Conscience: Phenomena and Theories [Translation ed.] 0268103178, 9780268103170

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CONSCIENCE

HENDRIK G. STOKER TRANSLATED BY PHILIP E. BLOSSER F O R E W O R D B Y D. F. M. S T R A U S S

C O N SC I E N C E PHENOMENA AND THEORIES

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu English Language Edition Copyright © 2018 University of Notre Dame Translated by Philip E. Blosser from Das Gewissen: Erscheinungsformen und Theorie by Hendrik G. Stoker, vol. 2 in the series Schriften zur Philosophie und Soziologie (series editor Max Scheler), printed by Mänicke & Jahn A.-G., Rudolstad. Copyright © 1925 by Friedrich Cohen in Bonn All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stoker, H. G. (Hendrik Gerhardus), author. Title: Conscience : phenomena and theories / Hendrik G. Stoker ; translated by Philip E. Blosser. Other titles: Gewissen. English Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017055847 (print) | LCCN 2017056757 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268103194 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268103200 (epub) | ISBN 9780268103170 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268103178 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Conscience. Classification: LCC BJ1471 (ebook) | LCC BJ1471.S713  2018 (print) | DDC 170—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055847 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected]

To my parents with gratitude and love

Contents



Foreword  D. F. M. Strauss

ix



Translator’s Introduction xiii



Conscience: Phenomena and Theories



Editor’s Foreword   Max Scheler

3



Author’s Preface

7

1 2

Current Scholarship and Orientation

11

The Ambiguity of Conscience

16



Excursus: A Brief History of Theories of Conscience

35

3 4 5 6 7

Intellectualism and Bad Conscience

75

Intuitionism and Bad Conscience

106

Voluntarism and Bad Conscience

125

Emotionalism and Bad Conscience

157

Personal Evil and the Essence of Conscience

211

viii Contents

8 9 10

The Problem of the Genesis of Conscience

231

Some Theories of the Development of Conscience

244

The Reliability of Conscience

273

Notes

294

Bibliography

333



349

Index

Foreword D. F. M. Strauss

Hendrik G. Stoker was an eminent philosopher in the Afrikaner Reformed tradition. He was a man of diverse affiliations and diverse influences, all of which played into his thought and writing. He was closely affiliated with the neo-Kuyperian tradition of Reformational Philosophy pioneered by Herman Dooyeweerd and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven. From his vantage point in South Africa, Stoker carried on a lively debate with Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, and their disciples throughout his career. Like them, he was influenced by the neo-Calvinist movement stemming from the remarkable figure of Abraham Kuyper, who was not only a statesman and prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905 but also a noted theologian and seminal original thinker. Like them, Stoker also fell heir to the legacy of the great neo-Calvinist theologian Herman Bavinck. Unlike them, however, Stoker was not so disposed to dismiss every classic metaphysical distinction—such as “substance” versus ­“accidents”—when it appeared in thinkers like Bavinck or Kuyper. Unlike Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven, moreover, Stoker also studied with Max Scheler, adapting the latter’s phenomenological method to his own Reformed outlook. These differences and ix

x  Foreword

affinities have led to stimulating discussions among Calvinist philosophers about the relationship of R ­ eformational thinking to Scholastic and phenomenological categories of thought—a discussion that Stoker’s influence has significantly enlivened with his contributions. One of Stoker’s most profoundly original, significant, and unjustly neglected works is Das Gewissen: Erscheinungsformen und Theorien. The work has been too long overlooked, not only for the many reasons, cited in translator Philip Blosser’s introduction, related to the long shadow cast by the aforementioned Calvinist debates over the relationship of Reformational philosophy to Scholastic and phenomenological categories of thought, but also because it has remained untranslated from its original German for far too many years. I myself have seen a copy of Das Gewissen, but I unfortunately have not owned one. This explains why it has been an exceptional experience for me to finally read Das Gewissen in English translation. The neglect of this singular study of conscience, with its detailed analysis of associated psychological phenomena and various philosophical theories of conscience by a Calvinist philosopher, has been exceedingly unfortunate—it is gratifying to see this situation remedied by Blosser’s English translation. It is an exceptional work within the field of moral psychology and philosophy, which should be of interest not only to philosophers and psychologists but also to theologians, epistemologists, and those interested in moral issues generally. Although Stoker was modest about the scope of his project, the scholarship is solid and amazing, displaying a sound knowledge of related literature that is reflected in notes and wide-ranging references. Stoker was on the forefront of knowledge about the leading figures of various fields of study. His exposition of the ideas and conceptions of the leading intellectuals of his time is impressive and in many instances could serve as a brief orientation to the views of the authors discussed by him. Well written and well organized, Das Gewissen also reflects an exceptional mastery of the German language—we are grateful that the translator succeeds in transferring these lingual skills into the English translation. Blosser’s translation is very good, and the work will definitely be readable and accessible to an American audience. I am not aware of anything comparable to Stoker’s study of conscience in English or in other European languages.

Foreword xi

I should mention that I have most of the works and monographs written by Stoker in my study room at home—a collection I began in the early 1960s. I also had the privilege of meeting Stoker in 1969 during a philosophical discussion held near Potchefstroom, South Africa. I also contributed to a special issue of the scholarly journal Koers in 1994 dedicated to the legacy of Stoker. In my contribution I discussed an article by Stoker on the modern theory of biological descent he published in 1927, two years after the appearance of Das Gewissen.1 Stoker’s views on the comparative ways in which humans and animals experience reality could be profitably compared, I contend, with those of Jakob von Uexküll, well known for his theory of Umwelt, and also with the views of Adolf Portmann, who significantly notes the mysterious fact that fullgrown organisms present themselves as purposeful structured wholes.2 It should be also noted that I first met Philip Blosser, the translator of Stoker’s work, at the Second and Third International Symposia organized by the Stichting voor Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte in the summers of 1982 and 1986 in Zeist, Netherlands, where he delivered the papers “Edmund Husserl and Kitaro Nishida: The Phenomenological Connection” and “Reconnoitering Dooyeweerd’s Theory of Man.” Blosser was introduced to the philosophy of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven as a student of H. Evan Runner at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before going on to study (at Runner’s suggestion) at Duquesne University, where he wrote a dissertation (at Ted Plantinga’s suggestion) on Scheler’s phenomenology. Thus he is somewhat uniquely and fortuitously situated to serve as translator of Stoker’s work. Like Stoker, he has been schooled in the neo-Kuyperian philosophical traditions of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven. Like Stoker, he has also studied the phenomenology of Scheler, who was Stoker’s mentor at Munich. Like Stoker, furthermore, he is also somewhat amicably disposed toward the classical metaphysical categories of Aristotle and Aquinas, doubtless influenced to some degree by his later embrace of Roman Catholicism. Whatever one makes of these influences, they surely contribute to a sympathetic and well-informed translation of Stoker’s work.3 One final thought. As I was reading over this translation of Das ­Gewissen, I was forcibly struck at how Stoker presents a view of conscience in which evil is a necessary presupposition. In other words, conscience is regarded as inconceivable without a personal awareness of

xii  Foreword

moral responsibility for evil—this awareness of the possibility or actuality of personal evil is regarded as the essential feature in our experience of conscience. This is remarkable, because, by contrast, evil is normally seen as a parasite within the good order of creation. Perhaps this insight may be credited to an Augustinian perspective within Stoker’s radical Calvinist view of original sin. I commend this work and its translation to anyone interested in understanding more deeply the nature of human conscience and the diverse and fascinating phenomena associated with the experience of guilt, remission of guilt, and forgiveness. It is a work that should be of interest not only to trained philosophers or psychologists but also to a broadly educated laity from diverse lives and worldviews.

Notes 1.  See Strauss, “Die vakwetenskaplike en wysgerige betekenis van Stoker”; and Stoker, “Die Desendensieleer.” 2. Uexküll, Umwelt and Theoretische Biologie; Adolf Portmann, “Vorwort.” 3.  Representative of this sympathetic character is an article by Blosser titled “Toward a Resolution,” which places Scheler and Dooyeweerd in dialogue with each other, the original of which was first published in Italian under the title “Per una soluzione.”

Translator’s Introduction

Hendrik G. Stoker’s study of conscience is a remarkable work. Originally written as a dissertation at the University of Cologne under the celebrated German philosopher Max Scheler, it was first published under the title of Das Gewissen: Erscheinungsformen und Theorien in Bonn by Verlag von Friedrich Cohen in 1925. Acclaimed and well regarded by philosophers in the phenomenological tradition, such as Scheler, Martin Heidegger, and Herbert Spiegelberg, Das Gewissen is, if not above criticism in every detail, quite probably the single most comprehensive philosophical treatment of conscience in any language, not to mention a treatment that combines a perspective deeply informed by the traditions of Western Christianity with an uncanny gift for essential phenomenological description and a conscientious disposition for thoroughness. A work of surprising scope, substance, and insight, Stoker’s study offers a detailed historical survey of the concept of conscience from ancient times, through the Middle Ages, and into modern thinkers, such as Joseph Butler, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, John Henry Cardinal Newman, F. J. J. Buytendijk, Martin Kähler, Albrecht Ritschl, and others. He analyzes not only the concept of conscience in various academic theories but also various terms for conscience, etymologies, and even colloquial proverbs about xiii

xiv  Translator’s Introduction

c­ onscience in different languages. Most notably, he presents a systematic and phenomenologically rich analysis of various types of theories of ­conscience—which he divides into intellectualist, intuitivist, voluntarist, and emotionalist—and he also gives an insightful discussion of problems and theories related to the genesis, reliability, and validity of conscience. Particularly remarkable is the dexterity, sensitivity, and subtlety with which Stoker analyzes the diverse moral, psychological, and spiritual phenomena associated with the interior experience of bad conscience, which turns out to be of decisive significance for understanding conscience. Das Gewissen promises to be of special interest not only to scholars in the phenomenological tradition, including those interested in phenomenological psychology, but also to those interested in moral and religious psychology, ethics, and religion. It should also find a warm welcome among the educated laity. It is an eminently accessible and readable work.

Reception of the work The reception of Stoker’s study of conscience among those in the phenomenological school of philosophy is worthy of some consideration. In his widely respected two-volume work, The Phenomenological Movement (1976), Spiegelberg mentions Stoker among “at least two” of Scheler’s students who “deserve special mention,” referring to “the South African philosopher Hendrik G. Stoker, [who] prepared a noteworthy monograph on conscience considered primarily as the expression of the evil in man, a study which Scheler himself recommended particularly for its phenomenological insights.”1 Again, in reviewing the development of the phenomenological movement internationally, Spiegelberg mentions that “South Africa is noteworthy chiefly in connection with Scheler’s influence on H. G. Stoker at the University of Potchefstroom in the Transvaal.”2 Scheler himself observes in his preface to Das Gewissen that Stoker’s work not only takes complete account of the existing German works on conscience, but it is also “the most analytically incisive and pene-

Translator’s Introduction xv

trating, . . . exhibits the greatest breadth,” and is “the most complete . . . because it tackles the problem simultaneously from the points of view of psy­chology of language, essential and descriptive phenomenology, onto- and phylo-genetics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion.” He continues: “What is best and most beneficial in his presentation may be his earnest struggle for a living and immediate grasp of conscience. . . . With distinguished mastery of the methods of essential-­ phenomenological analysis, the author lays bare the vital nerve of conscience.”3 Then, remarking on Stoker’s Calvinist South African back­ground, Scheler writes: The origins of the author in the religious and cultural milieu of Dutch-Afrikaner Calvinism undoubtedly predispose him to a high degree to an investigation of an inner personal faculty such as conscience. Perhaps nowhere in the world has this introspective penchant been experienced in such purity, rigor, power, and depth as it has, in the best times, in that religious and Christian heroism that the history of religion attaches to the name of Calvin. A distinct feeling of this kind permeates the author’s analysis and his attitude toward life and the world, which is as austere as it is magisterial, and it is bound up almost exclusively with God in the inner powers of his mind. No matter how one may be inclined to appraise this prodigious historical ethos, it serves to provide a particularly favorable disposition for purposes of investigating the phenomena of conscience. . . . . . . Professor Stoker’s thorough and deeply penetrating treatment of these problems, which most of the relevant current works of psychology and hitherto existing monographs have treated in a completely inadequate way, constitutes a significant landmark for all further research.4 Again, in his 1926 preface to the third edition of his own work, Formalism in Ethics, Scheler comments on how his own writings have been elaborated upon and deepened, but in a manner different from Nicolai Hartmann’s, by his South African student, Stoker. Das Gewissen, he says, has been “very well received by critical readers” and represents “the

xvi  Translator’s Introduction

most precise and minute analysis on the phenomenon of conscience that we have today,” and it “has also been recognized on various occasions by eminent critics.”5 Heidegger, in a section of Being and Time entitled “The Existential-­ Ontological Foundations of Conscience,” mentions the interpretations of conscience found in Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and suggests that one also should take note of the treatments by Martin Kähler, Albrecht Ritschl, and Stoker. Never generous in his praise of anyone who fails to plumb the depths of the “ontological roots” of phe­nomena according to his own particular “existential interpretation,” Heidegger nevertheless praises Stoker’s work in his typical backhanded way: This is a wide-ranging investigation; it brings to light a rich multiplicity of conscience-phenomena, characterizes critically the different possible ways of treating this phenomenon itself, and lists some further literature, though as regards the history of the concept of conscience, this list is not complete. Stoker’s monograph differs from the existential interpretation we have given above in its approach and accordingly in its results as well, regardless of many points of agreement. . . . Stoker’s monograph signifies notable progress as compared with previous interpretations of conscience, though more by its comprehensive treatment of the conscience-­ phenomena and their ramifications than by exhibiting the ontological roots of the phenomenon itself.6 It is notable that in a dissertation submitted jointly to the University of Montreal and the Sorbonne in Paris, entitled “Conscience and Attestation: The Methodological Role of the ‘Call of Conscience’ (Gewissensruf ) in Heidegger’s Being and Time” (2011), Gregor B. Kasowski claims that Heidegger never once described conscience as a “call” before reading Stoker’s Das Gewissen in 1925. His dissertation examines specifically how Stoker’s phenomenology contributed to shaping Heidegger’s account of the “existential call.”7 Despite this evidence of early recognition and esteem for Stoker’s work, surprisingly little attention has been paid to Stoker’s Das Gewissen since the 1920s. Indeed, there is a distinct lacuna in the lit-

Translator’s Introduction xvii

erature of phenomenology on Stoker’s treatment of conscience. There is no mention whatsoever of Stoker, for example, in David Stewart and Algis Mic­kunas’s Exploring Phenomenology: A Guide to the Field and Its Literature (1974), the 764-page Encyclopedia of Phenomenology edited by Lester Embree (1997), Robert Sokolowski’s Introduction to Phenomenology (2000), or Dermot Moran’s sizeable Introduction to Phenomenology (2000).8 In fact, one is hard-pressed to find even a passing reference to Stoker in philosophical, psychological, or theological literature outside of a small circle of Dutch Calvinist writers. This is extremely unfor­tunate. Yet the reasons for this lacuna in contemporary scholarship, beyond the general waning of interest in phenomenology and the intuitive phenomenological approach embraced by both Stoker and Scheler, may become clearer in the course of examining Stoker’s personal ­background.

Stoker’s background Hendrik G. Stoker (1889–1993) was born in the Boer Republic of Transvaal in South Africa at the beginning of the devastating Second Anglo–Boer War (1899–1902), and he grew up among the defeated Boers under British colonial rule. He belonged to the Afrikaner branch of the Dutch Calvinist tradition that took root among the Dutch immigrants of South Africa.9 He was first sent to the Deutche Schule in Johannesburg, then in 1916 to the Potchefstroom Gimnasium and the Reformed (Calvinist) Theological School in Potchef­ stroom, which eventually grew into Potchefstroom University, from which he graduated in 1919 just after the First World War. J. D. du Toit (Toitus), the celebrated military chaplain with the Boer Commandos who became rector of the Theological School and later chancellor of the university, was well acquainted with the philosophical climate of the Netherlands, having earned his doctorate at the Calvinist-founded Free University of Amsterdam, and he advised Stoker to study at the Free University, providing him with funding.10 After earning his master’s degree from the University of South Africa in 1921, Stoker therefore resolved to complete his g­ raduate studies at the Free University. He had hoped to study with the celebrated Dutch Reformed ­theologian

xviii  Translator’s Introduction

Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), but by the time Stoker arrived in The Hague in 1922, Bavinck had already died. At a loss regarding his further study options, Stoker sought the advice of S. O. Los, a student who was finishing up his own dissertation that year. Los referred Stoker to the respected philosopher D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, who was then serving as a minister in The Hague.11 This referral was propitious. Vollenhoven had been advised himself by the Dutch anthropologist F. J. J. Buytendijk in 1920 to go to Germany to study under the psychologist Felix Krueger in Leipzig. Buytendijk in turn advised Stoker to go to Germany and study under Scheler in Cologne. These connections were quite natural: like Scheler, Buytendijk was a phenomenologist and, like Stoker, a Calvinist,12 and he taught at the Free University from 1914 to 1925 before converting to Catholicism in 1937.13 Scheler, for his part, was widely regarded as the leading philosopher of Europe between the world wars, although his influence has waned since.14 It was therefore no small thing that Stoker was able to pursue his doc­torate under someone of Scheler’s philosophical stature between the wars.15 Stoker tells us something about the appalling conditions in which the German people lived during this period, making them easy prey for the National Socialists, a development that helped precipitate the Second World War (1939–45).16 The turbulent effects of the war years were also felt in South Africa, where Stoker had taught since 1925. Great Britain’s call for her colonial subjects to take up arms against Germany met with resistance from many Afrikaners who nursed bitter memories of British brutality during their conquest of the Boer Republics and their formation of the colonial Union of South Africa as a British dominion in 1910. Native Afrikaners demonstrated their defiance in 1939 by organizing an anti-British organization with pro-German sympathies called the Ossewabrandwag.17 Stoker was a captain within the organization and was imprisoned in the Koffiefontein internment camp for a year, ostensibly because of opposition to the pro-British policies of Prime Minister Jan Smuts. Stoker and his fellow inmates reportedly made the best of their imprisonment, forming a “Camp University,” of which he was appointed rector.18 Stoker was a product of difficult times and had to navigate his way among significant rival ideologies and worldviews and philosophically justify his positions so as to offer guidance to others. These were not

Translator’s Introduction xix

i­nnocent theoretical concerns but all-too-real challenges, namely, the British imperialism that led to the Anglo–Boer Wars; German National Socialism that clashed with Anglo-American liberalism during the Second World War; the republican nationalist struggle for freedom from British colonial rule in Africa; not to mention the ideology of apartheid that was official policy in South Africa until 1994.19 Some today might be tempted to say that Stoker found himself in certain respects on “the wrong side of history.” Nevertheless, throughout these historical upheavals, the hardships of his wartime internment, the ideological challenges he faced, and the academic projects he undertook, Stoker’s single most abiding commitment throughout his career was to his religious faith as a son of the Reformed Church in South Africa. This was what sustained him. This was the lens through which he saw and understood his own life and work. Even his purely theoretical work, which was primarily methodological and concerned with systematically establishing philosophical first principles and foundations for various disciplines, is intelligible only in this light. His adaptation of Scheler’s phenomenological method to a Christian perspective is but one example of this.20

Stoker and the Calvinist philosophical tradition Stoker clearly belongs to the Dutch Calvinist philosophical tradition, yet his place in that tradition is not easy to assess. On the one hand, it is clear that he is an important thinker. He has been called “one of the three fathers of a Reformational Philosophy” (“een van die drie vaders van ’n reformatoriese filosofie”) alongside the ­internationally known Dutch neo-Calvinist philosophers Herman Dooye­­weerd and Vollenhoven.21 Like the latter two thinkers, Stoker was born, nurtured, and educated in a Calvinist environment, albeit in  a South African milieu. He followed closely the developments of ­Reformed philosophy in the Netherlands, exhibiting his critical appreciation of his colleagues’ work at the Free University.22 He served on the editorial board of the new movement’s philosophical journal, Philosophia Reformata, in its early years. Throughout his teaching career he embraced the ideal of theorizing from a Christian perspective.23 His

xx  Translator’s Introduction

courteous criticisms of Dooyeweerd’s “Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea,” along with his development of his own version of Christian philosophy, which he first called “Theistic Philosophy” and later “The Philosophy of the Creation Idea,” are clearly the product of an independent thinker—not to mention his numerous taxonomical neologisms coined for philosophical use,24 or his contention that values and events represent distinct dimensions of reality, or his deep reflections on the methods of science.25 The importance of his philosophy for theology has been specifically noted.26 His legacy has been described as nothing short of profound.27 He was invited to lecture at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1963, at a number of American institutions in 1973, received the Stals Prize for Philosophy from the South African Academy for Science and Art in 1964, was made honorary professor at Rand Afrikaans University (now the University of Johannesburg) in 1970, and was granted an honorary doctorate by Potchefstroom University in 1971.28 On the other hand, it is no less clear that Stoker’s work has been nevertheless overlooked, if not almost forgotten. In this respect, his professional fate is not unlike that of his German mentor Scheler, whose work has also been largely eclipsed by other thinkers and movements since his death. Indeed, given the depth and substantial nature of his work, the lacuna of scholarship on Stoker, especially among scholars interested in the phenomenological movement or in the Calvinist philosophical tradition, is remarkable. The South African scholar B. J. Van der Walt devotes the entire first section of his excellent 2013 article “Stoker as a Christian Philosopher” to the question why Stoker’s philosophy remains relatively unknown and without much apparent influence.29 Among the reasons he discusses (together with others), I think the most important fall into four groups. 1. Stoker’s relative isolation in South Africa. Stoker remained his whole life in South Africa. Most of his writings remain untranslated in Afrikaans. He spent his entire career teaching at Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, a parochial institution associated with the Boer nationalist movement in the Transvaal.30 His work in South Africa has unfortunately sometimes been treated too dismissively as little more than a “Dutch export,” or a backwater adaptation of the “Amsterdam Philosophy” of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven.31 For

Translator’s Introduction xxi

these reasons and others, his work has not received much attention even in South Africa. Few of his original students are still living. Bio­ graphical treatments of Stoker are inadequate, given the limited scope of the sketches by Van Dijk and Stellingwerff, Klapwijk, and Raath.32 There are only three dissertations on his work—by Malan, Schutte, and Kasowski.33 And, even after the appearance of an international festschrift honoring him,34 there were only two unpublished theses—that of his grandson, H. G. Stoker, Jr., and M. F. Van der Walt.35 Students found his style and vocabulary cumbersome, calling him “the bracketing philosopher,”36 and some of his traditional Afrikaner social and political views are easy to dismiss as out of step with the times.37 2. Waning interest in phenomenology. Although Stoker’s Das Gewissen was received with acclaim when published, and his mentor Scheler was in the heyday of his renown as the best-known philosopher in all of Europe, the phenomenological approach embraced by both men has been eclipsed largely by changing trends and styles of philosophy. Scheler himself remains comparatively unknown today due to a number of factors, including not only the wartime Nazi suppression of his work but also the postwar ascent of Heideggerian existentialism and its repudiation of all philosophies of value,38 the dwindling support for in­tuitionist approaches, and growing European interest in Anglo-American forms of analytic philosophy. Stoker has fallen victim to these trends along with Scheler. 3. Waning interest in Christian philosophy. The rapid secularization of academia in the West has led to generally decreasing interest in Christian approaches to philosophy like Stoker’s.39 This trend is reflected in most colleges and universities with historical religious affiliations, including Stoker’s own, where the role of Christian perspectives in the curriculum declined until 2005, when the institution was merged with others to form a new, secular institution under the name of NorthWest University.40 This trend can also be seen in the diminishing interest among students and scholars from Reformed backgrounds in the legacy of neo-Calvinist thinkers such as Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven, a trend that unfortunately also erodes incentive for examining a work such as Stoker’s Das Gewissen.

xxii  Translator’s Introduction

4. Calvinist disagreements over Stoker. This factor is more of an inhouse problem within the Afrikaner and Dutch Reformed community, but it has had significant consequences for the reception of Stoker’s work within (and by influence, beyond) that community and therefore bears examining. Stoker is generally classified as a member of the Dutch neo-­ Calvinist tradition of philosophy laying claim to the worldview and legacy of the prolific scholar and statesman Abraham Kuyper (1837– 1920), who was also prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. As such, Stoker can be said to belong, like the neo-Calvinist philosophers Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven, to one of the few Christian traditions outside of the Catholic world to have its own substantial philosophical movement. Beyond this, however, the question of classification becomes more challenging. Those laying claim to the neo-Calvinist legacy of Kuyper include not only members of the “Reformational” school pioneered by Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven in the 1920s, but also others such as those affiliated with the movement of “Reformed Epistemology” identified with Alvin Plantinga (at Notre Dame) and his followers since the 1960s. “Neo-Calvinists,” in turn, are a subset of “Reformed” thinkers, with the latter representing a broad spectrum of Calvinist views, in­ cluding even a tradition of “Reformed Scholasticism.”41 Any affiliation with Scholasticism, however, poses major problems for Reformational thinkers, who aim to purge their ideas of any residue of “synthesis” with ideas alien to the biblical or Reformational Christian tradition, whether Greek, medieval, or modern. Thus, Dooyeweerd, in a 1939 essay on Kuyper’s philosophy of science, distinguishes between “Reformational” and “Scholastic” currents in Kuyper’s thought, promoting the former and criticizing the latter.42 For Reformational philosophers, not only is any influence of Reformed Scholasticism problematic but so is the ­influence of any non-Reformational “synthesis thinking” of any kind. For this reason, members of the Reformational philosophy movement pioneered by Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven sometimes demur at classifying Stoker as a Reformational thinker, despite his role in the movement. Why? The nub of the problem has to do principally with two major influences on Stoker—that of the Dutch Calvinist theologian

Translator’s Introduction xxiii

Herman Bavinck, and that of Scheler—both of which pose more or less unique problems for Reformational neo-Calvinists.43

Bavinck’s Scholastic influence Bavinck (like Kuyper) was a household name in the early twentieth ­century among Afrikaners, just as in Holland, and shaped Stoker’s world­­view even before he went to Europe. Stoker developed his early philosophical thinking along lines suggested by Bavinck, as there was not yet an established Christian philosophy such as Dooyeweerd or Vollenhoven would later develop.44 Part of Bavinck’s appeal may have been his combination of traditional Calvinism with an expansive view of Christianity and the church, which called on people to involve themselves in renewing the world around them with a biblical idea of religion as a central response of the heart to God’s all-pervasive revelation.45 Bavinck, despite being an eminent Calvinist theologian, nevertheless has been thought to have had contaminating traces of Thomistic Scholasticism in his thought. Thus in the writing of Reformational scholars concerned about such influences in a fellow Calvinist like Bavinck, one often finds a number of recurring catchwords signaling concern for the author’s Reformational integrity, such as “neo-­ Scholasticism,” “logos speculation,” “substance-thinking,” “nature–grace dualism,” “analogia entis,” and the like. It is often hard for an outsider to see what the problem exactly is, but from a Reformational perspective it is often viewed as quite damning, and a number of critics have alleged similar “Scholastic” influences in Stoker’s thought, ostensibly through Bavinck’s influence. Even an adequate discussion of these issues (and the seemingly interminable arguments back and forth) lies well beyond the scope of this introduction, but it may be said that one basic concern seems to be that there is a biblically untenable notion of the “self-­sufficiency” of creation and of the “autonomy of reason” allegedly suggested by the Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysical framework and tradition, which influenced Stoker through Bavinck.46 Stoker does indeed address the metaphysical aspect of conscience and other phenomena with which he deals in terms of their “substance” or “being” (or

xxiv  Translator’s Introduction

their “ontical” dimensions—a term he prefers), which he considers fundamentally necessary for an authentic understanding of their creaturely mode of existence, but he would reply that this in no way entails either a “self-sufficient” view of nature or an “autonomous” view of reason. Yet despite the fact that Stoker and others have repeatedly countered these sorts of allegations, they nevertheless seem to have stuck.47 Stoker’s position within the Reformed tradition remains, thus, a matter of continuing ­debate.

The influence of Scheler’s “irrationalist” phenomenology Scheler’s influence is likewise seen as problematic because of certain assumptions believed to underlie his phenomenological method and concern about how far these may have influenced Stoker’s own qualified version of that method.48 These include the following: (1) ironically, the presumption of “presuppositionlessness” underlying Scheler’s notion of “essential intuition” (Wesensschau), which he shared with Edmund Husserl; (2) the identification of an independent realm of mentally in­ tuited and hypostatized “value-essences” alongside and distinct from the realm of concrete events, things, and individual and social structures; and (3) a current of “irrationalism” underlying Scheler’s phenomenological approach, including his insistence that values are the primary phenomena of intentional “value-feeling” (Wertgefühl) and cannot even be apprehended by reason. The first is seen as not only untenable but incompatible with Stoker’s own position that theoretical neutrality is impossible. The second is dismissed as a species of unsupportable phenomenological essentialism.49 The third—since it involves, among other things, not merely the recognition of nonrational, emotional ways of knowing (which is readily admitted), but the claim that these are completely cut off from reason in the manner of Pascal’s “logic of the heart,” which has “its reasons of which reason knows n ­ othing”— is criticized as an untenable form of “irrationalism.”50 Although ­Stoker does indeed embrace a form of the phenomenological method, a form of essential intuition, and a certain primacy of the emotional over the rational in our experience of a bad conscience, he carefully adapts Scheler’s insights to his own Calvinist perspective, and he demonstrably

Translator’s Introduction xxv

holds no irrationalist view of “value-feeling,” since he refuses to isolate emotion from reason. Yet despite the fact that Stoker countered most of these allegations with carefully reasoned responses, they nevertheless also seem to have stuck, probably because the disagreements pertain to deeper-level commitments concerning philosophical approach.51 There is certainly no question that Stoker was influenced by Scheler, as he was by Bavinck, but it should not be supposed that he adopted his ideas uncritically without due consideration from his Calvinist perspective. Stoker was not a mere imitator, but an independent thinker, maintaining his distance from Scheler on certain questions and resisting certain assumptions he found unacceptable.52 Accordingly, a sym­pathetic reader of Das Gewissen may very well find that concerns about Stoker tending toward “irrationalism” or a presuppositionless “neutralism” in his philosophy seem a bit alarmist and overwrought, just as do concerns about the nefarious influence of Bavinck’s “Scholasticism” and “substance-thinking” on him. In fact, even though it may do little to allay the concerns of many Reformational thinkers, Stoker’s approach to Scheler’s phenomenology of values, and his willingness to incorporate basic metaphysical ideas of “being” and “substance” into his own approach, in many ways appears to independently confirm many of the critically circumspect yet appreciative assessments of Scheler, and of phenomenology generally, found in the Catholic tradition.53

Stoker’s analysis of conscience Stoker himself offers a partial summary of Das Gewissen in English, ­entitled “A Phenomenology of Conscience”54 (which omits entirely his elegant linguistic and historical survey of the concept), but a brief analysis may be helpful to the reader, based on the three basic problems identified by Stoker: What is conscience? How does it originate? Is it ­reliable?55 In his English summary, he treats only the first question, but in what follows we will cover briefly all three. 1. What is conscience? Stoker begins by contrasting the profound role conscience plays in ordinary experience with the confusing variety of scholarly opinions about it, and he asks, “Why the confusion?” He suggests as possible reasons the difficulty of conceptually grasping a

xxvi  Translator’s Introduction

phenomenon so profoundly interior and spiritual, the haphazard development of our language about it, and the ideological straitjacketing of our understanding of it by various theories. Such difficulties, he maintains, underscore the need for a meticulous, descriptive phenomenological approach to determine exactly what we experience in conscience. Such an approach must employ, he says, not logical or scientific abstractions, but intuitive means of distinguishing essential from accidental characteristics of conscience. It also requires isolating and minimizing any distorting prejudices. Describing an essence (like “greenness”) is difficult, since it cannot be directly defined but only indirectly cir­ cumscribed by metaphors or analogies. The same is true of an experience like “guilt.” We must allow the experienced phenomenon itself to guide the process of description. The approach may initially seem logically circuitous or tautological (x is not a, not b, not c, etc.), but intuitively it is inductively illuminating. Stoker rejects out of hand as improper candidates for what we mean by “conscience”: (1) abstractions like “the nineteenth-century conscience”; (2) a person’s moral character; or (3) mere moral awareness. The first is too amorphous; the second and third involve judgments about people that may have nothing to do with conscience. More credible candidates include (4) moral knowledge, (5) moral willing or inclination, and (6) moral feeling. He classifies the latter three types of theories, respectively, as rationalist (subdivided into intellectualist and intuitivist), voluntarist, and emotionalist, corresponding to their view of conscience as residing, respectively, in (1) moral inferences and moral intuitions, (2) moral volitions and inclinations, and (3) moral feelings. Moral knowledge is presupposed by conscience, says Stoker, but not  identical to it, because we can know the morality of our deeds without experiencing conscience.56 Scholasticism stresses the intellectual element in conscience, he says, whereas moral sense theorists and phenomenology take an intuitivist view. Among the latter, however, neither Scheler, nor Hartmann, nor Hildebrand identifies moral knowledge with conscience. They correctly identify knowledge as an element in it, but not as its essence. If moral knowledge were conscience, suggests Stoker, the history of literature could never have yielded such tortured characters as Macbeth and Raskolnikov.57

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Moral willing or inclination are also involved in conscience, says Stoker, and they help to explain the sense of moral responsibility we feel for our actions. They cannot be identified with conscience, however, ­because they, too, can be experienced without the least stirring of conscience. Conscience requires the further recognition of evil in oneself. Scholastic theories about our innate sense of morality (synteresis) emphasize this voluntarist aspect of conscience. Moral feeling is also present in conscience, though, again, not identical to it. Pharisaical feelings of moral self-worth, for example, are not remotely related to conscience. By contrast, the feeling that our own moral welfare is at stake in our real or possible moral guilt is essential to conscience. Moral feeling, especially that involving bad conscience, is therefore the most profound and penetrating manifestation of conscience, according to Stoker. It is in this connection with the moral feelings associated with bad conscience, furthermore, that Stoker’s descriptive powers are most acute and compelling—in his analysis of our experience of guilt, the gnawing sense of isolation, alienation, shame, remorse, fear of being found out, and anger toward ourselves. Is such an experience of conscience normal or abnormal, healthy or pathological? Certainly the experience of it is unpleasant and resists repression. Those who try to understand it within a naturalistic framework (biology, psychology, sociology), like Darwin, Bain, Freud, or Nietz­­sche, consider conscience a pathological aberration. By contrast, from a religious standpoint (Calvin, Newman, Scheler), it appears ­eminently—if terrifyingly—sane, even when the experience of guilt does not explicitly presuppose religious awareness. This raises the question: To whom does the guilty person feel re­ sponsible? Stoker demonstrates in detail that it cannot be oneself, one’s family, friends, society, or the state. Alleviation of real guilt requires not therapy but punishment or forgiveness. Following Scheler, Stoker suggests that conscience implies a transcendent Judge who summons us to account, and he describes this summons, expressed by conscience, as theal (from the Greek theos for “God”), implying an immediate relatedness to God that need not be necessarily religious. Conscience is essentially prereligious, he says, but finds its loftiest expression and fulfillment in religion. It is ultimately an emotional experience, but it involves

xxviii  Translator’s Introduction

moral knowledge, will, and aspirations permeating the depths of moral character and personality. 2. How does it arise? Skeptics point to the lack of complete uniformity in judgments of conscience as evidence of its relativity and its genesis by natural evolutionary processes. Stoker allows that conscience does develop in both individuals and communities, but only within clear limits. He distinguishes four types of development: (1) momento-­ genetic (instantaneous) and (2) psycho-genetic (gradual)—both within the individual; and (3) phylo-genetic, within the species, and (4) bio-­ genetic, from lower to higher species. Conscience proper, as a real internal announcement of personal evil, says Stoker, only appears suddenly (momento-genetically), when we become aware of our guilt. Improperly understood (as moral will or knowledge), however, conscience may be thought to develop by gradual formation (psycho-genetically), but the acquisition of moral knowledge or faculty of moral volition is not the same thing as the stirring of conscience, which is always sudden. By the same token, conscience cannot properly be thought to arise within a species (phylo-genetically) as such, much less via evolution (bio-genetically) from lower life forms. Conscience proper always arises suddenly through experience of one’s own moral culpability. Stoker examines at length the bio-genetic claims of evolutionists like Darwin, along with the equally reductionist theories of Bain, Mill, Nietz­sche, Rée, and Spencer. He relies on the research of Buytendijk to show that human beings exhibit subject–object awareness and are not completely immersed in their milieu like animals. He shows that Köhler’s chimpanzees don’t grasp the meaning of their punishment but only the practical effect; that evolutionists conflate emotional infection and projection with moral sympathy or conscience; that Nietzsche’s ­attempt to explain conscience as stemming from resentment (ressentiment) reads into conscience something that is external to it; and that each of these theories in some way commits the reductionist fallacy. 3. Is it reliable? Stoker distinguishes conscience in (1) its proper sense of a real internal disclosure of personal evil from (2) its secondary sense as a deposit of insight into the good. The former is objectively ­infallible, provided we locate it, he says, not in the objectively correct

Translator’s Introduction xxix

detection of evil, but in the awareness of our subjective consent to what we perceive as evil.58 The latter is fallible, though it remains subjectively absolute and binding in the sense that we can never inculpably oppose it. Stoker compares the patristic and Scholastic distinction between ­synteresis and conscientia with positions within his own Reformed tradition, touching, for example, upon the theory of Valentin Hepp. Even though conscience is not directly educable, according to Stoker, we have a duty to examine and form our conscience (indirectly) via our intellect, intuition, and will.

