Episode 27, Conscience (Part III - Sigmund Freud)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2017
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Everything you could need is on www.thepanpsycast.com! Please tweet us your thoughts at www.twitter.com/thepanpsycast. Most people understand conscience as something which tells us right from wrong. The conscience is that little voice in your head that tells you to do your homework, go to bed on time and eat 5 a day. In fact, the Oxford Dictionary defines conscience as: "A person's moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one's behaviour." We're going to be questioning this definition extensively. What is conscience? Where does the conscience come from? Where does the word conscience come from? Is conscience fundamental in its own right, or is it acquired through our development? Does the conscience carry any moral authority, and if so, what should be the function of conscience in ethical decision-making? Is conscience just an illusion? To aid our exploration of these questions, we're going to be consulting C. S. Lewis' Studies in Words in Part I, Aquinas' Summa Theologiae in Part II and Sigmund Freud's The Ego and the Id in Part III. In Part IV we'll wrap up the show with some further analysis and discussion and the return of philosophical ultimatum.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Part 3, Freud's understanding of conscience. |
| 0:16.3 | Our inquiry question, what was Sigmund Freud's view of the conscience? |
| 0:20.7 | Very briefly, who was Sigmund Freud's view of the conscience? Very briefly, who was |
| 0:23.0 | Sigmund Freud and what is his paper now a book, Ego and the Id, all about? So who was |
| 0:29.9 | Sigmund Freud, Jack? So he was born in 1856 and he met a late grave in 1939. He was an Austrian |
| 0:37.1 | neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. He |
| 0:41.0 | essentially created a brand new approach to how we look at the human personality. It's regarded |
| 0:46.0 | the most influential and controversial, one of them of the 20th century. There's some fantastic |
| 0:52.9 | episodes in Freud's life and so much has been written. |
| 0:55.4 | Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury to look at in this episode. He has some bouts with |
| 1:00.3 | cocaine. He like to recommend it to his friends and to the people who was treating and he used it |
| 1:07.5 | all throughout his life. He definitely had some problems with at some stages. So we had an interesting episode with Albert Einstein. |
| 1:13.2 | He never actually won a Nobel Prize. |
| 1:15.6 | So he was nominated for 12 years in physiology and medicine. |
| 1:20.0 | And in 1929, the Nobel Committee for Medicine and Engagement expert |
| 1:23.3 | who came to the conclusion that a further investigation in Freud was not necessary |
| 1:26.7 | since Freud's work was no proven scientific value. |
| 1:30.3 | In 1928, Einstein actually said, as his biographer, Peter Gaye says, that he could not offer |
| 1:36.2 | any dependable opinion on the truth of Freud's teaching, adding that it seemed doubtful |
| 1:40.8 | to him what a psychologist like Freud should really be eligible for a Nobel Prize in Medicine. |
| 1:45.8 | He's also nominated 1936, for literature of all things, but didn't win the prize. |
| 1:52.0 | Yeah, I mean, starting off, I mean, I had a lecturer when I was at university, |
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