The Concept of Conscience and Polemic About Conscience in the French Enlightenment

Abstract

The article raises the question of conscience as a moral impulse to the life of each individual. A brief history of the issue is considered. In connection with the history of the issue, the views of such French philosophers of the eighteenth century as Lametri and Rousseau are analyzed. Lametri proceeds from the belief that all human behavior, all properties, desires, are determined by mechanical laws. In Lametri's opinion people's striving for physical pleasures is recognized as mechanically conditioned, since the physiological processes are basically the movements of the smallest atoms of the sense organs. The whole human life is determined by the desire for physical pleasures and the desire to avoid suffering. Conscience wouldn`t be here, its presence is in fact caused by a wrong childhood education, ignorant ideas. If so, then, according to Lametrie, a human being needs to get rid of it.

Rousseau, on the contrary, regards the conscience as the most important motivator of the moral actions of a human being; it is closely connected with religious faith. God put moral impulses in the heart of a human being and made conscience a voice of the soul. According to Rousseau, conscience is determined by the social state of a person. Distinguishing between good and evil, a person strives to treat all people «in accordance with conscience”. Conscience is not prejudice, but the deepest property of the human soul. It has nothing to do with sensual pleasures, but with demands for altruism. Often people even sacrifice their lives to save the life of another person.