Remarks concerning the translation Throughout the translation, I have made it my principal objective to keep faith with the meaning of the author’s text. Thus, I have endeavored to achieve a rendering that is as literal as possible without compromising the readability of the English translation. Such an objective invariably requires use of the principle of dynamic equivalence with the aim of expressing as naturally as possible in English the equivalent meaning of the German text. Inevitably this entails making certain compromises. I have avoided using terms that seem excessively awkward in English, such as “logicize” and “intellectualize,” even if this meant occasionally more circumlocutious renderings. Take, for example, the ­following sentence: “In der wissenschaftlichen Sprache ist die Logisierung der Volkssparache notwendig.” Translating this rigidly might result in this ungainly sentence: “The logicizing of the vernacular language is necessary in scientific language.” Instead, therefore, I translated it thus: “For the sake of scientific clarity it is necessary to recast the vernacular in terms that are logically more precise,” which I think is not only more readable but substantially preserves the meaning of the ­original. In other cases, I have kept closer to Stoker’s language, using English cognates of his terms even where they may strike the English reader as a bit awkward. One example is where Stoker distinguishes four types of theories of conscience—Intellektualismus, Intuitionismus, Voluntarismus, and Emotionalismus. Here some awkwardness seems unavoidable, and I translate these, accordingly, as “intellectualism,”

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“­ intuitionism,” “voluntarism,” and “emotionalism,” along with their adjectival cognates, “intellectualistic” or “intellectualist,” and so on. Another example is where Stoker uses the term “psychological” (psychologisch) as a contrast to “logical” (logisch), as when he describes language as not developing “logically” but “psychologically.” I can imagine this could seem awkward and even a bit confusing to English readers, and it is tempting to express the sense of Stoker’s text by rendering “psychologically developed” language as “organically evolved,” which in my opinion better communicates the intended meaning in the original context. Yet I have retained the original “psychological,” on the advice of Danie Strauss, for the sake of faithfulness to the text and also because Stoker elsewhere uses “organic” in a nonpsychological, biological sense. Some liberties I have taken with the text include changing certain nouns and pronouns to conform to current conventions in academic English. For example, I usually translated Wissenschaft (singular) as “sciences” (plural), since it is more common today to distinguish social sciences (like psychology) from natural sciences (like biology), rather than refer monolithically to “science” without differentiation. In certain contexts I also found that “theoretical” served better than “scientific” as a translation of wissenschaftlich. Except where Stoker quotes other authors within his text, I also took similar liberties in order to avoid irritating contemporary aversions to gender-inclusive use of third-­personsingular masculine pronouns (“he,” “him,” “his”), thereby removing what would otherwise present an unfortunate obstacle to many readers today, despite the change in tone this introduces into Stoker’s traditional usage and some compelling arguments against the practice.59 I had to draw a line, however, at such philistine infelicities as “a human being is not an end in themselves,” or “Godself ” as a substitute for masculine pronouns for God, which violate all canons of sane logic, good grammar, and good taste. A unique problem was posed by the German term Drang, which is sometimes translated as “urge,” “impulse,” or “drive.” It would have been tempting to use the most natural sounding of these alternatives in English and translate Drang as “impulse,” so that Drang des Gewissens could be rendered quite naturally as “impulse of conscience,” or böse Drang as “evil impulse.” But Stoker explicitly distinguishes Drang

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(as ­insightful and enduring) from Impuls (as blind and momentary),60 elimi­nating that option. Another alternative is “drive,” which seems to gain support because Stoker himself translates it as “driving force” in his English essay “A Phenomenological Analysis of Conscience.”61 The difficulty with “drive,” however, is that it not only sounds a bit strained in English (the “drive” of conscience?), but that elsewhere Stoker also contrasts Drang with “drive” because, like “instinct,” “drive” generally connotes a motive power that is blind.62 “Inclination” might seem to be a serviceable and natural alternative, particularly because of its ease of use in English, but Stoker also dismisses this option because “inclination is always a passive disposition, whereas the motive of conscience is intentional and active.”63 The term “impulsion” would seem to express the actively intentionality resident in Stoker’s use of Drang, but it seems altogether too contrived and laden with mechanical connotations to be serviceable in the context of conscience. “Conation” (Lat. conatus) might also serve, but it is too broad conceptually, has fallen out of use, and is listed among the “1000 most obscure words in the English language.”64 As a result, I have settled on “urge” as the best, if not ideal, translation for Drang. The “urge” or “urgings” of conscience, and also good and evil “urges,” are at least readily understandable and clearly express the conative force of Drang as used by Stoker. All one has to bear in mind is that it is an insightful, intentionally directed “urge.” Another challenging term used by Stoker is ontische (from the Greek ὄν, “entity”; genitive ὄντος, “of that which is”), which is usually translated as “ontic” or “ontical.” His usage is not exactly that of the wellknown idiom of Heidegger, however, who contrasts the “ontical” (signifying concrete, specific realities) with the “ontological” (signifying deeper underlying structures of reality). Rather, Stoker seems to conflate both of these meanings, to some extent, in his use of “ontical,” which he employs to refer to entities and facts about them, and to that which is fundamentally real as opposed to merely phenomenally apparent. He also seems to want to avoid the connotations of theoretical reflection (in “onto-logical ”) and also the sense of groundless speculation sometimes associated with “metaphysical.” “Ontical” has for Stoker the sense of that which is most interior, essential, and basic in the nature of a person or thing. In some contexts, where the emphasis

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is more on a subject’s experience than on objective structures of reality, as when Stoker uses the term to refer to a person’s feelings, it might have been more natural to substitute the term “existential,” and refer to “existential feelings” rather than “ontical feelings” without thereby doing violence to the author’s intended meaning. I have nevertheless retained Stoker’s use of “ontical,” again at the suggestion of Danie Strauss, because of the importance Stoker seems to attach to the term. Other changes were made in the arrangement of the text to make the English translation more user-friendly. Some things in the body of the text were moved into the notes, including parenthetical “asides.” Longer quotations in Latin, Greek, or other foreign languages were also moved to the notes, and English translations substituted for them in the body of the text. In a number of passages, where Stoker directly quotes an author without indicating whom he is quoting except in a footnote, I took the liberty of introducing the quotation by means of interpolations: “as Nietzsche writes,” “Freud observes,” and so on. Excessively long paragraphs have been subdivided according to natural thematic breaks, and some unnecessarily short ones (e.g., at the beginning of chapter 10) have been consolidated into a single paragraph. Foreign terms have been generally placed in parentheses, with transliterations or English translations inserted preceding them. Some names of pa­ tristic and medieval authors unfamiliar to contemporary readers have been Anglicized and standardized for easier recognition—for example, “Hier­onymus” has been changed to “St. Jerome.” Where I found parenthetical remarks or changes in font size in the original text that did not suggest a break in thought with the surrounding context, I simply removed the parentheses, standardized the font size, and incorporated the remarks into the body of the text for a smoother flow. Errors in punctuation, spelling, personal names, or titles of books in the original text have been corrected without indication, unless otherwise noted, but only after painstaking verification, including the insertion of first names of authors mentioned where missing. Stoker’s citation and documentation style has been also modified to conform to current American academic style. I have eliminated redundancies in the notes, such as reiterations of full publication data, and have adopted our publisher’s recommendation of notes with shortened citations coordinated with a comprehensive bibliography. Multiple note

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references within single sentences have been consolidated into single notes at the end of sentences or paragraphs. My own notes, and my remarks within Stoker’s notes, have been placed within brackets to distinguish them from Stoker’s. Numerous corrections within Stoker’s notes and bibliographical data, however, have been made without notice, including the insertion of complete names of authors, titles cited, place of publication, and such, which have all been provided in full in the attached bibliography. In some cases, as seemed appropriate, more recent still-in-print editions of works cited by Stoker have been included in the notes and bibliography for the reader’s convenience. Translations from Stoker’s quoted material are my own unless indicated otherwise. Also, some of Stoker’s chapter titles have been altered to make them more concise and descriptive.65

Acknowledgments Several months after completing my doctoral dissertation on Max Scheler, I received from Hendrik G. Stoker, with whom I had been corresponding, a letter, dated December 13, 1985, in which he wrote: “My work—‘Das Gewissen’—has not yet been translated into English and I would really appreciate it if you would undertake this translation.” At the time, I had not yet read his work, but I was aware of the high regard for it among a number of scholars in the field of phenomenology with whom I was familiar, so I told Stoker that I was interested in taking on the project. It has taken me three decades to find the time necessary to complete the project, but thanks to a sabbatical granted to me in the fall semester of 2013, I have been able to finally keep my promise to Stoker. Deo gratias! I owe a profound debt of gratitude to all those who have rendered assistance to me throughout this translation project. To the late Professor Stoker himself for encouraging me to undertake the translation of Das Gewissen through our personal correspondence in 1985, but also to his son, Pieter Stoker of the School of Physics and Chemical Sciences of the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University, for his kind permission, on behalf of the estate of Stoker and his surviving family, for me to translate and publish his father’s work,

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and to Stoker’s grandson, Henk Stoker, of the Faculty of Theology at the same institution, for permission on behalf of the extended Stoker family for the use of their photograph of the young Stoker from his student days in this publication. To the staff at the University of Notre Dame Press, acquisitions coordinator Robyn Karkiewicz, acquisitions editor Stephen Little, managing editor Rebecca DeBoer, copyeditor Scott Barker, and manuscript editor Matthew Dowd for their patient assistance and expertise in expediting the publication of this work; to Thomas Grundmann of Bouvier-­Verlag for help in obtaining German copyright permissions; and to Eugene Kelly of the Department of Social Science, New York Institute of Technology, and Danie Strauss of the School of Philosophy, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, for their review of the manuscript and many helpful suggestions; and to Strauss for his kind assistance in securing a generous grant of financial assistance through his offices at North-West University in South Africa. To the administration of Lenoir-Rhyne University, particularly Robert Spuller, former academic dean, for a summer research grant in 2000 (which I spent in Washington, DC, researching Stoker’s extensive bibliographical sources), a reduced teaching load in the spring semester of 2003, and a sabbatical leave in the fall semester of 2006, during which I completed a substantial part of the translation project; and to the administration of Sacred Heart Major Seminary, particularly Msgr. Todd Lajiness, rector, and Fr. Timothy Laboe, academic dean, for their generous grant of a sabbatical leave in the fall semester of 2013 to complete the project. To the library staffs of Lenoir-Rhyne University, particularly Burl McCuiston; Catholic University of America; the Library of Congress; and the Cardinal Szoka Library of Sacred Heart Major Seminary, especially Christopher Spilker, Mark Hornbacher, and Norma Forbes, for their tireless efforts and frequent detective work in securing often obscure monographs and articles in various languages. To the late great Manfred S. Frings, and also Eugene Kelly, Gabrielle Weinberger, Werner Schultz, Kent Matthews, Marshell Bradley, Jochen and Amica Ewe, and especially Chase Faucheux for their help with various German colloquialisms and difficult passages in the primary text; to Eduardo Echeverria for his assistance with a few passages in

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Dutch and Afrikaans; to Bohdan B. Kuropas for assistance with translating several French passages; to John Blakey and Edgar Foster for help with both Latin and Greek, and to Edward Peters for additional help with several nettlesome Latin passages; and to Victor Salas for help in deciphering the abbreviated Latin primary sources for the works of St. Albertus Magnus cited by Stoker. To my mentor at Calvin College, the late H. Evan Runner, and my mentor at Duquesne University, the late Lester Embree; my colleagues at Lenoir-Rhyne University: Richard Von Dohlen, J. Larry Yoder, and Robert Winter; my colleagues at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, especially Eduardo Echeverria, Edward Peters, and Victor Salas; my good friends Marshell Bradley, John Timothy Bell, Kirk Kanzelberger, Alex Begin, and Kyle Jennings; my spiritual directors, Fr. Deo Rosales of the Opus Dei Prelature, while in Durham, North Carolina, and Fr. Titus Kieninger of the Canons of the Holy Cross, Fr. John Bustamante and Fr. Eduard Perrone, in Detroit—for their friendship and personal support through various stages of the project. To our network of close family friends: Eduardo and DonnaRose Echeverria, Nina Bryhn and Bobby Lee, Edward and Margie Laabs, and Colleen and Trevor McInnes, Edward and Angela Peters, Victor and Elizabeth Salas, Darren and Tina Hogan, and all of their respective children, for their loving companionship, long-suffering support, and help with everything from childcare to schoolwork; and to my family, especially Lori, Christopher Eugene Yoshiya, Jonathan Yoshiro, Benjamin Philip, Nathaniel Maas, Amy and Hannah Cabrini, without whose indulgence and support, at various times and various ways, this undertaking would not have been possible. Thank you. Philip Blosser, Detroit, Michigan Pentecost, 2015

Notes

1. Spiegelberg, Phenomenological Movement, 1:267. 2.  Ibid., 2:626 (Spiegelberg has “Potschefstrand” instead of “Potchef­ stroom”). 3.  See Scheler, “Editor’s Foreword” in the present volume.

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4. Ibid. 5. Scheler, Formalism in Ethics, xxxi–xxxii. For the original German, see Scheler, Formalismus (4th ed., 1954), 23–24. 6. Heidegger, Being and Time, 217nvi; cf. 496–97. 7.  Kasowski, “Conscience and Attestation,” 64–70. 8.  Stewart and Mickunas, Exploring Phenomenology; Embree, Encyclopedia of Phenomenology; Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology; Moran, ­Introduction to Phenomenology. 9.  Van der Merwe, “In Memoriam H. G. Stoker,” 95. 10.  The Free University of Amsterdam was founded in 1880 by Dutch Calvinists as an institution formally independent (hence “free”) of both church and state. On the Calvinist milieu in South Africa, see Stoker, Die Stryd, 274–75; and Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 54–68. 11.  Van der Walt, “Stoker,” 54–68. 12.  Buytendijk published a series of four notable articles in November and December 1921 dealing with Scheler and depth psychology, in the journal De Reformatie, weekblad tot ontwikkeling van het gereformeerde leven, entitled “Kennis der Ziele-Diepte” (“The Knowledge of the Soul’s Depth”), “Over het Berouw” (“On Repentance”), “Over het Ressentiment” (“On Ressentiment”), and “De Deemoed” (“On Humility”). Cf. Buytendijk, De Vrouw. 13.  Beijk and Merwe, “H. G. Stoker as Student,” 502–5. 14.  For Scheler’s influence, see Heidegger, “In Memory of Max Scheler,” 59, who hailed him as “the strongest philosophical force” in all of contemporary philosophy; Bochénski, Contemporary European Philosophy, 140, who called him “the most brilliant thinker of his day”; Frings, Max Scheler, 103, who called his Formalism in Ethics one of the most profound, erudite, and ingenious works of philosophy. For his influence on H. G. Gadamer, J. P. Sartre, M. Merleau-­Ponty, N. Hartmann, J. Ortega y Gasset, E. Cassirer, M. Buber, J. Maritain, G. Marcel, and R. Ingarden, see Good, Max Scheler; Blosser, Scheler’s Critique, preface and chap. 1; and see Wojtyła, “Ocena,” for Pope John Paul II’s doctoral dissertation on Scheler. For the waning influence of Scheler and phenomenology, see the discussion below. 15.  Stoker’s published correspondence with F. J. J. Buytendijk sheds considerable light on his relationship with Scheler during his years in Cologne, including his respect for Scheler, his concern for Scheler’s marital troubles and defection from Christian theism, references to the authors whom Stoker was then reading, and his great admiration for his South African mentor, du Toit (cf. Beijk and Merwe, “H. G. Stoker as Student,” 501–28). 16. Stoker, Die Stryd, 4–5. 17.  An older, better-known organization with similar sympathies at the time was the Afrikaner Calvinist secret society, founded in 1918, called the Afrikaner Broederbond, dedicated to the proposition that “the Afrikaner Volk has

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been planted in this country by the Hand of God” (see Smith, Die Afrikaner Broederbond ). 18.  For a summary of this period, see Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 58–59; for Stoker’s views of the Smuts government, security police, and Germany, see Stoker, Die Stryd, 270–73; for details on the reasons for Stoker’s arrest and his political position, see Van der Schyff, Wonderdaad!, 504–5, 520–22; for details about conditions in South Africa during the Second World War, see the anthology edited by Stoker, Agter tralies en doringdraad, 1–82, containing contributions by former political prisoners, including a chapter contributed by Stoker himself (306–25). 19. Stoker, Oorsprong, 1:305–8; 2:237–43; Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 58–59. 20. Stoker, Oorsprong, 1:305–8; 2:237–43. 21.  Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 64. 22.  See, for example, Stoker, Die nuwere wysbegeerte aan die Vrije Uni­ versiteit. 23.  Van der Merwe, “In Memoriam H. G. Stoker,” 95. 24.  Examples include Stoker’s use of idions (oeridionne) for essential creaturely phenomena and idiostances (idiostansie) for things, so as to avoid problematic nuances of the Scholastic term “substance”; diafanerotic (diafanerotiese) for his own phenomenological method of sounding the depths of creaturely essences; and theal (teaal ) for the immediate relatedness of all creatures to God; see Stoker, Oorsprong, 2:204–5, 212, 216, 263–73; Stoker, Philosophy of the Creation Idea, 6, 14, 19, 73–83. See also Stoker’s penchant for extensive classifications in “Contingent and Present-Day Western Man,” 144–66. 25.  See Stoker, Beginsels, 1:202n1; Van der Walt, “The Value of Stoker’s Methodology,” 65–66, 91–92. 26.  Heyns, “Betekenis van H. G. Stoker se Filosofie,” 455–72. 27.  Raath, “Soli Deo Gloria,” 343–62. 28.  Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 58. 29.  Ibid., 56–57. 30.  To keep matters in historical perspective, it should be remembered that most American Ivy League universities, like Harvard and Yale, also were founded as parochial schools for the training of Protestant pastors. 31.  Cf. Stellingwerff, Geschiedenis van de Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte. 32.  Van Dijk and Stellingwerff, Perspectief; Klapwijk, “Honderd Jaar Filosofie aan die Vrije Universiteit,” 529–93; Raath, “Soli Deo Gloria,” 343–62. 33. Malan, ‘N Kritiese Studie van die Wysbegeerte van H. G. Stoker, written under S. U. Zuidema at the Free University, created a stir by criticizing Stoker’s philosophy, but is called a “less-than-successful” dissertation by Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 57, cf. 61–62; Schutte, “Die noodwendigheid van Christelike wetenskap”; Kasowski, “Conscience and Attestation.”

xxxviii  Translator’s Introduction

34.  Bingle and Du Plessis, Truth and Reality. 35.  H. G. Stoker, Jr., “Die Vraagstuk van die Deontologie”; M. F. Van der Walt, “Value of Stoker’s Methodology.” 36.  Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 58. 37. Stoker, Oorsprong, 1:209–22. 38.  Cf. Emad, Heidegger and the Phenomenology of Values. 39. Burtchaell, The Dying of the Light. For a specifically Dutch Calvinist philosophical context, cf. Zylstra, “Introduction,” 29–32. 40.  Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” 56. 41.  Van Asselt et al., Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism. 42.  Dooyeweerd, “Kuyper’s Wetenschapsleer,” 193–232; Dooyeweerd, “Kuy­per’s Philosophy of Science,” 153–78. 43. Stoker, Oorsprong, 2:218–19, 332–36, indicates that the earliest influences in his intellectual formation were the Calvinist theologians Abraham Kuyper, J. Woltjer, Wilhelm Geesink, Valentin Hepp, and especially Herman Bavinck—all of whom have been criticized at one time or other as having certain “Scholastic” elements in their thought. The other major influence during his doctoral studies was his German mentor, Scheler. The influence of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven came later. Van der Walt, “H. G. Stoker,” suggests that the two most seminal influences were Bavinck and Scheler. 44. Stoker, Oorsprong, 2:334. 45.  Cf. Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation. 46.  For example, Dooyeweerd, New Critique, 2:32; 3:62–76, sees the idea of “being” as applying to God alone, not to creatures. See also Vollenhoven, Vollenhoven’s laatste werk, 105, and Vollenhoven, Schematische Kaarten, 257; Veenhof, Revelatie en Inspiratie, 628; Heideman, Relation between Revelation and Reason, 345–56; Strauss, “Scholasticism and Reformed Scholasticism,” ­97–114. 47.  For Stoker’s counterarguments against this and other related charges, see his Oorsprong, 2:202–30; and Stoker, Philosophy of the Creation Idea, esp. 118, 131–40. Among those who question the negative assessment of Bavinck’s “Scholasticism,” the following should be mentioned: Echeverria, Dialogue of Love, who devotes about a quarter of his book to this issue; Zigterman, “Dooyeweerd’s Theory of Individuality Structures,” who questions the classic Reformed critique of “substance” thinking by Dooyeweerd and specifically defends Bavinck and Stoker; Hendrik Hart in his “Malan’s Critical Study” in ­Bingle and Du Plessis, eds., Truth and Reality, 109–21, who defends Stoker against similar criticisms; and Van Woudenberg, “‘Aspects’ and ‘Functions’ of Individual Things,” 1–13, who questions whether Dooyeweerd’s resistance to the concept of “substance” is self-defeating, suggesting that it lands him in “metaphysical antirealism.” 48. Stoker, Oorsprong, 1:305–8; 2:237–43.

Translator’s Introduction xxxix

49.  Dooyeweerd’s theory of modal spheres (New Critique, vol. 2, passim) leads him to deny that things have “essences” and to refer, instead, to “individuality structures”; and his critique of the phenomenological notion of “­essential intuition” (Wesensschau) is quite nuanced (see his New Critique, 2:486–90, esp. 487n1). In fairness to Scheler, it should be noted that he denies the real existence of values: “As to the question: ‘What is value?’ I submit the following answer: Insofar as in the question the word ‘is’ refers to existence . . . a value ‘is’ not at all (Der Wert ist überhaupt nicht)” (in Scheler, “Beiträge,” 98, translated by Frings, Mind of Max Scheler, 23). Frings suggestively refers to Scheler’s view as a “functional” view of values (ibid.). 50.  This touches only one element in the Reformational critique of phenomenology and is far from being the sum and substance of its critique of ­“irrationalism.” See, for example, Strauss, “(Ir)rationalism,” 1–9. For a general Calvinist critique of phenomenology, see Van der Hoeven, Kritische Onder­ vraging, and Van der Hoeven, Rise and Development of the Phenomenological Method. For more specific Reformational criticisms of Scheler and Stoker, see Dooyeweerd, New Critique, 3:62–76, 487, 545, 591; Vollenhoven, Vollenhoven’s laatste werk, 75, 101; Vollenhoven, Schematische Kaarten, 245, 247; Van der Walt, “Stoker’s Methodology,” 73–74; for Stoker’s views on the matter, see his Philosophy of the Creation Idea, 86–124, and Stoker, Oorsprong, 2:202–30; and for Stoker’s account of his own phenomenological method, see, esp., Oorsprong, 1:237–43. His method, as seen in his analysis of conscience in Das Gewissen, basically follows the method of essential and descriptive phenomenological analysis found in Scheler’s middle period and represents the phenomenological realist movement adapted to a Christian perspective (cf. Smith, “Realistic Phenomenology”). For significant parallels to Stoker’s view of the value-­ dimension and phenomenology as adapted to a Christian perspective, see Hildebrand, Ethics, pts. 1 and 2; the metaphysics-friendly Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 64–65; assimilation of phenomenology in Lonergan, Method in Theology, 30–41; and Crosby, Selfhood of the Human Person. 51.  Stoker follows Scheler in granting a certain primacy to essential in­ tuition (or intentional feeling) in the area of values, as can be seen from the ­primacy he grants to emotion (over intellect and will) in his phenomenology of conscience, but it is no less true that he refuses to isolate emotion from reason, as evident in Das Gewissen, 52–55, 86–87, 138–92, 209–11 (in the present English translation, see the Excursus following chap. 2, and chaps. 4, 6–7). For Scheler’s view of value-feeling, by contrast, as completely independent of rational thought, see, esp., Scheler, “Ordo Amoris”; and Scheler, Formalismus, chap. 1. 52.  E.g., Stoker, Oorsprong, 2:333. 53.  The “phenomenological Thomism,” or “Lublin Thomism,” of Karol Wojtyła is a good example of this. In addition to his aforementioned disser­ tation on Scheler, see Wojtyła, Person and Community, and Schmitz, At the

xl  Translator’s Introduction

Center of the Human Drama. Other examples include Stein, Knowledge and Faith, which places St. Thomas Aquinas in dialogue with Edmund Husserl; and Sokol­owski, Introduction to Phenomenology, which describes phenomenology in terms congenial to classic Thomist metaphysics. For studies critically ap­ preciative of Scheler’s approach, see also Hildebrand, Ethics; Spader, Scheler’s Ethical Personalism; Kelly, Material Ethics of Value; and Blosser, Scheler’s Critique; and the relatively more negative assessments of Staude, Max Scheler, and Nota, Max Scheler, whose criticisms are focused chiefly on Scheler’s personal life and eventual abandonment of Christian theism. 54. In Oorsprong, 1:305–322. 55.  The term used by Stoker is Geltbarkeit, which concerns the question whether conscience can be shown to have “validity.” (See note 1 in chapter 10 of the present work.) 56.  Note that Stoker’s view that moral knowledge is presupposed by conscience (cf. Stoker, Das Gewissen, 52–55, 86–87, 209–11) confutes, at least in this one respect, the argument of those who suspect him of having a fundamental “irrationalist” epistemology, as some have suggested of Scheler (e.g., Vollenhoven, Vollenhoven’s laatste Werk, 75, 101; Vollenhoven, Schematische Kaarten, 245, 247; and Dooyeweerd, New Critique, 3:62–76). 57.  See Stoker’s discussion of Macbeth and Raskolnikov in chapter 3 of the present work. 58.  It is remarkable, as Strauss pointed out to me, that Stoker developed a view of conscience in which evil is a necessary presupposition (see, esp., chaps. 5–7 and 10). By contrast, evil is normally seen as a parasite within the good order of creation. 59.  For example, Kreeft, Philosophy, 9n1: “‘Man’ means ‘mankind,’ not ‘males.’ It is traditional inclusive language. ‘Humanity’ does not go with ‘God’ (‘God and humanity’) because ‘God’ and ‘man’ are concrete nouns, like ‘dog’ and ‘cat,’ while ‘divinity’ and ‘humanity’ are abstract nouns, like ‘canininity’ and ‘felinity’ or ‘dogginess’ and ‘cattiness.’ Whatever the political or psychological uses or misuses of these words, that is what they mean. We do not undo old injustices against women by doing new injustices against language.” 60.  See chapter 5 of this work. 61.  Stoker, “A Phenomenological Analysis of Conscience,” 312. 62.  See chapter 5 of this work. 63. Ibid. 64. Schur, 1000 Most Obscure Words. 65.  For example, Stoker’s title for chapter 7, “Andere echte Gewissens­ phänomene (das gute, das warnende Gewissen usw.) und die Zusammenfassung über das Wesen des Gewissens,” has been replaced with: “Personal Evil and the Essence of Conscience,” which achieves brevity without sacrificing ­accuracy in capturing the central issue of the chapter.

Conscience Phenomena and Theories

Editor’s Foreword

In the first of the philosophical and sociological works that inaugurated this series, Dr. Paul Ludwig Landsberg’s work on The Nature and Significance of the Platonic Academy,1 we delineated the general perspectives guiding us as editor of the series. The series, whose backlog of accepted material has increased considerably and has had to be held up for a time due to problems at the publishers, should now proceed again at regular intervals. We now resume publication with an investigation of the “phenomena of conscience.” This work—which concerns the field of ethics, descriptive and genetic psychology of moral phenomena, and philosophy of religion—comes from the hand of Dr. Hendrik G. Stoker of Johannesburg, South Africa, who at present occupies the position of ­Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Potchefstroom (Transvaal). In our own book, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, and also in our essay on “Repentance and Rebirth,” we sought to formulate more completely some of the problems arising from the phenomena of conscience and to help promote their resolution using our own groundbreaking method of phenomenological analysis and subsequent theoretical explanation.2 These works mark the point of departure for the new and independent endeavors of Professor Stoker. 3

4  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

It is quite true that we already have rigorous scientific works in the German language on conscience, its origin, and significance. Professor Stoker’s research takes complete account of these works and carefully considers their merits. Moreover, by comparison with these works, his own investigation is not only the most analytically incisive and penetrating, but it also exhibits the greatest breadth. As far as his critical utilization of past and present literature is concerned, it is also the most complete work that we have concerning what is certainly—as the author shows in detail—a linguistically challenging and often confusing state of affairs concerning the phenomena of “conscience.” We say that it exhibits the most breadth because it tackles the problem simultaneously from the points of view of psychology of language, essential and descriptive phenomenology, onto- and phylo-genetics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion—indeed, virtually from every side at once. And even if it by no means exhausts the aspects of animal psy­chology, developmental psychology, or patho-psychology in dealing with the matter at issue, it nevertheless advances the subject in a most valuable manner. The author considers German, Dutch, and English literature (in keeping with his own educational background), roughly in equal proportions, and investigates the problem at issue carefully within the context of the great ethical and philosophical movements of history. Further, he seeks to extract some of the best material for his task from the often audacious and one-sided interpretations of “conscience,” “guilt,” “remorse,” and so forth found in Nietzsche and Freud—and, further still, from the great poetic and literary incarnations of struggles of conscience found in the works of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and others. What is best and most beneficial in his presentation may be his earnest struggle for a living and immediate grasp of conscience. This ­elevates his discussion above any mere symbolic value of words, and it allows him to engage the phenomena themselves apart from any sort of merely arbitrary rational interpretation. The object of this struggle is to unveil the most basic facets of experience, which fulfill the abiding elements intended by the word “conscience” and its synonyms and ­analogues in other languages. With distinguished mastery of the methods of essential-­­phenomenological analysis, the author lays bare the vital nerve of conscience.

Editor’s Foreword 5

The origins of the author in the religious and cultural milieu of Dutch-Afrikaner Calvinism undoubtedly predispose him to a high degree to an investigation of an inner personal faculty such as conscience. Perhaps nowhere in the world has this introspective penchant been experienced in such purity, rigor, power, and depth as it has, in the best times, in that religious and Christian heroism that the history of ­religion attaches to the name of Calvin. A distinct feeling of this kind permeates the author’s analysis and his attitude toward life and the world, which is as austere as it is magisterial, and it is bound up almost exclusively with God in the inner powers of his mind. No matter how one may be inclined to appraise this prodigious historical ethos, it serves to provide a particularly favorable disposition for purposes of investigating the phenomena of conscience. Of course, various limitations in the author’s investigation, as we have noted ourselves, may be rooted in the very same fact. Despite his rigorously scientific attitude, in our opinion the author underrates the social and evolutionary factors that conscience evidences—­even if one considers the content and objective value of its apparent “testimony.” By the same token, he perhaps also overrates the constancy and clarity of its historical manifestations and does not sufficiently appreciate those who may be blind to values and insensitive to moral feelings, for whom conscience quite seriously really seems to be completely lacking. Furthermore, as deeply considered as it may be, the metaphysical and religio-philosophical function that he assigns to the phenomenon of conscience in keeping with his theistic metaphysical persuasion—in a manner influenced strongly by the methodology of John H. Newman—may hardly be claimed so unequivocally as appears to be the case with the author. Because of these limitations of attitude, even the author’s statements about the developmental psychology of animals, children, and so on cannot be regarded as definitive yet. There still remains a field wide open to research in this direction. In his book, Professor Stoker sets for himself three profound questions for investigation, representing the principle problems of conscience: (1) What is conscience? (2) How does it develop? (3) What value attaches to its impulses? Although it obviously cannot be said that his work completely resolves all of the multifaceted and still largely

6  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

­ bscure questions attached to the treatment of these three problems, o Professor Stoker’s thorough and deeply penetrating treatment of these problems, which most of the relevant current works of psychology and hitherto existing monographs have treated in a completely inadequate way, constitutes a significant landmark for all further research. —Max Scheler, Cologne, January 1925

Author’s Preface

The “moral conscience” is often distinguished from the “religious conscience.” If one seeks to grasp conscience simply as conscience, however, this distinction is not so fundamental as it often seems. The distinction appears to be a fundamental one to us only when the “religious” experience in religious conscience is compared with the exclusively “moral” experience in moral conscience. Although the “religious conscience” may perhaps present the appearance of a more delicate, more sensitive, purer phenomenon—one that is more adequate to the deeper conditions of sensibility proper to the essence of conscience itself—the focus of our present work is chiefly on the so-called moral conscience. The ­reason for this is that the conscience as moral phenomenon is quite ­certainly the most difficult thing to distinguish from the remaining other aspects of moral experience. Only by delimiting the matter in this way can we expect to apprehend conscience in its peculiar and unique ­character. The present work is the result of various phases of development in my understanding of conscience. At first it was my view that the intellectualist and relativist conception of conscience was correct. But after a thoroughgoing phenomenological investigation of the phenomena ­associated with conscience and after a historical-critical investigation of theories of conscience, I found myself compelled to accept the view 7

8  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

that the deepest core of conscience is emotional. Still further investigations yielded the conclusion that the phenomena of conscience, in their deepest sense—in their unity and peculiarity—cannot be understood primarily in formal terms. Such is the ordinary way of attempting to determine what the conscience is—by defining it, for example, as an act of reason, intuition, judgment, inclination, will, feeling, and so on. But only in terms of its material content—its objective, actual stirrings in which it is given and makes itself felt—does the fundamental possibility present itself of clearly comprehending conscience as a group of in­herently unified and unique phenomena in its actual depth, meaning, and character. Based on these insights I arrived at the principles by which, in my opinion, conscience must be understood. These are suggested by the following “slogans”—insofar as “slogans” can indicate a mode of i­ nterpretation—namely: emotionalism, objectivism, personalism, and ­absolutism. The core of conscience yields itself as a suprabiological fact after all the temporal, relative, and accidental factors have been peeled away; just as suprabiological acts are given to us in the intuition of essences— in the preferring of values according to their objective order of rank, in grasping the beautiful, in lived experiences of a religious nature, and so forth—on the basis of a suprabiological principle: the mind, or spirit. (Here I could very well refer the reader to the investigations of Max Scheler and F. J. J. Buytendijk.)1 This core of conscience is no more capable of being derived from that which is “merely biological” than any of the other aforementioned “spiritual” acts. Nor can the principle of a gradual development from the “biological” to the “suprabiological” be maintained here. The dread associated with conscience, for example, cannot have developed gradually out of an instinctual or biologically based fear of “punishment.” Even so, however, it is undoubtedly true that conscience in its concrete empirical manifestations has numerous relative, socially acquired, and biologically conditioned elements. Illness, deeply traumatic experiences of various kinds, misfortune, charity, romance, success, fulfilled expectations, and so forth can all have an influence on how conscience presents itself. One cannot overestimate how embedded and embodied conscience is in the concrete profusion of everyday life. Socially conditioned understandings and insights regarding moral values, laws, norms, and so forth likewise exert a deep

Author’s Preface 9

influence upon conscience. Relative factors of a psychogenic and phylogenic variety are also significant codeterminants for conscience. The core of conscience presents to us something absolute, while the outer layers surrounding the core suggest that which is relative. Conscience itself demands unconditional submission and asserts its infallibility and authority, even though in its outward appearance it is bound to countless relative, acquired, and uncertain factors. In the history of conscience, the attempt has been made repeatedly—and will continue to be made—to dissolve this sharp distinction. Any theories that view conscience simply as the product of mere biological or sociological factors are ­radically distorted, as are any theories that do not acknowledge social, b ­ iological, and evolutionary factors. On the basis of the objective phenomena, and in accordance with my own understanding, I have ­attempted here to do justice to both sides of conscience.

