The source of conscience

Abstract

The first step the author takes is to look at authentic inborn conscience, conscience based on reasan and at religious conscience as the foundational value in man, as a socially foundational value and as a ‘theo’ -universal value. Conscience is considered in regard to its mythological origin and within tire complex of Kant’s philosophy of religion. The author critiques certain aspects of Kant’s intellectualism and investigates the very origin of conscience, that is, the emergence of its moral form out of its moral content. Conscience is tliematised within die context of the Bible as the “ Word of God" and through an explication of certain passages from die New Testament conscience is connected with the Law (Moses’s Decalogue). Finally, the author explicates die evangelic sense of the relation between conscience and love and positions conscience as the task before man both in reason and in religion.