Duchowy niepokój, czyli o sumieniu słów kilka

Abstract

The concept of conscience is not an unambiguous term and
is not infrequently exposed to the danger of reducing its characteristic
depth. This danger appears especially where it is understood
above all, or, in extreme cases, merely as man’s ability
or his specific power involving pronouncing judgements on particular
deeds or attitudes, in terms of moral good or evil, passing
over, and sometimes even forgetting about what makes it capable,
as well as the space in which this distinctive process takes
place, thus constitutively belonging to the nature of this specific
human reality.
An opposed view of understanding of conscience as a judgement,
the existentially experienced conscience perceived as
distinctive spiritual space marked with the sense of humanness
appears – with a privileged place for meetings and growth.
Meetings with oneself, with another man and with God, as well as
growing in freedom and love, towards complete humanness.
What best characterises it is the experience and understanding
that authentic self-fulfilment as a person – open with the Absolute,
as well as with the whole reality – means our welfare and
obligates. The emerging responsibility for oneself calls on to
search for forms and ways, not just any, but harmonious with the
discovered sense of one’s own existence, in order to accomplish
this moral good. Whereas, the gradually emerging horizon of
sense, constitutively contributing to man’s moral awareness, not
only lightens self-understanding, but also makes us capable of
appropriate grasping of the deepest essence of good or evil of
our particular decisions. In this way, conscience becomes „the
light”, „the guide” and „the judge” of our being, our self-fulfilment
in freedom.
Many a thing indicate that moral awareness and ability to
pronounce specific judgements, though diverse in terms of proprium
typical of each of them, indeed constitute one, dynamic
and indivisible entity. Breaking it inevitably leads to limiting, and
sometimes even distortion of one’s own humanness.