SINCE THE PRESENT WORK, ORIGINALLY WRIT TEN AS A DISSERTATION, BRINGS

to a close one period of my life and opens another, I would like to add a personal note to these brief introductory remarks. This monograph is lovingly dedicated to my parents as a token of my gratitude for all their devotion and sacrifices on my behalf, for their unflagging support for me despite the expenses of a three-year course of studies abroad that enabled me to complete my academic work. I ­remember with admiration and gratitude the comprehensive and wide-­ ranging education that they made possible for me. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my highly esteemed teacher and professor, Dr. Max Scheler, for deepening my understanding of philosophical, psychological, and sociological problems of the greatest importance, and also for his influence in impressing upon me the formation of diverse interests and a broad appreciation of research problems. His struggle for the truth, especially for the absolute truth, his penetrating insight into connections between the essences and values of ontical2 data and their phenomenal appearances, and his wide-ranging knowledge, which encompasses nearly all areas of learning, were of fundamental importance for my education. My time of study in Cologne under Professor Scheler will always evoke warm and pleasant personal memories.

10  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

Furthermore, I would like to mention my gratitude to Professor F. J. J. Buytendijk (of Groningen), to whom I am very much indebted both personally and in connection with my European studies. I have followed with interest the lectures of Professor of Experimental Psychology Dr. Max Wertheimer and Professor Wolfgang Köhler of Berlin, and Professor Johannes Lindworsky of Cologne, and also Professor of Sociology Dr. Werner Sombart and Professor of Pedagogy Dr. Eduard Spranger of Berlin. Concerning my academic education during my studies at the University College of Potchefstroom (in Transvaal, South Africa), I want to mention at this point especially my highly esteemed teacher and professor, Dr. Jacob Daniël du Toit, Rector of the Theological School, and Dr. Ferdinand Postma, Rector of the University-College. Furthermore, I would like to mention the recently deceased Professor J. Kamp, who was widely loved and admired by his students, and Professor S. O. E. Boshoff and Professor S. O. Los, now in The Hague; and I would not want to leave unmentioned my friend Professor J. C. van Roay, MA. I am thankful to the publisher, Friedrich Cohen, for the printing of this work despite the difficult circumstances of publication. —Hendrik Gerhardus Stoker, Johannesburg, South Africa, February 24, 1925

1 Current Scholarship and Orientation

One of the most interesting, profound, and important challenges to depth-­psychology1 and psychology in general is the question concerning what conscience actually is, particularly a guilty conscience. It claims dominion over the whole of a person’s experience. Its power plays a vastly important role in one’s life. The phenomenon mystifies the researcher, yet it is patently obvious to anyone with a troubled conscience. In some people it is evinced as a horrible dread, driving them further and further away in flight and leading them to perceive all other people as a threat. In other people it reigns as an unspeakable shame, leaving in them the desire to sink into utter oblivion. In others it works as an infinite grief and loving sorrow, producing acts of redemptive and consoling repentance. In still others it works as an electromagnetic sensor for detecting the presence of a dangerous electric current, warning and restraining them from committing an irrevocable and irreversible evil act. What we glimpse in the dread and contrition of conscience is no trivial or superficial matter, but it touches us in our deepest core and seems to bring us into immediate proximity with the higher principles of personal justice and love by which we feel ourselves to be governed. In no way is this a vague, imperceptible, mystical, or incomprehensible experience, but rather a phenomenon whose movement in us is felt concretely, individually, personally, intensely, powerfully, and with complete clarity. 11

12  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

Nevertheless, psychology has hitherto treated this phenomenon in an all too negligent and perfunctory way. When one consults the table of contents of any psychological works or handbooks on this subject, it is astonishing how few observations and acknowledgments may be found directly bearing on the phenomenon. Why is this? Perhaps it could be said that psychology is still a young science and has had to tackle the more superficial problems of the inner life and to work through these first before it could begin to plumb the depths of the inner life and take on the more fundamental problems. Perhaps it could also be said that psychology in its beginnings has stood directly under the spell and influence of the mathematical sciences and the scientific method of the past century and could not yet break free of their mathematical ideals and atomistic hypotheses. Perhaps also, since conscience and the problems related to it do not lie in the foremost line of interest for researchers in psychology, it may also be said that this negligence is a matter related to the particular outlook of our times, and that a positivistic scientific orientation must inevitably turn its back on the deepest essence and meaning of this type of phenomenon. Today one sees everywhere an awakening to new questions of greater human significance. Psychology has recently entered a new phase, with phenomenological investigations, such as those by Max Scheler, F. J. J. Buytendijk, Alexander Pfänder, and others; works of gestalt-­psychology, such as those by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka; the endeavors of Eduard Spranger in psychology of culture; the psychoanalytic studies of Sigmund Freud; the works of William McDougall in behavioral psychology—to mention only a few new movements in psychology. All of these, regardless of how they may differ, are united by their common desire to overcome the older natural-scientific orientation of atomistic psychology (Elementenpsychologie) and the earlier school of associationist psychology, and by their conviction that the proper subject for psychological investigation is not to be found in discrete atomistic data but in the whole “nature,” the Gestalt, the “complex,” and the “structural-unity” of the mind as a “totality,” and that the realities signified by these words form the fundamental basis of psychology.2 This turning point—this crisis—within the discipline of psychology today has yielded a resurgence of interest in deeper, more

Current Scholarship and Orientation  13

fundamental problems, which, it may be hoped, may soon give conscience the attention it properly deserves. Although precious little has been said about the subject of conscience by those in psychology before now, the subject has managed to garner considerably more attention in theological and philosophical ethics. Unfortunately, however, within those disciplines the psychological point of view is usually subordinated to philosophical and theological interests—which are quite lethal for the problem of conscience itself and for the other theories in question. As a result, a complete chaos prevails in ethics concerning the problem of conscience—a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes)—and, at the same time, a consummate labyrinth of ambiguous concepts. One need only consult miscellaneous definitions in miscellaneous works of ethics to see this. Conscience may be regarded as a divine oracle, as the highest court of reason, as human judgment, as feeling, as will, as a compulsion, or as an instinct. It may be identified with our general moral nature or with syllogistic logic. It may be seen as infallible or, contrariwise, as “untrustworthy,” as grounded in convention, as the voice of the community, or individual subjectivity. It may be seen as something divine in the person, or as a biogenetically predisposed experience of “guilt” found even in animals—as a condition, a function, an organ, an act, and so on. When we venture into the problem of conscience under such circumstances, therefore, it is imperative that we do not let such theories of conscience and the history of the problem prejudice our judgment. It is important, instead, to take as our starting point the objective reality— the actual experience of conscience as such—and to let this objective ­reality alone have the last word over the truth of the theories. This is what we intend in the present work—to endeavor to understand conscience, not as abstractly or theoretically conceived, but to grasp it descriptively in its concrete and actual existential depth, and to strive thus to understand its significance. Before we can proceed, however, it is unfortunately necessary to perform something analogous to a surgical operation. The term “conscience” and its referent (what it refers to) are burdened with immense ambiguities and perplexities that must be cut away. Much that is ordinarily associated with “conscience” has nothing to do with it.

14  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

In chapter 2 and the Excursus of this work we will attempt to gain an overview of the many meanings of terms and concepts associated with “conscience,” and their sources, and to find a way out of the confusing labyrinth in order to establish, subsequently, which parties in this cosmopolitan assembly belong to the realm of conscience merely in name and which parties by ties of blood. Then, and only then, can progress be made toward understanding the problem of conscience itself. Here three questions must be clearly distinguished. Too often the failure to distinguish these questions has led to disastrous effects for the resolution of the problem. The three basic questions are the following: What is the essential nature of conscience? How does it develop in the individual and in the community? Is the witness of conscience absolutely valid and trustworthy? These questions about the essential nature, genesis, and validity of conscience correspond to the following three parts of the work.3 It is wishful thinking to suppose, like Paul Rée (and many others), that all the problems of conscience can be solved merely by a consideration of The Origin of Conscience (as his [Rée’s] work is entitled).4 On the contrary, every question of origin or genesis is preceded in principle by the question of a thing’s essential nature. Every process of becoming or emerging presupposes something that becomes or emerges, which first must be grasped in its essence if we intend to do justice to the question of development. Otherwise the problems and investigations end up being turned on their head. Moreover, once conscience has been examined according to its nature and genesis, then the problem of validity also becomes clear. The present work stems from my active interest in clarifying this poorly understood phenomenon of conscience. Even so, I am all too aware of my inadequacies in meeting the formidable challenges posed by this problem and that many more years of intense work would be ­required to do it justice. Perhaps a subsequent work will achieve this.5 Only through the cooperation of additional researchers can the precious gold be fully extracted from the rich mine of this issue. This work is in-

Current Scholarship and Orientation  15

tended, therefore, only as a contribution, a psychological-­philosophical study toward a deeper understanding of the problem of conscience. Not all of the problems of conscience dealt with in this work are treated in the same detail. Some are merely noted or suggested, insofar as a deeper treatment would take us too far afield from the main questions at issue. Such problems are still noted, nonetheless, insofar as they cast new light on the phenomenon and are important for its metaphysical implications, meaning, and nature.

2 The Ambiguity of Conscience

“In the entire field of ethics there is probably no other concept that has been so subject to abuse, employed in such different and inconsistent ways, and been shrouded in such mysterious darkness—whether intentionally or otherwise—as the concept of conscience,” laments Friedrich Jodl.1 Anyone who considers the countless popular uses of this term, or leafs through scholarly bibliographies comparing what philosophers, theologians, and psychologists throughout the centuries have understood by “conscience” (das Gewissen, la conscience morale, geweten, conscientia, συνείδησις), and wishes to grasp an underlying unity amidst the chaos of ideas, is faced with a daunting task. The situation cannot be altogether unlike that of a patient subjected to psychological experiments involving optical illusions, who may well declare: “Everything is so confusing and surreal, spinning around and running together in a confused jumble. For the life of me, I can’t distinguish what is real from what is illusion during the experiment.” No wonder Richard Rothe wants to throw out the word “conscience” from the “synagogue of scientific language” and substitute a completely different name for it, as he says, “because we conceive ‘conscience’ to be scientifically unserviceable.” In the same respect, as Rothe also notes, common parlance is so vague and vastly chaotic that any attempt to artificially delimit the meaning of the term would result in linguistic bewilderment. Conscience embraces all the various psychological phenomena in which the 16

The Ambiguity of Conscience  17

essential moral and religious nature of a person manifests itself—all of which Rothe breaks down rather rigidly into eight concepts: nature, meaning, instinct, and power, each divided into two subcategories according to its moral or religious sense.2 Certainly Rothe is partly right here. Such an ambiguous concept (with even more meanings than the eight he lists) cannot be employed in a technical way without qualifi­ cation. Yet this approach to “conscience” is much too mechanical and ­atomistic. Are there actually no primordial phenomena of conscience, phenomena that present themselves as properly organized and constituted under the heading of “conscience”? Only if there were not, only if there were no more basic phenomena than those compartmentalized neatly by Rothe’s eight concepts would his protest and suggestion carry any weight here. But such primordial phenomena of conscience do in fact exist, and they form the basis upon which the various concepts of conscience are based—by way of derivation, abstraction, analogy, and so forth, and these concepts are applied, in turn, to various other phenomena. What prevents us, then, from uncovering these primordial phenomena and identifying them as the proper phenomena of conscience, particularly when we can distinguish all derivative concepts from one another by means of qualifying adjectives and descriptive attributes? It is by no means pointless to say, for example, that “guilty conscience” is a genuine phenomenon of conscience, whereas an “advisory conscience” or “conscience of the nineteenth century” has nothing at all to do with the genuine phenomenon of conscience. The relationships between these various sorts of concepts can be delineated quite easily by means of qualifying adjectives and descriptions; one merely has to clarify what is meant in each case. By such means, then, it may be possible to preserve for future scholarship a perfectly good word—a word full of linguistic life and breath, a word which, perhaps more than any other, has won its rightful place in both popular and technical language through its connections with profoundly human experiences. The word “conscience” ought to be avoided only where a more generic synonym may be used that does not carry the specifically personal connotations of “conscience”—for example, when a synonym might be used to signify “moral knowledge in general.” A great deal of confusion would be

18  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

avoided if this point were observed. As an example of the confusion to be avoided, Oswald Külpe places an unnecessary strain on the concept of “conscience”—even if the term serves a technical and economical purpose for him—when he argues: “If we use the term ‘conscience’ for the function performed by moral judgment (in a broad sense not limited to one’s own actions), then the distinctions mentioned here designate different opinions concerning the origin of conscience.”3 It is of first importance, therefore, for the investigation of the problem, to gain an overview of the ambiguity of the term (and concept of ) “conscience” and its underlying causes. This ambiguity may be assessed in terms of the following factors: • The nature of the phenomenon as constituted in the depths of the soul • The serious personal importance of the phenomenon • The etymological origin of the word “conscience” • The psychological (as opposed to logical) development of language (vernacular discourse and poetic license are the greatest offenders here) • A distorted conceptualization of “conscience” in the sciences • The place of “conscience” within philosophical systems inimical to it

The nature of the phenomenon as constituted in the depths of the soul People have been playing around with the concept of conscience for some time. Poets, preachers, theologians, psychologists, and philosophers, and also ordinary people using ordinary language, have all taken part in the process. Moreover, the concept is one that lends itself quite easily to playful manipulation, as we shall see. The primary means by which we apprehend the world given to us is through expressions of our mental (seelisch) experiences, rather than through any particular colors, sounds, or things around us. Yet the pro-

The Ambiguity of Conscience  19

cess of language formation seems to show that we first develop the ability to name and understand the sensibly perceptible things around us, and that it is more difficult to apprehend and signify concepts of mental experiences. This is probably because naming and forming concepts involves a reflective act. We need to move from an “unreflective possession and grasp of things” to a “reflective awareness of things.” What is necessary is a level of abstraction that allows one to transcend the mere “possession of things” and an unreflective knowledge of them. It is easy enough to understand how we apprehend our physical environment, which is presented to us in sounds and colors, by naming things, abstracting from the given reality, and forming representations and concepts. We do this more easily than we are able to manage when it comes to our mental and spiritual experiences. It is much more dif­ ficult for us to disentangle our mental and spiritual experiences in order to abstract discrete elements from them and get a grip on them con­ ceptually. Thus, concepts like “gold,” “flower,” “horse,” and “ink” are grasped much more readily and unequivocally than “will,” “belief,” “feeling,” “concept,” or “conscience.” Moreover, sensibly perceptible things in our environment are given to us in a much more sharply defined way than things in our mental and spiritual experiences, which always seem to flow into one another in a confusing way. The deeper the stratum of existence in which a phenomenon is located, the more difficult it is to grasp it adequately in a coherent way. “Conscience” belongs to the deepest level of our experience as persons, and it is accordingly very difficult to retrieve its data from out of our interior depths, to grasp them objectively, and to pin them down conceptually so as to clearly differentiate them from other elements of our experience. The difficulty of conceptually defining the phenomenon in a precise and objective manner tends to lead to the muddling of boundaries and thereby to the problem of ambiguity.

Serious personal importance of the phenomenon Second, conscience belongs to the most important experiences of every person, because it is founded on metaphysical and religious realities—

20  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

that is, on what Scheler calls “the eternal in man.”4 It is important because it moves us so intensely by its austerity and magnitude, and it plays such a major role among all the mental and spiritual phenomena of our experience. This fact provides the animating principle behind the drive to define and communicate the meaning of conscience linguistically, figuratively (e.g., in proverbs), and conceptually, and also the larger tendency to generalize, personalize, and apply the term “conscience” to other closely related or even completely different phenomena that may be only analogously related to conscience proper. The immense importance of conscience in human life and the intensity of its emotions thus also serve as the principal causes behind the ambiguity of the concept and the term.5

The etymological origin of the word “conscience” Etymologically speaking, “conscience” went from having a broader, more general and nebulous meaning to a narrower, more specific, definite meaning, which comes into view in such phrases as “my conscience is bothering me,” or “I have a bad conscience about that.”6 The German word for “conscience” (das Gewissen; Middle High German—gewizzen; Old High German—gewizzanni) originally had the meaning of (1) knowledge of something, or awareness; (2) perceptions shared with others, hence a communal knowledge; and (3) information. Under the influence of the Latin conscientia, this concept gained a moral significance, and thereby also the narrower meaning of conscience familiar to us. This reproduction of the Latin conscientia appears first with Notker of St. Gall (ca. AD 1000), along with the acquisition of the Christian-­Latin vocabulary. So also the Dutch geweten was transformed into a moral concept under the influence of the Latin conscientia. In French, la conscience still bears the meaning of the comprehensive concept “consciousness,” and only la conscience morale bears more or less the same semantic range of meaning found in the German and Dutch words for “conscience.” The English term “conscience” was also used initially for a more general concept of a kind of knowledge or awareness, and it only later gained the narrower meaning it has today.

The Ambiguity of Conscience  21

All these words lead us back to the Latin conscientia as source. Here too we see the same phenomenon. Conscientia did not have originally the meaning that “conscience” has today but signified primarily (1) “knowledge shared by several” (communis complurium scientia); (2) “that state of mind in which one is personally conscious to oneself ” (is animi status, quo quis alicuius rei sibi ipse conscius est); (3) “knowledge,” “idea,” or “teaching” (scientia, cognitio, doctrina), and only later gained the moral significance of “moral consciousness,” and then of “conscience” lying “within the person” (intus hominem). I have not been able to discover whether conscientia developed this parallel moral significance independently or whether it was under the influence of the Stoic syneidesis (συνείδησις). Martin Kähler assumes that the Latin ­conscientia developed independently alongside the Greek syneidesis (συνείδησις).7 It is not only possible but quite likely, however, that conscientia developed into the concept of “conscience” for internal reasons under Stoic influence. The Greek syneidesis (ἡ συνείδησις), furthermore, originally meant only “consciousness,” cognizance, and knowledge. It gained its specifically moral sense only under the influence of the Stoic school. Chrysippus of Soli (ca. 200 BC) still used the word in the sense of “consciousness.” Joannes Stobaeus (ca. AD fifth century) and Diodorus of Tyre (second century BC) used it already in the sense of “moral consciousness” and of our “conscience.” These facts concerning the parallel etymological development of the term “conscience” in all of these ­languages—from the more general concept of “consciousness” through the concept of “moral consciousness” down to the narrower concept of “conscience stirring within us”—certainly help to explain why our concept of conscience is so terribly ambiguous. An overestimation of the powers of etymological demonstration has led scholars to an impasse where the attempt to resolve the issue through the etymological development of the word “conscience” in various languages has proved ultimately futile. It was observed that there were two parts in the composition of the word—on the one side, the “ge-,” “con-,” or “sun-” (“συν-”), and on the other side, the “wissen,” “scientia,” or “eidenai” (εἰδέναι). Accordingly, the second part was taken to refer to the “knowledge” located at the core of “conscience”—that is,

22  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

to knowledge, or judgments, about the value of my actions, and so forth. However, the first part (the “ge-,” “con-,” or “συν-)—the part concerning the “with” in the “with-knowing” of “con-scientia”—presented numerous difficulties. Knowing “with” whom, after all? Is it a knowledge with God, with others who are eyewitnesses, or with oneself ? Each possibility presents its own difficulties. Most people resolve the matter by taking the “with” to mean “with oneself.” Yet if everyone saw that none of these various linguistic components originally had anything to do with the moral concept of “conscience,” that none of them originally meant anything more than “consciousness” in the most general sense, then such etymological hairsplitting would seem to be pointless. At most, one could ask what the “with” has to do with “consciousness” (the original meaning of the word “conscience”), that is, with reflective knowing. There is an essential problem involved with this question, however, even before any consideration of etymological analysis arises— namely, that a duality is always presented in “conscience”: the accused and the judge, the guilty and the innocent, the empirical self and the ideal self (or the self that I should be). Moreover, it is always evident within this duality that the important circumstances of my behavior are known not only to the one side in this encounter but also to the other side. This problem is mistakenly identified with the etymological composition of the word and, accordingly, an etymological resolution is attempted. Thus, confirmation is sought in the word for something that the word itself in no way has the ability to confirm. We must emphasize here a very important point, to which we will return later. Kähler points out for us the following extraordinary fact: “In any case, however, Latin words are as little suited as Greek for expressing the sense of a legislative faculty, or the so-called ‘antecedent (anticipatory) conscience’ (vorangehenden Gewissens), in the strictest sense of the expression.”8 In both languages the moral attitude of “conscience” is more retrospective, more that of conscience as experienced subsequent to the act—that is, “subsequent conscience.” Given the fact that these languages, and particularly the Latin etymology, are so ex­ ceptionally rich in idiomatic expressions and proverbs, it is extraordinary that the concept of a “motivating, fortifying, legislative conscience” hardly occurs in them. This etymological fact alone indicates how the

The Ambiguity of Conscience  23

phenomenon of “antecedent conscience”—which exhibits a tendency of movement, a drive to realize the “ought-to-be” (Seinsollens) as its ­content—­may be readily confused with “subsequent conscience” (and its “retrospective and agitated” qualities) or even fused together with the latter as belonging to one and the same “conscience.” With some justification, then, Albrecht Ritschl strictly separated “legislative conscience” from “reprimanding conscience.”9 From the fact that all these words (Gewissen, geweten, conscience, la conscience morale, conscientia, ἡ συνείδησις) have the same etymo­ logical root-word (wissen, know, scio, εἰδέναι), various thinkers of a rationalist bent have deduced that herein lies a proof that the essence of “conscience” lies in “knowing”—an act of knowledge or judgment—and could by no means lie in the feeling or the will. This attempt to demonstrate the primacy of the intellect etymologically is overly hasty, however, and does not prove what it claims to show. The only thing one can properly say about the general etymological correspondence between the concept of “conscience” and “knowing” is that knowledge of something is somehow an essential factor, a necessary precondition, for the phenomenon of conscience. Beyond this nothing more can be derived from this fact—certainly not that the essence of “conscience” consists only in an act of knowing or even in a judgment. One could just as easily conclude that the essence of conscience lies in the movements of the emotions or the will, and that the etymology simply extracts but one essential feature of conscience, which was nevertheless still used to designate the whole phenomenon (or group of phenomena). Expressions such as “My conscience moves me,” “. . . frightens me,” “. . . urges me,” and so forth, already show clearly enough that more resides within the essence of conscience than merely an act of knowledge. Long before the word “conscience”—Gewissen, conscientia, συνείδησις—had found its way completely into the vernacular, the phenomenon of conscience itself was already present and was well known. “Conscience” was perceived by the inner self in earlier times no less clearly than it was later, after a word was settled upon by which to name it.10 In the absence of such a universal word, the phenomenon of conscience came to be designated by means of various emotionally colored terms corresponding to its movements. The Greek language provides us

24  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

the clearest example. The word ἡ συνείδησις only came into use much later for referring to “conscience.” The tragic poets during the heyday of Greece, and also Homer, knew nothing of this meaning of the word. Yet all of the Greek poets treated the experience of conscience extensively. One need only think of Orestes’s flight before the Furies, or of Antigone’s acknowledgment of the “natural” law to bury her brother against the command of a tyrant. A valuable work on this question has been provided by W. H. S. Jones in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh). He shows us which Greek words bear a moral significance and are used in the same way as our term “conscience.” Departing from his rationalistic interpretation of conscience, he says: “Although there is embedded within the Greek language the notion, in later times developed by philosophers, that virtue and sin have an intellectual side, yet the most common moral terms used in early times refer to the emotional side of conscience.” He shows how, from Homer up to the Stoics, various words were used for the diverse phenomena of conscience, in the same sense in which we use the word “conscience” (Gewissen).11 He says: “Conscience in fact was acting, although as yet no special word ­existed to represent it, while the intellectual side was still less developed than the emotional; . . . all the Greek words for conscience look, with scarcely an exception, to conscience, the judge, and are associated with shame. Plutarch says in wonderfully modern language, that it wounds and pricks the soul.”12 What Jones argues is very significant, namely, that though a single word for “conscience” was still lacking here, almost all of the associated words highlight the emotional side of “conscience.” He nevertheless accepts the accuracy of the rationalistic interpretation of “conscience” that is taken widely today as self-evident—a view about which he is far more sanguine than we are. If one reads his treatise, however, one cannot help wondering whether the terms highlighting the intellectual dimension of conscience—such as he syneidesis (ἡ συνείδησις), conscientia, and ­Gewissen—do not simply cover over this rich, original emotional patina of conscience and thus present a distorted focus on the single aspect of knowledge, thereby failing to convey the full reality of the phenomenon. How rich and multifaceted these Greek designations are for the countless phenomena of conscience, compared with the one word that we must use today: “conscience”! Nevertheless, this one word has acquired

The Ambiguity of Conscience  25

for us once again a much fuller, richer significance and has become much more important than any of these Greek terms. On the one hand, perhaps this is because it has had to serve for many different kinds of moral phenomena. On the other hand, perhaps it is because the term “conscience” has acquired, with the new cultural direction introduced by Christianity, a much more central position than it could have had for ancient peoples.

The psychological (as opposed to logical) development of language All the deepest movements of the human soul—the movements of ­conscience—can be found portrayed for us in masterful, incisive strokes in the great works of world literature. One has only to think of Homer, of the greatest Greek tragedies (one thinks of Antigone or Orestes), of the Bible with its thoughtful and straightforward familiarity with human nature (one thinks of the deeply stirring, magisterial Psalms, and of the Pauline Epistles), of Shakespeare’s immense tragedies (Richard III, Macbeth, etc.), Byron (Cain, Manfred), Tolstoy (Anna Karenina), Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment), and the like. “Hardly any psychological occurrence of human life has been portrayed in art so frequently or in such a magnificent way as the inner anguish of the human breast torn by agonies of conscience,” observes Heinrich Gerland.13 “As with the poet, so also with the painter: one thinks of Arnold Böcklin’s masterful painting: The Furies.14 And so with the musician: recall Bach’s Passions, Mozart’s grand second Don Juan finale.”15 And just listen to Rousseau’s lyrical eulogy to “conscience”: Conscience! Conscience! instinct divine, immortal and celestial voice, sure guide of a being that is ignorant and limited, but intelligent and free; infallible judge of good and evil, who renders man comparable to God; it is you who form the excellence of his nature and the morality of his actions. Without you I sense nothing in me that elevates me above the beasts, other than the sad privilege of leading myself astray from error to error with the aid of an understanding without rule and a reason without principle. . . . Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions the voice of the body.

26  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

Too often reason misleads us. But conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man. It is to the soul what instinct is to the body: whoever follows it obeys nature, and has no fear of being led astray. . . . Conscience is the best of all casuists.16 This is the practical attitude toward “conscience” found in the poet, preacher, and common folk. It is completely different from the attitude of theorists and philosophers, who are not as interested in the practical value and effect of the phenomenon as in an exact theoretical knowledge of what it actually is and how it actually behaves. Parallel to these two different attitudes toward conscience—one practical, the other theoretical—one likewise finds two different languages: (1) a natural, common, psychologically evolving language, and (2) a strict, scientific, logically precise language. Compare the passage quoted from Rousseau, on the one hand, with the language and the style of a Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, or Fichte, on the other! The logically precise language is employed, on the one hand, in order to define the term “conscience” by means of a single logical concept and thereby freeze its meaning. The psychologically evolved language is employed, on the other hand, in order to give life to the word, to give it emotional color, to apply it to analogous situations, to blend it in the most varied ways with the latest word usages, and to constantly deepen and fortify the linguistic roots of the word by means of newer, more suggestive significance. The word “conscience” is used in ordinary language, not for purely theoretical or logical reasons, but for practical reasons arising out of a practical attitude of life rooted in the basic ­emotional concerns of daily living. Feeling, interest, striving, and willing play just as great a role in the development of language as they do in thinking. Furthermore, as Helmut Hatzfeld says, “few people think in strictly logical terms, and it is by these same people that our colloquial language is cultivated, formed, created, enriched, and propagated.”17 Strenuous practice is necessary for logically flawless reasoning, yet the same is not strictly required in one’s practical employment in daily life. If we could see how language grows throughout the centuries, how new words and expressions arise through the creative power of individuals and the community, or under the influence of foreign languages—how

The Ambiguity of Conscience  27

new experiences, epochs, interests, and needs promote new words and thoughts through a collaboration of noetic-psycho-physical factors— then we could also see that language presents the image of a living organism and not that of an inanimate mechanism. Just as the roots of a plant, when moved to a new location, take root and grow wherever nourishment is available, so new words arise spontaneously and appear as if they were suddenly inspired, wherever the soil of robust spiritual vitality is watered by new experiences. New words take root in such soil and draw nourishment and strength from it in order to spread outward and flourish. Poets, with their finely nuanced and deeply resonant perceptions, serve as interpreters of these new experiences and ideas by means of the new words they coin. Likewise, the new words take root in the fertile vernacular language, which provides a vital new energy. More than any other word, “conscience,” in its ever increasing connections with other words, has had to rely always upon the interpretive service of our deepest experiences and thoughts. Every language is the richer and the more vivid because of the treasure of its verbal associations with “conscience.” Our colloquial discourse has managed to capture the diverse meanings of this extraordinarily vital word—whether used concretely or abstractly, whether translated, whether applied to various analogous phenomena or concepts, or used in personifications, proverbs, and so on. Precisely for this reason, colloquial discourse has become an underlying cause of the ambiguity of the word “conscience.” The list of terms that follows (several paragraphs below) may be consulted in order to see the extent to which the term “conscience” has been obfuscated and confused by its entanglement in colloquial language. This can be disastrous for those in the sciences. They cannot possibly make use of such emotionally saturated, ambiguous words for their precisely defined, rigidly fixed concepts. Hence, when they take over ordinary, psychologically developed terms, they invariably impose a strict conceptual logic upon them. For the sake of scientific clarity it is necessary to recast vernacular language in terms that are logically precise. Yet this logical precision comes at the cost of prescinding from the fullness of life and reality, thereby yielding a technical language that is unavoidably mechanical—a language that loses its vitality and eventually dies out along with its authors. As Hatzfeld says:

28  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

A philosopher who truly attempts to give adequate expression to his thought, and to make his speech forcibly logical, creates his own language. Yet there is an unavoidable curse in forcing a logical structure upon one’s language. Such philosophical language fails to comprehend the commonplace habits of speech in the community of colloquial discourse.18 On the one hand, whenever it is thought that scientific progress can be achieved only by means of imposing a rigorously logical structure on language despite the fact that this undermines its natural vitality and potency, the negative consequences are inevitable. Trying to force a strictly logical structure upon an ambiguous and multifaceted term such as “conscience,” with all of its connotations and nuances, robs it of much that is pictorial, essential, living, and suggestive. On the other hand, if the sciences were not able to avail themselves of an intelligible conceptual logic, they would be forced to wade into the labyrinth of concrete experience and ordinary language without an intelligible method. There is only one way out of this impasse. We must group together all the phenomena and concepts intended by the term “conscience” in all of its senses and investigate how these groups relate to one another and which of them can be called “conscience” properly in the primordial sense. Only objective phenomena themselves can help us find our way out of this labyrinth of ambiguities. Only the phenomena themselves can properly justify their claim upon the name “conscience.” First we must consider the ambiguity involved in colloquial discourse; then, in the next section, we will treat the ambiguity involved also in scientific language. The variety of different senses that the word “conscience” is used to convey in colloquial speech may be compared in the following, far from complete list of examples: A conscience may be “up-to-date,” “old-fashioned,” “compelling,” “poor,” “stained,” “biting,” “weighed down,” “grieved,” “upsetting,” “defiled,” “gloomy,” “silly,” “bad,” “burning,” “homely,” “Christian,” “humble,” “poetical,” “burdensome,” “permissive,” “noble,” “honest,” “biased,” “vain,” “strict,” “narrow-minded,” “lenient,” “timid,” “aroused,” “false,” “cowardly,” “shallow,” “diligent,” “tortured,” “free,” “absolving,” “happy,”

The Ambiguity of Conscience  29

“fearful,” “cleansed,” “scourging,” “legislating,” “great,” “good,” “trusting,” “fallacious,” “small,” “empowering,” and so on and so forth.19 One’s conscience can be “disregarded,” “buried,” “encumbered,” “soothed,” “grieved,” “unburdened,” “searched,” “eased,” “questioned,” “stirred,” “fortified,” “stilled,” “deceived,” “bound,” “disowned,” “lost,” “lent,” and so forth.20 One speaks of a conscience “of the nineteenth century,” “of France,” “of mankind,” “of the industrialist,” and so on. One finds proverbs such as these: “A good conscience is a soft pillow”; “He has a conscience with enough room for a Silesian coach driver to turn around in it”; “The elderly have conscience without knowledge, but today we have knowledge without conscience”; and others.21 In his lexicon of German proverbs, Karl F. W. Wander has 237 sayings that refer to “conscience,” which certainly bespeaks the popularity of the term!22 Significantly, all languages have similar proverbs and constructions relating to conscience.23 In short, in all languages the word “conscience” has assumed a most exalted and also a most ambiguous status. If one tries to grasp what is understood by each of these expressions involving “conscience,” one soon finds five or six different, major groups of phenomena all being described by the same word. One might have thought that the native creativity of language itself would have yielded a different name for each group, and the fact that it has not is perhaps unfortunate. Nevertheless, it is significant here that all of these examples bespeak an enormous ­linguistic richness and treasure that has evolved in connection with the word “conscience.” Furthermore, it is significant that these examples attest that one of the most important causes of the ambiguity of the term “conscience” lies in the fact that the living, growing language of colloquial idiom does not develop in a strictly logical manner. Rather, it develops psychologically—in the emotions, imagination, and interests of a people, and with their particular needs for insight. After all, it is the practical attitudes of people toward life and reality that chiefly determine the way a language develops, rather than the theoretical conceits of scientists. Although it is true that scientific theories can exert a secondary influence back upon the practical attitudes of people, and thus modify them, the development of language receives its vitality not from science, but from life and from objective reality itself.

