 As the characterization of conscience as self-assessment here presented suggests, conscience has most often been associated with negative feelings (Arendt 1971), such as shame, guilt, fear, contrition. While these feelings are typical of the Christian understanding of conscience, they need not be tied to a religious view: for most of us, even in our common language, conscience is something that yields negative feelings more often than not—for example we often talk of the “bites of conscience” or of conscience as causing us “remorse” (which derives from the Latin “remordere”, i.e., “to bite again”). However, a joyful conscience that praises and takes pride of one’s own moral merit can be conceived as well. Examples of joyful conscience can be found for instance in Cicero and some Latin Stoics, most prominently Seneca (Sorabji 2014: 25–30). Also in the Protestant tradition started by Luther we find the idea of a joyful conscience, where joy springs not from pride or self-praise, but from awareness of God’s future remission of sins (Luther 1535; Calvin 1536).