Conscience And Virtue Ethics

of great importance since it gives way on how creation from its creation (exitus) would return (reditus) to God through the example or aid of the Virgin Mary.

Langston, Douglas C. Conscience and Other Virtues. U.S.A: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

In this book, the author delves more on conscience and virtues and by that it becomes crucial in this research. This book is comprised of three parts namely the historical background, the contemporary dismissal of conscience and conscience as a key to virtue ethics and that which makes it crucial in this research for it presents some important topics. In the first Chapter the author discussed the classical background and different notions of famous philosophers and

Bonaventure’ conscience and synderesis. In analyzing St. Bonaventure’s concept of conscience this must be understood in two general parts as how Bonaventure puts it. The first part seems to be a power for discovering the truth of very general practical principles like “obey God,” “honor your parents,” and “do not harm your neighbors” He talks about this power as a light on a par with the power of the intellect to discover the truth of the first principles of theoretical reason. The author labeled it as “the potential conscience,” while the second part of conscience was labeled as the “applied conscience”, for this part of conscience is the application of the very general principles toss situation that maybe either general or particular. According to this book these two are both innate for St. Bonaventure for the latter naturally applies the very general practical principles to situations. The distinction of St. Bonaventure between “potential conscience” and “applied conscience” helps us understand that despite man’s orientation of the good through the use of conscience he still, performs evil. According to the book, it is because of ignorance and misapplication of the “applied

Bonaventure’s works namely, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum and the Collationes in Hexaemeron. Looking at the title, this is focused on the structural similarity of these two works but these two are not related with each other. Though these two conveys a structural similarity Metselaar gave some of the arguments that differs from each other especially on qualifying God as the first known. In Chapter Ten of the Hexaemeron, it is discussed that “divine being comes into the mind first” and that “the first of all intellectual things is first being.” While on the Itinerarium, according to Metselaar, the argument of God as the first known consists of three parts where Bonaventure argued about the divine