Conscience and ideology

The purpose of the article is to analyze the relationship between the phenomenon of conscience and ideology. The work uses psychoanalytic and cultural-historical approaches, the methods of critical philosophical reflection and dialectical logic are applied. Conscience is viewed as a person’s ability to critically assess his or her thoughts and actions in accordance with personal ideas about what should be done. At the same time, attention is focused on the fact that feelings of shame and conscience are inherent in all people, since they are fundamental in the mechanisms of human consciousness and self-consciousness. Actually, their presence acts as one of the main features which distinguish humans from other animals. In turn, ideas about what is due are dynamic, since they are fixed by specific actors of the cultural and historical process, who are individuals who have determined their understanding of what is due, values and ways to achieve them, who have sufficient will to convince others that their guidelines are correct. But not all ideals set a progressive, humanistic direction. At the same time, the work emphasizes that no personal ideas about what should be done can take the form of a general ideology if they do not reflect, to one degree or another, the material interests of the most part of society. At the same time, the logic of the study leads to the conclusion that the absence of a common ideology that promotes humanistic values aggravates the moral disorientation of representatives of modern Russian society, reducing the level of self-control provided by conscience.