synderesis

Blending knowledge of absolutes with practical judgment is the business of synderesis.

An alternative interpretation of synderesis was proposed by Bonaventure, who considered it as the natural inclination of the will towards moral good.

But, as an intellectual disposition concerned with knowledge of the first principles of action, synderesis provides only the universal premise of the practical syllogism.

Synderesis or synteresis, in scholastic moral philosophy, is the natural capacity or disposition (habitus) of the practical reason to apprehend intuitively the universal first principles of human action.

Similarly, the capacity or disposition that allows the practical reason to apprehend intuitively the principles or laws that preside over its discursive reasoning regarding human action is called synderesis.

Conscience, or 'conscientia', was the process of judgment which acts upon this innate synderesis: the "application of knowledge to activity"(Summa Theologiae, I-II, I).Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas emphasized that "Synderesis is said to be the law of our mind, because it is a habit containing the precepts of the natural law, which are the first principles of human actions."

Following Aquinas, Budziszewski distinguishes between synderesis, which supplies the first principles of practical reason and which he calls "deep conscience," and conscientia, which he calls "surface conscience" and supplies judgments about particular acts.

As certain principles are immanent in the mind for its speculative activity, so also a "special disposition of works" - or the synderesis (rudiment of conscience) - is inborn in the "practical reason", affording the idea of the moral law of nature so important in medieval ethics.

To complete the practical discourse and reach a conclusion regarding what has to be done hic et nunc [here and now] and what means are to be used, other capacities are necessary besides synderesis, and to actually effect the action other faculties are required besides reason.

Also the precepts of natural law can be considered object of synderesis insofar as all the things towards which the human being has a natural inclination are naturally apprehended by the intellect as good and therefore as objects to be pursued, and their opposites as evils to be avoided.

Thus, conscience was considered an act or judgment of practical reason that began with synderesis, the structured development of our innate remnant awareness of absolute good (which he categorised as involving the five primary precepts proposed in his theory of Natural Law) into an acquired habit of applying moral principles.

In purportedly morally mature mystical people who have developed this capacity through daily contemplation or meditation combined with selfless service to others, critical conscience can be aided by a "spark" of intuitive insight or revelation (called marifa in Islamic Sufi philosophy and synderesis in medieval Christian scholastic moral philosophy).