Greek and Jewish notions of conscience

When Linda Hogan reviews the ancient traditions for notions of conscience my sense that she, and not just she, is expanding the concept beyond its proper bonds is reinforced.  For example, she tells us right of the bat that the ancient world used the word conscience in a way that was wider and less deep than ours. For starters the primary word in Greek meant something more akin to what we mean by consciousness.

When we get to early Christian texts we find that the word doesn't come up enough so we have to start pretending that the words "heart", "wisdom" and "prudence" also mean conscience in some contexts. How to put this, how about no they don't. People use different words to mean different shades of meaning and we should respect that.

Greek notions of conscience are, well let's quote Hogan:

From the fifth century B.C.E. on, the term syneidesis appears in sporadically in Greek literature but with no consistent meaning. Many of these instances speak of conscience in an explicitly moral sense, and most of these refer only to bad conscience.

The added emphasis is what seems most important to me. My experience of conscience matches this and I am wary of those who want to make more of it.

She goes onto talk about Socrates Daimon which sometimes prevents him from doing things. In the Phaedrus, for example, it prevents him from leaving Phaedrus until he has undone his earlier glib defence of sex without love. Hogan says that she agrees with those who say this daimon is not conscience "... since it does not judge past decisions it cannot be regarded as identical with conscience."

But so far the notion that conscience judges anything at all is unproven. Also the assertion that a notion has to be identical to be talking about the same thing seems a bit stretched to me. It seems particularly stretched as Hogan has said that in other contexts she is willing to treat discussions of heart, wisdom and prudence as implying conscience. I get the sense that she is willing to apply what ever vocabularies and strategies it takes to get the meaning she wants.

The Latin tradition of conscience does not seem worthy of note enough to comment on here to me. The Jewish tradition, however, is very interesting.

As a result, the self-knowledge to which the term conscience refers occurs in a different way. Knowledge of self arises, not through probing the depths of one's being, but in remembering and keeping God's law revealed in God's word. It is God's word that makes self-understanding and hence a good moral life possible.

I have to say that something about this seems very right to me. How could we have conscience at all without some content that comes from outside us. Otherwise consulting our conscience would be, as Wittgenstein puts it, like buying a second copy of the morning newspaper to see if the first was correct.

In addition, note this phrase "the self-knowledge to which the term conscience refers". Really? Conscience refers to self knowledge? Where did that come from?

Knowledge is not active. It doesn't do things. Self-knowledge cannot be conscience.

In any case, Hogan's whole notion here is confused. What does Hogan mean by "probing the depths of one's being". Here we tend to picture someone closing their eyes tightly and scrunching up their face. "I'm probing the depths of my being." "To probe' here is a metaphorical expression and we cannot mean by it that we have any special access to our "heart" than another being could.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, the very next example of Jewish conception of conscience Hogan talks about is the request in Psalm 139 that God would examine us to know our heart and keep us from doing evil. Hogan is not altogether happy with this because, she says, "The rational autonomy that is characteristic of later understandings conscience is nowhere present in this thinking."

Rational autonomy? This is one of those expressions that we tend to automatically confer approval on. Who could disagree with rationality? Who could disagree with autonomy?

And yet we don't tend to think rational autonomy is good thing when doing mathematics. I can't say, "That's your way of doing division, I have my own way that gives a different result. If I try this in math class, my teacher will bluntly, and correctly, tell me that I am doing math wrong.

It's not that I deny autonomy. But if "moral judgment" is to mean anything at all, there must be agreement at its heart. There must be judgments that we all agree about. Where does freedom lie then? Well, let's just say that we don't know for now (although we do know).

For now, I'd just note that Hogan is stealing bases right left and centre here. She can barely write a paragraph without introducing all sorts of concepts to conscience into the discussion without justifying them. It's hard not to think the whole book is itself predetermined by certain desired outcomes of hers.