MORAL-PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF CONSCIENCE.PART II. CONSCIENCE IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY
The paper consists of two parts and analyses some cases in recent Russian psychological studies of conscience (part 1) comparatively with some cases of philosophical approaches to conscience (part 2), explicitly those, which represent conscience in functional and normative dynamics. On the assumption that conscience is a moral phenomenon, it is important to specify its place and role in the structure of morality (moral consciousness), how it differs from other moral phenomena (duty, responsibility, honor, dignity, etc.), particularly those, which contribute into the person’s self-control over her decisions and actions (what has been demonstrated in Oleg Drobnitskii’s conception of conscience). Different aspects of self-consciousness, namely prospective and retrospective, which are evident in conscience evolve at individual level in an uneven manner and characterize together with other features different stages of individual moral matureness. Gradation in moral development, specifically as it is manifested in the development of consciences is indicative both for the stages of moral development and the types of moral character; however, they are detected best of all in the form of stages of individual moral development. Some broadly known conceptions of individual moral development (John Rawls, Lawrence Kohlberg) have provided fordefining “pure” types of moral characters, following which “intermixed” types could be modelled to be implemented to diverse tasks of empirical research on conscience.