Question Two. Whether Conscience is in the Will

7. Second I ask whether conscience is in the will.

8. That it is:

Hebrews 13.18, “We are confident that we have a good conscience, wishing to walk well in all things;” goodness belongs to the will, so conscience does too.

9. Further, if conscience were in the intellect, someone who knows more about doable things would be more conscientious; the consequent is false,     therefore the antecedent is false as well.

10. For the opposite side:

Ecclesiastes 7.23, “For your conscience knows that you have often cursed others.”

11. This is also plain from the acts of conscience, which are to testify, to accuse, to judge etc     ., and all these belong to reason and intellect;     therefore etc     .

I. To both Questions

A. Opinion of Henry of Ghent

1. Statement of the Opinion

12. Here it is said [by Henry, Quodlibet 1.18] that “the law of nature contains the natural principles of things to be done^” Look at Henry there: [“For just as in the cognitive power there is natural law as universal rule of the things to be done and right reason as particular rule, so on the part of the will there is a certain universal mover, which stimulates to action according to the universal rules of the law of nature (and it is called ‘synderesis’, which is a certain natural choice in the will agreeing with the natural dictate of the law of nature), and a certain particular mover, which stimulates to action according to the dictate of right reason (and it is called conscience, which is a certain deliberative choice in the will always agreeing with the dictate of right reason). And conscience is always formed by the consent and choice of free will in line with the judgment and sentence of reason, so that if reason is right, conscience is right too...but if reason is erroneous, conscience is erroneous too. And because conscience is only formed from the free choice of him who wills, although in line with the knowledge of reason, it happens as a result that some who have much knowledge of things to be done possess in themselves no or a slight conscience about acting according to knowledge, and this either because they do not deliberate about action but do everything precipitately, or because, if they do deliberate, yet they choose freely against conscience and altogether reject it, or they follow it weakly in their choosing and act against what they know; hence all these sorts act against knowledge, with no or a little sting of conscience, and have only remorse of synderesis, which cannot be wholly extinguished.”]

2. Rejection of the Opinion

13. Argument against this view:

First about synderesis, that if it has an elicited act necessarily tending toward good and resisting evil, and there is no such thing in the will, then synderesis is not in the will.

- The proof of the assumption is that in 1 d.1 n.80 it was shown that the will does not necessarily enjoy the end shown to it, and that no power or force or habit in the will can be a principle of necessarily enjoying; so neither can it be a necessary principle for willing in conformity with practical principles, which are taken from the end.

14. Further, if there were some such power or force or part in the will that would necessarily tend by an elicited act toward good and resist evil, then it would be supreme in the whole will, because it would have regard to the ultimate end that the first practical principles are taken from; therefore the will, according to any force or inferior part of it whatever, would be in its power so that, when it moved, the lower part or force would obey it and be moved in conformity with it. So it would prevent all sins in the will, because, as it would be moved necessarily, so it would necessarily move the whole will; for the whole will would be moved as it moves, and if the whole will were right, there would be no sin.

15. Argument against the other part, about conscience:

First because an appetitive habit is not generated from one act [Ethics 1.6.1098a18-19, 2.1.1103b21-22]; but conscience comes from one practical syllogism, by evident deduction of some conclusion from the first practical principles; so conscience is not an acquired appetitive habit. Plain too is that it is not innate, nor a part, nor a force.

16. Further, what is of a nature to be caused by some cause cannot be caused by another cause unless this other cause virtually contains the perfection of the first cause; a habit of the will is of a nature to be caused by an act of will as by its proper cause; therefore it cannot be caused by another act unless this other act contains an act of will virtually in itself. But an act of intellect does not contain an act of will virtually in itself according to Henry, because ‘the act of will is more perfect’;Quodlibet 1 q.14, “One must simply say that that power is preeminent over another whose habit, act, and object are preeminent over the habit, act, and object of that other. Now so it is in the present case, that the habit, act, and object of the will are altogether preeminent over the act, habit, and object of the intellect. Therefore one must absolutely say that the will is preeminent over the intellect and is a higher power than it is.” ⁵⁰ therefore the intellect cannot by its own act cause in the will the sort of weight that would be a quasi habit of the will.Quodlibet 9 q.5, “I say that although the will is in no way moved by the practical intellect as to its act of willing...yet it is moved by it as to some passion, which passion is as it were a weight in the will as the will is free, inclining it into a mode of habit so as to will [accordingly].” ⁵¹

17. Further, either the will is able not to accept the weight, and then the intellect will not be a sufficient cause of it - for when a sufficient cause acts the effect exists once the passive recipient is in due proximity to the cause. But if the will is not able not to accept it, then - when the consideration in question is actually present in reason - the will is not able to put the weight aside, because reason does not have a lesser necessity in causing the caused weight than in preserving it.

18. Further, the will must act either according to the given weight or not. If it must, then it is not free, because the agent of this weight is a natural cause so its effect too will be a natural form;     therefore an agent necessarily acting according to this weight does not act freely, because acting thus or otherwise is not in its power. If the will does not need to act according to this weight (which even the Apostle manifestly seems to mean, from the gloss on Romans, ‘Whatever is against conscience etc     .’,Henry, Quodlibet 1 q.18, “The objection about the gloss on Romans, that ‘everything which is not of faith (that is, of conscience) is sin’, proceeds correctly save that ‘conscience’ is not there taken properly but in extended sense for a thinking of reason.” Romans 14.23, “Everything that is not of faith is sin.;” gloss, “What is done against faith (that is, so as to be believed against conscience) is evil.” ⁵² which makes it plain that some sin can be committed against conscience), then the result is that, when a perfect conscience is present, the will is able to will the opposite of what conscience dictates, and so this habit is never corrupted by an act of will, which seems absurd when positing that it is a habit of will.

B. Scotus’ own Response

19. To these questions [nn.1, 7].

If synderesis is posited as something having an elicited act, always tending to the just act and resisting sin, then, since no such thing is in the will, it cannot be posited there; therefore it is in the intellect. And it cannot be posited as something other than a habit of principles, and it is always right because, from the idea of the terms, the intellect, by virtue of its natural light, at once rests in the principles; and then, as far as the part of intellect is concerned, free choice is of a nature to will in agreement with those principles, even if - to the extent the remaining partial cause fails - it does not freely will, because there is no necessitating cause there.

20. Accordingly conscience too can be posited as a habit proper to practical conclusions, with whose act right reason in doable things is of a nature to agree; and so conscience is said to stimulate toward good, insofar as the whole of free choice [d.38 n.11] has one partial cause rightly disposed; and a right and good volition follows, unless there is a defect of the other partial cause concurring with respect to the will.

II. To the Principal Arguments of the First Question

21. To the first argument [n.2] I say that synderesis murmurs ostensively, because it shows that the good is to be willed, and there is occasion in this for murmuring against evil.

22. To the other [n.3] I say that the will, which is a freely acting power, does not necessarily will advantage by an elicited act, just as neither does it thus necessarily will what is just; however if this single power is considered as it has an affection for advantage and does not have an affection for the just, that is, insofar as it is a non-free appetite, then not to will advantageous things would not thus be in its power, because it would thus be precisely only the natural appetite of an intellectual nature, just as the appetite of a brute is the natural appetite of a sensitive nature.

23. I say therefore that Anselm’s proposition, “No one is able not to will advantageous things” [n.3], must be understood of the power when not speaking of the whole of it, which whole power can freely not-will not only advantageous things but also just ones, because it can freely not-will both the latter and the former; instead it must be understood of the power insofar as it is affected precisely by the affection for advantage, that is, as it is considered under the idea of such appetite yet without including freedom in such appetite; but synderesis does not elicit any act in us in this way; for this reason I said in the solution [n.19] ‘if synderesis is posited as something having an elicited act’.

24. The answer to the third argument [n.4] comes from the same point, that natural will, the way it necessarily tends to the thing willed, does not have an elicited act about that thing but is only in such a nature a certain inclination toward the perfection most suited to it; and this inclination exists necessarily in the nature, although the act in conformity with this inclination and nature is not necessarily elicited; for the act (whether it is in conformity with the inclination and then it is called natural, or not in conformity with it and then it is called against nature) is only elicited by free will, and however much free will may want the opposite of what the inclination is toward, the inclination toward what the inclination was toward is no less necessary, because it remains as long as the nature remains.

25. To the final argument [n.5] I say that this nature alone is free, and it has a mode of acting superior to every other created nature.

III. To the Principal Arguments of the Second Question

26. To the arguments of the second question [nn.8-9].

I say that the habits of the practical intellect are called good or bad because of their agreement with the will, just as - contrariwise - the will can be called right or bent because of its agreement with a right speculative act or a non-right speculative act, which acts are formally in the intellect; however goodness belongs to the will as rightness belongs to the intellect, but goodness is more appropriated to the practical intellect than to the speculative.

27. To the next argument [n.9] response can be made through the remark of the Philosopher in Ethics 7.5.1147a19-22 that “some people, when in a state of passion, speak the words of Empedocles, but they do not at all know them.” And so one can concede that he who simply knows with practical knowledge, not he who knows merely how ‘to say the words’, is conscientious - and the more he knows the more conscientious he is; this would seem it ought most to be said by him whose opinion has already been rejected [Henry’s, n.8, 12-18], because, according to him, in the same instant of time when will is bad reason is blinded, so that no one would in this way have conscience the less even if conscience belongs to the will. The argument then is common to this as to the other part [sc. about synderesis], and it can be solved as in the aforesaid way [sc. by distinguishing elicited act from habit or inclination, nn.23-24].