Is There a Universal Moral Truth?

Is There a Universal Moral Truth?

Macau Inter-University Institute
(IIUM)

Ana Bernadete A. Pangan
ID No. 201313
Friday, 24th of October, 2008

INTRODUCTION TO MORAL PHILOSOPHY (Group A)

CONSCIENCE

Where does your Conscience live?

Where does your Conscience live?

Sigmund Freud tells us that knowing morally right or wrong

depends on our parents, teachers and mentors, in which Lewis actually tells us that the

core value of knowing the moral law comes from God. Which comes to the question,

where does moral law actually come from?

When someone ask you to steal your friend’s wallet, would you? Or if someone would ask

you to kill someone and pay you a million dollars, would you? Have an affair because you

don’t feel at all satisfied with your husband/wife? What one thinks is no more right or wrong

than what another person thinks. It is somehow true that we live our lives according to our

senses of right and wrong.

When we fail to do what we ought, a part of our mind we call “conscience” evokes an

unpleasant feeling we call “guilt.” I mean, is that an indication on what we should feel when we

do such? Or is a reflection on what our parents have taught us?

Two very influential psychologists talks about conscience and tells us how one can decide

from what is morally right or wrong.

Sigmund Freud’s perspective on conscience is that our morality came from our parents,

teachers, and those who were an influence to us when we were young. And that morality based on

the ten commandments, to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself comes from human

experience and not from revelation.

In Freud’s worldview, God is simply a projection of parental authority. And that we

associate parents with our creation and teaching us right and wrong.

He also stated that a child is brought up to a knowledge of his social duties by a system of loving

rewards and punishments.

Freud pushes moreover that...

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