The many great across the world

news, and the two are of physical

and bless you all of physical.

He bless you, Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at

at www. History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, Do the Right Thing, 13th Century Ethics.

I'd like you to imagine that you're riding the London underground at rush hour and that you have managed to get a seat.

Or perhaps you really are a Londoner who is riding the Underground at Rush Hour while listening

to this, in which case you were no doubt already imagining that you had a seat. Now imagine that you notice a woman with a swollen belly standing right nearby.

Being, like all my listeners and outstanding and admirable human being, you hasten to offer her your seat.

As it happens, another passenger standing next to you turns out to be a philosopher.

She also turns out to be one of those rare philosophers who is actually socially outgoing.

I did say you'd have to use your imagination.

She asks you why you offered your seat to the pregnant woman.

Probably you'd shrug and say that it was obviously the right thing to do.

The philosopher, being a philosopher, might reply, sure, but that doesn't explain why you did

it.

People fail to do the right thing all the time. To which you would presumably say something to the effect that it would not have felt right to continue sitting there while someone in greater need was forced to stand. your conscience would not have allowed it.

This answer would strike the philosopher as intriguing, especially if she happened to have an interest

in 13th century moral theory. Medieval thinkers devoted careful attention to the phenomenon of moral conscience.

Some of them saw it as playing precisely the role just suggested.

Conscience explains why you actually perform the actions you take to be good,

rather than just understanding that that would be the right thing to do and then doing something else.

...