30  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

When language develops organically in a psychological manner, it inevitably yields numerous sources of confusion, as we have seen, so that even phenomena entirely opposed to each other may come to be designated “conscience.” Phenomena belonging to “conscience proper” come to be conflated with other phenomena that undermine the authentic meaning of “conscience.” We have seen such confusion, for example, in such expressions as “apologetic conscience,” “venal conscience,” “cowardly conscience,” or “unfair conscience,” and also in many of the cited proverbs. In view of this, a scientific orientation must not permit itself to be misled by common vernacular expressions. A sound theoretical account of the popular concept of conscience can be attained only when all the original phenomena to which the common expressions allude are grasped for themselves in their own objective and natural condition. Before we undertake anything like this, however, we must examine the final reason for the ambiguity of “conscience,” which has to do with theoretical attitudes toward the problem.

A distorted conceptualization of “conscience” in the sciences The social sciences at present take over the word “conscience” from colloquial usage, where it is laden with enormous ambiguities, and attempt to render it logically coherent. Instead of first differentiating and investigating the data phenomenologically and allowing themselves to be guided by objective reality, these sciences frequently take as their point of departure the ambiguous concept of “conscience” itself and then seek to shape it, form it, and fashion it in such a way that its ambiguity comes to be more or less repressed and subsumed under a more general, abstract, and vague generic concept. This is the first methodological error made by most theorists about conscience. The tangible reality of individual phenomena is suppressed by the tyrannical principle of general validity. Many thinkers accordingly attempt to combine the most varied phenomena under one and the same general concept. “Conscience” then becomes something like “moral awareness,” or “our evaluative nature,” or “the utterance of the public,” or “spirit of the Race,” or “susceptibility of moral emotion,” or “a well-knit system of socially acquired habits of estimating acts,” or “the living knowledge of what is morally

The Ambiguity of Conscience  31

good,” or “moral judgment,” or “a disposition of judgment,” or “an acquired law,” or “the law of our own personality,” and so on.24 The most diverse phenomena are thus combined schematically under this vague, general concept of conscience. Some may attempt to defend this approach by appeal to the principle of parsimony,25 but the fact remains that the phenomenon of conscience in the entirety of its concrete nature and living reality is forfeited by using this general concept. It is one thing (1) to have a generic concept whose essential meaning is reca­ pitulated throughout a variety of species, so that each species contains the same basic meaning as the general concept. For example, where “bad conscience” serves as the operative concept in “penitent conscience,” “fearful conscience,” “shameful conscience,” “wrathful conscience,” and so forth, that which is primary and essential in each phenomenon is precisely that it is a “bad conscience.” It is another thing (2) to combine items such as “table,” “chair,” “sofa,” “wardrobe,” and so on under a concept such as “furniture,” where each species first possesses its own nature, yet secondarily also permits itself to be classified under the general concept (accordingly, a table is primarily a “table,” and only secondarily a piece of “furniture”). It is yet another thing ­altogether (3) to arbitrarily assemble a completely disparate, insignificant collection of things, such as ink, pen stands, hair, stove, shoes, and so on, under a concept such as “black things.” This last case is virtually what appears to apply to these theorists who take the general concept of “conscience” to summarily embrace “moral nature,” “inmost personality,” “moral consciousness,” “cognition of values,” various imperatives, urges, motions, and so forth. The only common thread running through them is the nuance of morality. But even so, the distinctive nature of each of the original phenomena is lost: “bad conscience,” “legislative conscience,” and so forth each loses its specific sense, its power, and its meaning. It is a misguided approach to language analysis that leads to arbitrarily grouping together everything having a somewhat similar nuance, color, or name, and simply subsuming it under the same­“epigraph” (one could almost say “epitaph,” since the essential meaning is lost in the process). A significant reason why “conscience” has become such an enormously confusing concept lies precisely in this presumption of a “general concept” without first investigating the objective phenomena in their own right and then logically establishing the relevant terminology upon the knowledge of reality thereby acquired.

32  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

The place of “conscience” within philosophical systems inimical to it Finally, an important reason why the concept of conscience is so ambiguous and confusing is to be found precisely in the various theories of conscience themselves. If we look into the works of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others, to see how these philosophers understand conscience, two things attract our attention: in each case (1) we are dealing with a system of thought, and (2) conscience takes a special place within this system that is congruent with the whole. The system takes primacy over conscience, and conscience is subjected to the tyranny of the whole system and its schematic worldview. Although conscience may invariably occupy a place of singular and central importance in such constructions of thought, it also presents itself in a completely novel, strange, artificial, and unnatural attire. Instinctively, we cannot help but wonder whether conscience can really be conceived thus. It is hard to suppress the conviction that the full, concrete reality of conscience is nevertheless so robust, rich, and complex that it could survive no matter how severely it was stunted and crippled by unnatural, mechanistic, and artificial distortions of various systems of thought. When presented to us in such a condition, it certainly looks much more destitute than it does in its natural habitat. Reality as it is understood within a theoretical system is always a prejudiced and partial reality. Reality itself, in its various objective forms of being, identity, and value, is in fact a thousand times more complicated than the most intricate system of thought. Every ­concept of objective reality26 must proceed from a single point (in the subject) and can never be all-encompassing. Only in the Person of all persons—in God—is a comprehensive system possible that does full justice to the totality of reality in all of its facets.27 In addition to the inevitable bias and limitation inherent in any theoretical system, philosophers are not always inclined to let objective reality be the primary determining factor in their systems, but they prefer, rather, to impose their systems upon reality. Their inclination toward a subjective bias, influenced largely by their personal interests and particular historical development, tends to render their concepts

The Ambiguity of Conscience  33

and systems distorted and misleading.28 In most systems, those influences that are based on personal and historical considerations tend to be more perceptibly evident than those based merely on facts or on ­reality alone. Indeed, some philosophers have attained heights of arbitrariness in their conceptual distortions of factual data. At the same time, each system has at least a partial truth that it tends to universalize into an all-encompassing truth that applies to every sphere, far beyond those areas where it is objectively applicable. No system is possible without at least an ontically founded partial truth. Otherwise it would become sheer nonsense. The phenomenon of conscience is thus forced into systems of thought such as these and subjected to all of their objective and subjective limitations. Since it normally occupies a central place in these theoretical systems, it shares preeminently in their inherent biases. Yet since every system contains at least one objective partial truth, which some thinker or other has perceived and takes to be irrefutable, it may be assumed that a corresponding partial truth concerning conscience may be found even in these systems. To rescue this partial truth from the clutches of its distorting system is the task of a historical investigation of theories of conscience. It is obvious that every system can admit only such a concept of conscience as, according to its own logic, fits into the particular framework of its own basic ideas, and such a concept as fits well where conscience has an exceptionally important place within it. Thus, a critique of theories of conscience must of necessity include a critique of the theoretical systems as a whole, of which these theories of conscience are a part. Moreover, scholars themselves are usually so enmeshed in their own worldviews and in developing their ideas con­ sistently within them that they are only able to perceive conscience through the lenses of their own systems. In light of this, one cannot strictly accuse such scholars of deliberate dishonesty or unscientific subjectivity when they sacrifice their concepts of conscience on the altars of their systems. It follows that conscience will inevitably be viewed and described differently in every theoretical system, that scholars will be able to perceive it only through the lenses of their own systems and impose the biases of their own frameworks upon it. This is the ultimate reason for

34  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

the ambiguity of the concept. It was inevitable that a Kant would understand and describe conscience differently from a Spencer, a Freud, or a Nietzsche. From the fact that this correlation exists between particular theories of conscience and the systems within which they are developed, it follows that a typology of theories of conscience must stand in a parallel relation to a typology of worldviews or philosophical systems within which these theories are treated. In the following Excursus, we shall single out a few of the principal theories of conscience for detailed consideration. On the one hand, we want to allow the typological contrasts and differences between these theories to emerge clearly. On the other hand, we also want, in the course of our analysis, to address, criticize, and refute various theses that we consider problematic. Of the many different theories that we could possibly consider, we have selected only those that most clearly represent the typical contrasts between various alternate positions. Accordingly, our synopsis of these theories, which follows below, should not be viewed as a “history” of the theory of conscience. Some theories left untreated here will be encountered later in the course of the present work. In other cases, theories may be subjected to critique here that do not lend themselves methodologically to later parts of the work. Along with various classical theories, we shall also be treating Freud’s theory of conscience, because (1) his teachings are so extraordinary, peculiar, and original; (2) he defines conscience, through his basic concepts of libido and repression, with no less bias than a full-blown theoretical system typically does; and (3) his radicalism exhibits starkly both the advantages and disadvantages of systems of thought. We should be able then to summarize more concisely the general differences between these theories so as to finally find our way out of the labyrinth of ideas about conscience and gain a panoramic view of the forest instead of feeling ourselves lost among the trees.

Excursus A Brief History of Theories of Conscience

Medieval doctrines of conscience A major role was played in medieval moral theory by synteresis (συντή­ ρησις)—a word and concept that was later recalled with great distaste.1 The term was carried over from the Scholastics into various Protestant authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, without any of them having inquired into its origin and meaning, until the erudite Johannes Cocceius rendered his qualified disdain: There is no need at this point to anxiously distinguish synteresin συντήρησιν [a cognate of synteresis, συντήρησις] from conscientia. That term, synteresin (συντήρησιν), is a contrived fiction, and neither scripture nor any other good authority, nor the average person, uses it in that sense to mark the knowledge of right and wrong or of the law of nature itself, or, as some do, to refer to that part of the soul that always countermands moral defects. And I do not find a precedent for this concept in dictionaries.2 Wilhelm Gaß says concerning this: “It is extraordinary that the scholarly Latin language of the Middle Ages not only neglected to coin its own term and then adopted a Greek word occurring as seldomly as synteresis (συντήρησις), but that this word demonstrably acquired a more explicitly technical definition in Latin than it had in Greek. In more recent times the matter has been discussed back and forth, but without any conclusive results.”3 The first puzzle we face is the etymological ancestry and associated meaning of the word synteresis. Suddenly one finds, in addition to 35

36  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

c­ onscientia, a synonym: synteresis (synderesis, synderisis, sinderisis, scinderesis, etc.). To be sure, it was a very serviceable synonym, because the medieval way of thinking had a great need to distinguish two sorts of conscience (conscientia)—on the one hand, an eternal, inextinguishable, infallible one; on the other hand, a fallible, empirical one—and an ever-growing tension between these two concepts eventually became apparent. However, the intrinsic need for making this distinction does not explain the external etymological course of development of the distinct terms. The second puzzle involves the question as to what precisely is to be understood by the concept of synteresis, and how it is to be related to its partner, conscientia. As to the question of etymological ancestry, we find that the word synteresis (συντήρησις) is used in the sense of conscience for the first time by St. Jerome. He spoke of the three animal forms—man, lion, and ox—which most Greeks employed to symbolize the three faculties of the soul in Plato—the rational, irascible, and appetitive; or logikon, ­thymikon, and epithymetikon (λογικόν, θυμικόν, and ἐπιθυμητικόν).4 ­Jerome adds: And, in the fourth place, they place above and beyond these three that which the Greeks call synteresis (συντήρησις), which is also the spark of conscience that was not extinguished in the breast of Adam [see note 5, below] even after he was cast out of paradise, and by which we realize that we sin when we are overcome by pleasures or madness, and meanwhile are led astray by an imitation of reason. And this they specifically describe as an eagle, which does not mingle with the other three but guides them when they go astray—that which in scripture we sometimes find being called spirit, which, for our sake, breaks in on our ineffable groanings (Rom. 8:26). For no one knows those things that are of man except the spirit which is in him (1 Cor. 2:11). Paul, too, writing to the Thessalonians, prays that this [spirit] be preserved whole with the soul and body (1 Thess. 5:23).5 F. A. B. Nitzsch maintains that since St. Jerome stands completely alone in this use of the word synteresis (συντήρησις), it likely arose through a “gradual” process of miscopying or mistransliterating the

Excursus 37

[supposedly] synonymous syneidesis (συνείδησις), and, once discovered by Jerome, became a welcome and helpful term for the Scholastic theory of conscience.6 Gaß rightly rejects this contrivance out of hand, since there is no compelling reason to support it, and the internal linguistic evidence suggests little that would relate the term “conscience”—that is, syneidesis (συνείδησις)—to an “eagle,” whereas there is far more that suggests such a relation in the case of synteresis (συντήρησις), in the sense of monitoring or surveillance, particularly if it is derived from synterein (συντηρεῖν—to guard, to keep safe).7 Furthermore, the metamorphosis of the word suggested by Nitzsch is forced and rather ­ex­cessive. Much more likely is the opinion of those, such as Gaß and Zahnel [see note 8, below], who trace synteresis (συντήρησις) back to synterein (συντηρεῖν—to protect, to watch)—a term found already in classical Greek authors in the more frequent basic root forms of terein and teritikos (τηρεῖν, τηριτικός), with the double meaning of (1) strict observation and (2) protection.8 This word is also found very frequently in the Gospels in the composite form of synterein (συντηρεῖν), as Jerome of course admitted. This view is still more significant because the meaning of the word agrees exactly with what Jerome wishes to say. Conscience as synteresis (συντήρησις) is the caretaker and guardian of the divine laws in us, even as the “eagle” doubtless symbolizes, and as is expressly stated in the above-cited thesis of Jerome (on 1 Thess. 5:23), where the expression tere theie (τηρη θείη) from tereo (τηρέω) is used for servari. Everything fits together strikingly. Yet who then are the Greeks (Graeci) from whom Jerome received the term? Gaß and Zahnel go back to Origen [of Alexandria], from whose original text alone a Latin trans­ lation has been transmitted to us in which conscientia is used. They believe that he himself used synteresis (συντήρησις), and that Jerome here relies on him for the view that the expression synteresis (συντήρησις) was formed through Alexandrian usage. To be sure, this solution remains a hypothesis, since the original [Greek] text is missing, but it is the most likely hypothesis. Certainly it is much more likely than the solution of St. Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus), who claimed: Synteresis, according to its name, connotes a certain coherence through knowledge of good and evil, for it is compounded from the

38  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

Greek preposition syn (with) and haeresis (heresy), which is the same as belief or knowledge fixed in a person through reason. It seems that synteresis is a certain combination with all the higher powers of the soul—synteresis is rectitude residing in individual powers in agreement with the first rectitude.9 Gaß rightly calls this a “little test-piece of Scholastic philology”—where “syn” is understood to be Greek, and “haeresis” is understood to be not Greek but Latin, so that “synteresis” is thought of as an “inherent opinion” (opinio inhaerens) within us that includes a “knowledge of good and evil” (scientia boni et mali)—whereby one arrives at a meaning resembling the word conscientia. Wilhelm Windelband, however, finds teresis (τήρησις) to be the technical term for “observation” among physicians of later antiquity, such as Sextus Empiricus. He supposes that in Neoplatonic usage syntere­sis, like synaesthesis (συναίσθησις) or syneidesis (συνείδεσις), originally signified “self-observation,” and thereby received the ethical-religious meaning of “conscience.”10 He stresses the other (second) meaning of tereo (τηρέω), “to take heed of,” “to observe carefully,” which is primarily used in the classics to mean “to guard,” “to protect,” and “to take precaution against injury and misfortune.” This solution is improbable, however, because Jerome, or whoever coined the ethical use of synteresis, in all probability did not proceed from a technical medical term for “strict observation” or “self-observation,” but rather from the meaning of synterein in the sense of “observing” the laws and commandments of God. This sense of the term, which lies closer to the ancient author than the other technical term, is used frequently not only in the Gospels but also in the Apostolic Epistles. The ancestry of synteresis as a substantive rendering of the New Testament syntereo (συντερέω)—likely under the influence of the Alexandrian usage connected with Origin, from which Jerome likely got it—remains the most sensible and likely solution, not only in terms of the character of the word, but also in terms of the reasoning of patristic thinkers. This solution, in turn, throws considerable light on the second problem—namely, what synteresis means and also what has been understood by it. We do not know exactly how the word synteresis originated,

Excursus 39

or precisely how Jerome got it, or how it acquired its moral sense. What can be said is that it remains an artificially formed word that has delivered very useful service to the Scholastics. The distinction between synteresis and syneidesis, which is originally absent according to Jerome, emerges suddenly and sharply in Alexander of Hales. What is certain, however, is that the reception of synteresis in Scholastic language is based essentially on the authority of Jerome. The expression remains a patristic heirloom.11 As we have seen, Jerome takes synteresis to be the spark of conscience or spirit in human beings, which survived in them after they left paradise. It stands above the other three faculties of the soul, does not mingle itself with them, but corrects them in their errors, making us aware of our sin, and so on. Martin Kähler writes: This thought of [Jerome] connects Scholastic psychology with that of Aristotle, locating the practical intellect in synteresis—that is, depending on its setting, the power (potentia) or the habit (habitus) of moral principles. The differences specify the particular application of conscientia to the individual.12 Alexander of Hales takes up the concept again decisively and says: “Synteresis is nature’s light, inclined toward good and repulsed by evil.”13 He asks: “Is synteresis a power or a habit? Or is it reason or will or another power other than these? Or can sin stem from it? Or can it be quenched?”14 Four points of inquiry follow in regard to conscientia. He introduces the dispute here as to whether synteresis is a “habit” (habitus), an act (actus), or a power (potentia). He also sees, in the fourth form of the eagle, that principle that stands above the other three—the spirit of a rational person (spiritus rationalis hominis) in the ethical sense, or the light by which rational power is illumined (lumen, quo potentia rationalis illuminatur). It then fell to the acumen of the Scholastics to distinguish between synteresis and conscientia. Alexander of Hales defined synteresis as the “spark of conscience that is not extinguished” (scintilla conscientiae quae non extinguitur), and conscientia as the “conscience itself, which is thrown down headlong among certain people and loses its place” (conscientia ipsa, quae praecipitatur apud

40  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

q­ uosdam et locum suum amittit). The former is permanent, constant, and immortal, be it habit (habitus) or power (potentia); the latter, changeable and fallible. St. Albert the Great himself also accepted the interpretation of Jerome. Synteresis is the highest moral faculty of the soul, a “power perfected by habit” (potentia cum habitu completa). It is, he says, rational will striving eagerly after what is good, disagreeing with what is bad. Synteresis is the motive force that has always arisen to be fixed innately in higher beings, moving and inciting toward good and drawing back from evil. In such matters it never goes astray, nor is there any sinning in conformity with synteresis.15 Conscientia habitually advances to conclusions for which synteresis supplies the major premise. Hence, conscientia can easily err. St. Albert wants to think of synteresis, first, as a “power” (potentia), which is then secondarily consummated as “habit” (habitus). Synteresis is “the spark of practical reason, always inclining toward good and recoiling from evil; never wholly snuffed out in any person, neither in a traveler, nor in a condemned person.”16 The most important authority, however, is St. Thomas Aquinas. Choosing to align himself here with St. Antoninus of Florence17 against Albert, Thomas holds that synteresis is not a “power” (potentia), but a “habit” (habitus), and that conscientia is an “act” (actus): Synteresis is not some particular power higher than reason, such as nature, but a certain natural habit of operation, in the same way that intellectual habit is a speculative principle, and not some power.18 . . . If properly adopted as one’s premise, conscience is not a power but an action whereby we apply our knowledge to the things that we do: and either attestation or constraint or acquittal follows upon this application.19 The concept of synteresis becomes increasingly intellectual: “Synteresis is called the law of our discernment insofar as it is the habit comprising the rules of natural law, which are the first principles of human efforts.”20

Excursus 41

For Thomas synteresis no longer stands above and outside the three other faculties of the soul, as it does in Jerome, but coalesces with the highest—namely, with reason (the ratio). It is not speculative reason, but reason insofar as it is concerned with practical behavior, that is, practical reason. It is “the basic moral truth naturally implanted in consciousness, which underlies the comprehensive sum of every moral judgment and directly points out a positive behavior to the good and a negative to the bad.”21 Friedrich Jodl identifies the synteresis of Thomas Aquinas with practical reason, as the subjective appearance of natural moral law.22 St. Antoninus of Florence—still more intellectually—regards the relationship of conscientia to synteresis as syllogistic: There occurs in the soul or in the mind of man a certain syllogism, as it were, whose major premise synteresis advances, stating that every evil thing must be avoided. Indeed, higher reason takes up the minor premise of this syllogism when it states that adultery is evil, because it has been forbidden by God. Lower reason, on the other hand, states that adultery is evil, either because it is wrongful or ­because it is shameful. Conscience in turn draws a conclusion by asserting, and inferring from the foregoing statements, that adultery, therefore, must be avoided.23 Conscientia takes its departure from synteresis, and it applies the latter’s knowledge, principles, and laws to particular circumstances, thereby judging them to be good or evil. Conscientia is thus “knowledge that, as it were, concludes” (quasi concludens scientia). Its obligations are threefold: to testify (testificari), to accuse (accusare), and to loosen and bind (solvere et ligare).24 Conscientia can err either in its assumption, if it proceeds from a mistaken idea, or in its application, if it employs a correct supposition without properly examining the circumstances. On the one hand, a fertile ground for the quibbling judgments of casuistry was opened up here by the “compendium of cases of conscience” (summa de casibus conscientiae), leading to the Jesuit doctrine of probabilism, which knew nothing of synteresis and treated conscientia as nothing more than prejudice.25 On the other hand, Latin mysticism

42  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

gave the Scholastic doctrine a fruitful turn in a different direction by following the patristic suggestion that synteresis, as the highest faculty, is disposed to an awareness of direct contact with God.26 This divergence of views is rooted in the twofold concept of conscience that emerged in medieval thought, distinguished by the terms synteresis and conscientia. By attempting to preserve an eternal, infallible, absolute element in its doctrine of conscience, while also fully ­acknowledging the empirical, fallible, relative element, Scholasticism erected a thoroughly artificial theory of conscience. Unable to hold both of these elements together, however, it developed either in the direction of casuistry or mysticism. It is this same tension that broke out many centuries later in diverse forms, whether in the conflict between nativism [innatism] and empiricism, a priorism and evolutionism, or absolutism and relativism.27 Scholasticism has discerned quite rightly that two elements are revealed by conscience—on the one hand, something eternal and absolute, and, on the other hand, something relative and temporally conditioned. Is conscience absolutely trustworthy or is it fallible? One element seems to be infallible, the other fallible. Scholasticism was not able to resolve this paradox of conscience. It has provided us, along with a host of ingenious concepts, with an overly conceptualized construction that is insufficiently rooted in the objective reality of the phenomenon. Sharp conceptual thinking tends to split, fragment, and kill by means of its analysis. As a result, we receive from these thinkers not so much a description of the concrete actual phenomenon, but something me­chanical, abstract, and unreal. Synteresis is actually presupposed by conscientia and stands much closer to the “real conscience” of experience than conscientia does. One could much more readily take the “constant inclination toward good and recoil from evil” (inclinatio semper ad bonum et remurmurans malo) as what we ordinarily mean by “conscience” than the cold, syllogistic “application” (applicatio) performed by “conscientia.” However, neither one gets at the real phenomenon of conscience, which only makes its appearance after the “application.” A critique of this doctrine follows in due course. Following the Protestant Reformation, the concept of synteresis still continued to be used for a long time, but, departing from the contrived

Excursus 43

Scholastic concept of a “practical syllogism in the intellect” (syllogismus practicus in intellectu), it now developed increasingly in the direction of meaning “awareness.” At all times, however, the moral life was conceived in relation to God, and the judging, accusing agency of “conscience” stood in the forefront. “Conscience” had now become the organ for discerning our right behavior in relation to God—thus with Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin: conscience as “a sense of the divine and of experience” (sensus divini et empirii).

Joseph Butler One of the most influential treatises on conscience in English ethics was written by Joseph Butler.28 In many respects, Butler’s theory resembles the Platonic conception of human nature and its corresponding organization of the state—with human beings having a harmoniously integrated personality comprising a tripartite microcosm of reason, feeling, and sensuality, arranged in conformity with the idea of justice in a correct reciprocal relationship in which reason is the highest, governing function—a system corresponding exactly to the threefold division of the Platonic ideal state: Appetite, passions, affections, and the principle of reflection, considered merely as the several parts our inward Nature, do not at all give us an Idea of the system or constitution of this nature, because the constitution is formed by somewhat [something] not yet taken in consideration, namely, by the relations, which these several parts have to each other, the chief of which is the authority of reflection or Conscience. It is from considering the relations, which the several appetites and passions in the inward frame have to each other, and, above all, the supremacy of reflection or conscience that we get the idea of the system or constitution of human Nature.29 Conscience, then, or “the principle of reflection,” has a sovereign authority over the other purposes of our nature, whereby we apprehend our nature as a system or a “constitution.”30 Our constitution stands within our own power, furthermore, and we are responsible for it:

44  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

Our constitution is put in our own power. We are charged with it, and therefore accountable for any disorder or violation of it. One of the principles of action, conscience, or reflection, compared with the rest, as they all stand together in the nature of man, plainly bears upon it the marks of authority over all the rest, and claims the absolute direction of them all, to allow or forbid their gratification.31 The conscience therefore bears in itself the sign of authority over all the different parts of our nature. Butler writes: “The relation, which the several parts or members of the natural body have to each other and the whole body, and which the variety of internal principles in the nature of man have to each other and to the whole nature of man, can be compared with the relation that each particular person in society has to other particular persons and to the whole society.”32 In addition to “conscience,” two other regulative principles are given, benevolence and self-love: “Benevolence . . . is in some degree to society, what self-love is to the individual,” says Butler. The first principle is connected to “the public good”; the second to “the private good.”33 Conscience is now “the principle in man, by which he approves or disapproves his heart, temper and actions.” This is possible because human beings are creatures capable of reflecting on their own nature. Conscience has reverence or respect for “the private good,” and also for “the public good,” and defends the interests of both. The function of conscience is (1) to distinguish between the inner principles of our hearts and also our outer actions; (2) to serve as judge over ourselves and also over our actions, determining and declaring whether certain actions are, as such, correct, right, and good—or unfair, wrong, and evil; (3) to set forth its authoritative nature by approving or condemning those who perform such actions, without being questioned or advised; (4) to always seek, as long as it is not forcibly suppressed, a higher and more effective judgment that will serve in the future to support and corroborate its own judgments:34 It is by this faculty, natural to man, that he is a moral agent, that he is a law to himself, a faculty in kind and in nature supreme over all

Excursus 45

others and which bears its own authority of being so. . . . Conscience, has not only some influence, which may be said of every passion, of the lowest appetites, but likewise it is superior, manifestly claiming its superiority over all others from its very nature, insomuch that you cannot form a notion of this faculty, Conscience, without taking in judgment, direction, and superintendency. This is a constituent part of the idea, that is, of the faculty itself, and to preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength, as it has right, had it power, as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.35

Immanuel Kant Kant has given us a description of conscience that is remarkably profound and beautiful, despite the fact that it is completely conditioned by his system of thought. In his Doctrine of Virtue,36 Kant envisions conscience in a purely formal, subjectivist manner. It is not something acquired, and one is under no duty to acquire it. Rather: Every man, as a moral being, has a conscience inherent in him. To be obligated to have a conscience would amount to having the duty of recognizing duties. For conscience is practical reason holding man’s duty before him, wherever a law is applicable, with a view to either his acquittal or his condemnation. Thus it is not directed to an object but merely to the subject (it affects moral feeling by its act), and so it is not something incumbent on one, a duty, but rather an inevitable fact.37 Therefore, an “erring conscience” is impossible: For while I can indeed err at times in my objective judgment as to whether something is a duty or not, I cannot err in my subjective judgment as to whether I have compared my action with my practical reason (here in its role as judge) in making the objective

46  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

j­ udgment. For then I would have made no practical judgment at all, and in that case there would be neither truth nor error. Unconscientiousness is not a lack of conscience but rather a tendency to pay no attention to its judgment.38 We have to make up our minds about what is or is not our duty, but once the deed is done, conscience speaks involuntarily and invariably: “Therefore, to act with the approval of one’s conscience cannot itself be a duty, for if it were, there would have to be yet a second conscience in order for one to become aware of the act of the first.”39 The lofty place that Kant grants to conscience in his system is seen here clearly, where he does not subsume it under the “categorical imperative” or the “thou shalt,” but, on the contrary, views it as a barometer that tells us whether or not we have acted in agreement with our duty. The conditional “whether or not” here represents the content of the Kantian conception of conscience and constitutes the highest court of appeal: an erring conscience does not exist. Kant also sees conscience as a tribunal: Every concept of duty contains objective necessitation by the law (as a moral imperative limiting our freedom) and belongs to practical reason, which gives the rule. But the inner imputation of a deed, as a case that comes under the law (in meritum aut de­meri­tum), belongs to the power of judgment, which, as the subjective principle imputing an action, judges with legal effect whether an action considered as a deed (an action coming under a law) took place or not. On this there follows the verdict of reason (the sentence), which (as condemnation or acquittal) joins with the action its legal effect. All of this takes place before a tribunal (coram iudicio), which, as a moral person giving effect to the law, is called a court of justice (forum). Consciousness of an inner court in man (“before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another”) is ­conscience.40 Just as Kant often proceeds in his works to shift suddenly from a starkly analytical, abstract theoretical argument to the concrete mode of an enthusiastic visionary,41 so here he proceeds to give us a beautifully picturesque, vivid description of conscience:

Excursus 47

Every man has a conscience and finds himself watched, threatened, and, in general, kept in an attitude of respect (of esteem coupled with fear) by an inner judge, and this power watching over the law in him is not something that he himself (arbitrarily) makes, but something incorporated in his being. It follows him like his shadow when he plans to escape. He can indeed numb himself or put himself to sleep by pleasures and distractions, but he cannot avoid coming to himself or waking up from time to time, and when he does, he hears at once its fearful voice. He can at most, in the extremity of corruption, induce himself to pay no more attention to it, but he still cannot help hearing it.42 But now comes the difficulty: Now this inherent intellectual and (since it is the thought of duty) moral disposition called conscience has something peculiar about it: although its business is an affair of man with himself, man yet sees himself necessitated by his reason to carry it on as if at the bidding of another person. For this action is the bringing of a case (causa) before a court, and to think of the man accused by his conscience as one and the same person with the judge is an absurd way of representing a court of justice, since then the prosecutor would always lose. Hence for every duty man’s conscience will have to conceive someone other than himself (i.e., other than man as such) as the judge of his actions, otherwise it would be in contradiction with itself. This other may be a real person or a merely ideal person which reason itself produces.43 Instinctively, everyone feels here that there is a gap in Kant’s idea, and also an artificial and unsatisfactory way of filling the gap. It is imagined that we will bow before a pure ideal person of our own making, or that we must be idolaters. Yet Kant earnestly insists upon this self-made, purely ideal person, for he says: Such an ideal person (the authorized judge of conscience) must be a scrutinizer of hearts, since the court of justice is set up within man. But at the same time he must impose all obligation: since

48  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

c­ onscience is the inner judge of all free actions, he must be, or must be conceived as, a person in relation to whom all our duties are to be regarded as also his commands. Now, since such a moral being must also have all power (in heaven and on earth) in order to be able to give his law its due effect (a function essential to the office of judge), and since such an omnipotent moral being is called God, conscience must be conceived as a subjective principle of responsibility before God for our deeds. In fact the latter concept will always be contained (even if only in an obscure way) in the moral self-­ awareness of conscience.44 Yet Kant cautions against taking this ideal person, to whom conscience inevitably leads, as an object of justified belief, and still less as a really existing supreme being outside of ourselves to whom we are morally accountable. For this “person” is not given to us objectively through our theoretical reason, but rather subjectively through our practical reason, and therefore stands in no more than an analogical relationship to a lawgiver of all rational beings in the world. Yet either this ideal person is, or is not, a fabrication. Either we have not fabricated this being (Why would we do this? What would induce us to do such a thing?)—or, if we have, we are idolaters. Otherwise this person is not fabricated, but is essentially other, that is, God. But Kant directly cautions us against accepting this person as really other than ourselves. This criticism strikes at the weak point of the Kantian ethics of autonomy and duty, which Scheler has refuted in detail in his ­Formalismus. Kant perceived the difficulty in his conception of a court of justice, namely, how the distinction between the accused and the judge may be conceived as a duality within one and the same person. He answered this question in complete consistency with his epistemological system. That is, the judge—the free, law-giving person—is the homo noumenon, and the accused is the member of the sensible world endowed with reason (species diversus [sic; should be “diversa”]). As Kant says, “It is only from the viewpoint of practical knowledge that he is to be regarded in this way, since there is no theoretical knowledge of a causal relation of the intelligible to the sensible”—and this specific difference is that of the human faculties (the higher and lower), which characterize human beings.

