Thomistic versus Freudian theory of conscience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15633/lie.62Keywords:
conscience, superego, feeling of guilt, practical reason, objective moral truth, St. Thomas Aquinas, Sigmund FreudAbstract
The aim of this paper is to present and confront Thomistic and Freudian theories of conscience despite the essential differences between these two concepts. According to St. Thomas Aquinas conscience is an act of practical reason that recognizes objective moral truth in a receptive way. On the contrary, Sigmund Freud states that conscience is a part of the superego which supervises and controls human behavior taking into consideration changeable ethical norms and values. This paper is an attempt to complete Aquinas’s classical doctrine of conscience with Freud’s contemporary yet controversial psychoanalytic theory of personality, especially in the matter of pathological feeling of guilt.
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Copyright (c) 2013 Grzegorz Jasek
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