Conscience, Truth and Action

Abstract

Liberal democracies attempt to accommodate conscientious objections without having a clear understanding of the nature, and authority, of the claims of conscience. This might lead to what I call an ‘Antigone claim,’ as the Greek tragedy provides an instance of a claim of conscience irreconcilable with state authority. To understand the interaction between political authority and conscientious objection, I sketch three different models of conscience: a knowledge-based model that presents conscience as giving priority access to moral norms; an emotional model that treats conscience as a natural capability that alerts us of wrongdoing; and a reflection model that argues that conscience works as our inner tribunal helping us deliberate about what is right to do. Each model of conscience presents a different challenge to political authority. The conflict becomes tragic in Antigone’s sense only when conscience is portrayed as providing knowledge of the moral norms, which is the way in which religion tends to understand conscience. The other two models can be squared with political authority in various ways, but they do not offer a final case for the authority of conscientious claims; at best, they show that political authorities should hear conscientious claims and respond to them by engaging with the reasons provided by conscientious claims in public deliberation. Conscience thus reconstructed can provide a constructive function in any society (a) by holding political authorities to account, (b) by forcing them to provide reasons for their actions, and ultimately (c) by refining our deliberative and adjudicative practices to make sure that action is always anchored to truth.