QuestionsWhat makes something right?Conscience, a divine instinct
What makes something right?Nature or conscience

Conscience, a divine instinct

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 · 1778Man is born good; society corrupts him.
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What it claims

There is, deep in our souls, an innate principle of justice by which we judge good and evil: conscience.

Why

All peoples share the same notions of good and evil, which neither upbringing nor self-interest can explain.

In short

"Conscience, a divine instinct" is an argument by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Emile IV, Creed of a Savoyard Priest) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: nature or conscience). Its claim: There is, deep in our souls, an innate principle of justice by which we judge good and evil: conscience. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P2). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Emile IV, Creed of a Savoyard Priest
Valid with an implicit premise

Note: here a character is speaking, the Savoyard vicar. Rousseau says he "transcribed" the speech as an example, not as a rule; but he later defended it as close to his own thought. The vicar argues that we do not learn to love the good: this feeling, conscience, is innate.

P1Among all peoples, despite opposite religions and customs, we find the same notions of good and evil.
P2 · implicit premiseWhat all peoples agree on, while differing in everything else, comes not from education but from nature.
P3This feeling cannot be explained by self-interest: we admire the just person who sacrifices himself, and self-interest alone explains only the deeds of the wicked.
P4A feeling of good and evil that comes neither from education nor from self-interest is a natural principle in us, as natural as self-love.
Therefore there is, deep in our souls, an innate principle of justice by which we judge good and evil: conscience.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P2, the computer finds a case where all peoples share the same moral notions and self-interest does not explain them, yet they are still learned: then there is no innate principle.
With its four premises, the conclusion follows. Without P2 it no longer does: universal agreement could come from something other than nature, for instance from social needs that are the same everywhere, passed on by education. The vicar states P2 only when answering Montaigne: that is exactly where Locke attacks.
Analogy. Everywhere on Earth, children are afraid of the dark. You could say: it is innate. You could also say: everywhere, parents tell stories about monsters. That everyone does the same does not yet tell us where it comes from.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Pascal (after Montaigne) 1670 · attacks premise 1

There is no universal agreement: what is just on one side of a border is unjust on the other. Laws and customs change with countries and times.

Rousseau replies
Rousseau The Savoyard vicar's reply (Rousseau's character)
The vicar answers Montaigne: a few strange customs, due to local causes, do not destroy the agreement of all peoples. Is there a single country where it is a crime to keep one's word or to be generous, where the good man is scorned and the traitor honoured?
Locke 1689 · attacks premise 2

Even if all men agreed, it would not prove the principle innate: education, company and custom are enough to explain it. Conscience is only our own opinion of our actions, and sincere consciences approve opposite things.

Rousseau replies
Rousseau The Savoyard vicar's reply (Rousseau's character)
The vicar does not name Locke, but he answers the "so-called wise men" for whom everything comes from experience. He grants them that our ideas come from without and that knowledge of the good is not innate. What is innate is not an idea but a feeling: the one that moves us to love the good as soon as reason has shown it to us.
Nietzsche 1887 · attacks the conclusion

"Bad conscience" has nothing divine about it. When life in society prevents our aggressive instincts from coming out, they turn against us: that is how the inner world is born. Conscience has a history, and that history is made of constraint.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1887, after the author's death (1778).