Conscience and Law

Moderator: The subject of this disputation is a fundamental one and touches the centre of every moral dilemma—for the individual as well as for the community at large. Conscience and law. Are they enemies, and is the most we can hope to achieve an armed neutrality, so that the conflict between them can at least be kept within bounds? Or are they brothers, twins—and Siamese twins at that, so that one must necessarily imply the other? Of course we must first want to see what the words mean, for here, as always, we are at the mercy of the labels we use to avoid the painful work of thinking. Conscience—too easily it can be the name for the spontaneous response of anarchy or anguish: law—as easily it can be the title for no nonsense, the totalitarian’s eternal alibi.To decide what is their relationship, then, must demand a careful scrutiny of what their function is: a function that is proper to the human person, with a mind to know and a will to implement his knowledge. That is why the form of this disputation may be specially useful, demanding as it does a patient definition of terms, and a guarded inspection of their use in argument.Of the method of concession-and-denial I think I need say nothing now: most people are now familiar with this kind of argument. But perhaps I should point out one difference of procedure which we have introduced in order to extend the dialectic as usefully as we may. The disputation will proceed in two directions.