Greek · Greek moral and religious psychology
syneidēsis
συνείδησις
Heard as sin-ay-DAY-sis
- Period
- Hellenistic to early Christian
- Semantic range
- Joint knowledge, being privy, inner witness, moral awareness.
- What it can mean
- Knowing something with another, or with oneself as witness. Conscience in Pauline and later Christian usage.
- What it should not be equated with
- Not a synonym for modern phenomenal consciousness. Not the same word as synaisthēsis.
- Primary or early source
- New Testament usage; earlier Greek moral vocabulary.
- Scholarly source
- SEP medieval conscience; Thiel on the later Latin reception.
- Relation to other terms
- Ancestor of Latin conscientia on the knowing-with shore.