Moral consciousness can be defined as an ability to perceive that a social situation involves a moral dimension. It is the awareness that the consequence of one’s actions for the concerned parties is a morally pertinent issue, and an ability to think of potential consequences. As will be discussed below, moral consciousness has been given different meanings in different fields of scientific inquiry, and there is no widely established view of the content of the concept.

The term “moral consciousness” has come up also in papers discussing historical consciousness though it usually has not been defined or elaborated in depth in that context. That there are connections, or “intersections” (Ammert et al. 2022), between how people relate to history and morality is evident. This happens, for example, in the encounter with history where reading a historical narrative sets in motion a moral evaluation of the historical event and the people involved in it. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a historical narrative that does not invite, at some level, the reader to a moral response.

Exploring similarities and differences between the moral values and norms of the past and the present stimulates historical consciousness because it invites to reflect on the historical continuities and discontinuities and their implications for the future (Ammert 2015). Such reflections might easily express a presentist view that the current prevailing moral values are transhistorically valid, or relativism where every historical period is thought to have its own perception of morality that cannot be related to each other without it being anachronistic. Neither of these two positions is sensitive to the complexity of continuity and discontinuity between the past, present, and future, as in more elaborate historical consciousness. They are also not sensitive to the question as to what extent moral responses are culturally constructed or embedded in the psychology of the human species.