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Conscience has been much neglected by philosophers. It is not directly treated in ancient philosophy, while, apart from Bishop Butler, who was primarily interested in the aspect of self-deception, there is scarcely a philosopher from Descartes to the present day who has touched upon it more than tangentially. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, a treatise upon conscience became a standard component of commentaries upon Peter Lombard's Judgements and from there found its way into university seminars (written up as Debated Questions) and textbooks (Summae). The history of this development up to Henry of Ghent has been ably documented by Lottin (1948). Lottin, though, was writing for specialists in medieval philosophy and from within the tradition of the ‘Gothic revival’ of clerical culture, with the result that his work is not easily accessible, psychologically, to contemporary philosophers who are the intellectual heirs of Hume, Kant and, now, of Frege. My purpose is th
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Conscience has been much neglected by philosophers. It is not directly treated in ancient philosophy, while, apart from Bishop Butler, who was primarily interested in the aspect of self-deception, there is scarcely a philosopher from Descartes to the present day who has touched upon it more than tangentially. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, a treatise upon conscience became a standard component of commentaries upon Peter Lombard's Judgements and from there found its way into university seminars (written up as Debated Questions) and textbooks (Summae). The history of this development up to Henry of Ghent has been ably documented by Lottin (1948). Lottin, though, was writing for specialists in medieval philosophy and from within the tradition of the ‘Gothic revival’ of clerical culture, with the result that his work is not easily accessible, psychologically, to contemporary philosophers who are the intellectual heirs of Hume, Kant and, now, of Frege. My purpose is th
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