The Single Individual and the Searcher of Hearts: A Retrieval of Conscience in the Work of Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard

Jeff Morgan argues that both Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard think of conscience as an individual’s moral self-awareness before God, specifically before the claim God makes on each person. This innovative reading corrects prevailing views that both figures, especially Kant, lay the groundwork for the autonomous individual of modern life – that is, the atomistic individual who is accountable chiefly to themselves as their own lawmaker. This book first challenges the dismissal of conscience in 20th-century Christian ethics, often in favour of an emphasis on corporate life and corporate self-understanding. Morgan shows that this dismissal is based on a misinterpretation of Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy and moral theology, and of Søren Kierkegaard’s second authorship. He does this with refreshing discussions of Stanley Hauerwas, Oliver O’Donovan, and other major figures. Morgan instead situates Kant and Kierkegaard within a broad trajectory in Christian thought in which an individual’s moral self-awareness before God, as distinct from moral self-awareness before a community, is an essential feature of the Christian moral life.

Jeff Morgan is Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics at Saint Joseph's College of Maine, USA. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, USA, in Christian Ethics and was a Catherine of Siena Fellow in Ethics at Villanova University, USA. He lives in Portland, Maine with his wife and four children.

Brian Brock is a Reader in Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

Susan F. Parsons is editor of Studies of Christian Ethics, the journal of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics.