The idea of conscience in the mysticism of Richard Rolle and Hegel’s philosophy
Shagi / Steps January 1, 2023 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.22394/2412-9410-2023-9-3-159-173 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
This article compares the theories of conscience of 14th-century mystic Richard Rolle and philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel. For Rolle, conscience is the voice of a transcendent God, formed through mystical aspiration and love for God. For Hegel, conscience is the internalized voice of significant others, shaped by political views or social position. The two perspectives are complementary: one focuses on the formation of conscience, the other on its social functioning. Both agree that conscience requires a religious or spiritual quality to motivate action.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Rolle and Hegel offer complementary theories of conscience: Rolle emphasizes its formation through mystical love for God, while Hegel focuses on its social functioning as internalized others. |
Abstract
This article examines the problem of mystical and religious foundations of morality, which are interconnected, first of all, with the inner world of a person - with duty, conscience, self-esteem. In what follows two theories of conscience are analyzed, compared and contrasted: those of the fourteenth-century mystic Richard Rolle and those of the philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel. The main attention is paid to the comparative analysis of the idea of conscience in the mysticism of Rolle and in Hegel’s moral philosophy. If for Rolle conscience is the voice of the supreme transcendent God, for Hegel conscience is a generalized voice of significant others transferred to the inner plane, which is conditioned by a person’s political views or social position. These points of view do not exclude each other: one focuses on how conscience matures, how it is formed on the basis of mystical aspiration and love for God, while the other focuses on the mechanism of functioning of a mature conscience, which realizes itself in society in a sense of duty. According to Rolle, conscience is the beating of an inner intelligence. In the absence of this, we are unlikely to act upon the knowledge that conscience presents to us. According to Hegel, conscience is the divine voice with immediate knowledge of existence. But to goad us into action conscience must be more than this; its content incorporates an experience with a religious or spiritual quality that is beyond conceptual analysis.