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conscience

שו”תCategory: generalconscience
asked 3 years ago

Hello Rabbi, do you think a conscience is a good thing? Is it recommended to acquire it or educate the next generation in this way? Is a good deed that I do because of conscience a good deed in the first place? Isn’t conscience what moralists call “fear of God”?


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מיכי Staff answered 3 years ago
Conscience is first and foremost a fact. We have a conscience. It is true that it can be refined by thinking, but this does not fundamentally change it. Thinking only makes it more precise (the natural power of conscience is sometimes directed in the wrong directions). If you do a good deed because of conscience, then you are a good person. If you do it because there is value in being good – then you are a moral person. And if you do it because there is a divine command (which can be parallel to the command of conscience), then it also has religious value.

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מנסה להבין replied 3 years ago

Thank you, I didn't understand what the difference is between a good person and a moral person.

מיכי Staff replied 3 years ago

A good person is a person who does good deeds. Even a sheep does good deeds because of its nature and not by choice or decision. A person who acts well out of a commitment to a moral commandment is a moral person.

טירגיץ replied 3 years ago

You have linked two components here: commitment to the moral order and not because of nature. And you seem to be saying that a deterministic commitment to the moral order because of nature (this is how one's consciousness is structured when it recognizes a moral order) seems to you more like a sheep than choosing, by free choice, a commitment to the moral order. To me, this is a strange claim.

מיכי Staff replied 3 years ago

“Commitment by nature” is an oxymoron. If it is an action by nature then there is no commitment here. I will act and not act. Commitment is the result of my decision.

טירגיץ replied 3 years ago

There is a mental state of commitment, which can be reached as a result of choice or as a result of a natural process. You could just call the choice a moral process, but I don't see what's not-so-casual about that.

טירגיץ replied 3 years ago

Or are you saying something stronger? That a determinist saying thank you for something is like the recording from a can machine. A determinist hugging his child is like the child wrapping himself in a cozy wool blanket. And nothing particularly concerning morality and commitment?

מיכי Staff replied 3 years ago

Exactly like that.

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