TO THE QUESTION OF THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE

Abstract

This article is dedicated to understanding the nature of conscience, its essential manifestations and features. Conscience is the “core” of a person’s moral life. The conscience acts activate and accumulate the internal energies of the person, which help him/her to be fully connected with the world and to carry out a thorough evaluation of both his/her actions and Others. Therefore, the phenomenon of conscience is inextricably linked to the freedom of a person and his/her efforts to exercise himself/herself as a Human, to find his/her own inner voice. Despite its intimacy, conscience never closes within the limits of individual existence, but has unconditional openness to the world, is a keen awareness of responsibility for our actions. Conscience is a testament of the fact that, at a deep (implicative) level, we are rooted in, and inextricably linked to, one Reality. As a result of critical analysis, it is argued that conscience emerges as an internal potentiality of a person, a continuous process of self-determination and formation. Conscience is dialectic in nature, combining internal/external, individual/social, subjective/objective, rational/irrational aspects. The complexity of the phenomenon is manifested in the attempts to symbolically identify it as Call, Witness, Demon, Worm, Judge, etc. Conscience is impossible outside the dialogue of the person with himself/herself and Others, because in the communication process the inner growth and formation of the person take place. Conscience defines a “coordinate system” within which a person’s life moves and divides the line between Good and Evil, Real and Ideal, Existent and Desired. Accordingly, conscience is ideal in essence and is an indispensable structure of human consciousness, linked to the boundary questions of a person regarding his/her own nature.