ABSTRACT
The capacity to make a practical judgment as to whether something is to be chosen as morally good, or avoided as morally bad, is called our conscience. This term is also used in a narrower sense, viz. for the consciousness that an act we have ourselves performed was morally right or wrong, and thus for a concrete judgment that can be described graphically as the ‘pronouncement of conscience’ (in the first sense). We speak of a good or a bad conscience, depending upon whether the pronouncement expresses approval or disapproval (cf. Aquinas: Applicatio legis naturalis ad facienda).
