Conflict of conscience
A conflict of conscience is an inner dichotomy that a person can get into if they find themselves in the situation of having to act against their own conscience due to economic hardship, social or political pressure, as a result of blackmail or on the orders of a superior . The conflict can also be the result of an ethical dilemma when two different values that are considered to be equal come into conflict with one another. The person exposed to a conflict of conscience will find himself guilty regardless of his decision in his own eyes or those of others , while at the same time delaying a decision can be accused of moral immaturity or cowardice.
Conflicts of conscience in legal theory, philosophical ethics and psychology
In the case of a conflict of duties, conflicts of conscience are important for the legal assessment of criminal offenses. With the freedom of religion closely associated freedom of conscience is also intended to avoid conflicts of conscience and resulted in many modern democracies about the right to conscientious objection and refusal to work on grounds of conscience. In practical philosophy , conflicts of conscience are dealt with as ethical borderline cases, especially in casuistry , in psychology primarily in the form of cognitive dissonances . Within an ideological, legal or social system, they can reveal fundamental structural defects, but they can also result from the contrast between intuitive and rational insights.
In cultural anthropological terms, the conflict of conscience can be described as a conflict between two value systems: One serves to tame “inequality among people” and is a backward-oriented system of social norms, empirically blind to historical processes, the other works progressively forward against “inequality in people”. and give him personal guidelines for his actions, but be blind to structural processes. The one-sided focus on the social leads to ideology, the one-sided personal to utopia. In between, people get into a “conflict of conscience, from which the pure pragmatist can only emerge through aggression against his own person (depression, suicide) or against society (opposition, revolution), and the pure mythic only through 'inner emigration' into ideology and the utopia, that means, however, can save by completely renouncing responsible political action ”.
Conflicts of Conscience in Literature
The conflict between one's own conscience and social norms or applicable law is a common theme in fictional literature. The inner monologue , which then sometimes becomes an inner dialogue between the conflicting reasons of conscience, is often suitable for its explicit representation . In Friedrich Schiller's drama Wallenstein , the conflicts of conscience that arise from simultaneous loyalty to the emperor and to the military leader are themed; they ultimately lead Max Piccolomini, who is additionally driven by his love for Thekla, into suicidal behavior. In a dialogue with the countess, he expresses his inner agony very clearly beforehand:
“I can't take that.
I came here with a firmly resolved soul,
I believed I was doing right and impeccable,
And must stand here like someone who deserves to be hated,
A raw inhuman, burdened by a curse [...] -
The heart in me is indignant, it arises
two voices arguing my chest,
it's night inside me, I don't know how to choose the right.
[…] Where is a voice of
the truth that I am allowed to follow? […]
Should I swear oath and duty to the emperor?
Shall I
send The Patricidal Bullet to Octavio's camp ?
[...] To the noble heart,
the hardest duty could seem the next. Not
the great, only the human happen. "
Also as in the novels Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky are exposed to the characters repeated conflicts of conscience; the attempts to solve them are often what drives the action forward.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Nicolai Hartmann : Ethics . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1926, pp. 462–464.
- ↑ Peter Weidkuhn: Aggression and Normativity. About the mediating role of religion between rule and freedom. Approaches to a cultural anthropological theory of the social norm . In: Anthropos 63/64, 1968/1969, pp. 361-394; P. 372 f.
- ↑ Walter Hinderer : The ladies of the house: A perspective of Schiller's "Wallenstein" . In: Monatshefte 77/4, 1985, pp. 393-402; P. 399.