Question

Differentiate between law and conscience with examples. Discuss how law and conscience are two important components of ethical guidance?

Answer 1

While law defines a course of action to be followed, as determined by due process in a state, with the objective of achieving common good and imposes an obligation, conscience is the intrinsic intuitive capacity to discriminate between right and wrong. For example: if someone is on the accident site , a conscientious person will help the injured person, but the same person may not have any legal obligation to help the injured person. He may not be legally accountable to the state/society but he is conscientiously accountable to himself. However, without application of conscience,legal goals cannot be achieved.For example, there is Anti dowry law, but it would seldom induce empathetic behavior in a person devoid of conscience. Some thinkers have stated that conscience and law are complementary to each other and helping each other to achieve the common goal of the society. Thus, law and conscience together help in determining what is right and what is wrong. In the beginning, ethical behavior is enforced through imposition of law, but with the development of consciousness, the man is guided by conscience. For instance, while a Sexual harassment law may impose on the people ethical conduct towards women at workplace, with the development of conscience this value becomes ingrained and guides the people and organisation to provide 4 GS Paper 4_1 Answer Key safe environment for women. Conscience is an important tool even for such situations when law is silent about what course of action is ethical. So, both Law and Conscience is an important tool for ethical guidance.