Epistle to Ansgar Letter 11: God and Conscience
9 Feb AD 2025
Feast Day of Saint Cuaran the Wise
Dear Godson,
Today is the feast day of St Cuaran the Wise, also known as Curvinus or Cronan, and Irish Bishop of the Eight Century. When the press of bishopric work crowded out his prayer life, Cuaran fled to Iona, hid his name, and became a monk. However, he was found and recognized by St Columba and returned to his duty. He was called wise for his wide knowledge of canon law, but perhaps his flight from worldly offices to pursue intimate prayer with heaven was the better part of wisdom.
We can ask St. Cuaran to pray for the wisdom we need to face the question of man’s moral nature. If conscience is indeed the still, small voice of God within us, if it is supernatural, then God is known to us through the conscience: His voice reveals Him.
The polytheist might argue that the voice of conscience might be many gods speaking, in the same way as many passions pull at us. The pantheist might argue that this conscience of the voice of the divine universe itself, of which we are as much a part as all things, from stones to stars. These niceties need not concern us here: other arguments will show what reason tells us of the Supreme Being, whether he is one or many, or both, immanent or transcendent, or both. For now, we attend merely the argument that the nature of conscience requires a Supreme Being to be.
The conscience is either natural or supernatural, that is, secular or spiritual. If secular theories explaining the conscience fail, the conscience is supernatural.
Before examining the theories, let us agree on the facts. Facts are either confirmed or denied by experience, including that experience gathered across generations called tradition. By the very nature of experience, the question cannot be put to rest with the perfect certainty of a geometry proof: if your experience supports one theory, you will all the more be convinced, and if not, then not. Experiences differ.
However, certain experiences are so commonplace and so widespread that no detailed study is needed: such things are called common sense because the common man encounters it in his daily life. If one wishes to argue the common sense is wrong, as for example, heliocentrism or atomism or relativity must do, the burden of proof is on the challenge to common sense, not its defense.
The first thing common sense shows what kind of things people say when they quarrel. Some quarrels devolve into fighting words, exchanges of insults or threats. But some are disputes, where the quarrel is over right or wrong.
Whether the dispute is over a seat on a bus, or the last slice of cake, or who struck whom, or when to follow the example a bad crowd, a common theme runs through:
- “That is my seat; I was here first!” “A man should offer his a seat to a lady.”
- “Give me a slice; you’ve had more than your share!” “I’m starving, and you’re fat!”
- “He struck first!” “So what? That does not excuse you!”
- “Why me? Everyone else is doing it!” “Because their Moms are lax; yours is not!”
Examples can be multiplied endlessly, but please notice the form of the claims being made:
The first is a claim about the rule or standard governing use of a commonly held good, such as a seat on a public bus: First come, first served.
The rebuttal claims an exception, based on the inequality of the sexes, requiring chivalry from gentlemen who have a duty protect the weaker sex: Ladies first.
The second claim is again about the rule or standard governing common property, and appeals to a standard of equality: Share and share alike.
The rebuttal proposes an exception to equal shares, based on an inequality of need.
The third claim is an appeal to a rule or standard that duty of peace is mutual, hence excused when not reciprocal: What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Or perhaps this could also be a claim for the severe justice of Lex Talionis (An eye for an eye).
The rebuttal is that the duty to keep the peace is absolute, not to be excused another’s lapse. Injuria non excusat injuriam (Two wrongs do not make it right).
The final claim is an appeal to a rule or standard that all duties must be equal, must avoid double standards, and must follow precedent: Stare Decisis; and, once again, the rebuttal is that certain duties not to be excused another’s lapse; abusus non tollit usum (Abuse does not preclude use).
Anyone with common sense will notice all these claims and rebuttals appeal to a rule or a standard which all parties tacitly assume all parties are obligated to obey, unless excused by a specific exception which, likewise, applies to all parties.
Again, common sense will notice these claims and rebuttals are all appeals to duty.
Common sense will notice none of these claims and rebuttals are appeals to passions, preferences, self interest, common good. None is merely an act of bullying, the stronger man claiming the weaker must yield or be forced. Likewise none here appeals to rank, wealth, status, popularity, or some other form of strength, direct or indirect. No appeal is made that the weaker party should prevail due to her weakness, and pity veto justice.
A duty is an imperative obligation, to do or to omit to do an act, regardless of whether we are so inclined or not, regardless of whether the act or omission is in our best interest or not, in the common interest or not, regardless of strong or weak, rich or poor, high or low.