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In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant refers to this notion of a tribunal, in passing, as “that marvelous faculty in us, which we call conscience,” and then comes to the topic of repentance, of which he says: Repentance for an action long past is painful every time it is remembered. It is a painful feeling caused by the moral disposition, empty in a practical sense since it cannot undo that which has been done. [Joseph] Priestly, as a true and consistent fatalist, even declares it to be absurd. . . . But as a pain, repentance is entirely legitimate, because reason, when it is a question of the law of our intelligible existence (the moral law), acknowledges no temporal distinction and only asks whether the event belongs to me as my act, and then morally connects with it the same feeling, whether the event occurs in the present or distant past.45 One should like to compare this understanding of repentance with Scheler’s!46 In his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant asserts: Conscience is a state of consciousness which in itself is duty. . . . The understanding (Verstand), not conscience, judges whether an action is really right or wrong. . . . Conscience . . . is the moral faculty of judgment, passing judgment upon itself. . . . Conscience does not pass judgment upon actions as cases that fall under the law, for this is what reason does, insofar as it is subjectively practical. . . . Rather, here reason directs itself, as to whether it has also really undertaken that assessment of actions (as to whether they are right or wrong) with all due diligence, and it calls the person to witness for or against himself, as to whether this assessment has occurred or not.47

Arthur Schopenhauer Schopenhauer’s conception of conscience is very closely connected to his whole metaphysical system. His position represents a strict determinism in the interpretation of conscience, since he views deeds as

50  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

f­ ollowing necessarily from motives, and motives necessarily from character. “Therefore,” he says, “although man’s moral responsibility concerns chiefly and ostensibly what he does, of course, at bottom it really concerns what he is.”48 Nobody blames the motive, because one knows that a completely different action would have been possible “if only he had been a different man, but he is such as his actions show him to be and is no other, and it is this for which he feels himself responsible; here in the esse (what he is) lies the place where the sting of conscience is felt.”49 Again, Schopenhauer writes: Conscience is precisely the increasingly complete and intimate acquaintance with ourselves that arises from our own mode of conduct . . . it is the ever growing and more complete record of our deeds.50 Now there are generally only three basic incentives of human actions, and every possible motive is aroused by them: (1) egoism, which desires one’s own welfare; (2) malice, which desires the misfortune of others; and (3) compassion, which desires the welfare of others.51 Only actions that proceed from the third incentive have moral value. The issue of conscience thus now centers on the question of whether we have heeded this third motive, a fact from which awakens satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what we are. As Schopenhauer writes, “Conscience is conditioned by reason (Vernunft) simply because the latter provides it with its only possibility of a clear and connected recollection. It lies in the nature of the case that conscience speaks only after the fact. . . . It can speak beforehand only indirectly by inferring from earlier cases that are analogous to an intended action.”52 Schopenhauer sees conscience as an acquaintance with one’s own settled character that emerges only gradually through the performance of deeds. He sees in this a complete agreement with the fact that different persons are highly susceptible to one or another of the three motives, depending on their innate, unchangeable, hereditary dispositions. Schopenhauer assumes a skeptical stance toward conscience, because so many things that are called conscience are not. He writes: “The violation of external, arbitrary, and even absurd rules torments many a

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man with inner reproaches precisely as does conscience. . . . Generally speaking, every inconsistency, every thoughtless action, every action contrary to our resolutions, principles, or convictions, whatever the nature of these; indeed, every indiscretion, every mistake, every stupid blunder afterward secretly annoys us and leaves behind a sting in our hearts.” And he derisively appends a conscience-recipe: “Many a man would be astonished if he saw how his conscience, which seems to him such an imposing affair, is really made up. It probably consists of onefifth fear of men, one-fifth fear of the gods, one-fifth prejudice, one-fifth vanity, and one-fifth habit, so that he is essentially no better than the Englishman who said, quite frankly, ‘I cannot afford to keep a conscience.’ ”53 Schopenhauer’s assumption is one-sided and purely arbitrary. It is unsupported by the data and limited by the prejudices of his system. We cannot avoid this conclusion, because he recognizes conscience as having to do merely with our response to our sense of whether or not we have acted from compassion or been hospitable toward strangers, and because he does not acknowledge actions against rules of conduct or convictions as having any relevance to conscience, but as stemming only from our reactions to some general amoral concept of failure. For Schopenhauer, only an action stemming from compassion has moral worth. He believed, therefore, that moral conscience could be authentically established only on the basis of compassion. Schopenhauer calls this third incentive “compassion” (Mitleid), because the positive reality that is immediately felt is nothing but the pain accompanying all want, deprivation, need, and indeed every desire. Compassion is, above all, the immediate participation in the suffering of the other and thereby in the prevention or alleviation of this suffering. He calls this event “astonishing, mysterious . . . the great mystery of ethics, its original phenomenon.”54 Luck, by contrast, is something negative. It is only the suspension of want, or the cessation of pain. Compassion is, for Schopenhauer, only a form of suffering in general. Suffering, furthermore, is the very essence of life, the will, and existence itself. This suffering can be alleviated only in light of the clear realization that the will-to-life is to be negated, and nonbeing preferred to being. (Suicide as a means of affirming life is not allowed.)

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Against this pessimistic background, Schopenhauer’s idea of conscience can be seen now for what it is: our knowledge of our own individual will, as it arises from action.55 If this will affirms itself with such exceeding intensity that, going beyond itself, it negates the will appearing in others, it thereby does injustice, and the source of this in­ justice is egoism.56 This intensity of the will is in itself, and for itself, a constant source of suffering, because (1) all willing originates from want, and therefore from suffering, and (2) because it is for the most part not satisfied. Schopenhauer writes: Besides the suffering described, and inseparable from wickedness, as having sprung from a single root, namely, a very intense will, there is associated with wickedness another particular pain quite different from this. This pain is felt in the case of every bad action, and according to the length of its duration it is called the sting of conscience or the pangs of conscience.57 This pain arises from a twofold knowledge: However firmly the bad person is involved in the principle of individuation (principium individuationis), according to which he regards his person as absolutely different from every other and separated from it by a wide gulf, there is nevertheless roused in the innermost depths of his consciousness the secret presentiment that such an order of things is only phenomenon, but that, in themselves, things are quite different. He has a presentiment that, however much space and time separate him from other individuals and the innumerable miseries, they suffer, indeed suffer through him; however much time and space present these as quite foreign to him, yet in themselves and apart from the representation and its forms, it is the one will-to-live appearing in them all that, failing to recognize itself here, turns its weapons against itself, and, by seeking increased well-being in one of its phenomena, imposes the greatest suffering on another. . . . Furthermore, the pangs of conscience also spring from a second immediate knowledge closely associated with the first, namely, knowledge of the strength with which the will-to-

Excursus 53

live affirms itself in the wicked individual, extending as it does far beyond his individual phenomenon to the complete denial of the same will as it appears in individuals foreign to him. . . . At the same time it contains the knowledge of the intensity of his own will, of the strength with which he has grasped life and attached himself firmly to it, this very life whose terrible side he sees before him in the misery of those he oppresses; besides the merely felt knowledge of the delusiveness and nothingness of the forms of the representation that separate individuals, it is this self-knowledge of one’s own will and of its degree that gives conscience its sting.58 It is in compassion for others, according to Schopenhauer, that the great chasm between ourselves and others disappears. We perceive that the chasm between ourselves and others belongs only to a fleeting, illusory phenomenon. We recognize that both in our own case and that of others, it is the will-to-life that constitutes the inner nature of everything and lives in all things, and for this reason we would not wish to hurt even an animal.59

Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche wanted a new culture of master morality, not a slave morality like that offered by Christian culture with its preference for the weak, lowly, humble, meek, and suffering. All such qualities—along with love of neighbor and self-denial—he regarded as hostile to life. A will-topower, a belief in the Overman (Übermensch), is the highest thing in life. Only the strong and the noble are good. Present-day Europe suffers, in his view, from a mental illness, an obsession (idée-fixe), because it sees the “moral,” “altruistic,” and “disinterested” as equivalent concepts.60 Morality is precisely the danger of dangers; it is what would be at fault if the peak of power and splendor actually possible for the human species was never in fact attained.61 It is from ressentiment 62 that this peril of Christian morality has arisen—from the tree trunk of Jewish vengeance and hatred.63 The slave revolt in morality begins with ressentiment itself turning creative and giving birth to morals. Unlike every

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noble morality, which grows out of triumphant self-affirmation, slave morality begins by saying “No” to an “outside,” an “other,” a nonself, and this ressentiment-inspired “No” is its creative act. Whereas those who are noble, happy, aristocratic, well-born, powerful, and active live before their own conscience with confidence and openness, those who are ­animated by ressentiment wallow in poisonous and hostile feelings of slave morality, impotence, and depression; they are neither truthful nor naive, neither honest nor straightforward with themselves; their souls squint; their minds love hideouts, secret paths, and back doors. In short, they are ignoble. They call themselves “the Good Ones,” and their noble enemies “the Evil Ones.” This is their creative achievement.64 Would anyone care to learn how ideals are fabricated on earth? Weakness is transformed, by means of lies, into something meritorious; impotence, which cannot retaliate, into “kindliness”; anxious lowliness into “humility”; submission before those one hates into “obedience.” The inoffensiveness of the weak, even their cowardice, is called “patience”; their inability to avenge themselves is portrayed as unwillingness to avenge themselves, perhaps even as forgiveness. “This workshop, where ideals are manufactured, seems to me to stink of lies,” writes Nietzsche.65 One who takes such a dismissive view of the good in Christian culture, curses it with elitist disdain, and sees it as riddled with weakness and slave morality must also have a new conception of the phenomenon of conscience. Nietzsche turns a scornful eye toward “the conscientious one”—the animal bred to calculate and make promises, that sovereign individual who can be held responsible. The proud knowledge this animal has of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom that has become a dominating instinct— this it calls its conscience.66 Conscience! This late fruit! The human animal has had a memory imprinted upon it, and not exactly in a gentle manner: “A thing is burned into the memory in order to make it stick: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory,” says Nietz­ sche.67 With torture, blood, martyrdom, sacrifice, the most gruesome rituals of religious cults, and harsh penal laws, the human animal has seared into its memory the promises it has made in exchange for the privilege of living in society!68 But how did that other “gloomy matter,” the awareness of guilt and sum of “bad conscience,” come into the world? In The Genealogy of

Excursus 55

Morals, Nietzsche tells us that the ancestry of the key moral concept of guilt (Schuld) can be traced to the eminently material concept of debts (Schulden) and the age-old contractual relation between creditors and debtors. Creditors punish debtors as they have always been punished, not because the debtors or offenders could have acted differently, but rather in the way that parents still continue to punish their children, from anger over some damage suffered. Festivity is also associated with punishment, just as it has been always associated with the inflicting of suffering.69 As Nietzsche writes: Now the lawbreaker is a debtor, who not only fails to repay the advantages and advance payments bestowed upon him, but who even dares to lay violent hands upon his creditor. The fury of the defrauded creditor and the community throws him back again into the wild and lawless state against which he had been previously protected: it thrusts him away—and now every kind of hostility may vent itself upon him. “Punishment” is the attitude toward the hated, disarmed, and prostrated enemy, who has lost not only every right and protection, but also all hope of mercy: hence, the law of war and the victory celebration of “Woe to the vanquished” (Vae victis)!70 At a later stage, the malefactors are no longer outlawed and cast out. They are even protected against the immediate wrath of the one they have injured. An increasingly determined attempt is made to mollify the rage of the offended party, to treat each offense as capable somehow of being paid off, and thus to isolate the offenders, to a certain extent, from their deeds. The more powerful the commonwealth and the richer the creditor, the milder the penal laws become, until society allows itself the noblest extravagance—permitting its offenders to go unpunished. So ends justice, as does every good thing on earth, by overcoming and undermining itself (Selbstaufhebung), and this is called mercy, the privilege of the most powerful in their province beyond the law.71 Does this mean that “bad conscience” or the feeling of guilt must have arisen from punishment? Not at all. On the contrary, punishment rarely awakens pangs of conscience. “Bad conscience” or remorse is extremely rare among criminals and convicts. As Nietzsche declares, “Prisons and penitentiaries are not the hotbed in which this species of

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gnawing worm is likely to thrive.”72 In general, punishment hardens and cools; it strengthens the power of resistance. “Bad conscience”—this most uncanny and interesting plant of our earthly vegetation—has not sprung from this soil.73 From where, then? Nietzsche writes: “Bad conscience is the profound sickness to which man succumbed under the stress of that most fundamental of all transformations he ever underwent—that transformation which occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the constraints of society and peace.”74 Just as happened with sea creatures that were forced to become land animals or perish, so these half-animals, who had been happily adapted to the wilderness, war, roaming, and adventure, suddenly found all their instincts devalued and found themselves reduced to their consciousness, their weakest and most fallible organ! But those old instincts did not suddenly cease making their demands. All instincts that are not given free reign turn inward. This led to the interiorization of human beings, from which emerged what was later called the human “soul.” Those frightful bulwarks, by means of which the organized state protected itself against the ancient instincts of freedom (punishment, above all, belonged among these bulwarks) caused these wild instincts to turn back in upon human beings themselves. Hostility, cruelty, the lust for persecution, for raids, excitement, destruction—all turned against the possessors of such instincts: this is the origin of “bad conscience,” according to Nietzsche. Those who were forced to conform to the morals and burdensome regulations of society, these were the animals that rubbed themselves raw against the bars of their cages while the attempt was made to tame them; these fools became the inventors of “bad conscience.” With them began the greatest and most sinister illness, of which humanity has not yet been cured: the human suffering caused by human nature itself! Yet at the same time, something within this human nature announces, as it were, a future: a human being is only a path, an interlude, a bridge, a great promise!75 The state did not arise out of contracts, but only through “masters” who could command. They knew nothing of guilt or responsibility. It is not because of them that “bad conscience” took root and began to grow. Those who were stronger, the more courageous and more noble, have had the “clearer and better conscience” on their side. “Bad conscience”

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is found only on the side of the weak, the slavish, the groveling, those marked by ressentiment.76 But these ugly plants could not have grown without the “masters,” whose hammer blows and violence have produced a tremendous quantity of repressed freedom, driving it underground and out of sight, that is, rendering it latent: “In its beginnings, bad conscience was nothing but this instinct for freedom that was forced to become latent, repressed, imprisoned within, and compelled to vent itself on itself.”77 We should not think ill of this matter simply because it is ugly and painful, for it is still, after all, the instinct for freedom (i.e., the will-to-power): here, however, the material upon which this great force vents itself is ourselves, in the entirety of our old animal selfhood—and not, as in that grander and more spectacular ­phenomenon—our fellow human beings. By means of all of its activity, bad conscience, as the veritable maternal womb of all ideal and imaginative events, at last also brought forth into the light a profusion of strange new beauty and affirmation— perhaps above all beauty itself. It was only “bad conscience” and the will to abuse oneself that provided the conditions for the value of altruism.78 Bad conscience is an illness, but an illness on the order of pregnancy. How did this illness reach its loftiest and most awe-inspiring summit? It came from the relationship of the debtor to the creditor. The living generation acknowledged a juridical obligation toward the preceding ones, especially toward the earliest founders of the tribe. This was ­because it felt that the tribe owed its existence to the sacrifices and achievements of its forebears, and that it owed them a debt that had to be repaid. Thus it recognized a debt that constantly continued to grow, since these forebears, in their continued existence as powerful spirits, never ceased to grant the tribe new blessings of advantage and strength. “Bad conscience” thus originated in the tribe’s fear of its ancestors and their power, in the awareness of its indebtedness to them, which continually compounded itself in proportion with the increase in the tribe’s own power, until the ancestor of the most powerful tribe became so frightfully enlarged in the imagination that it receded into the numinous twilight of the unimaginable: the ancestor was finally transfigured into a god.79 The sense of indebtedness or guilt before this god continued to grow and reached its culmination in the Christian God.

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A decline of belief in the Christian God, a victory of atheism, would ­deliver us completely from our feeling of indebtedness to our origins, our first cause (prima causa). Atheism is accompanied by a kind of second ­innocence.80 With a stroke of genius, Christianity lets God sacrifice Himself for us and pay our debt for us, granting temporary relief to our tortured human race. But the most terrible sickness that has ever raged within us—the sickness of finding ourselves guilty and reprehensible to the point of being unredeemable, of erecting a “holy God” in order to feel more certain of our own absolute unworthiness—this sickness continues to rage on! We must avert our “evil eye” and reverse everything: we must intimately associate “bad conscience,” not with our natural inclinations, but with everything against nature. We must desire this great health: a brazen wantonness of knowledge, a kind of sublime malice. The Overman (Übermensch) must come to redeem us from the curse that our earlier ideal laid upon us, from loathing, from the will-to-­ nothingness, from nihilism. So also must come the stroke of midday, the hour of great decision, which again liberates the will. So this one must come, this victor over God and nothingness.81

Sigmund Freud An extraordinarily strange view of conscience is provided by the psychoanalyst Freud. In conformity with his psychoanalytic view of life and its problems, and the worldview founded upon it, Freud was led to regard the libido, its repression and sublimation, as the fundamental factor in the establishment and formation of conscience. In his view, conscience arises from the Oedipus complex.82 He writes: In simplified form, the case (the Oedipus relation) works out for the male child in the following manner. At a very early age, he develops an object-cathexis83 toward his mother, which takes its point of departure from his mother’s breast and exhibits a typical example of object-­choice in those who are still dependent. The boy also seizes upon his identification with his father. The two connections con-

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tinue side by side for a time, but at length, through the deepening of sexual desire toward the mother, and the perception that the father stands as an obstacle in the way of this desire, the Oedipus complex arises. His identification with his father then takes on a hostile tinge and turns into the wish to remove his father and usurp his place with his mother. From then on, the relationship to the father is ambivalent (the identification can just as easily turn into an expression of the tenderness toward him as a wish to eliminate him). This ambivalent attitude toward the father and the unmixed tenderness and affection felt for the mother signifies, in the boy, the presence of a simple, positive Oedipus complex.84 If this Oedipus complex is shattered, it may be replaced either by identification with the mother or an intensified identification with the father. The latter case is a normal result and consolidates the masculinity of the boy’s character. In a completely analogous manner, the Oedipus attitude85 of a little girl can play out in a strengthening of her identification with her mother and a reinforcing of her femininity. Through bisexuality in the boy, four trends are given within him in connection with identification and object-cathexis—trends directed toward the father and the mother. With the decline of the Oedipus complex, these are combined in such a way, says Freud, that out of them an identification with the father and an identification with the mother emerge. The identification with the father preserves the object-relation with the mother that belonged to the positive (Oedipus) complex, and will at the same time replace the object-relation with the father that belonged to the inverse complex; the case of identifying with the mother is, of course, analogous. The relative intensity of the two identifications in given individuals will reflect the preponderance in them of one or the other of the two sexual tendencies.86 Thus the most general result of the sexual phase dominated by the Oedipus complex may be taken to consist in the formation of a synthesis combining these two identifications, somehow, within the ego.

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This change in the ego retains its privileged position, standing over against the other element in the ego as ideal-ego or super-ego. This super-ego is not simply a residuum left by the objects of the id’s choices (the id is, for Freud, the system of unconscious instincts), but it also represents a vigorous reaction against these. Its relationship to the ego is not merely a matter of such injunctions as these: “You must be like your father,” or “You must not be like your father” (i.e., it retains various prerogatives). In fact, the ideal-ego owes its formation to its revolutionary undertaking of bringing about the repression of the ­Oedipus complex. As Freud writes:87 The super-ego retains the character of the father. The more intense the Oedipus complex was, and the sooner it was repressed (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling, and reading), the stricter is the super-ego’s domination over the ego later on, in the form of conscience, or maybe as an unconscious feeling of guilt. . . .88 The ego-ideal is therefore the heir of the Oedipus complex and consequently also the expression of the mightiest impulses and most compelling libidinous stirrings of the id. . . .89 In the further course of development, the role of father is carried on by teachers and other authorities; their commands and prohibitions remain strong in the ego-ideal and exercise moral censorship in the form of conscience. The tension between the claims of conscience and the achievements of the ego is experienced as a feeling of guilt. . . .90 We are overly conscious of guilt feeling in two emotional disturbances that are very familiar to us: in these the egoideal shows a special sternness and rages against the ego, often in a cruel manner, particularly in obsessive neurosis and melancholia. . . .91 A large part of guilt feeling is normally unconscious, because the formation of conscience is intimately tied to the Oedipus complex, which belongs to the unconscious. Man is not only much more immoral than he believes, but also much more moral than he knows.92 The poor ego suffers under the threat of a threefold danger: that from the outside world, that from the libido of the id, and that from the severity of the super-ego. Three kinds of anxiety correspond to this

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threefold danger, because anxiety is the expression of a retreat before danger. Freud observes: What lies hidden behind the ego’s dread of the super-ego, its fear of conscience, is this: the higher nature that became the ideal-ego once threatened the ego with castration, and this dread of castration is probably the nub around which the subsequent anxiety of conscience has gathered; it is this dread that persists as fear of conscience.93 We have traveled here through a strange land, heard an unusual language, and experienced a disconcerting atmosphere. Are we to take Freud seriously in the visionary reveries he so imaginatively presents here? If it were not for the exceptional and profound insights into sexual life yielded by psychoanalysis, or the attention given to Freud’s career, his scientific work and background in the medical field, one could easily be inclined to dismiss his theory as a typical modern European novelty without any warrant for further serious consideration. Even so, a fundamental protest must be made against his boundless and precarious generalizations and extensions of hypothetical assumptions from one particular field of investigation across the expanse of other remaining fields, so as to consider them universally applicable. One cannot do justice to these other fields in this manner. That which may be valid for special cases of sexual pathology may not ordinarily be transferred to other fields without further consideration. Psychoanalysis will have to increasingly admit the objective facts—just as Freud himself has been compelled to accept also the phenomenon of a “death wish” in addition to the libido—particularly as the fundamental concepts and structure of his theory are reexamined more closely. The foundation, upon which his edifice rests, is far from being as solid or secure as the psychoanalyst supposes. With subsequent attempts to revise his theory’s fundamental ideas, one is increasingly caught up short by evident contradictions.94 Let us permit Freud to defend himself against a significant accu­ sation: Psychoanalysis has been reproached time after time with focusing upon the id and with indifference to the higher, moral, spiritual

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e­lements in human nature. The reproach is doubly unfair—­ historically as well as methodologically. In the first place, moral and aesthetic tendencies in the ego have always been viewed as having a repressive side; in the second place, there has been a general refusal to recognize that psychoanalytic research could not produce a complete and finished body of learning, like a philosophical system, but had to find its own way step by step along the path to the understanding of mental complexities, by analytically dissecting normal and abnormal phenomena. We ought not to be in fear and trembling about the place of the higher things in human life, as long as we are occupied with the intensive study of that which is repressed in the interior life of the soul. And now that we have embarked upon an analysis of the ego, we can reply to all those whose moral sensibilities have been jarred and who have complained that there must surely be a higher nature in man: certainly, and this higher nature is to be found in the ideal-ego or super-ego, the representative of our relationship to our parents, the heir of the Oedi­ ­pus complex. As little children we knew this higher nature, admired it, feared it, and then later received it into ourselves.95 The higher nature in us, our mind or spirit (Geist), is thus degraded to the sphere of the pleasure principle. It only arises by way of reaction against this pleasure principle, as a repressive agent, as a result of the influence of experience, upbringing, and the sublimation of repressed lusts. But how does the pleasure principle come originally to be repressed? Freud’s explanation does not answer this. Even if we could accept his explanation as a purely formal possibility, there still remains the enormous problem of how the substance of the higher mental and spiritual functions in us developed. Although some might find Freud’s view of the matter quite probable, it is hard to avoid questioning how the mental and spiritual element in us could possibly be the product of biological, sexual factors. The mental and the biological have altogether different natures. The principles of self-preservation and preservation of the species in biology have no validity for the mind. The mind is ­“suprabiological,” to use the term of the Groningen biologist and animal psychologist F. J. J. Buytendijk.96 Scheler rightly said that it was the

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methodological error of Freud to seek to understand the normal from the abnormal, thereby turning the order of facts on their head.97 We have seen how Freud regards conscience as having developed from the Oedipus complex. Conversely, we see in his essay Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego what happens if conscience is “taken out of commission” in a group:98 The individual comes under conditions within a group that permit him to throw off the repression of his unconscious inclinations. The seemingly new characteristics that are thereby brought to light are the expressions of this unconscious mind, in which the basic principles of all the evil of the human mind are contained. It is not difficult to understand the weakening of conscience or of the sense of responsibility under these circumstances. We have claimed for a long time that the seed of conscience is social fear. . . .99 The principal characteristics of the individual who finds himself in the group include the disappearance of conscious personality, the predominance of unconscious personality, the similar orientation of thoughts and feelings by means of suggestion and contagion, and the tendency to act without hesitation upon the suggestion of an idea. The individual is no longer a proper individual, but an au­ tomaton without a will.100 With perceptibly unlimited power, says Freud, the group now takes the place of human society as a whole, the bearer of authority, from fear of whose punishments the individual imposes many inhibitions on himself. . . . In obedience to its new authority, the ­individual may put out of commission his erstwhile conscience and yield to the enticing objects of his lusts—an end achieved reliably through the suspension of his inhibitions.101 Freud’s understanding of social conscience is exceedingly strange. The collective mind of society is supposed to have originated from envy. All alike are to be equally deprived. Social justice means that we must deny ourselves of much in order that others, too, will likewise exercise

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restraint. This demand for parity, such that nobody may have it better than another, is the root of the social conscience and the feeling of duty, according to Freud. (Walter Rathenau likewise declares: all justice stems from envy.)102

L E T U S N OW C OM PA R E T H E SE VA R IOU S T H E OR I E S OF C ON S C I E N C E , I N W H IC H

we confront such vastly different perspectives and diverse personal sentiments. Is it one and the same conscience, after all, that Butler glorifies, Nietzsche derides as an expression of impotence, Freud views as a repressive tyrant, Kant elevates above his highly reputed concept of duty, Schopenhauer reckons as a form of suffering, and Scholasticism identifies as the means by which the divine spark in us (synteresis) preserves divine law under particular circumstances? Are these intuitions about conscience or hypotheses? Such diversity of view could create the impression that we are dealing here merely with subjective opinions, which are utterly incapable of doing justice to the phenomenon of conscience. Otherwise such differences would be impossible. There is no question as to how brilliantly each theory sets forth an essential element of the objective phenomenon, even if this element is seen only through the particular lens of the author’s personal perspective. Is Butler not in some sense right in accentuating the element of authority? And is not Nietzsche, in perceiving in conscience a (feeble?) antithesis to the “master morality” and will-to-power? And is not Freud, when he interprets the function of conscience as a repressor of the libido? Is Kant’s insight anything short of profound when he sees in conscience the ultimate authority, the function of a supreme judge? Is Schopenhauer not deeply profound when he emphasizes the element of suffering in the conscience? Is not Scholasticism also right in viewing conscience as emerging from a watchfulness, like that of an eagle? Yet again, there is no question how obviously biased each view is! Each theory is defined by its own worldview and constructed on the basis of the essential elements of conscience that happen to be seen by its author. Now, if we remove from each of these various theories its distinctively subjective and personal characteristics, we are confronted by elements of conscience that not only do not conflict with one another but

Excursus 65

also fulfill and deepen one another. Butler’s element of authority, Kant’s function of judgment, Nietzsche’s will-to-power, Freud’s tyrannical function, Schopenhauer’s element of suffering, Scholasticism’s function of keeping watch—all these are not really irreconcilable opposites. On the contrary, the full synthesis of these elements throws conscience into clearer and sharper relief. If we turn our attention, however, not to the details of these different views, but rather to the particular personal biases with which these details are opposed to our understanding, then we will be led back to the different worldviews assumed by these thinkers. A critique of the theory of conscience then will necessarily include a critique of these various worldviews along with the principles at work in them. Nevertheless, we can always trace back every type of worldview to a limited number of recurring types. A typology of theories of conscience would correspond to such a typology of worldviews. Thus we find in theories of conscience a pair of constantly recurring archetypes. Two or three hundred years ago, these contrasting types would have been called nativism and empiricism.103 Today these terms are obsolete, and one hears reference instead to a priorism and a posteriorism (or evolutionism), and to absolutism and relativism (or historicism). In the past, the question was this: Is “conscience” inborn or acquired? Today the parallel question recurs in this form: Does ­“conscience” have an eternal, invariable nature, or has it developed from factors that have nothing to do with “conscience”? Thus we find opposing allegations, such as, on the one hand, “Conscience is an absolutely impartial and unfailing divine oracle in us,” and, on the other hand, “Conscience is in every sense a product of one’s experience and development and is biased and fallible, just like any subjective opinion or prejudice.” Between these extremes, many theories look for a synthesis that recognizes both the essential nature of “conscience” and its various developmental elements, and which represents the conscience as relatively (more or less) fallible, or divides it into fallible and infallible parts. What is principally important here is the contrast between the inherent nature and formative development of conscience and the synthesis of both of these elements. What is practically important is the contrast that results from this: the infallibility or fallibility of conscience, that is, the question of its validity or ­trustworthiness.

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In accordance with the three principal questions emphasized here regarding the nature, development, and validity of “conscience,” we shall investigate in the following parts of this work, first, the nature of conscience, then its development, and finally the problem of its validity, which, as we will discover, provides the context for the synthesis of the first two contrasting elements. Not only the principles of being and becoming play a role in the theory of conscience but also others, such as the following: formal—­ material; autonomy—heteronomy; universal—relative, as concerns the validity of values, laws, and norms; universalism—individualism; sub­ jectivism (psychologism)—objectivism; intellectualism—intuitionism; ­rationalism—voluntarism—emotionalism; “conscience” as a disposition (habitus)—faculty—function—action, and so on. Each of these distinctions will be investigated at the appropriate place in the present work. But since this work is intended in the first place as a psychological study, theoretical problems of ethics can be considered only insofar as required by our psychological approach to the problem.104 Our aim will be to begin with the phenomena that are objectively given to us and to be guided by them alone. The answers to our questions must be provided by objective psychological data—not the existing precommitments of presupposed theories, hypotheses, explanations, and subjective opinions.

W E HAV E P R OV I D E D A N OV E RV I E W O F T H E A M B I G U I T Y A S S O C IAT E D W I T H

“conscience” and its origins, and also the principal points of disagreement among the various theories of conscience. We have not yet extricated ourselves, however, from the confusion related to the chaotic panoply of linguistic and scientific meanings of conscience. The only way out of this confusion is by means of an orderly overview of the various meanings of conscience. The question, “Which of all these different phenomena is rightly or wrongly called ‘conscience’?” is one that directs itself to the nature of conscience, not to its formative development. As such, it is especially important for the initial approach to the problem in this work. Moreover, there are different groups of answers to this question that can be combined. Probably every moral phe-

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nomenon at one time or another has been called “conscience”—whether it refers to that which is properly “other” than conscience or to that which is the “thing itself.” Now let us organize all the meanings of “conscience,” as they arise in language or in the sciences, into groups corresponding to the various classes of phenomena to which they are related. In this way we can broadly distinguish six such groups, which may be summarized briefly under the following terse headings: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Conscience in the figurative sense Conscience as the whole person Conscience as a general moral consciousness Conscience as a moral knowledge Conscience as a moral urge (Drang) Conscience as a moral emotion

The first three headings obviously can make no valid claim to represent the real phenomena of conscience. The last three have perhaps more or less right to be called conscience in a broader or narrower sense. In the interest of clarity, we shall link the last three headings, ­respectively, to the following technical labels employed for various theories of conscience: 4. Rationalism—(a) Intellectualism and (b) Intuitionism 5. Voluntarism 6. Emotionalism

Explanation of the foregoing groupings of meanings of conscience Re: 1. Conscience in the figurative sense: This would include the “conscience” of the nineteenth century, of industry, of the times (Zeitgeist), of the government, of humankind, and so forth. It is clear that genuine phenomena of conscience are concrete, individual, real data and that “conscience” in an abstract sense does not objectively exist. It is a supplementary term of convenience used for

68  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

r­ easons of economy, and it does not correspond to any actual objective phenomena, at least not to any phenomena proper to conscience. Re: 2. Conscience as the whole person: Conscience in this sense—as the heart of a person, as the whole nature of the person, as a person’s whole moral character and moral nature—is presented to us in the views of William MacDougall, William T. Davison, and others. Davison maintains this view when he writes: “Strictly speaking, the conscience is not a part of man’s nature, it is the man himself, viewed in one aspect, one set of relations.”105 Likewise, McDougall writes: Conscience is the whole moral personality, a vastly complex system, in which all the elements of personality work harmoniously together toward the supreme end of right conduct and more complete moralisation of the self. I maintain that conscience is identical with the whole moral personality, with moral character.106 Likewise there are also linguistic expressions that refer more to character than to conscience as such—for example, “He has a conscience that is foolish, proud, loving, well-meaning, civil, dishonest,” and so on. Many of these sorts of linguistic attributes contradict the nature of conscience as such, since they incline one to understand by “conscience” (in a broader or narrower sense) something on the order of a “dishonest conscience,” or something of the sort—surely a contradiction in terms (contradictio in terminis). Although people always have a “conscience,” it is not the case that “conscience” is their whole person or character. There is much in a person, much even in a morally good person, that does not belong completely to “conscience.” The most intimate part of the person is present in “conscience,” but “conscience” is not found everywhere we find the most intimate part of the person. Conscience is a principle or phenomenon of reaction against the person, perhaps even against the whole person, and cannot be simply identified with persons or their character. Persons are always “there” as long as they live, but their conscience is not. It may fall silent, withdraw itself, or fail to register any evil whatsoever in those who have no “conscience,” even if they have some sort of character. It is an unnecessary and unwarranted expansion of the concept of conscience to equate it with persons or their character.

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Re: 3. Conscience as general moral consciousness: Conscience in this sense, without regard as to whether the content of the consciousness ­involves one’s own action or that of another person, is also a very common but likewise unwarranted use of the word. In many conceptions, the border between “consciousness” and “moral consciousness” becomes blurred. This is especially the case in the French language, where “la conscience” may signify “consciousness,” and where “la conscience morale” may signify “moral awareness” or “conscience.” “La conscience alarmée,” “heureuse,” “timide,” “paisible,”107 and so on could be used for any of the three concepts, yet the three correspond to essentially different phenomena. Thus it is possible to speak of a “conscience” that is stupid, joyful, or expectant. But these adjectives could serve just as well with “consciousness”: it is a real stretch here to really speak of “conscience.” [Hastings] Rashdall, along with many others, sees “conscience” as moral consciousness in general: “Conscience—or (to speak more scientifically) the moral consciousness.”108 It is obvious that what was originally called “conscience” is always self-referential: in no respect does “conscience” rouse itself over what others do or what they allow, so long as one does not share responsibility for it. Numerous moral phenomena that fall within the realm of moral consciousness are far from being phenomena of conscience. If we wish to investigate “conscience” rather than “moral consciousness,” we must be careful to avoid Theodor Elsenhans’s pitfall of investigating “moral consciousness” as though it were “conscience.” He regards conscience as a “moral consciousness” that is restricted linguistically to one’s own behavior.109 The author actually should have called his work “The Nature and Development of Moral Consciousness” [as opposed to “Conscience”].110 Re: 1–3. We can already rule out in advance this group of meanings from further consideration, since it is evident that they have no claim to validity as genuine phenomena of conscience. These three meanings therefore must be excluded from the confusing array of meanings ­attributed to “conscience,” since they clearly do not belong to the phenomena of conscience proper. Re: 4–6. The remaining three groups must be investigated more thoroughly, since they likely have more or less right to be called ­“conscience.”

