The Notion of Moral Conscience in Seneca’s Moral Psychology

Abstract

My paper investigates whether the Stoic Seneca attributed a new capacity to the commanding-faculty of the soul, the hégemonikon. The concept of moral conscience (conscientia) often appears in Seneca’s moral psychology as a linguistically complex, often symbolic-allegorical form of expression, which I first review in a historical context to analyse the specifics of its use. Next, I examine how Seneca’s notion of conscientia fits into the context of earlier Stoic theories of the emotions, as a result of which moral conscience in Seneca appears as a new capacity of the soul.