To be sure, in many disputes, perhaps most, the party who cannot prevail on the justice of his cause will adopt a rhetorical tactic of citing these other reasons, reasons unrelated to fairplay, for why the decision should go his way. One can practically form a list of informal logical fallacies based on such rhetoric: such as appealing to threats (ad baculum); or appealing to pity (ad misericordiam); or to appealing to the greatness or rank of the person making the claim (ad hominem or ad verecundiam), and so on.
But common sense must notice no one makes these rhetorical appeals until and unless he sees he has no case on the merits: if his argument begins by making a claim based, not on any standard of fairness, but on an appeal to strength, rank, power, he never had an argument to begin with. Once the talk turns to mere threats, it is not a dispute, but a fight; or if the talk turns to mere pleas, it is not a dispute, but a begging.
Common sense observes that all disputes over right and wrong acts and omissions are debated and discussed as if under the authority of a rule equally binding on all parties. It is an idea of equality and fairplay, a rule of right action, a Golden Rule.
Logic says it cannot be otherwise: a discussion of right and wrong is a discussion of the standard of right and wrong, and whether the current case fits under it, or is granted an exception, whereupon the exceptions are also governed by a standard. (For example, if killing another man is unlawful, but killing him in self-defense is justified, then what constitutes “self-defense” has to be defined as the standard governing the exception. An irrational fear that a witch might one day hurt you with a voodoo curse, for example, would not allow you to claim self defense if you killed her from ambush.)
I mention that exceptions to the rule are also rules to forestall a frivolous objection that exceptions made a standard invalid. If the exceptions are arbitrary or partial, yes, the standard is broken, but if the exceptions are rational, and are clearly understood, the exception form part of the standard, granting an excuse when a literal application would be draconian and unjust.
Both the standard and the standardized exceptions must be universal to be a standard, that is, must apply to all cases under consideration. If the elements defining the standard apply, the standard applies; if an element is missing, it does not. If they are arbitrary or partial, the standard is broken.
This is the logic used by all men everywhere, for all cases, great and small, from the just war theory to a murder trial to simple, commonplace disputes over a seat on the bus or the last slice of cake. This is the logic used by all men everywhere, for all cases, because there is no other alternative. To dispute right and wrong without reference to a standard is not to reason at all: as said above, it is threatening or pleading or some other act.
Common sense and clear logic show the universality of moral reasoning. The study of other lands and peoples, past and present, also witness this: travelers and historian observe that the Golden Rule in some form or another, with minor variations of wording, exist in all literate civilizations of which we have record. Buddha, or Kant, might express the idea of the universality and equality of the moral law with differences in emphasis, but the core idea remains the same: the law plays no favorites.
The law is blind to factions and to partiality, blind to passion, self interest, popularity, power, or any other factor aside from the elements of the standard. This is why classical images of justice show her as a goddess with a blindfold, bearing the sword of justice and the scales of equality.
Hence common sense, logic, and knowledge of man both near and far, including those of other climes and times, witness the existence of a faculty whereby the standard of right and wrong, just and unjust, is known and used.
This faculty of objective and universal moral reasoning all men know to be the conscience.
That the conscience in all cases correctly identifies moral standards and correctly applies them is not here the issue: clearly some men have more well developed consciences than others, civilized men more than savages, sages more than children. But blindness or shortsightedness in some does not demonstrate that eyesight is not sight, neither can folly and error demonstrate that wisdom is not wise.
Likewise, the mere fact that myriad opinions on matters of conscience exist, and differences in how and how strictly moral standards apply, does not demonstrate that moral standards are arbitrary, partial, or fictitious, or that the conscience cannot correctly grasp and use such standards.
The conscience is true, that is, objective and universal.
To be sure, this conclusion is not a matter of perfect certainty, as befits a geometry proof or matter of pure logic, but there is no means to question this conclusion honestly without assuming it is true. If there are no moral standards, there are no standards of morality and honesty. If there is no standard of honesty, nothing can be done in an honest fashion, including the act of questioning the existence and nature of the conscience. A man without a conscience cannot honestly question and investigate the question of what the conscience is, and whether it is real or false, objective or partial.
This being established, let us note two more things about the moral standards we all confirm and obey each time we dispute or ponder questions of right and wrong.
First and foremost, the secular attempts to account for this phenomenon fail.
Some seculars say the conscience is merely self-interest rightly understood, or that is it selfishness disguised under a cloak of hypocrisy.
Others seculars say the conscience is disguised class interest, or say the conscience the psychological conditioning of one’s culture and upbringing, mere a matter of convention, or the internalized echo of countless commands heard in childhood: the Golden Rule is no more true than a rule of grammar.
Finally, some seculars say simply that there is no justice in the world, merely the will of the strong oppressing the weak, using the cloak of hypocrisy to mask their brutal selfishness, or, oddly is the cunning of the weak to undermine the strong, by appealing to soft sentiments within the otherwise heroic heart, so as to deceive them into weakness as well.
These attempts to explain the nature of the conscience all suffer the same fatal flaw, for they all propose that the conscience is partial, either a disguise for self-interest, community interest, brutality, seduction, or cultural conditioning. If so, no discussion of right or wrong is possible in any case, for it is not possible to ponder within oneself nor debate with another any issue of right and wrong without a standard of right and wrong.
All these attempts to explain the nature of the conscience dismiss the conscience as partial, biased, blind hence dishonest. All these attempts to explain the nature of the conscience dismiss all standards as double standards, tacitly or openly hypocritical, in which case they are not standards are all.
But if there were no moral standards, and if all moral standards were dishonest hypocrisy it would not and could not be the case that dishonesty was wrong, nor would we be under any obligation to admit our standards were hypocrisy. Because in a world where all moral standards are dishonest, nothing is nor can be dishonest: the concept would have no meaning.
We are not speaking here of a case where objective moral standards exist, and one man or group of men misinterpret and misapply those standards, or bend judgments to their own interests. Such things happen, and honest men find them objectionable, since they are biases and perversions of justice: cloaking unfairness under a disguise of fairness. But even as one cannot have shadows cast where no light shines, the concept of a perversion or lapse of justice, a breach of moral standards, could not exist in a universe where justice never existed, and moral standards were all merely partiality and prejudice pretending to a fictional objectivity. Literally no mind in the universe could conceive of such a thing: it would have no meaning, for the same reason syllogism could not exist in a universe were logic did not exist.
Second and most subtle is the other implication of the objectivity of moral standards and the reality of the conscience as a faculty for perceiving such standards.
Moral standards are like the laws of geometry or formal logic in that such things are objective: every creature able to reason recognizes that A is A, and A is not non-A, no matter what term is substituted for “A” in that sentence. Every creature able to reason can be taught, howsoever long it takes, that if the definitions, common notions, postulates of Euclid are granted, the Pythagorean Theorem follows. It is not a matter of opinion, and no dispute on the point is possible.
Moral standards, however, are unlike the laws of geometry or formal logic because the statements are not declarative but imperative. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is not a suggestion, but a command.
All men who heed the conscience hear the conscience as commandments: of things one ought or ought not do, must do or must not do, whether one is so inclined or not.
Commandments imply a commander. Laws imply a lawgiver. No imperative has meaning unless an authority issues the imperative. Statements that it may be prudent or advantageous to do or to omit this act or that in order to achieve some goal are not imperatives, unless achieving the stated goal is an imperative. No possible list of suggestions nor observations can form an imperative commandment unless there is an imperative axiom at the head of the list.
A lawgiver whose authority reaches to all men of nations and generations cannot be a natural creature. No natural creature has power and authority reaching all parts of heaven and earth: but there is no farthest star beyond which a man can go and find a realm where the Golden Rule is void, and the voice of conscience falls silent. This is because the voice of conscience is not produced by the events of the given time and place, or applies under certain circumstances and not others. The Golden Rule is an absolute. The rule itself is not conditional to circumstances, even if the specific way in which the rule is applied may differ from time to time and place to place, as severity or mercy is required to fulfil the imperative.
The mere fact that imperatives exist, any imperative, shows that some act ought to be done, and other things ought not be. This is not a natural property. Natural properties of natural objects are physical. They can be described in declarative sentences, stated as matters of fact. Natural objects can be described by the measurement of some multiple or combination of the properties of mass, length, duration, candlepower, current, temperature, moles of substance.
The logic here is ironclad: if all natural objects can be measured by these properties of mass and length and so on, anything that cannot be measured in this way cannot be a natural object.
If not natural, then supernatural.
Imperatives are nonphysical. Moral laws are supernatural. The conscience is the faculty by which men perceive and ponder moral laws and their application to daily cases. Hence the conscience is supernatural.
No secular theory can explain, address, or even recognize the supernatural. No secular theory can explain the conscience. Hence the conscience, merely by speaking to us, proves a supernatural lawgiver with authority over all the cosmos established these rules. Such a lawgiver by definition must be omnipotent and benevolent: and this all men know to be God.
The conscience is not the only witness heaven has placed in our souls to reveal the truth of heaven to us: the love of beauty also reveals the workings of providence, and proves God.
Yours,
John Charles Justin-martyr Wright
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
