefs about morality that we reject in later life due to our moral reasoning. However, these early formed values and belief may still influence our morality today. For example, if an individual was forced to attend Sunday service at church in their childhood then they may still take these values into their later life and go to Sunday service at church so they do not feel guilt for not going. For Freud, the mind is split into 3 parts; Instinctive Desires (Id), Super-Ego and Ego. The immature conscience can be identified with mass feelings of guilt, reinforced and conditioned by childhood as previously stated for example, going to Sunday service at church as that’s what you did as a child to keep your parents happy and to stop you from feeling guilty. The mature and healthy conscience can be identified with the ego’s reflection about the best way of achieving integrity and having strong moral principles. The mature conscience is dynamic, focused on the future and it will not let the immature conscience restrict it with guilt although they may conflict sometimes. This is a process of development and learning, not something that is inborn within them. Freud’s view of conscience would blame society for an individual acting immorally, rather than God. As parenting, school and life experiences shape a person’s conscience and morals it would be accurate to say that this kind of conscience has to be developed over time and at the individuals own pace, rather than just following a set of instructions by God. The strengths of his theory is that it is easy to follow: if you feel guilty, your conscience is telling you it’s wrong. His theory also explains that the conscience is a balance of psychological features in the brain, it also explains evil, that it is flawed and may not be developed in some people. However it does not explain how to listen to our conscience, other than guilt indicates a wrong action – although, this doesn’t help as the guilt often happens after the wrong act, so can’t be used to determine acts. We can’t always do right, as the ego makes a balance between the superego (conscience) and the id (needs/wants), so can’t always follow the superego.
Jean Piaget took Freud’s idea of guilt as a conscience and made it into his own view of what conscience is. He said that our conscience develops as we move through stages of our lives. The first conscience that we experience happens usually between the ages of 5 and 10; this is called heteronymous conscience. This conscience is developed as a result of parenting and upbringing. For example, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when addressing people. This happens when the conscience is immature and so the child does not know if they have acted immorally until they have done the action. The second conscience which Piaget outlines is the autonomous conscience. This develops after the age of 10, where an individual is able to distinguish between right and wrong before they make their decision about what action they are going to take. They are also less dependent on the authority of the people around them and are able to distinguish between right and wrong for themselves. This is clearly a developmental approach to conscience, not a religious one which claims that it is innate. If an individual were to carry out and action which was bad then the blame would be placed on the child’s upbringing or that they are just a morally bad person that is unable to distinguish the difference between right or wrong, or that they do know what the right thing to do is yet they still carry out the immoral action. Piaget view can be appreciated by all, theists can say that God makes the conscience develop, whereas others can appreciate that it’s a biological psychological process. his view is easy to understand, yet explains the other stages of development, as well as the conscience. The intention of the conscience is to form a functional society. Christians may dislike that theonomous theology isn’t mentioned in the moral development stages
Erich Fromm believed that all humans are influenced by external authorities such as parents, teachers, church leaders ect who apply rules and punishment for breaking them. A guilty conscience is a result of displeasing authority and if that authority is God then the fear of being rejected will have a powerful influence on an individual. Disobedience produces guilt, which in turn weakens our power and makes us more submissive to authority. The way that the Nazi government in Germany in the 1930s manipulated the consciences of its people to feel guilty about helping or harming Jews is a classic example of the authoritarian conscience. Fromm’s views changed over time and he saw the humanistic conscience as being much healthier, since it assesses and evaluates our behaviour. We use it to judge how successful we are as people. It is our real self and leads us to realise our potential as far as possible. This view is similar to Virtue Ethics, by being enriched and developing virtues. Real Conscience: “reaction of ourselves to ourselves; the voice of our true selves”. This view Aims to develop individuals, like Virtue Ethics and it judges our success as a human being, and realising our full potential. This view appeals to non religious people and can be followed by everyone as it can be universal. However Individuals can have different Authoritarian consciences such as a person being raised differently can change what makes us feel guilty, it’s not the individual’s fault, But is this unfair to those brought up around negative authority figures, i.e. delinquents/ criminals. The problem with the secular approaches to conscience is that it does not explain actions that are clearly made without the use of a conscience. If the conscience is possessed from childhood, then why do some people not have a sense of what the right and wrong things to do are?Another problem with the secular ideas of conscience is that it explains how it influences us into making decisions, but it does not tell us what the right path is? How are we supposed to know that the path we have chosen to take is the wrong one, or mistake the wrong path as being the right one? St. Thomas Aquinas would put this down to a mistake in reasoning, but how would psychologists such as Freud explain this?
In conclusion, I believe that conscience is innate and that Aquinas view on Conscience is correct, and that conscience is something which is a natural ability which is given to people to understand the difference between right and wrong by using the power of reason. Also that it innate to seek good because sin is falling short of God’s ideals, seeking apparent goods because they are not using their powers of reason properly.