70  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

Re: 4. Conscience as a moral knowledge: We find in this group all those views that describe the core of “conscience” as some kind of “moral knowledge” (whether formal or material). This moral knowledge may be knowledge of good and evil values,111 of laws, norms, and so forth, and it may be discursive or intuitive, rational or emotional, inborn or acquired. This group includes also those views that describe “conscience” as an act of moral knowing (or such knowing’s function, capacity, valuing, or power of valuing, etc.). The main point here is the element of moral knowledge. This knowledge is ordinarily limited to one’s “own actions.” All intellectualist and intuitionist definitions of conscience fall into this category. Conscience may be a syllogistic procedure, an application of general laws to a special case, a judgment, an organ of knowledge, or a divine oracle. It may arise in intuitive understandings of good and evil. It may advise, vindicate, sentence, acquit, correct (in an intellectual sense), err, deceive, doubt, judge, and so forth. It may be the result of centuries of acquired moral knowledge in the individual, or the voice of the race, community, or humankind within the individual, and so on. In all these statements, what stands out as the essential element is moral knowledge. Re: 5. Conscience as a moral urge (Drang): In this group are all those conceptions of “conscience” whose principal accent falls, not on the factor of knowledge, but on the tendency toward realization in the broadest sense—an inclination toward activity, a movement directed toward the “ideal-ought.” The already recognized good, or the good that is illuminated by one’s inclinations, must be realized. The essential thing here is the attraction of the “ought” or the inclination toward the “ought,” rather than mere knowledge of what is obligatory. The main point here is the element of a moral urge. We find in this group those conceptions of “conscience” as an urge, drive, instinct, striving, willing, or call of duty. We find opinions of conscience as something driving, compulsory, legislative, empowering, and courageous, and also the conception of “conscience” as the realization of an individual calling in the senses entertained by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Georg Simmel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Häberlin, and others. In all of these phenomena—in conscience as legislative, imperativist (in both the autonomous and heteronomous sense), or experienced as a

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calling—the preponderant emphasis is not on knowing as such, even though they all encompass and presuppose such knowing in one form or another (the main feature of Group 4). Rather, the main emphasis is on a tendency directed toward realization, the movement toward a goal, an emphasis on the “ought” (in the most general sense of the word), or an urge toward fulfilling that which awaits fulfillment. All theories that emphasize this inclination, tendency, or urge as the essence of conscience we may group together under the heading of voluntarism. Re: 6. Conscience as a moral emotion: In this last group we find those phenomena in which the contrast between “good” and “evil” (either as actualized or as inclined to be realized) suddenly emerges in a surge of deep emotion, and our whole person, even if only for a moment (whether quietly or outspokenly), lays claim to this antithesis. We emerge somehow from the regular flow of our experience, which ordinarily is fairly constant in the relative strata of common experience, and in a single moment we are compelled to come to a full stop. Then, after satisfying this call to stop, we may proceed to continue participating in the relative ebb and flow of occurrences and processes in and about ourselves. Neither the recognizing of good and evil, nor an inclination toward the good, is the essential thing here, but rather the actual experiencing of opposition between good and evil within us. We have here that phenomenon, which we can undoubtedly regard as “conscience” par excellence (kat’ exochen).112 This essentially presupposes, both the elements of knowing and inclination—both of the characteristics emphasized by Groups 4 and 5—but it assumes a prominence over both as a new group because of the new meaning and nature that emerges within it. The phenomena of conscience acquire here a new tone, definition, and an ontical importance through the sudden clarifying illumination of the antithesis between good and evil, and through the lived experience of its connection to personal well-being or ­misfortune. The main point here is the element of emotional feeling. This group typically specifies conscience as good, evil, alarmed, glad, admonishing, tormenting, biting, tainted, fearful, burdened, remorseful, gnawing, guilty, uneasy, grateful, annoyed, and so on. Countless attributive expressions of this kind have been coined in various languages to describe “conscience,” especially “bad conscience.” The

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world’s greatest poets in every genre have portrayed this phenomenon in the most richly varied and colorful ways. The world’s greatest preachers have mastered the art of influencing these deeply important human emotions. The chief factor here is not in any way moral knowledge or urgings, as such. Rather, it is a personal fact, an objective circumstance, bearing witness to itself in the very movement of the emotions itself. The personal experience of the real antithesis between good and evil within us constitutes the essential core of these phenomena of conscience. All those theories that stress the relation of conscience to this last group of phenomena, and that regard the stirrings of emotion as the chief element in conscience, we group together under the heading of emotionalism. Re: 4–6. Accordingly, the theories of conscience in Group 4 may be classified as intellectualist,113 those of Group 5 as voluntarist, and those of Group 6 as emotionalist.114 These last three groups probably have more or less right to claim that they are dealing with “conscience” (narrowly or broadly defined), insofar as their data consist entirely of concrete, individual, moral phenomena. However, if the concept of conscience is taken in the strictest possible sense, only the phenomena in Group 6 may be considered valid as actual phenomena of conscience. Our chief interest in the present work lies in the phenomena of conscience par excellence (kat’ exochen) and therefore the phenomena in Group 6. It is true, of course, that Group 6 necessarily presupposes an element of knowledge (Group 4), and also an element of an urge (Group 5). This is because genuine conscience is not blind, but sharpsighted, and because it is not indifferent to good and evil, but specific, with a bias in favor of the good and against evil. Without this element of inclination toward good and against evil, it would be incomprehensible. For this reason, then, some preliminary groundwork toward dispelling the fog of ambiguity surrounding intellectualism, intuitionism, and voluntarism will be needed, along with a consideration of the actual phenomena of conscience,115 even if Groups 4 and 5 are not of interest to us in and for themselves. What is abundantly clear is that all those conceptions that take the essence of “conscience” as lying in “moral knowledge” or a “moral urge,” do not properly understand what is sig-

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nified primordially by the term “conscience.” If we intended to offer a phenomenology of all moral phenomena in general, then we would surely investigate Groups 4 and 5 for their own sake. Since we are here limiting ourselves to the phenomena of conscience proper, however, we can consider these two groups only when they throw light on the issues embraced by Group 6. It is a shame that our language is too poor to provide us with another synonymous term for the phenomena in Groups 4 and 5. As our investigation will make increasingly clear, however, neither of these can be properly classified under the concept of conscience proper. Treating everything in Group 6 at once as a whole presents methodological difficulties. There are many essential differences between the “warning conscience,” the “good conscience,” the “bad conscience,” and so forth—probably as many differences as there are essential agreements between them. For this reason, a separate investigation of each case in its own right will be necessary. The essential agreements between each of these will be brought more clearly to light only after (and not before) each of them has been investigated in itself. Further, since “bad conscience” is given to us as the most intense, effective, and primordial instance among all the genuine phenomena of conscience, we shall make it our first objective to investigate it in relation to the various intellectualist, intuitionist, voluntarist, and emotionalist understandings of conscience. This should permit us not only to clearly apprehend the various other authentic phenomena of conscience (“good conscience,” “warning conscience,” etc.). It should also permit us, finally, to search out the underlying unity among all these different phenomena, in order to find an answer to the question: “What exactly is conscience?” After this question concerning the nature of conscience comes, in turn, the genetic problem of its origin and development, to be dealt with ­subsequently. By this means alone will it be possible to rise above the chaotic ­ambiguities surrounding the matter at issue and to attain an overview of all those phenomena that are called “conscience,” and also the needed insight concerning those which alone constitute “conscience proper.” The objective phenomena will lead us—like Ariadne’s thread116— out of this labyrinth of ambiguity and lead us to those phenomena that

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can be summed up as “bad conscience.” Although the phenomena of Group 6 constitute conscience par excellence (kat’ exochen), one could perhaps also assert that the combination of Groups 4, 5, and 6 may be said to refer collectively to “conscience” in a broader sense, to the extent that these are related to the subject itself. After all, conscience never ­directs itself to actions (or the values of actions) of others. But since Group 4 can have as its object of knowledge the actions of others and one’s own, it is debatable whether Group 4 generally still deserves the name of “conscience.” Only by means of an artificial boundary can a part of the phenomena of this group, the act of moral self-knowing, be  incorporated into the region of conscience. It is also debatable whether this group could be more accurately described as dealing with moral (ethical) knowledge or the function of moral knowing (or valuing). By means of the attempt to admit Group 4 into a broader ­concept of conscience, we arrive at the boundary of all possible phenomena of conscience. Where moral self-knowledge is completely missing, there is no right to speak of conscience. We have a sufficient vocabulary in our language, and sufficient moral (ethical) knowledge (insight, judgment, etc.) to avoid the use of the term “conscience” in such cases. The ambiguity of the term must be curtailed by scientifically restricting its use to moral phenomena related to the self. Beneath this broader concept of conscience, any further problem of ambiguity can be overcome through additional distinctions and qualifications.

3 Intellectualism and Bad Conscience

As typical examples of intellectualism, we may cite Michael Cronin’s and  Friedrich Jodl’s definitions of conscience. According to Cronin, “Conscience is an act of the practical reason, whereby man recognizes that certain things are good and to be done, others evil and to be avoided. Conscience is an act of the ‘arid light of the intellect’ (sicca lux intellectus) and no more.”1 For Jodl, “The clearest and least ambiguous concept of conscience presupposes the existence of authoritative norms in human consciousness as a given fact”; conscience tests “whether our practical behavior in a given case agrees with the norm or not. Conscience is a form of knowledge (about the value of our actions in definite instances), which can be expressed in the explicit form of a syllogism.”2 Similarly one could also cite evolutionists such as Paul Rée and William K. Clifford; Thomists such as Victor Cathrein; rationalists such as Christian Wolff, and Johann K. F. Rosenkranz, Friedrich Paulsen, and Ernst Laas; and older theologians like Guilielmus Amezius, and more recently Herman Bavinck.3 All these intellectualist theories ultimately see the nature of conscience as lying in a judgment, and they regard a bad conscience as a judgment against an offensive or evil act. The first distinction that we must make is implicit in this question: “A judgment of whose action?” The distinction of the intellectualist here is not always very sharp. 75

76  Conscience: Phenomena and Theories

If we compare the difference between an ordinary moral judgment and a judgment of conscience, an essential difference immediately comes into view—namely, that the judgment of conscience is more specific than the merely moral judgment. I can make either a judgment of conscience or a “moral judgment” concerning my own actions, but only a moral judgment concerning the actions of others. Although a judgment of conscience may look, when viewed externally, exactly like a direct moral judgment of my own action, it is nevertheless essentially different. A judgment of conscience does not stand purely and objectively on its own (e.g., like the judgment “2 × 2 = 4”). It cannot be detached from the person doing the judging and then generalized. It is woven into the very fabric of an individual’s personal, mental, and psychic experience. Only through this concrete, integrated context does it acquire its meaning, nature, and significance as a judgment of conscience. It consults only its own most deeply grounded interests, ultimately its own being itself, and is thereby specifically rooted in (and refers to) a person’s own being. Thus, a judgment of conscience differs from “moral judgments” because it can be valid for no more than a single individual. By contrast, “moral judgments” are detachable from persons and the deepest levels of their being. Yet their meaning, essence, and significance are not lost on that account, since they can be generalized and rendered universally valid—something essentially impossible for a judgment of conscience. We can pronounce “moral judgments” about others, and, by the same token, even about ourselves, but such self-referential “moral judgments” still have nothing to do with the actual phenomenon of conscience. It would be possible for me to condemn my own actions as wrong and yet regard the fact with indifference, laugh about it, and cynically sneer about it, as so many criminals have done in response to their deeds. The verbal declaration of a moral judgment, as such, is by no means necessarily a phenomenon of conscience. For this reason, intellectualist definitions of conscience, which see the essence of conscience as lying in moral judgment, do not quite succeed in grasping the nature of a bad conscience. The ineluctably self-referential quality of judgments of conscience is grounded much more deeply than Theodor Elsenhans acknowledges, when he says, “In ordinary language, the conscience is never or only rarely ref-

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erenced in relation to others; it seems to be only a type of self-­ legislation.”4 Subsequently, in order to confirm this, he assembles various linguistic illustrations, and says: In the final analysis, these examples show how, everywhere in common usage, conscience is confined to its own bearer or subject. Accordingly, conscience may be defined perhaps as moral consciousness applied to oneself, or moral consciousness in its reflexive usage. This difference from a psychological point of view, however, is negligible.5 The psychological substance of the foregoing, which is embraced by both concepts, is therefore the same for both.6 We see here clearly and distinctly an error into which intellectualism generally falls, along with a mechanistic, atomistic view of consciousness. There is no appreciation of the depth-dimension of mental life, or of its organic, integral concrete wholeness. The inner life is projected onto the surface of consciousness, and what is projected there is analyzed and cut to pieces, then forcibly extracted from its natural bonds in nature and reality. One’s life and personality are more than something mechanical, more than a stream of consciousness or surface-­ level awareness. Elsenhans thinks that the self-referential quality of conscience consists in the linguistic fact that we happen to speak about it in reference to ourselves. Yet this does not prevent him from assuming, however, that it is essentially no different from the “moral judgments” we make about others. Certainly “moral judgments” about ourselves and about others have a similar nature. He is right about that much. If he thinks, however, that on this account moral judgments about ourselves can be understood as judgments of conscience, he is simply mistaken. A judgment of conscience is fundamentally different from moral judgments, whether in reference to ourselves or others, because it is organically related to numerous deeper interior phenomena, which give it its singular identity and meaning. The reason why conscience is self-referential is not because we happen to speak about it in reference to ourselves, whether inadvertently or as a matter of habit. Rather, we speak about it thus because this self-referential quality lies at the heart of the entire phenomenon of conscience. Elsenhans’s m ­ echanical way

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of trying to understand conscience could be compared to trying to understand a mother’s love for her child by means of the love generally exhibited by women for children in general (e.g., as in a teacher’s love for her pupils). This would amount to saying, “It is appropriate to refer to the former as ‘a mother’s love,’ and we could easily enough continue to hold fast to this little linguistic convention, but there is no essential psychological difference between the two cases”! “Moral judgments” depend on whatever substantive theoretical knowledge is given to us, whereas judgments of conscience have to do primarily not with theoretical moral knowledge as such, but with that which, in the deepest personal and individual sense, is a matter of fundamental interest and well-being to one’s very life and existence. We never have a bad conscience about what other people do, because our personal well-being does not depend directly on what they do. With this in mind, we may state the intellectualist definition of “bad conscience” thus: “Bad conscience is a judgment condemning a wrongful act, which we know ourselves to have committed.” The first assumption of such a definition is rightly to suppose that we who are doing the judging have performed the condemned act, though we could have acted otherwise. This awareness of our freedom is what gives rise to the conviction that we are responsible for our deeds. It is precisely because of our consciousness of our complete responsibility for our actions—and, hence, our guilt—that our conscience plagues us. This freedom—this possibility of having acted otherwise (which Schopenhauer wrongly denies), this responsibility for deeds— belongs to the essence of the phenomenon of conscience.7 Without this freedom, bad conscience makes no sense. It simply can have no substantial or serious significance from a determinist point of view. If we were thus determined in this respect, so that all of our actions followed each other mechanically in a predetermined order, we could no longer speak of responsibility. A bad conscience, or a judgment of conscience that produced an accusation, would be a pointless spectacle: “I committed the wrongful act. I could have (and should have) avoided doing it. I, and I alone, am wholly responsible for it. I am bad (Ich bin schlecht).” Every theory of conscience must begin with this experience, if it is to have any meaning at all. For a reductionistic determinist, who denies the psycho-

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logical freedom of willing and acting, bad conscience can be nothing more than an extraordinary self-deception, a pointless wonder, an unavoidable tragedy of life—or something that does not really exist but is the bizarre product of folklore, popular myths, and common fantasy. All intellectualist theories recognize the fact that those with a guilty conscience do not stop merely with a negative judgment concerning the wrongness of their act. Rather, the wrongness of the act refers back to themselves, so that the judgment “this action (of mine) is bad” is replaced by the judgment “I am bad” or “I am evil.” Or they may say, directly targeting themselves: “You are bad (or evil).” The judgment therefore refers to a deeper stratum of life, to those who are responsible themselves. This referral of the action’s wrongness to one’s own guilt, one’s own fault, is an essential element of bad conscience. It is clear that a remarkable deepening of the phenomenon is apparent here. This fact at any rate shows us something that cannot be explained succinctly by most intellectualist theories. If the essence of conscience were nothing more than moral knowledge, then why should conscience find it necessary to penetrate more deeply than a judgment concerning one’s action in order to lodge a more searching judgment concerning one’s own depravity? Why is it not enough for those troubled by their conscience to know that an act was bad? Why this turn against the self ? Does this not point to a deeper, fundamental phenomenon, to which an intellectualist approach cannot do justice? This objective compulsion to face our own guilt, instead of merely condemning the wrongness of our action, is a fact that those from the intellectualist perspective only acknowledge with a shrug but have no means of understanding from their standpoint. This phenomenon can be understood only by penetrating to a much deeper level of the person than the intellectualist perspective does, and by considering not only judgments of guilt but also the very essence and experience of guilt itself. In connection with this problem, it is a significant fact that mentally ill patients repeatedly experience quite the reverse—that is, they experience themselves as bad, evil, and guilty, without having the least idea why they actually should be considered guilty. They look for an action that in fact would render them guilty or bad, and then accuse themselves in the severest terms for the tiniest little inadvertent blunders.

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Being evil and being guilty are isolated here and given as primary,8 rather than [one’s] judgments about bad actions. We have seen that a judgment of conscience about a depraved deed tends to be replaced by judgments about one’s own depravity—­ judgments either of the form “I am bad” or, directed against oneself, “You are bad.” Now, are both of these types of judgments of conscience part of one and the same basic phenomenon? Very little consideration is ordinarily given to this essential question. It is simply assumed as a fact that we are concerned here with one and the same “bad conscience.” Above all, the intellectualist perspective fails to do justice to the question whether these two types of judgments of conscience essentially constitute one and the same phenomenon—particularly when it comes to the vivid image of the “tribunal of conscience.” The conscience is at once the accuser, accused, witness, judge, and verdict!9 Here we find both authentic and inauthentic phenomena of conscience freely blended together in a confused view of “conscience.” Before going any further into the details of this dramatic image of the tribunal, we should like to clarify for ourselves the issue as to whether the two judgments of ­conscience—“I am bad” and “You (self-referentially) are bad”—lead back to one and the same basic phenomenon. Empirically, the two judgments may seem to be genetically related. It may seem that the first one follows a bad action in the form of a self-accusation (“You are bad”), and that the second one then follows, in turn, as an affirmation of agreement (“Yes, I am bad”). Essentially, however, it is exactly the other way around. The primary judgment is “I am bad,” and the secondary one is (self-referentially) “You are bad.” The latter is founded upon the former. The certainty of guilt is the first condition of the phenomenon of conscience. As long as the “You are bad” does not yet acquire this certainty or have it confirmed by means of the “Yes, I am bad,” it has not yet become a phenomenon of conscience. If it really has this certainty, however, it does so only because of the first “I am bad,” and the affirmation “Yes, I am bad” is altogether superfluous and pointless. Otherwise it would amount to a theatrical performance, which would be essentially impossible and absurd for such a deeply serious phenomenon as an authentically bad conscience. These two phenomena must be sharply distinguished, since what is essentially given

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as primary, as constituting the core of conscience, is the experience of guilt, the bearing of guilt, the being guilty—in short, the “I am bad; I have acted badly.” What is secondary is an altogether different phenomenon, a revolt against the primary experience of guilt and of being guilty, which turns us against ourselves, in order to punish, curse, torture, condemn, and assault ourselves. In primary bad conscience, where the recognition and experience of guilt is authentic and deepest, we human subjects (as “whole persons”) experience this guilt as something confronting us as absolute, and in which eternal law and justice hold sway. In secondary bad conscience, by contrast, the experience is not one of standing under an “all-seeing” eye, but, rather, the closely parallel experience of standing under our own innermost eye. Thus, I split myself into two halves—a better and worse self—and my “better self ” takes the law into its own hands, reproving and punishing itself, getting angry with itself and such. Yet if I am deeply troubled by my conscience and have a profound awareness of my guilt, not only will I “have no time” to take a position against myself, accusing and torturing myself in this way, but I will be fundamentally incapable of doing so. I will take flight in a great panic beneath the sleepless and ever-­vigilant “all-seeing eye” of law and justice holding sway over me, or grow deeply ashamed and seek to hide and cover myself, or repent of my action in unfathomable sorrow. Taking a “point-of-view-againstmyself ” is still out of the question here, while I am experiencing the living reality of my guilt in the integral totality of my person. Only when this tension is somewhat alleviated, and the experience of bearing guilt does not command my whole attention so completely, does it become possible for me to consider myself as an object or “ego” who has committed the action—and then to condemn, judge, pursue, torment, thrash, curse, rant and rage against myself, and so on. But this is a completely different phenomenon—secondary bad conscience—and it may not be identified with primary conscience, but rather presupposes it as its basis. Both cannot occur simultaneously, despite what the image of the tribunal would seem to suggest, because both tend to assume outlooks defined by way of direct comparison with one another and to be directly comparative in relation to each other. Each view can only occur alternately in temporal succession, one after the other. Secondary bad

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conscience, however, is always founded upon the primary (the “You are bad” upon the “I am bad”). Without the primary, the secondary is not really a phenomenon of conscience. Thus, without a real experience of guilt and its certainty, this self-judging, self-tormenting, and self-­accusing falls altogether short of the phenomenon of conscience proper. The relation between the two phenomena is precisely the reverse of what it first seems to be when considering its genesis. A sharp distinction between the two phenomena is necessary. We shall encounter this essential distinction again in the treatment of the urgings of conscience.10 Could not the “You are bad,” however, still be interpreted as a completely different phenomenon, namely, as an “accusing conscience,” understood perhaps as occupying a position genetically between the execution of the act and “bad conscience,” as something distinct from “bad conscience” itself? No, because there is no “accusing conscience” to be distinguished from the phenomena of primary and secondary bad conscience. If it made its appearance genetically prior to bad conscience, either it would already exhibit a genuine experience of guilt and certainty of guilt (whether as primary or as secondary bad conscience), or it would lack this certainty and have nothing at all to do with conscience. Quite to the contrary, however, “bad conscience” involves both phenomena: each experience of guilt implicitly contains in itself a self-accusation. Each “bad conscience” is an “accusing conscience,” not only where guilt proclaims itself in gentle whispers but where it breaks forth in full force. What is ordinarily seized upon as an accusation of conscience is the quiet voice of “bad conscience,” which lets itself be heard and falls silent again, repeatedly, or is forcibly silenced. In this “accusing conscience” we do not have any new phenomenon. It is simply “bad conscience” itself in the full reality of its psychological and spiritual battle against the resistance offered by everything raging in the torrential flow of our consciousness until, breaking through the surface, it seizes our whole self on every level of our being with its full character and force, concentrating everything on one point: Guilt! Guilt! Thus every bad conscience is also a judging conscience (even if not a conscience intellectually passing sentence on the accused). As soon as there is an accusation of guilt, the guilt has been already judged. There is no

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judicial utterance or function apart from this. Primary bad conscience is also the experience of “having our guilt judged.” When we are troubled by our conscience, we experience what it is to “be judged” no less in our guilt than in the accusations against us. Thus “bad conscience,” “accusing conscience,” and “judging conscience” are identical phenomena. Only in “secondary bad conscience” do we encounter a further active self-judgment on account of our guilt. The idea of a tribunal is based on the fact that those who are aware of their guilt attempt to convince themselves that they are innocent. As bizarre as it may seem, it is hardly a rare thing for those troubled by their conscience to engage in deliberate self-deception, shaming, and misrepresentation of circumstances. They will then induce themselves to believe in these self-deceptions, or deliberately continue grubbing about in sophistries until they believe themselves innocent. It is a curious fact that we can lie deliberately to ourselves, knowing that we are doing so, and yet believe our intentional self-deception to be true.11 It is a case of mentally closing our eyes to an unpleasant truth, spiritually averting our gaze from the facts, a process of blinding ourselves to the unsympathetic reality of our guilt. (Of course this is reminiscent of the proverbial ostrich, which, when pursued, sticks its head into the sand and then believes that it is safe because it no longer sees anything.) Just as I no longer see anything when I deliberately close my eyes, it also appears possible to “close” my spiritual eyes and believe that there is nothing really there—that I am innocent! This is one of the most puzzling and mysterious phenomena of our interior life. How it is possible, I do not know, but it is an utterly certain fact. (The fact is specifically confirmed by psychopathological and psychiatric practice.) The urge to justify oneself, which leads to deliberate self-deception if it succeeds, is also a basic fact of genuine conscience that makes the notion of a tribunal appear to be so plausible. But what does this urge have to do with “conscience”? It is in fact a phenomenon opposed to conscience, a dangerous and dishonest adversary, a self-impersonator! And yet the proceedings of our tribunal would not run very smoothly without allowing admission to this self-justification, this most cunning and sophisticated advocate—an advocate, moreover, whose eloquence could very well sway the most prominent judge on the tribunal! Thus

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one cannot avoid feeling the incongruity involved in welcoming into the “tribunal,” that is, into “conscience,” a phenomenon inimical to conscience itself. Yet so it must be, if one accepts the tribunal thesis. Is this whole dramatic account not a bit too theatrical for the serious question of conscience? If the self-accusation of the one experiencing guilt has from the beginning an absolute certainty of guilt, and is therefore a real phenomenon of conscience, then why would the entire proceeding of the tribunal up through the guilty verdict still be concerned with establishing this absolute certainty? This is “theater” indeed, and something that never occurs in conscience. If this absolute certainty did not exist from the beginning, and was thus not a phenomenon of conscience, but perhaps some sort of “doubting conscience,” then this legal proceeding would make sense. Up to the guilty verdict (“You have been found guilty”), however, it would still have absolutely nothing to do with the actual phenomenon of conscience. The actual conscience would appear only after the verdict, thus after the absolute certainty of guilt had been established. Therefore, either the guilt is absolutely certain from the beginning—so that the judge and everything pertaining to the judicial process is superfluous—or there is an element of doubt and the guilt is uncertain. In that case, however, “true conscience” appears only after the status of guilt has been assured, following the legal battle of the courtroom. A question still remains. Is this “doubt about guilt” not a phenomenon of conscience? Is there such a thing as a “doubting conscience”? There is a phenomenon that seems to answer in the affirmative, provided that the doubt is directed to the possible wrongfulness of the deed. It is the doubt that asks: “Did you not, perhaps, nevertheless act badly?” (Such phenomena concerning doubt, and also the deeply disturbing doubts associated with religion, await much deeper investi­ gation than we have yet seen.) These phenomena, if they are real appearances of conscience, reveal four elements: (1) an uncertainty about whether the action is good or bad; (2) certitude concerning the answer to this question that is of absolute importance for us and our very existence (and therefore ontically important); (3) a fear that the action is simply bad (here the eye is directed, not to the possible goodness of the action, but to its possible wrongfulness, and this essentially characterizes our stance and the focus of our interest); and (4) an urge

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toward the good, a spiritual love, flowing from the deepest core of ourselves as persons, in which the whole phenomenon of conscience (and every true phenomenon) is ultimately embedded. There is no positive accusation, but only the fear of possible guilt (just as a “warning conscience” serves as a restraint before the danger of possible offense). But what if this fear was simply self-generated and had no internal justification? If this were the case, we would be dealing with a pathological phenomenon, such as appears in so many neurotic anomalies that involve a vague fear of “possible guilt” (as, for example, in cases of “scrupulosity”). In this case, we could set aside the “doubting conscience,” since it would not qualify as a real phenomenon in the ordinary sense. Yet if the fear is justified, then it must be anchored in some kind of certitude, and the possibility of guilt must be rooted already in this certitude. In this case, the fear of conscience must be a “fear of the guilt that results from having done something wrong,” just as the warning conscience is a “premonition of guilt before one does something wrong in the first place.” There is almost certainly going to be a sense of guilt, even if one is not yet entirely conscious of this certainty, and the doubt is merely an awareness of doubt, rather than an actual doubt. In this sense we may surely say that there is such a thing as a true “doubting conscience,” but the designation “doubting” is perhaps not entirely suited to do justice to the phenomenon. For a phenomenon in which no certainty of guilt is present, although in fact there is real doubt, cannot be fully a phenomenon of conscience. Thus, our so-called doubting conscience is not a fully developed phenomenon of conscience, although it is still basically a real manifestation of conscience. And what of those doubting persons who fear that they are guilty? They would surely be inclined neither to erect an inner tribunal nor to excuse themselves. Rather, if they had no reflective awareness of any guilt of which they could be directly accused, their interest would be inclined to run in a completely different direction. A tribunal here would be utter nonsense. Such persons would seek to allay their doubt, to attain certainty, and examine the possible unworthiness of their action until they attained clarity about the matter. The idea of a tribunal would make sense only if conscience were really a sort of application of reason and were capable of assuming a  transcendent vantage point floating above all the actual facts and

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­ bjective circumstances in question. But if the experience of conscience o is in fact profoundly real, if I do not only assess my guilt as such but also experience it as such, then this intellectualist conception of conscience is fundamentally false. The intellectualist perspective makes an analogous mistake when it views the essence of conscience as consisting in a mental syllogism or in an application of general laws to specific cases. Such activities of reason might precede an experience of conscience but essentially have nothing to do with it. The one consists in a real experience of objective facts, the other in mere mental representations that hover above and beyond the real world.

V E RY I N T E R E S T I N G I N T H I S C O N N E C T I O N I S S C H O P E N HAU E R’ S AT TAC K O N

Kant’s conception of conscience as a tribunal: The Kantian depiction of conscience produced an exceedingly imposing effect, before which one stood with reverential awe and ventured the less to say anything against it . . . before the court of justice with trial, proceedings, judge, prosecutor, counsel for the defense, and sentence. Now if these internal events were actually as Kant ­describes them, it would certainly be a matter of surprise that any man could be, I will not say so bad, but so stupid as to act against his conscience. For such a supernatural institution of quite a special kind in our self-consciousness, such as a secret tribunal (Vehmgericht) in the darkest recesses of our innermost being, would inevitably inspire everyone with terror and a fear of the gods. . . . In real life, on the other hand, we see that the effectiveness of conscience is regarded as so feeble that all nations have been intent on coming to its assistance through positive religion.12 Schopenhauer does not refute anything essential to conscience with the last objection. It makes no difference whatsoever to the question of its existence and supernatural institution whether this secret tribunal (Vehmgericht) is weak or strong in its effect. His first objection, about how a person could be so “stupid” as to act against his conscience, also fails to furnish a basic reason why Kant’s conception must be wrong. It

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is quite possible for people to be so “stupid” as to act against their conscience, even if conscience inspires them with terror and fear of the gods. If there were advantages to be gained by stealing and lying, for example, why could they not dare to do so? Or, in a manic moment, why could they not forget the very existence of this supernatural institution? Incidentally, it is not “stupid” to act against conscience if one does not have to worry about any hurtful consequences. This notion of a tribunal, says Schopenhauer, is by no means essential to moral self-judgment. For one thing, a conscience that is obviously contrived, spurious, and based on pure superstition will occasionally assume the same form of accusation, justification, and judgment as in the tribunal—as when a Hindu reproaches himself for having provided occasion for the killing of a cow, or a Jew remembers having smoked his pipe at home on the Sabbath. (Before continuing, however: Why does Schopenhauer call both of these cases examples of a conscience that is contrived, spurious, and based on superstition? The Hindu and the Jew, in any event, have experiences of conscience that, in themselves, are neither inauthentic nor contrived. Although their convictions may seem superstitious and contrived to Schopenhauer, one cannot simply impute his understanding to them. On the contrary, these phenomena are also genuine experiences of conscience precisely in their own personal interconnectedness.) For another thing, even morally indifferent phenomena can often take on the form of a tribunal. For example, if I agreed to stand as guarantor for a friend out of sheer affability and without thinking, the heavy responsibility that I had undertaken could suddenly become clear to me, as I began to see how easily I could come to great loss because of my agreement. Here, too, the tribunal may come into play, until the judge’s verdict sealing my doom falls in a single remark, “Stupid blunder!” Even the objection of Schopenhauer that ­different phenomena can easily assume the form of a tribunal, still does not prove that conscience cannot do so. The difference between the ­informal judgment (“Stupid blunder!”) and the moral judgment (“Guilty!”) specifies precisely the difference between the two phenomena that Schopenhauer overlooks. At no point does Schopenhauer’s critique find its mark in anything substantial, yet he intuitively and correctly felt that Kant’s notion of the tribunal was false.

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Schopenhauer further criticizes a beautiful point concerning conscience made by Kant, who says: “It follows him like his shadow, when he intends to escape.”13 Schopenhauer claims that one can say exactly the same thing about scruples of any kind—even the secret awareness of pensioners that they are spending far more than the accumulating interest in their bank account and that their principal is gradually melting away. Here Schopenhauer emphasizes a very interesting fact. It is true that one could say the same thing about pensioners as about those with a troubled conscience. The external conduct in each case is exactly the same. However, the nature of each phenomenon is totally different. One experiences their guilt at a much deeper level than the other experiences their financial loss, and each experiences something qualitatively different from the other. One experiences their own moral depravity; the other experiences the jeopardy of their future position in life, but feels no moral guilt, responsibility, or anything of that sort. It is strange to find these kinds of mimicking analogies of moral phenomena even in nonmoral areas. Judged purely in terms of externals, both could be viewed as identical, but there is an essential difference that manifests itself internally. This seems to be exactly the same as what happens when the mechanical movements of something inanimate imitate those of an animate being so that it appears to be living. The same seems to be the case with apparent analogies of conscience, such as a dog’s so-called guilty conscience (in Schopenhauer’s classic example), or the negative reaction that sometimes sets in after an experience of overabundant pleasure and joy. Although there are superficial analogies here, none of these cases has anything at all to do with the real experience of conscience.

