From the Inner Sanctum to the Res Publica: Augustinian Conscience and Public Reasoning

This paper argues for the constructive potential and significance of Augustine’s account of conscience for contemporary tensions in public life regarding conscientious disagreement and public reasoning. First, I note how contemporary accounts of conscience typically characterize it as a faculty and the potential risks of this in curtailing public reasoning while fostering partisan epistemologies. Then, I explore Augustine’s account of conscience, contextualized by earlier Roman accounts of conscientia, and suggest how Augustinian conscience is an interior ‘knowledge’ that integrates what we know with another’s. Finally, I suggest how Augustine might cast new light on contemporary concerns in relation to disagreement in public life, namely: how might conscientious disagreements arising from different beliefs, commitments, and traditions accord with robust notions of free and responsible citizenship? 

Part I: Conscientia in Cicero, Seneca, and Lactantius 

Compared to ancient and late antique accounts of conscience—e.g., as a virtuous practice of moral self-awareness (cf. Langston, 2001; Sorabji, 2014; Blowers, 2020)—contemporary accounts typically characterize it as a faculty, importing a subjective immediacy that risks curtailing public deliberation and reasoning and fostering self-enclosed, ‘partisan’ epistemologies (Giublini, 2023; cf. Rorty, 1991; Herdt, 2022). 

My paper begins by exploring the historical development and difference between contemporary accounts of conscience as a faculty, and accounts of conscientia in Cicero, Seneca, and Lactancius—three earlier Roman thinkers who influenced Augustine’s thinking on a variety of questions (cf. Alimi, 2024). What emerges is a constellation wherein conscientia is both an inner sanctum and a forum, open to social judgements (e.g., Cicero, mil. 61) and God (e.g., Seneca, ep. 83.1). Lactantius, drawing on Cicero and Seneca, will later conceive of conscience as being interior yet ultimately open to others—especially God, thereby evincing a need for the virtuous practice of self-examination (e.g., div. inst. 6.24.11-20).

Unlike a faculty that makes immediate, self-authenticating, or absolutized judgements, conscientia does not simply entail sincere, personal judgements that are absolutized without reference to other citizens or communities. Rather, conscientia is 'Janus-esque': entailing 'interior', personal knowledge and discernment that are completed in discursive acknowledgement and dialogue with others. This paves the way for Augustine’s account, wherein conscience is a sanctum, voice, and practice in relation to Christ and other hearers. 

Part II: Augustine on Conscience

Here, I explore Augustine’s account of conscience, which drew on Cicero, Seneca, and Lactantius. For Augustine, conscience is an excellence connected to practical wisdom, involving one’s affective and cogitative faculties (cf. trin. 12.13-18). Moreover, Augustine’s account—in accordance with late antique views of conscientia—affirms conscience’s critically reflective orientation while insisting on its discursive, truth-seeking nature since it is always already intersubjective and ultimately before God (cf. conf. 3.6.11, 8.7.18). Like Lactantius, Augustine depicts conscience as our inner sanctum before God, thereby enjoining human self-examination and confession in conspectu Dei (e.g., en. Ps. 5.11; cf. Clausen, 2017). 

Yet, while Augustine affirms conscience’s interiority and relation to moral standards, he does not understand it as an inviolable, innate faculty to be immediately followed but something fallibly formed by socio-cultural norms and warped by sin (conf. 3.8.15-16). Conscience requires repair, cultivation, and guidance regarding its proper use vis-à-vis truth (conf. 3.9.17). Therefore, while sincere appeals to conscience are important, an Augustinian view might suggest that they are initia for moral reasoning—not termini (conf. 10.26.37).

Finally, I will argue how Augustinian conscience is more than an inner sanctum; it is also indispensable for public life by integrating learning and public reasoning with deontic constraints like obligation and responsibility (cf. Herdt, 2022). Augustinian conscience is not merely where one reflectively encounters oneself or one’s community but, ultimately, Christ. Hence, I turn to Augustine’s discussions of truth, ‘illumination’, and learning in mag. and conf. to elucidate the interior and public aspects of conscience wherein Christ speaks within and without to diverse communities in our commonwealth (cf. mag. 11.38, 14.46; conf. 12.25.34-12.31.42). 

Part III: Augustinian Conscience and Public Reasoning

Finally, in considering the ways in which public reasoning emerges from a plurality of different traditions, I suggest that Augustine’s account of conscience offers distinctive resources for contemporary questions about disagreement. Firstly, Augustinian conscience is ‘realist’ in its relation to our common world, thereby affirming our common access to its accompanying, independent truths in God. However, it is also fallibilist apropos the sincere conscientious judgements of particular persons and communities vis-à-vis truth. In relation to contemporary publics and counterpublics, this suggests that public reasoning and disagreements emerge from different traditions, communities, and pieties so that constructive dialogue will be found in recognizing and engaging such differences rather than eliding them (cf. Stout, 2004). Following Augustine, we might imagine a plurality of persons interiorly attending to one ‘public’ truth in one common world. Thus, persons and communities might deliberate and disagree without being ultimately incommensurable (cf. Ticciati, 2022). 

Moreover, my Augustinian account of conscience follows interpretations of Augustine's relation to the saeculum as a ‘mixed time’—rather than simply a sinful, earthly city—wherein no single vision can presume total authority (Gregory, 2008; Lamb, 2022). This might provide Augustinian resources for resisting coercion and partisan epistemologies amidst disagreement while also acknowledging Cavellian separateness and the seriousness of political disagreement without necessarily ossifying either one (cf. Cavell, 1979; Mouffe, 2013).

In exploring the significance of Augustinian conscience for public life, conscience entails both a sincere and critical moral self-awareness and a robust, expanded vision of oneself as inextricably bound up with other citizens and communities in a mixed body.

Thus, Augustine provides resources for reimagining a well-formed conscience as a practice of reasoning that arises from particular traditions or communities and is always already related to truth. Following Augustine, acknowledging our differences and separateness apropos conscience might also entail acknowledging something more: namely, a life and love that is particular to each yet common to all (conf. 10.3.4; cf. lib. arb. 2.14). In learning together, each with our own personal conscience yet ‘taught’ by the same Teacher, Augustine provides reasons and resources for living well amidst serious, sustained disagreement since we are fellow citizens of a mixed body and partakers of a common good.