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Some years ago President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, in his address delivered at a Harvard commencement, said: “The main task in the coming era is a radical renewal of our sense of responsibility. Our conscience must catch up to our reason.…” Havel joins the three concepts of reason, conscience, and responsibility, implying that improvement of conscience is the key to a better sense of responsibility. The word “conscience” historically has carried various meanings (see the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary). At one time it referred generally to all inward knowledge, and the entire range of consciousness. Later, it referred specifically to knowledge shared with another, and only slowly came to be narrowed to the particular way we understand it today-namely, the feeling within us of needing to adhere to our inner sense of right and wrong.
Although Shakespeare used Hamlet to assert that “conscience doth make cowards of us all,” there is, I believe, also that part of conscience that enables us to dare and, sometimes, that even makes heroes of us all. For the sense of right and wrong is not only cognitive but also affective. Perhaps it originates from the infant's intuitive experience of making its early yes or no decisions: yes meaning good, therefore swallow and keep inside, or no meaning bad, therefore spit or vomit out (Spitz, 1957). Over time, yes and no fuse with good and bad, with right and wrong. Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (1968) defines morals as one's relationship to character, viewed as good or bad. It deals with the shaping or regulation of behavior. The word “ethics” itself derives from the Greek word for character. In distinguishing between the words moral, ethical, and virtuous-all of which pertain to conforming to standards of right or good-Webster's further defines “moral”