T H E I N T E L L E C T UA L I S T S E E S T H E E S S E N T IA L E L E M E N T O F C O N S C I E N C E A S

judgment, an act of reason, or an act of knowing. Now, if we extended the concept of knowledge as far as possible to incorporate all types of knowledge into it—such as indirect (syllogistic) inference, and all forms of judgment, intuition, perception, emotional-cognitive value-feeling, and such—then the intellectualist perspective (and intuitionism) would doubtless be right in stressing knowledge as the essential element of

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conscience. Conscience is not a blind, obscure, uncertain, vaguely prescient groping about in the dark, but it is the most highly certain and ­absolute personal conviction. It presents us with the most obvious knowledge of guilt (in its very essence).14 I could more easily doubt everything else—even that “2 + 2 = 4”—than I could doubt the reality of my guilt. Indeed, the knowledge possessed by conscience is sometimes sharper and more impartial, unsympathetic, and objective than any other knowledge. Without this element of knowledge, the whole phenomenon would be pointless and incomprehensible. The nature of “bad conscience” itself testifies to this fact, as seen objectively in any person troubled by his conscience. It tells us that it has only this one certitude—which it knows with manifest certainty— namely: guilt. Unquestionable certitude in knowing guilt belongs to the very essence of bad conscience. This element in bad conscience of knowing one’s own moral guilt must be emphasized over against those who wish to attribute conscience to animals. The dog that hides itself for fear of anticipated punishment, or Wolfgang Köhler’s chimpanzee, with its mouth full of forbidden feces, dancing about fearfully at its master’s sudden appearance—each fears an anticipated punishment stemming from purely biological principles of experience.15 The moment the threat disappears, the animal’s demeanor “strangely” discontinues at once. The superficial similarity between this behavior and that of a person with a troubled conscience conceals a profound difference. Here we have what seem to be phenomena of conscience, just as the phenomena of inanimate nature can take on the appearance of living phenomena. Nevertheless, none of this has anything to do yet with the living reality of true conscience. Similarly, in child psychology we can speak of real phenomena of conscience only if children have real knowledge of their own guilt. Children sometimes have a much finer, more sensitive, authentic, and in­ tuitive grasp of things, and they know experientially what is good or bad, right or wrong, as most child psychologists recognize.16 Psychologists who maintain that conscience arises only as a negative reaction to empirical praise or blame (or punishment), as [Alexander] Bain and many others believe, exhibit an exceedingly superficial understanding of a child’s heart and fundamentally underestimate it. A sharper eye

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would catch in the beautiful tears of a child’s real remorse a splendid, noble, deep, and valuable phenomenon, much deeper and more genuine than many psychologists are able to see with their mechanical “praise– blame” theories of guilt, or their hypothesis that guilt is mere “grief over the consequence of an unhappy action” or “over the unpleasantness of punishment,” and so on. As long as a fear of disagreeable consequences of an act is all that prevails in a child, we cannot speak of a phenomenon of conscience. We would be speaking, rather, of something more like the so-called animal conscience. If this fear were rooted, however, in a deeper experience of guilt—in the negative value (and not merely the danger) of an act (which, for real children would already be bad, because their parents had forbidden it)—then there would be indeed a phenomenon of conscience that went far beyond the facts of mere biology. What is essential to note here is that a real phenomenon of conscience is present in the psyche of children only if they have an awareness of their own moral guilt. Moreover, a child grasps, feels, and recognizes genuinely objective values over against the prevailing moral milieu with a marvelous sensitivity far more perceptive than that of “adults.” By contrast, as adults we progressively “acquire” through our experience a relative hardening of our character, mind, and attitude against objective values and their objective ranking through a gradual suppression of our personal moral knowledge and judgment over the course of our lives. The child confronts objective values more primordially, but also more innocently. The same holds for primitive peoples also, concerning whom one can speak of real conscience only if this element of knowledge is present. It should not be thought that primitive peoples were unable to distinguish between good and evil acts. Inclinations toward good and evil, virtue and vice were also present in them—except that moral evaluations in their case were not detached from their general religious sentiments. Even the most primitive peoples were aware of an angry or gracious god, if only by means of their animistic or fetishistic understanding, and this god’s anger was always related to a transgression. Folk psychology has furnished us with abundant material about this. What is noteworthy for us here is that even with primitive peoples, an absolute certainty and manifest knowledge of guilt are presupposed by their

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experience of conscience, even if their knowledge may happen to be achieved in a “nonintellectual” manner. Even in psychopathology, an absolute certainty of guilt is a precondition for experiences of conscience. Here we must make a further distinction, however, and ask: Can such experiences even be considered normal here? Quite the contrary, a baseless and neurotically induced feeling of guilt is considered an illness, rather than an authentically normal experience. One must beware of putting such abnormal, unhealthy symptoms on the same level as normal, healthy phenomena. This is one of the most fundamental mistakes of psychoanalysts,17 who take their point of departure from such abnormal cases and proceed ­directly to evaluate all that is normal in light of the abnormal. Those who are mentally disturbed, insofar as they are mentally ill, are no more likely to be capable of normal experiences of conscience than they are of any other normal experiences. Yet even here, when a patient who is suffering from psychopathological illness experiences guilt and the symptoms seem entirely abnormal and unhealthy, it is still quite possible to see in them a recognizable underlying character. Just as one can determine the essence of, say, a “lion”—regardless of whether it is a real lion, or an illusion, a hallucination, an exceptionally convincing painting, or a photograph—likewise one can determine the essence of an experience of guilt, regardless of whether it is real, dreamed, or the result of illness. Accordingly, even in psychopathological experiences of guilt, one finds an essential element of bad conscience: an absolute certainty and indubitable knowledge of guilt—even if indifferent to its actual sources. (It is only because this confidence and certainty of guilt is not grounded in normal, rational understanding that it is not a real phenomenon of conscience. Patients may express their certainty that they have acted badly, without remembering what they have specifically done. Oddly enough, such patients seek to find the reason for their guilt by going back over all their actions with a fine-tooth comb, looking to discover anything that might qualify as “bad.” Many elderly people often accuse themselves in terrible anguish of long bygone sins of their youth.) This element of knowledge is also the basis for the question as to whether conscience is erring or deceiving. It is not usually thought that conscience is ordinarily something mystical or oracular, despite some

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who may disagree. The issue depends on whether we are willing to detach the phenomena of conscience from its personal bonds and compare them with other such detached attestations of conscience. On such a mechanistic approach, conscience may be “mistaken.” People may be mistaken and deceived about moral values. Their insights are conditioned by both education and environment, each of which testifies to the relativity of conscience. But if one considers conscience personally, in connection to their nature, then there is no question of an erring or deceiving conscience. For those with a troubled conscience, the testimony of conscience is the highest and most evident truth—even perhaps where they objectively deceive themselves! Even the least actual doubt about this matter would cause the phenomenon of conscience to immediately vanish for them. (We shall see in the last chapter where the difficulty actually lies in the question of validity concerning judgments of conscience.) All of this shows us the relative strength of the intellectualist perspective and its claim that the element of moral knowledge is the e­ ssence of “bad conscience.” Against this perspective, however, two important critical questions may be raised: Does the essence of bad conscience consist only in discernment? Does the essence of conscience consist in discernment as such?

Does the essence of bad conscience consist only in discernment? Here the intellectualist perspective ordinarily answers that discernment and judgment are bound together with attendant feelings, but that these are only concomitant phenomena. It is then invariably emphasized that disagreeable feelings are always associated with “judgments of guilt,” just as agreeable feelings are always associated with “judgments of a good conscience.” But why not the exact reverse? Knowledge as such is surely one and the same, regardless of what feelings may appear to be joined with it. (Or does knowledge of the good have a particular interest in agreeable feelings, and knowledge of evil in disagreeable feelings?) Moreover, the opposite can actually occur: many criminals know that

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they have acted badly, and they delight, gloat, and joke about it. Their attendant feelings are therefore agreeable. Contrariwise, many who know that they have acted well become annoyed over it, and their attendant feelings are therefore disagreeable. Are the feelings here in fact merely attendant, concomitant phenomena? Does the sting of “bad conscience” have only an ancillary function? Are not feelings a response to the objective circumstances of guilt—rather than merely something attendant to judgment? Are those who are troubled by their conscience unhappy, disturbed, ashamed, and saddened only because of their judgment that they are bad, or do these feelings directly attest to their understanding and experience of their depravity? If the latter is true, then feelings are not purely ancillary phenomena, but they rather declare their own message by means of their emotional contents. This conception, incidentally, according to which various judgments are respectively associated with specific feelings, is totally fallacious. Max Wertheimer has brilliantly refuted this “association thesis,” which is still found in most works on conscience.18 It is imagined that a psychic manifold is capable of being analyzed into discrete elements, and then reconstructed by simply connecting the elements into a “sumof-its-parts.”19 In connecting the elements we encounter the “sum-ofits-parts,” a composition out of pieces that are fundamentally indifferent to each other, so that what is molded together can be in principle anything at all. Its “content” is irrelevant to the coexistence of the parts, that is, no substantial elements condition their placement together. It is a blind sharing of quarters by mechanically organized components of all kinds, and the placement of their content is purely random. It must be said, on the contrary, that an actual “sum-of-its-parts” is something witnessed only rarely in psychology, and perhaps then only as a sort of approximation. Such marginal occurrences cannot possibly be considered adequate as a typical basis for interpreting the cases in question, for that which is given is already “configured” in itself in various degrees, given as a “whole,” a “total process” with “complete lawfulness,” “integrated tendencies,” and the “complete conditioning” of its component parts. Component “pieces” are here understood as “parts” that “precede the whole.” That which is combined together does not consist of objectively

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arbitrary pieces, but of what is conditioned variously by concrete laws of form (Gestalt). It is characteristic of meaningful processes that whatever occurs does so for internal reasons and factual demands of the case. Thus even the judgment of conscience understood as a “sum-of-itsparts” (hence partial, blind, and random with respect to facts) is associated with an element of feeling. Some even add to this an element of will, while overlooking the primal unity that essentially characterizes conscience. (Wertheimer’s “form,” or Gestalt, does not quite suffice here, because that which is essential lies deep within the phenomenon, but the form lies on the surface, along with the jointly grasped parts of the “whole.”) The primal unity of conscience, however, shines through its processes of judging, feeling, and willing, and the fundamental unity of its factual basis directly constitutes a unity out of these manifold processes. Hence, it is an error to hold that conscience can be explained or understood from its “elements” or from a “moral judgment” along with its “adhering elements of feeling.” An intellectualism that argued for the view that conscience consists only in a judgment or act of reason, and ignored all elements of feeling, however, would contravene all reality. To ignore the grief, anxiety, fear, and remorse of conscience—those deep emotional stirrings that constitute its very substance—would be to deny the very ontical principle of identity in conscience, and is therefore nonsense. Theodor Elsenhans,20 who is also entangled in the “elements theory,” nonetheless includes more of the whole subjective (self-­directed) “moral awareness” in his notion of conscience and penetrates a little more deeply than this one-sided intellectualism. He realizes the necessity of recognizing that conscience consists of several “elements,” namely, of the old threefold division of concepts, feelings, and volitions. “There is no condition of the soul,” he writes, “where one of these three types of mental processes is completely missing.”21 One must only determine the relations in which these three elements stand to each other within the conscience! The result in his case is that the feelings then claim the major proportion of conscience, while concepts and volitions claim only a secondary share. The single major hindrance for us here, however, is this mechanistic classification based on these three elements of consciousness. It draws the depth dimension of conscience to the surface

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level of our awareness and treats what is only a “projection of conscience” as though it were “conscience” itself. Its psychology is constructed after the pattern of the mathematical natural sciences, and it is fundamentally wrongheaded. It endeavors to explain for us how everything fits together, but it does not yet help us understand the heart of conscience itself. John Calvin, who offers some noteworthy phenomenological observations in his Institutes of the Christian Religion and has a perceptive eye for the essential nature of things underlying appearances, draws a penetrating distinction between the element of knowledge in conscience and the element of its emotional depth. Aptly, he says, “a simple ‘knowledge’ (conscientia) could reside, so to speak, closed up in man,” but when people “have a sense of divine judgment joined to them as a witness that does not allow them to hide their sins from being accused before the Judge’s tribunal, this sense is called ‘conscience.’ ”22 Calvin rightly realized that if conscience had as its function only an act of knowing, its power and reality would be lost, and its impact would be trapped and locked up within itself. But since it can act as a feeling, it “does not allow man to suppress within himself what he knows, but ­pursues him to the point of making him acknowledge his guilt.”23 Therefore it is said that “conscience is as good as a thousand witnesses” (conscientia mille testes). From the foregoing it is clear that the intellectualist perspective errs, not only by regarding the act of knowing as the essence of conscience, but also to the extent that it degrades feelings to mere side effects (even when it acknowledges them), and by paying homage to a fundamentally erroneous “association theory.”

Does the essence of conscience consist in discernment as such? The basic mistake of unilateral intellectualism, however, comes into sharp relief when we examine carefully what is to be understood by the interior acts of reasoning, inferring, applying general principles to specific cases, thinking, judging, and so on—in contrast to the rest of our experience. We shall investigate judging as such, as representative of these various other activities of reason.

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Judgments, as Alexander Pfänder rightly says, are thoughts that assert something.24 The judgment projects from itself a particular state of affairs, which always lies outside of, beyond, and transcending the judgment that projects it. Thus, no part of the state of affairs forms a part of the judgment, rather, the judgment simply asserts something about the objective state of affairs. The level of the state of affairs remarked upon is therefore strictly divorced from the level of the judgment in which this state of affairs is addressed. Judgments always refer themselves to objects. But these objects, in their turn, are not dependent upon judgments or any thoughts whatsoever. Conscience does not have anything to do primarily with claimed structures of thought or judgments concerning objective states of affairs, but with these objective states of affairs themselves. It is concerned, therefore, not with anything on the level of judgments, but rather with the level of states of affairs. Conscience does not necessarily express itself in judgments or concepts, but it most certainly and necessarily does manifest itself in a direct understanding and experience of objective states of affairs. There is always a distance between a judgment and an objective state of affairs, whereas experience directly absorbs a state of affairs. A judgment stands over against states of affairs, whereas experience occurs within them, in the midst of them. A judgment hovers above states of affairs, whereas experience is the direct echo of states of affairs within the depths of a person. Judgment is in some sense a type of “adumbration” or “image” of real circumstances, a sort of second-­order reality, whereas experience directly seizes this concrete living reality itself. Thus we can distinguish two levels with essentially different characteristics: the one asserts, thinks, and judges concerning guilt; the other experiences it. In order for there to be a phenomenon of conscience, there must be a deeper level of experience than the intellectual. Only where the reality of being evil is experienced does one have a  bad conscience. A judgment concerning guilt does not belong es­ sentially or necessarily to bad conscience. Such a judgment does not necessarily signify the existence of a bad conscience. Indeed, one could just as easily rejoice at a judgment concerning guilt or scoff at it. Real feelings of conscience cannot be excited in us by mental images, inferences, or judgments, but only by the reality itself. “Persons influence us,

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voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us,” as Cardinal Newman ­declares25—and real moral guilt can lead us to deepest despair. Not mere thoughts. Reality transcends these: “Many a man will live and die upon a dogma, no man will be a martyr for a conclusion; no one will die for his own calculations, he dies for realities.”26 Those who are ­conscience-stricken do not flee from its judgments; they are not shamed by concepts of their guilt; and they do not regret the conclusions of their inferences. They regret only their real, objective guilt, which these judgments do not represent directly, but only indirectly. The chief mistake of the intellectualist perspective is that it wants to see the nature of conscience in acts of reason as such, and specifically in its judgments concerning guilt. A judgment of guilt without an experience of guilt is not a phenomenon of conscience, however, although an experience of guilt without a judgment of guilt is so. A judgment of guilt is only a factor related to conscience if it is rooted in the experience of guilt. Because of this mistake, the intellectualist perspective applies the term “conscience” to that which transcends conscience, hovers over it, stands opposite to it, but is certainly not the same thing as conscience itself. What does an inference—an application of general norms to special cases—have to do inherently with a bad conscience? Nothing at all! Acts of reasoning take place as occurrences on a level that decidedly transcends all events and experiences, insofar as they themselves are not objective states of affairs. Indeed, a reflection occurs in thinking, a bending back upon the reality given to us, and only indirectly touching this reality. Bad conscience is concerned directly with objective reality. Whereas thinking is concerned with concepts and abstract generalities, experiencing is concerned with reality itself in its concrete individuality. Thinking grasps things and states of affairs indirectly as from the outside, as mediated by structures of thought. Experience grasps guilt from within, as it objectively really is, and has an inherently personal character. All of us have only our own concrete lived reality, which no one else can share, and we have no other reality. As a result, however, this sort of concrete experience requires nothing less than the whole history of our personal experiences, simply because these incommunicable and eminently particular experiences do not stand on their own and cannot be detached from ourselves and our history, but can be understood only

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in and through them. This is not the case with thoughts, judgments, and inferences, which are not bound up with the personal in the same way, and are even capable of being shared with others, generalized, and entirely detached from personal experience. They are abstract and can be summoned at will. The experience of conscience, however, is given to us independently of our will. It cannot be generalized, but is bound up with the personal and demands our whole personality and particular history in order to be understood.27 The answer that is fatal to the question (“Does the essence of conscience consist in discernment as such?”) is, therefore, that conscience does not generally yield any knowledge as such, and it is not primarily concerned with knowledge so much as with actual states of affairs. Knowledge and the act of knowing are therefore necessary only in order to bring a person into contact with objective states of affairs. Where states of affairs are experienced, knowledge may echo one’s experience. I can form a real judgment of conscience, rooted in my experience of guilt, but such judgments are not necessary, especially where my knowledge is given to me not merely indirectly (as intellectualism contends) but also directly (as intuitionism holds). We do not deny that many experiences of conscience are attained through inference, thought, application of general norms or laws in special cases, and so forth, but what we claim is this: 1. As long as states of affairs are represented only in the activity of thinking, and the relevant knowledge has not sunk down to the deeper level where it can become an experience of those states of ­affairs, this process has nothing to do with a real phenomenon of conscience. 2. The norms or laws that are applied to specific cases, resulting in judgments of guilt, are always the highest truth for the person concerned, because the truth of guilt cannot be shaken and stands on the solid ground proper to the nature of conscience. 3. Conceptually apprehended guilt turns into emotionally felt guilt as spontaneously as true guilt arises. 4. This transition from the rational level to the deeper level of experience is never by an act of will, and it cannot be revoked by an inte-

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rior act of the will (although it may perhaps be evaded quite easily by external means such as deliberate self-deception, alcohol, etc.). This transition corresponds to an ontical (or existential) transformation deep within the heart of the person, which is to be understood as the outbreak of a metaphysical urge to seek good (spiritual love) and its realization.28 In short, thinking, inferring, and judging can lead to experiences of conscience and contribute to them, but in and of themselves they are not yet phenomena of conscience and require a metaphysical occurrence, a fundamental ontical transformation impelling one to an experience of conscience. Once a genuine experience of conscience comes into play, the rational factors can collaborate and be included within the unity of conscience, and in this sense one may speak of a “judgment of conscience.” The mediation of intellectual thought is not the only possible means, however, for obtaining the necessary knowledge of a guilty conscience. Standing diametrically opposed to this means is the intuitive apprehension of value. Knowledge of guilt is indisputably important. Without one of these two means of knowledge, a truly normal phenomenon of conscience could never arise. Conscience is not blind. Its self-perception is exceedingly sharp, and the knowledge upon which the phenomenon establishes itself is, for the person involved, the loftiest, surest, and truest. Where this is not the case, the phenomenon of conscience is essentially precluded as a possibility. Even the least bit of genuine doubt destroys it. Hence, the guilt experienced by a psychopathological patient or otherwise mentally ill person, although it may involve a certainty and assurance of guilt, lacks a rational basis either consciously or unconsciously, and cannot be considered a real experience of conscience. The fact that real experiences of conscience can arise from the application of known laws and norms to specific cases presupposes that such laws and norms are already known and presumed true, and have been retained in memory in order to be applied wherever possible. The medieval concept of synteresis has essentially this same monitoring and protecting function, in addition to the active elements of an attraction

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to good and aversion to evil. Synteresis thus emphasizes not only recognizing laws, but, even more, paying attention to them and keeping them. It accords with the tendency to seek good and avoid evil, and therefore with the element of impulse or an urge insofar as it focuses on keeping the laws—as though they might be crouching someplace behind the door of consciousness, ready to leap forth. When danger approaches, it emphasizes an important practical element in the experiences of those for whom laws, such as the Jewish Decalogue, have become positive contents of religious faith. A sin against one of the Ten Commandments is thus recognized by the fact that it can be subsumed under a particular commandment. There is no less an experience of conscience in the commission of theft or murder, for example, whether the criminals ­experience having done what is forbidden by religiously sanctioned commandments, or whether they directly and intuitively grasp the nega­tive value of theft or murder by an immediate experience of the felt negative value of loss inflicted on their victims. “Bad conscience” can arise, therefore, by various different ways and means, and it may be compared to the negative values of various attitudes illuminated by comparing, for example, Macbeth’s conscience (in Shakespeare) with that of Raskolnikov’s (in Dostoevsky). Lev Shestov writes: I want to compare the philosophy of Shakespeare with that of ­Dostoevsky. Not in their entirety, perhaps, but just in their understanding of evil and crime. With Dostoevsky there is a Raskolnikov, with Shakespeare a Macbeth. The substance is the same. And both writers are Christians. Only, Shakespeare never called attention to this circumstance, while Dostoevsky made a literary creed of his faith. What is particularly surprising in the comparison of Macbeth with Crime and Punishment is the attitude of the authors toward their victims. In Dostoevsky’s case, neither of the two murdered women plays any significant role. The fact of their death is a matter of indifference to him. They are there only because they are needed as victims for Raskolnikov. From Dostoevsky’s standpoint, the sense and meaning of the crimes lie not in the evil that Raskolnikov has inflicted upon his victims, but in what he has done to his own soul. Raskolnikov hardly thinks of the dead at all, although his fan-

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tasies unceasingly depict the most diverse horrors imaginable. It is completely different with Shakespeare. Macbeth speaks and thinks of nothing but his own soul. The horror of all his actions by no means leads him back to personal responsibility. He feels isolated from the whole world, and sees in all people, whether living or dead, only enemies who want to destroy his soul. Yet Shakespeare sees Macbeth with his own eyes. He does not forget for an instant that it is not only a question about the soul and its destruction, if it is also a question of evil and crime. On the contrary, as much as he is concerned with the psychology of the dark, criminal soul, he is every bit as much engaged with the calamity that Macbeth brings to those surrounding him, the situation of Scotland, and the mute horror of Macduff as he experiences the death of his children and his wife. Nothing of the kind occurs with Dostoevsky. The crime interests him only to the extent that it has a meaning for the soul of the criminal. He approaches his Raskolnikov from the opposite side from which Shakespeare approaches Macbeth. Dostoevsky arrives at the conclusion that the supreme meaning of life is comprehended in subordination to the rule. Dostoevsky subordinates himself to the rule; therefore the meaning of life is on his side. With Shakespeare there is no trace of this. For him crimes are merely crimes because they “create evil” for others, for Duncan, Macduff, the children, the whole of Scotland. For him there is no question (as for Dostoevsky), whether it is good to become a murderer, whether it could contribute to the greatness of one’s soul, and even if this were so, he still would not have killed.29 Shestov carries his brilliant comparison further. Yet what interests us here is the distinction between Macbeth and Raskolnikov. Macbeth objectively perceives the evil for which he is responsible. Therefore he is grief-stricken in conscience, and the perished souls of those he has murdered appear to him, confronting him with his guilt. But Raskolnikov is not concerned with the objective evil caused by his act, but rather with rules—whether it is permissible to murder an old, worthless woman in order to get her money and then simply do good with it, perhaps even a thousand times more good than this act of murder was evil.

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The evident truth of the rules that he intends to examine (and against which he transgresses) disturbs him, just as Macbeth is disturbed by the externally directed evil involved in his case. Of the two, Macbeth is undoubtedly the “healthier,” “more normal” or “more natural,” and “more pristine” type of murderer. Raskolnikov suffers from an overintellectualizing approach to life. But this does not change the fact that “bad conscience” can arise in another manner, and that evil can be viewed in another way. Now consider, instead of Raskolnikov, a type of murderer for whom the Decalogue represents a religiously sanctioned divine truth. His conscience is troubled, not because of objective evil, but because he has acted against God’s law and God’s will. The law here is placed above reality, and reality is subordinated to it, although with religious sanction. Yet religiously sanctioned law is seen at its purest and most natural when it is not viewed as something above but within reality, when the transgression of law is seen as coinciding with the objective harm done, and when the objective harm comes to be seen, through the power of spiritual love, as identical with transgressing law or with action against God’s will. How those with a troubled conscience come to understand evil, and exactly what they regard as evil, are ultimately questions of secondary importance when it comes to the nature of bad conscience. The essential and primary thing to note here is that they grasp their personal evil completely and suffer because of it. No matter how they apprehend their own evil, they will seek to come to terms with it according to their own personality, whether their views are shaped more by religion, intuition and value-feeling, or intellectual habit. Their experiences of conscience are most likely to arise from pathways that clearly and decisively lead them to see and acknowledge their evil in a personal way. One could surely not expect an overintellectual student like Raskolnikov to have a stance toward objective evil exactly like that of the masculine, bold, powerful figure of Macbeth, and it is obvious that Macbeth’s troubled conscience had to be of a different constitution than Raskolnikov’s. Herein lies the general mistake of the intellectualist perspective: that it does not see that the knowledge of values can also arise in other ways besides inferential reasoning; that the essence of conscience cannot lie in discernment of guilt as such, but that discerning guilt constitutes a

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necessary stage, an element, in conscience; that conscience does not lie in the bloodless judgment of reason in itself, but appears only through its attendant feelings by which it is grasped with certainty; and that the actual, direct experience of one’s own evil quality of guilt ultimately constitutes the basic nature of bad conscience. On the other hand, the intuitionist perspective has been inclined to underestimate law, especially law given in the religious sphere through divine revelation. It rightly asks whether we always can intuitively grasp objective values and if so, to what extent; whether we are not sometimes more or less blind to negative values and value-differences, just as the eye also does not always respond in the same manner to objective light, but may develop subjective changes in how it perceives complementary colors after intense irritation, for example. Fluctuations of attention also may allow sensations of unequal intensity to arise with equal powers of attraction. We do not confront values with equal objectivity and freedom at every moment. Under various conditions we might well prefer values that we would never ordinarily prefer, regarding them as “higher” values in moments of value-delusion or temporary value-­ blindness. A religiously sanctioned law has an important advantage here because of its objective stability, and it is an important help where we can falter in our grasp of values. This fact is accentuated clearly and distinctly by [Martin] Luther in the following words: “Before, I was free and walked in the dark without a lantern: now, possessing the law, I have a conscience, and I take a lantern when I walk in the dark. God’s law does nothing for me, but to awaken my bad conscience”30 Hence, the law opens our eyes. But the connection between conscience and law is still more intimate, as Luther’s quotation already shows. Those who know the law, which thereby presses the more heavily upon their guilt, are also more guilty than those who live far off from the law. As Karl Barth writes: This is therefore the subjective, human side of the relationship with God. . . . The law procures wrath. Where law is, there is transgression. Where law is, sin is imputed. . . . Esau, who was no dreamer as Jacob was, did not lie as Jacob did. To be Israel, as far as human possibility is concerned, means to be worthless and despicable, full of

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sorrow and disease: to be Christ, so far as human possibility is concerned, means to die in the midst of evildoers, to die framing the question, which neither Pilate nor Caiaphas would have allowed to escape his lips: My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? . . . Wherever men pray and preach, wherever sacrifice is offered, wherever in the presence of God emotions are stirred and experiences occur—there, yes! Precisely there, the trespass abounds. . . . Precisely there, men encounter God, and there breaks forth the crisis of God, the sickness unto death.31 Not only does law open the eyes of conscience, but through the experience of guilt, the violation of the law comes objectively to light. This crisis that people experience in the suffering of conscience resides in already being aware of the deeper basic truths that are revealed by the laws. Those who experience the torment of conscience understand deeper truths than those who have no knowledge of the laws by which guilt is triggered. Quite apart from the question of the intuitive understanding of values—which poses new problems not yet considered— those persons who are called objectively “good” because they know the laws and live according to them feel their guilt far more deeply and suffer significantly more than those who are unfamiliar with these laws. It is a remarkable irony that among imprisoned criminals there is such frightfully little anguish of conscience or remorse, but that straight-andnarrow preachers or conscientious priests can be constantly conscious of their guilt, contritely begging God’s forgiveness on their knees! Should not the opposite actually be the case? Should not conscience afflict preachers the least and criminals the most? Yet the actual relation is exactly the reverse. Those who know the law most profoundly and live most in accordance with it are therefore least likely to sin and do wrong. They are the ones who feel and undergo monstrous remorse, who most keenly feel the chasm between God and themselves, and who most readily accuse themselves. On the other hand, those who do not concern themselves with the law are the most likely to sin and do wrong. It is they who are least sensitive to their conscience. It is a metaphysical fact of singular importance that the conscience is most capable of thriving where a person stands on the moral high ground and is most

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morally sensitive. This paradox may be formulated decisively in the terse equation: those feel guiltiest who are morally best. Along with this seemingly negative effect, however, these individuals nevertheless also gain the positive advantage of a very great moral depth, because they have gained the deepest insight into their being—because the law has opened their eyes. It was Christ who cried out: “My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” Not Pilate. By “knowing the law” here we mean something much deeper than merely formal, intellectual understanding. Even the Pharisee knows the law. But he grasps it only formally, externally; not its depths, in its in­ teriority. Here again the question arises whether the intellectualist ­perspective is adequate to provide us with a serious and profound appreciation of the law, whether we do not also require the support of the intuitionist perspective and its spiritual view of things. In any case, the intellectualist perspective has no more right to claim sole monopoly in the recognition of good and evil or ownership of conscience than the intuitionist perspective has the right to deny that conscience can also arise through interaction with legal procedures and the application of norms. Both views are mistaken if they think that true conscience arises in us only through cognition (whether discursive or intuitive). Ultimately, intuitively felt values and intellectually recognized moral laws both must be grounded ontically. Everything that exists has a value, and moral law also has its truth insofar as it is existentially grounded and is also an objectively perceived value, which is to say that it must be grounded in existence.

4 Intuitionism and Bad Conscience

“Our reason, incorrigibly presumptuous, imagines that it possesses, by right of birth or by right of conquest, innately or by acquisition, all the ­essential elements of the knowledge of truth,” writes Henri Bergson.1 This hubris of our rational understanding is grounded in reason’s own nature. Alexander Pfänder rightly emphasizes this imperious self-­importance of rational judgment in its stance over against its object.2 Better still, Karl Jaspers calls special attention to the fact that in a “rational stance” toward an object, there occurs a limiting, defining, structuring, and determining of that which is given.3 Hence, a sort of domineering activity belongs to the nature of our rational understanding. It constructs its objects, namely its concepts, out of something previously given. It analyzes them, classifies them, appropriates them, governs them as possessions, shares them with others, and uses them arbitrarily for whatever purpose it wishes. It is no wonder that Kant— who directed his attention only to the formal activity of thought rather than to its material content—so overestimates this self-­importance of rational understanding through its concepts that he permits reason itself to prescribe laws to nature. We have a completely different view of how the given is intuitively grasped. On our view, the primary and essential thing is this: tout est donné—everything is given. I myself do not alter or determine anything. I am passive in receiving that which is given to me. I grasp directly that 106

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which is actual, living, and real, through intuitive perceptions or feelings of value. I am not occupied with arbitrary, self-generated representations of reality—mere concepts through which I am only indirectly in touch with reality. Intuitions are alive; concepts, by contrast, are fixed, frozen, and dead. By means of the intuitive attitude, I “sink” into concrete reality of the given and lose myself in it. The gap between “subject” and “object” in the “I–world” distinction has been completely bridged. With the rational stance, however, there is a separation between subject and object; I become a spectator and no longer a participant in that which is objectively given. Starting from Scheler’s essential distinction between pride and humility, F. J. J. Buytendijk shows how the rational approach essentially coincides with a posture of arrogance, how intellectual comprehension and mental mastery are considered the highest ideals of pride. He also shows, however, how the essential posture of humility resides in seeing and inspecting—seeing things in their own light, not by our light, our configurations, or our categories of understanding.4 This humility is evidenced, he shows, not by clutching things to one’s breast, but by gently touching upon them—not by grasping the thing “in-itself,” but by losing oneself in what is given. It is not we who make, form, and create the things that we know or the laws that we discern in nature; rather, it is the things, their natures, their values, and their reality that are given to us. Or, as Herman Bavinck brilliantly puts it: The world itself rests on revelation; revelation is the presupposition, the foundation, the secret of all that exists in all its forms. The deeper science pushes its investigations, the more clearly will it discover that revelation underlies all created being. In every moment of time beats the pulse of eternity; every point in space is filled with the omnipresence of God; the finite is supported by the infinite, all becoming is rooted in being. . . . Not evolution, but revelation, is the secret of the mind; in our self-consciousness, independently of our co-operation and apart from our will, the reality of our ego and of the world is revealed to us.5 This is, in my opinion, the ultimate nature of intuition—not the act of intuiting or seeing itself, but that which is revealed and given to us in

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our seeing. The revelation of objective realities, essences, and values is not the “secret of the mind,” merely, but is especially the “secret of in­ tuition.” Things, forms, and colors are revealed to us through “seeing,” and all of us must see these things for ourselves (color, for example, cannot be shared with a color-blind person). Likewise, mental intuitions (whether perceptible or imperceptible) are revealed to us individually, incommunicably, and immediately; they are rationally indemonstrable, yet alive and concrete. The reasoning intellect, however, uses them to generate concepts by which to represent them, freeze and ossify them, and finally kill them. With these concepts in hand, it then sets out to dominate, delimit, define, determine, classify, and schematize the whole of reality. I can disclose my guilt rationally, assert it, and pronounce a judgment on it. Is it also possible to intuitively understand my guilt, the ultimate heart of “bad conscience”? Can guilt also be given to me directly, through an immediate, intuitive, living understanding, or can I come to know my guilt only indirectly, through intellectual conceptualization? The claim of the intuitionist is that values are given intuitively, so that my guilt is revealed to me immediately and concretely. As already noted earlier, we reject completely the notion that divine oracles or mystical revelations form any part of intuitions of conscience. Nothing of such a mysterious, supernatural, or miraculous sort is given to us in “bad conscience.”

GERARD HEYMANS ENDEAVORS TO ARTICULATE AN INTUITIONIST PERSPECTIVE

in his work, yet it is doubtful whether his understanding of conscience can be accurately characterized in this way. He refers to any immediate insight as “intuitivist,” whether the associated action is morally virtuous or reprehensible.6 However, he does not treat this insight as an i­ntuition—as a direct revelation of objective reality, a value-feeling, an essential intuition, or a passive apprehension of a concrete, individual reality. Rather, he regards it as a spontaneous, objective perception of all the possible ways out of a conflict between one’s duties, and as a knack for immediately grasping the best way out. Morality lies, for him, simply in the ability to see matters objectively and to let one’s

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action be guided by this objective insight. He calls this the “objectivity-­ hypothesis.” Immorality, in turn, lies in the predominance of the subjective over the o ­ bjective, the personal over the factual, and the particular over the universal point of view.7 He refers to “conscience” as “an insight well-grounded but unaware of its ground,” somewhat like “common sense or intuition in theory and good taste in art.” The a priori principles of judgment operate just as well, in his view, in our unconscious as in our conscious judgments. These latent principles must be brought to light through analysis and by comparing their respective operations. If these principles do not suffice for reaching a decision, however, “one should adhere with full confidence to the evidence given in the particular case”—in other words, to conscience. We find that the same is true in other areas too: untutored individuals do not doubt their inferences even though they do not know the rules of syllogistic reasoning; artists judge with unerring certainty without having studied aesthetics; and we find, likewise, that this same direct, indubitable certainty can be trusted in the realm of ethics. Thus in most instances theory is practically unnecessary. Intuition is more reliable than conscious inference, because in many cases the factors to be considered are too numerous to be individually considered and weighed against each other, and because most of them stem from long-forgotten experiences generally no longer capable of being brought clearly to mind. Conscious inference has no choice but to disregard such forgotten factors, but intuitive thought embraces more than conscious thought, and even those data that have been lost to consciousness forever continue to have an effect within it. For this reason those governed by their “inner voice” in a conflict of duties are generally more confident of themselves than those who try to dismantle every situation into its component parts and carefully identify every detail.8 We have here an interesting monism, which claims to negate the dualism between intuitions (along with their contents), on the one hand, and conceptual thought (along with its judgments), on the other. On this monistic view, the “intuitive” refers ultimately to an unconscious, spontaneous mental activity that deals with all of the components and underlying motives in one’s mind, even those that have been lost forever from conscious thought and memory. In Heymans’s theory,

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therefore, intuition is not directly in touch with objective reality; it does not passively “lose itself ” in reality but maintains exactly the same detachment from it as rational understanding has. What Heymans understands by intuition, namely, this spontaneous insight—in his view, of all possible cognitive acts the best, most objective, and most rational— really has nothing to do with actual intuition but remains a brilliant, spontaneous, unconscious, practical rational skill, such as the mental dexterity required by a brilliant strategist. How little this has to do with conscience—specifically with “bad conscience”—becomes still clearer with further assertions he makes. The reliability of judgments of conscience, he says, can be impaired in the disturbing circumstance that uncontrollable nonethical motives ­intrude into the moral appraisal of an action. Thus people everywhere believe willingly what they hope, and these personal and subjective interests are ineluctably biased, subjecting conscience to the danger of personal bias. In order to eliminate this danger, Heymans proposes a thought experiment—namely, to imagine another person in one’s own situation and then to ask how one would judge that person, in order to thereby eliminate the disturbing influence of personal bias. Thus Heymans says: one trusts conscience completely only “where there is no partiality to be feared.”9 Is this not a too-human way to think about conscience? Must the only nonbiased faculty that we still possess, which is completely “nonpartisan” in relation to ourselves, really be exposed to the danger of partisanship also? Heymans fails to see that an essential property of conscience (especially bad conscience) is its absolute impartiality toward oneself. He is mistaken here precisely about what essentially distinguishes conscience from all other motives, interests, and acts. Many of those with a troubled conscience might wish that their conscience were partial, so that they could be spared the need for further suffering. Then they would have little need to concern themselves with a conscience that obliged them to obey its voice against their will, their wishes, and their designs. The possibility of becoming biased and losing one’s “objectivity” arises, in fact, precisely where conscience is missing, as does the urge to offer excuses arising from personal defensiveness. Conscience as such, however, stands directly opposite (or above) us, since it does not concern itself with our subjective biases.

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What Heymans calls “conscience” is not conscience, but merely the subjective, well-founded moral insight that he calls “intuition.” On the contrary, conscience is completely unbiased by nature. Yet it is by nature also completely vested in (and, in that sense, partial toward) what is good and valuable, and opposed to what is evil and worthless. Here the conscience is surely “biased,” but, on the other hand, it is never at any time biased toward subjective wishes and motives. One could just as well say: whatever is partial toward ourselves and our subjective wishes has absolutely nothing to do with conscience.

H EYM A N S’ S “I N T U I T ION I SM” HA S SHOW N U S W HAT I N T U I T ION I S NOT. OF T H E

many views of intuition, such as those of Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza (Scientia Intuitiva), Ralph Cudworth, Shaftesbury, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Henry Sidgwick, Hastings Rashdall, Edmund Husserl, Scheler, and others, we shall investigate only some that cast light on our problem of conscience.10 Henry Sidgwick, an exponent of “utilitarian intuitionism,” distinguishes three types of “intuitive morality”—perceptional, dogmatic, and philosophical.11 Perceptional intuitionism, which he calls the “commonsense” view of conscience, holds that each individual action can be assessed immediately and intuitively as right or wrong by means of a faculty of moral judgment, called conscience, without the use of general rules—even in opposition to a conclusion derived from these rules. Sidgwick criticizes this view as unphilosophical, saying that if we did not need such rules in individual cases, then neither would we have general rules, nor would any technical theorizing about ethics be necessary. Further, he calls this view “ultraintuitionist,” because, in the final analysis, it acknowledges only immediate intuitions and ignores any work on the part of the ­intellect. Dogmatic intuitionism acknowledges the need for the support of general rules. Although we all have concrete intuitions, and although they constitute a large part of moral phenomena, most of us are not satisfied with these and desire a firmer grasp of morality for our practical use. Our concrete intuitions are not always dependable and trustworthy, and we have all felt at one time or another that our conscience has given

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us completely different readings that are hard to reconcile with those of each other. Moreover, various individuals of equal undoubted competence have held completely different opinions about morality. In order to assuage our doubts, therefore, we are compelled to establish general moral rules founded upon common consent. These rules must not be accepted on the basis of authority, for then we would have no “in­ tuitionism” at all. Hence, all of us must intuitively apprehend these general rules as axiomatic for ourselves. Philosophical intuitionism assumes a critical stance toward “commonsense” morality, and tries to furnish a philosophical basis for it, but fails to provide one. The ideal philosophical basis is a system of self-­ evident axioms. Philosophical “intuitionism” differs from the dogmatic variety in that it rises above commonsense (popular) “intuitionism” and, if necessary, may improve upon it. Now, of course, many philosophical principles are tautological, as when, for example, they equate “right” action with “rational” action. We must therefore make our way between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of uncertain popular opinions, in order to find principles that are not tautological, but universally valid, formal, practical, and self-evident. Sidgwick believes he has found three such principles: 1. The Axiom of Justice or Equality (we must be impartial in the application of general principles); 2. The Axiom of Prudence or Rational Self-Love (we must attend to our own welfare); 3. The Axiom of Rational Benevolence (we must attend to the welfare of others). His philosophical “intuitionism” thus leads him to “utili­ tarianism.” Here Sidgwick confuses different understandings of “intuition.” At first he regards it as a “perceptional” intuition that is given to us only in concrete, individual instances. Later, however, he understands “in­ tuition” to mean mere insight, where the truth of general rules is immediately known and not based upon inference.12 Sidgwick rejects the first, unphilosophical (popular) view of “intuition,” because it ignores all intellectual use of general rules, and so

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he dismisses it as “ultraintuitionist.” By contrast, we acknowledge with this first view that authentic “intuition” is given concretely in particular acts of apprehension, since we hold that such intuition is grounded in objective reality. From this it follows that what Sidgwick wishes to understand by “intuition” must be different from what we understand. He sets up philosophical, universally valid, axiomatic principles, which are supposed to be self-evident, and calls them “intuitive.” But in examining how he arrives at such universal principles, we see that they can be established only through the laborious use of reason—by theoretical inference, not intuitive insight. Hence, they are not genuine ­“intuitions”—the gift of objective reality to us—but rather the product of our intellects. Thus the power of these principles does not lie so much in an intuitive, positive understanding of their contents (though the matter is debatable). Rather, it lies in the negative proposition: if these principles were not true or were not followed, then it would be impossible for human beings to live together. William McDougall quite rightly says, in a beautiful passage, Beside the grandeur of the moral tradition, the ethical axioms propounded by Rashdall, by Kant, or by Henry Sidgwick, and proclaimed by them as the highest achievements of the Moral Reason, appear strangely insignificant, if not wholly worthless, for, when they are not merely tautologies, they are highly disputable propo­ sitions, and of little value by reason of their highly abstract quality. Though the moral tradition is the greatest we know, and the most valuable thing we possess, and though it deserves our deepest veneration and solicitude, it is nevertheless incurably infected with that subjectivity so abhorrent to the Rationalist, and our business as moralists is not to disguise the fact by a cloud of words, but, recognizing it, courageously to follow in the footsteps of the moral leaders of all time, endeavoring by our reason to refine and improve it a little, and by our conduct, to secure for it an increasing influence upon the character and conduct of all men.13 It is precisely this subjectivity, so despised by the intellectualist per­ spective, which must be acknowledged and grasped in the depth of its

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intuitive objectivity. The fact that it cannot be proved rationally or engendered by discursive reasoning does nothing to discredit this s­ o-called subjectivity. One must not, like Sidgwick, seek to set aside popular intuitions and think up doubtful, abstract, “universally valid principles” to put in their place, which in the final analysis are not intuitions at all. In fact, these popular intuitions contain the most profound and significant material for any credible theory concerning moral values, norms, and laws. Scheler has presented us with a recent exposition of this fact.14 Every kind of knowledge, even moral knowledge, is rooted in experience. What sort of experience, then, gives us moral knowledge? What factual data provide the basis for moral judgments? For there are just as  surely “facts” of our moral experience as there are “facts” of astronomy, botany, chemistry, and the like. We should not look to find them in our “inner experience,” or in the world of ideal objects (the realm of mental numbers, triangles, etc.)—even though “moral values do have in common with triangles the fact that they are not to be found in the sphere of contents of sensation.”15 However, “should they on that account be regarded as meanings that are ascertainable only through reason”?16 By no means. A child senses the goodness and concern of its mother, without in any way grasping the idea of the good, even in the vaguest way. We may sense a noble moral quality in our enemies, even when our appraisal of them is otherwise negative: “Moral facts are facts of material intuition, and indeed not of sensible intuition, provided that we do not mean by ‘intuition’ an image-like content, but the immediacy of an object’s givenness.”17 And this is possible, because values are objectively given realities (Gegebenheiten), “clearly tangible phenomena, not an obscure ‘X’ that has meaning only through other well-known phenomena.”18 All values are material qualities, possessing a determined order of “higher” and “lower” in relation to each other.19 They are thus value-phenomena, genuine objects, which are distinct from all feeling-­ states (Gefühlszuständen). They are bound objectively to their bearers.20 This is the case with the aesthetic values corresponding to words such as fair, delightful, exalted, beautiful, and such, just as it is with ethical values corresponding to principled, mean, courageous, cowardly, pure, guilty, good, and evil. We do not usually come to clarity about such

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values through conceptually constant features. Rather, it usually suffices for us to grasp their essence through an experience of a single action or a person: Values are qualitative phenomena, in principle just as independent of the existence of psychic subjects as colors and sounds and have nothing to do with any causal relation of objects and any factual or real possible feelings (or feeling-states) or desires. They are qualities, not “relations” or occult “capacities,” and they are not phe­ nomenally differentiated just by reason of a genetic process or a logical manipulation, but from the moment they are first apprehended in objective feelings.21 These values form a fixed realm and are organized into four modal-­ spheres.22 At the lowest level are positioned the values of the agreeable and disagreeable, which correspond to the function of moral23 feeling. The values belonging to this modal-class include technical and symbolic “consecutive” (dependent) values,24 and also values of utility.25 At the second level appear life-values, values of the noble and ignoble, and  their attendant, consecutive values of “welfare” (and its opposite). The third value-modality encompasses mental (geistigen) values: beautiful–­ugly, right–wrong (not to be confused with “correct” and “incorrect”), and values of the cognition of truth with its consecutive cultural values. Fourth are values typically associated with religion, values of the holy and the unholy. These values form a fixed, eternal, objective order of ranks, independently of whatever may have been historically considered to be properly “beautiful,” “sacred,” and so forth. The values of “good” and “evil” are sharply distinguished from the foregoing values. They are also material values, but clearly tangible, material values of their own unique type. The value “good”—in the absolute sense—is that which appears, according to its essential laws, “upon” the act of realizing the value that is highest (in the cognitive rank of the value realized).26 The value “evil,” contrariwise, is one that appears upon the act of realizing the lowest value. Relative “good” and “evil,” however, is the value appearing upon acts directed to the realization of a relatively higher value (as regarded from the particular value-perspective of a

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given occasion). Since the height of a value is given in an act of “preference,” we can say that a morally good act is a value-realizing act, whose intended value-content agrees with the “preferred” value and opposes the “nonpreferred.” “Good” and “evil” are not related primordially to the will, as Kant believed, but rather to the person as the veritable center and source of personal acts. In the first place, therefore, regarded from the standpoint of the bearer of value, “good” and “evil” are originally values of the person. In the second place, “good” and “evil” refer to the orientation of a person’s moral capacities, which we call virtues and vices. In the third place, “good” and “evil” refer to the person’s acts, including both willing and doing. All objectively existing values are given to us in “intentional feeling” (intentionalen Fühlen)—a value-feeling-capacity. We distinguish the ­intentional “feeling of something” from all mere feeling-states (Gefühlszuständen), because of the existence of a primal intentional feeling, which is essentially different from ordinary feelings and feeling-states.27 One belongs to contents and appearances, the other to functions of their reception. An “intentional feeling” is given, for example, when I feel the beauty of snow-covered mountains in the setting sun. What must be distinguished from the act of “intentional feeling” is what is felt in it, the values to which the feeling refers. Here feeling acquires, along with its intentional nature, also a cognitive function that feeling-states do not possess. Here we find feeling primordially referring and directing itself toward that which is objective—indeed, toward values themselves. Such feeling is not an inanimate function or occurrence, but a meaningful, goal-oriented movement. In such emotional experiences we do not feel (indirectly) “about something,” but (directly) “something”—a definite value-quality. This feeling is directed intentionally to an object, just as perception is directed to that which is perceived. This “feeling of something” is not given to us objectively, but through it we encounter value-­ qualities within or outside ourselves, and the world of objectively given values opens up before us. Feeling is an objectifying act that requires no representation as an intermediary. Preferring also belongs to the sphere of value-cognition rather than to the sphere of striving. Love and hate form the highest level of our intentional life. Through acts of love and hate, we experience an expansion or contraction, respectively, of the

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realm of values accessible through value-feeling. Values are not thereby created or destroyed, but for the person involved, they are either opened up and revealed or closed down and concealed. Love has a discovering role. It is a movement, through which actually existing higher values, as yet new and wholly unfamiliar to a person, come to be brightly illuminated. It does not follow behind value-feeling and preference but precedes them in the role of pioneer and leader. Scheler has provided us with a profound theory of “emotional in­ tuitionism,” grounded in objective matters of fact. The important elements of this theory include direct contact with the objective sphere of values; the denial of any rational activity in the primordial apprehension of values; the emotional element in evaluation, which is wholly foreign to any purely rational attitude and can be connected with rational knowledge only through a process of interlacement; but, at the same time, the retention of the cognitive element in the apprehension of values, even if it is an emotional cognition; and the insight that objective values are given to us in value-feeling just as directly and primor­ dially as the colors that we see.28 At the same time, his theory is not a hypothesis to be proved, or a theory that somehow explains the unexplained, or intends to understand the misunderstood. Rather, it is a discovery of an objective matter of fact that compels the assent of anyone who has once perceived it, just as surely as a newly discovered star is visible for anyone that sees it properly through a telescope.29 Scheler has shown us that there is such a thing as an intuitive grasp of value. The question now is, however, whether the essence of “conscience” is already given in its most primordial sense with this cognitive-­ emotional apprehension of objective value. Here we encounter a human capacity—distinct from thinking, judging, and legislating—which directly and immediately says to us: “Here is this value, there is that; this one is higher than that, and therefore better.” Is this capacity for feeling values the whole of what we mean by conscience? Scheler would definitely say not. Conscience differs essentially from this capacity, and it is a completely distinct phenomenon, even though it necessarily pre­ supposes this value-feeling capacity. The exclusively intuitionist perspective, however, sees conscience as lying solely in this intuitive apprehension of value.

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The first thing that we must stress in opposition to this monolithic intuitionism is that value-feeling, as such, is directed toward all values generally, whereas conscience is directed toward only the values of one’s own actions and one’s own person. The value-feeling of the “noble” or “beautiful,” for example, actually falls completely outside of the realm of conscience. To mechanically split value-feeling into two varieties—one that refers to the values of one’s own behavior and person, and another that does not (with the intention of calling the former conscience as distinct from the latter)—is merely to assume that conscience is merely a species of value-feeling in general, and must be firmly rejected. The problem with this view is that a specific interest in supporting the good (and opposing the evil) of one’s own action is already given in conscience. It is an interest that far surpasses all emotional knowledge of values as such—an interest, moreover, in which the happiness of the person somehow has a say, and such an interest is foreign to value-feeling as such, even the value-feeling we have for our own actions. The intuitionist conception of conscience shares with all intellectualist conceptions a particular preference for knowledge. It emphasizes that the element of knowledge is fundamentally necessary for the ex­ perience of conscience, that conscience is not blind—not even in its feelings—but keenly discerning. In fact, it stresses that the knowledge possessed by conscience is the surest, most authoritative, and most ineradicable in our experience, as those with a troubled conscience can well attest. A great advantage it has over the intellectualist perspective is that the gap between knowing and experiencing values, and also the jump from value-apprehension to value-experience, is much smaller on its view. There is not so great a distance between a cognitive emotional feeling for the depravity of an action and an experience of guilt as there is between a judgment concerning guilt based on syllogistic reasoning and actually feeling guilty. The judgment is related only indirectly to the guilt, whereas the intentional feeling of guilt already stands in a direct relation to it. With judgment, the facts (and the truth about them) are disclosed; with feeling, we possess the facts (and their truth). With judgment, the fact of guilt is disclosed ruthlessly by our reason, which derives its conclusion discursively from general laws and brings it home

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to us in our thoughts; with feeling, the fact of guilt is experienced directly and immediately. The fact of guilt can be experienced by our ­conscience in either way—inferentially or intuitively—but the latter is constantly the most primal. In the final analysis, all moral laws, norms, commands, and duties must be grounded in such objective, ontical moral values, if they contain truth-content at all. Arbitrary rules that are not ultimately grounded in reality and real values are products of fantasy and have no right at all to be treated as true moral laws, norms, commands, or duties. Because of this vast gulf between a judgment of guilt and an experience of it, it is quite understandable how criminals can be mentally aware of their guilt and know perfectly well that they are evil, and yet have no experience of a bad conscience, even vaunting their wickedness, laughing about it and delighting in it. Would this gulf be possible if guilt were experienced intuitively and emotionally, rather than being understood intellectually? Could I assess my wickedness intuitively and have negative feelings about it, yet take pleasure and delight in it? I think not, for two reasons: (1) when antagonistic feelings appear simultaneously in the same experiential sphere, they will either negate each other or appear temporally only in succession (but never together), thereby always eliminating one or the other; and (2) as Scheler has shown, value-­feeling is already codetermined by a love or hate that precedes it, making it either more sensitive or, respectively, duller and blinder. Genuinely vicious people, who take pleasure in their wickedness and boast about it, are limited from the start to a minimal capacity for value-­ feeling by their lack of love. They can infer their wickedness only by means of general rules, norms, commands, and laws that they recognize, because their intuitive perception of higher qualities is closed off by their hate. Only by awakening their deeply dormant faculty of love would it be possible for them to reach their own guilt by means of their intuitive feelings and thereby attain an experience of their conscience. This possibility may be attained through a primal love for another (since love always assumes reciprocal love) or by way of example, but not by means of any intellectual, moralistic sermonizing. (Thus, Nietz­ sche quite rightly emphasized that those who are troubled of conscience are least likely to be found among criminals. Whoever still hears this inner voice is not yet a radical criminal.)

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The positive urge of love, as we attempt to show in the next chapter, is a principal condition for the possibility of every experience of conscience. Now, since love occasions the intuitive apprehension of the values of our actions and of our being, will not the experience of conscience already be involved in intuitive value-feeling? We have already seen that intentional value-feeling is not, as such, an actual phenomenon of conscience. When such value-feeling reveals the moral unworthiness of our actions, however, is it not necessarily connected with an experience of conscience that follows or coincides with it? No, surely not yet. For such value-feeling sometimes appears to knock at the door of our innermost heart, calling, “Listen! Listen!” without the least success in rousing our conscience. Value-feeling is momentarily attached to a random object, a value-bearer, such as a specific action, and vanishes if it is related to another object. It therefore has only momentary duration and is completely relative. The voice of conscience, however, does not have such a random, relative, or momentary character. It is absolute, and while it speaks, it has something of the eternal in its nature. Moreover, it has its own particular tone or resonance, which is evoked not only where guilt is intuitively grasped and recognized, but where it is experienced as a personal quality somehow connected to one’s personal well-being. This particular tone, which suddenly discloses the personal importance of the matter in question, is something new and completely missing in the mere feeling of negative value as such. Once value-feeling has called forth the phenomenon of conscience out of its depths, and conscience (with its sensitive ears) has heard the voice of value-feeling and appropriated its content, it then steps forward to make its appearance. For conscience, the specific quality of an action’s negative value is not of interest so much as the fact of guilt (or innocence). By this fact alone, it then seizes upon the whole person with the command “Stop!” In authentic conscience, this command is closely associated with a threat to personal and spiritual happiness. By contrast, there is no command of this sort in moral value-feeling, as such. Genuine conscience, especially bad conscience, appears in its full strength only when the certainty of the value in question (whether of an act of commission or omission) is beyond doubt. As long as intentional feeling is vague, murky, indefinite, hesitant, or people believe that they

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could be deceiving themselves at some point in their assessment, the phenomenon of conscience does not arise. Just as we can be mistaken in our judgments and inferences, after all, so it is possible to be deceived in our intuitions. If Hegel emphasizes the subjectivity and certainty of formal conscience (which is found on the level of “morality,” where alone we find genuine conscience), he rightly grasps this characteristic feature of true conscience: that it has absolute confidence and utter certainty about its content. This is confirmed by the following passages from Hegel: Conscience (Gewissen) is absolute certainty (Gewißheit) . . . the deepest interior solitude . . . an infinite certitude of itself that is formal and abstract, and exactly for that reason it is at the same time the certitude of a particular subject. . . . Conscience expresses the absolute claim of the subjective self-consciousness to know in itself and from itself what is right and obligatory, and to recognize nothing but what it thus knows to be good, and it maintains that whatever it so knows and wills is right and obligatory in truth. . . . Thus conscience, as the unity of the subject’s will with the absolute, is a sanctuary which it would be sacrilege to violate.30 People with a troubled conscience can doubt nearly every (relative) truth around them, including even the truth that 2 × 2 = 4, which strikes them as neither so important nor certain as the absolute evidence of their guilt. The evidence for this truth is so convincingly real that, even if all other realities and truths were to vanish, this truth would remain as long as the phenomenon of conscience endured. Such an overwhelming flood of evidence streams forth from this truth that any possible doubt is preemptively ruled out. Spinoza’s saying is apt here: “Truth is the criterion of itself and of the false.” Individuals with a troubled conscience seem to be ejected from the relative stream of time when they confront the absolute quality of this truth. This truth is, for them, the highest there can be. Their deepest convictions, even their religious ones, are connected with the truth of their guilt here. The absolute certainty of guilt is given objectively, and the truth of this fact confers upon it an objective luminosity. This absolute certainty

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is a primal condition of bad conscience, and without it the conscience would not exist. Because of this, it was exceedingly superficial of earlier psychologists and ethicists to have simply attached a “feeling of certainty” superficially to judgments of guilt or “disagreeable feelings” of guilt. The ultimate authority of conscience is rooted in the quality of absolute personal certainty and assurance of the truth of guilt. However, it rests upon objective truth, which is a sign of itself and of the false.31 When the experience of guilt is derived syllogistically, this truth must discursively secure the endorsement of general laws, norms, and commands, but when it is obtained by means of intuition, the truth is given immediately in all of its original brilliance. If, as Butler beautifully says, conscience carries its own authority with it, “if conscience had a power as it has law, if it had power as it clearly has authority, it would govern the world absolutely,”32 this is because its authority is rooted in true objective guilt. Thus conscience, as a self-directed, judging function, does not have authority in its functional acts because it possesses sovereign authority as such, but because its acts are flooded with authority by the truth and evidence emanating from objective guilt. The authority of conscience is grounded, not in the subjective ego, but in objective reality. It has authority only because the absolute certainty of guilt is given in its acts alone. Conscience is not the supreme judge who, adorned with its own authority and seated high on its lofty throne, lays down its judgments in the world of the self, as Butler maintained. On the contrary, such judgments and condemnations are not at all necessary, and are even superfluous. For already from the very beginning of my experience of conscience, I am confronted by the absolute truth bearing its condemnation, which the sovereign judge is so eager thereafter to pronounce once again. Before the judge can even pronounce my verdict, however, I already stand condemned. I have already experienced my guilt when I, as the guilty one, have grasped that I am guilty—not from the judge, therefore, but from the illumination of truth shining its light upon my objective guilt with the authority of conscience. Every form of psychologism must invariably go astray at this point, because it is necessarily compelled from the outset to deny an authority that comes from objective reality. This authoritative illumination, which is accompanied by certainty of guilt, is experienced only with authentic conscience. I may be sure of

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another person’s guilt through a negative value-feeling that I may have, but it is always given as a relative value and never with the absolute ­assurance with which I feel my own personal guilt. Even if my negative value-feeling for others eventually rises to the level of contempt for them, I do not feel their negative value with anything close to the authoritative certainty with which my own guilt is given to me by my conscience. The unique intensity of bad conscience can be understood only when viewed within the context of the organic whole of conscience, in which my absolute guilt is given as necessarily related in some way to my ultimate personal unhappiness. This intuitive sense of guilt cuts deeper, becoming the experience of guilt in conscience when its decree reaches the highest and most interior spheres of the person—the absolute core of the person, the very center from which all acts originate. It is from this central core that the act of conscience proceeds. The experience of conscience is not primarily a product of our volitional activity. Indeed, our will must submit to the power of conscience according to its own nature, even if it is true that we can choose to alter how we feel— by an act of deliberate self-delusion, by focusing on something else, by diverting ourselves from the fact of our guilt, or by anesthetizing ourselves in a narcotic haze. Nevertheless, when conscience appears in its full power, none of this is of any avail. Its voice is heard incessantly, and its message continually claims the attention of our whole person. Conscience stands over the will, and the will is ultimately powerless against it. This power of conscience grounds itself, on the one hand, in the power of the objective truth of guilt. We cannot avoid confronting it. An act of will cannot simply cast a spell and make it disappear. It is powerless against the claims of objective reality. On the other hand, however, this power of conscience also grounds itself in the primordial goodness and power of love, an urge that overflows from the deepest recesses of our being, that is, from our heart. The power of the will is limited to the peripheral levels of our experience. The will is capable of interfering with what lies at the surface of our psychic life but powerless against a love that breaks forth suddenly from the depths of our being. There is no will-to-love. But such a love as this is ultimately a necessary precondition for any true experience of conscience, as we shall see in the next chapter. Neither intellectual knowledge nor intuitive feeling of my guilt alone will suffice to evoke an experience of conscience. Neither will

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s­ uffice, that is, without a fertile ground within me prepared by an urge toward the good breaking forth within me, a love that ultimately has the religious or metaphysical sense of an urge toward the highest personal good, that is, a love of God. Conscience is not constituted by the recognition of guilt alone; something must awaken in me that can impregnate this knowledge so as to produce an experience of conscience. Therefore, since true conscience does not arise through knowledge as such, whether discursive or intuitive, we must discard as one-sided and fallacious all definitions and conceptions of conscience that seek to restrict it to the element of knowledge. Accordingly, all conceptions of conscience belonging to the fourth group (“Conscience as a moral knowledge”)33 fall by the way, of themselves, at this point. Whatever conscience might be called in these views may be subsumed under general concepts, such as moral knowledge, insight, function, act, and so forth, but not under the concept of conscience in its most pregnant sense. The element of knowledge is an essential constituent in the actual phenomenon of conscience, but it does not constitute the essence of conscience.

5 Voluntarism and Bad Conscience

In synteresis, or the “spark of conscience” (scintilla conscientiae), the emphasis is not so much on knowledge of principles as such, but rather on the fact that it has custody of this knowledge, and that it consists in “inclining to the good, desiring the good, rousing to the good and protesting evil, contesting evil, recoiling from evil.”1 Like an eagle, it preserves and protects the law of God in us.2 An impulse of movement “toward” and “from”—attraction and repulsion—is a basic experience in all obligation. This impulse or urge is apparent in the law-bound conscience and in Kant’s categorical imperative, and in the experience of “being blamed for something.” It is also emphasized by Paul Häberlin, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Georg Simmel, each in his own way. It is found in the Freudian “super-­­ego,” and its functions of repression, censorship, and suppression, and it confronts us clearly and decidedly in Scheler’s philosophy and value theory on the subject of love. This same tendency and movement appears also in the following definitions. According to Heinrich von Struve, conscience is the expression of the moral will, a product of moral instinct. According to James Martineau, it makes itself felt authoritatively as an expression of the divine will. According to Christian August Crusius, it is an innate in­ clination, a volitional phenomenon. According to Friedrich Eduard Beneke, ordinary moral striving manifests itself in the will. According to Theodor Lipps, conscience is a “backwards-facing instinct.”3 125

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Here we are generalizing this element of movement—this tendency toward realizing, having, or giving something—because it obviously exists as a factor of motivation, whether in the form of objective values from the outside attracting us or an outward-directed pressure or “push” from within ourselves (which is especially powerful in the feeling of duty). In this light, it seems best to represent this conative movement by the concept of an “urge” (Drang) even though we should remember that it is not an unconscious biological factor, but a spiritual one. We may be inclined to call this motivating factor in conscience a drive, instinct, inclination, impulse, striving, will, or love. Such terms are almost entirely inadequate, however, because an instinct is fundamentally blind, whereas the motive of conscience, by contrast, sees clearly and distinctly what is at issue. An impulse is also blind, and momentary, whereas the motive of conscience is enduring. An inclination is always a passive disposition, whereas the motive of conscience is intentional and active. One can speak of an “instinct of conscience” only by means of analogy, or in an equivocal sense, because an animal guided by instinct has no insight into its actions, such as persons guided by their conscience clearly do. Indeed, it is precisely by means of this insight that commitment grounds itself in obligation, or devotion grounds itself in love. The motive of conscience is also more like striving, because striving posits an end to which we are roused out of our own activity, but conscience does not necessarily posit anything. That is, although something in the imperative mood may be posited by the so-called legislating or obliging conscience, there is nothing imperative in its motive, in which the goal is simply given, manifest, and incumbent of itself. No objective or purpose is posited here, as in striving. Still less is this motive a will. Even though it sometimes can serve as a will, conscience ordinarily and naturally stands over the will, and in its most intense form, it is much stronger than the most powerful will. Thus we prefer to call this motive that reveals itself in conscience an urge (Drang)—a mental urge, an enduring conation in the human spirit—precisely insofar as this spirit is embodied in an acting person.4 This urge is not always necessarily the chief motive in all of a person’s acts. It can even fall dormant. Where it is not the chief motive and yet is still active, however, it provides the direction and orientation for action, usually in the form of an inclination

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to “ascend” to the moral high ground of nobler purposes, values, and ideals of obligation. In its most beautiful, lively, and perfect form, it ­appears in spiritual love. In its most mechanical, lifeless, and perhaps nearly blind form, it appears in the distortedly rigorist feeling of duty, in the disinterested and loveless categorical imperative: “Thou shalt.” This urge is rightly emphasized in moral life, especially in the experience of conscience, in contrast to sheer knowing, judging, and inferring. Although it still includes an element of knowledge, it is a much more fundamental and important factor here than mere recognition. When it comes to this emphasis, therefore, voluntarism surely has the advantage over intellectualism as a theory. This was perceived even by those members of the intellectualist perspective among Thomists, who attributed synteresis not to speculative reason but to practical reason, a concept very similar to the will. Nevertheless the voluntarist does not go deep enough. Even Kant himself, apart from his formalistic conception of conscience, saw into the matter more deeply, as can be seen from the fact that he did not call his categorical imperative “conscience,” but placed conscience unconditionally above all duties. Conscience does not exhaust itself preeminently (kat’ exochen) in the voluntaristic element of the urge, even where it is spiritual love itself, as we shall see.5 Before going any deeper into these problems, we need to take a couple of moments to consider an interesting and important point made by Paul Häberlin.6 He places the obligation found in conscience in opposition to one’s wishes and argues that it is not given in a manner remotely resembling a wish. If we are not the way we wish we were, we become irritated with ourselves or feel sorry for ourselves, but if we are not the way we ought to be, we get a bad conscience. He sees an authoritative character in the “ought” that is completely missing in a wish. A wish could be otherwise than it is, but the judgment of conscience cannot. The judgment of conscience is superior to whatever we may wish. It is a matter of right and wrong and has the character of an absolute necessity. By contrast, a wish is relative, variable, and vacillating— neither constant nor single-minded. A conscience that directed itself according to our wishes would not be a conscience, but only a wish. Conscience does not inquire about our wishes but demands that we actually submit to it even in our wishing and give up any wishes that do

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not conform to it. This striking contrast highlights some new characteristics of conscience that suddenly come into view. We can see conscience more clearly, because its contours are cast into sharp relief by a bright new light. Yet Häberlin does not emphasize an essential point, which is nevertheless utterly central: a wish arises only when it cannot be immediately realized. With the urge of conscience, however, not only is realization possible, but demanded absolutely immediately. Any hesitation in submitting to the urge is condemned as disobedience. From these same relationships, one can see that desires, longings, inclinations, and so on are not essential phenomena proper to the urgings of conscience. The former can be made to coincide with the latter, but not the latter with the former. This mental prompting or urging of conscience is like a compass and always points in one direction, namely, the direction of the greater and higher value, whether or not we go in that direction. In moments when we have to choose between two values—a higher and a lower one—this urge points unconditionally and necessarily to the higher of the two. It does not need to be strong. It could even be overridden by a contrary motive. Nevertheless, whether it is strong or barely noticeable, it constantly points toward the higher, just as the compass points north. Johann K. Passavant aptly says: When we come into the world, we are given a rudder and a compass in order to successfully navigate the storm-tossed sea and reach a distant harbor. For we are voyagers. The rudder is the will, the compass the conscience. With the compass we see our way without confusion, and we grasp the rudder firmly, so that we reach our ­destination despite the wind and waves. If we do not row, we do not make any headway; if we row without regard for our compass, we end up in the shoals or against the cliffs. The compass is our law— the law that is written in each of our hearts, and guides us ever more securely, the more closely we attend to it.7 Such an analogy will surely seem naive to those of an excessively intellectualistic bias. Yet the author’s intuitive perspective seizes upon deeper coincidences that throw new light on the problem of conscience. It is

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therefore well worth examining in some detail how far such an analogy can be taken and just what its limits are. Two problems present themselves to us here. First, the magnetic needle of a compass is attracted by the power of the Geomagnetic North Pole; it points north because the magnetic north attracts it. Is the urge of conscience—this “spiritual love” in a person—independent-minded and self-centered? Does it make up its own laws about what is good and bad, and decide the direction in which it should point? Or is it a power that resonates with the highest universal power, a love that resonates with the highest universal love— ultimately, the love of God—and which moves exactly as the magnetic needle moves in the magnetic field of the earth? Second, if this mental urge—this love—resonates together with the love of God and all His creation, then how is the problem of knowledge and love—and especially the knowledge of conscience—related to this universal love?

The first problem: Whether the compass of conscience is subjective or objective With regard to the first problem, Max Scheler has given us a helpful answer. Human beings are not detached, atomistic individuals, isolated from everything else, which stand all alone at various fixed points in the universe. Rather, they are bound together in solidarity with God, their fellow human beings, and the whole universe, by virtue of this extraordinary power of love found in their nature, which is also proper to the nature of God. The heart of Scheler’s philosophy embraces three basic principles: Love, Person, and Being. God as Love and as Person is the key to Scheler’s philosophy of Being: Love, as such, is the medium in which persons as persons touch one another, so to speak. Therein it is finally the root of knowing and willing, since all truth (corresponding to knowing), and all goodness (corresponding to willing) is ultimately personal truth and personal goodness: a personal God as truth and goodness, and the persons created in him as emanations of this personal truth and goodness. Person and love are one in God, as object and subject,

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being and knowing. In the creature they become separated, but are directed toward one another, strain toward one another, and are one in God, who is personal in his love and loving in his person. Love embraces the person—one’s own person, other persons, all persons—in God, the person of persons; and it embraces God in all. Since God is love, as the person of persons, his creation in its entirety is a concrete expression of love.8 Love is the primordial force holding all things together, the bond between Creator and creation, between human beings and God, and between human beings themselves, so that everything that exists is bound together in its deepest essence and even creation itself is a “concrete expression of love.” Love is the primordial power from which all originates, the primal force that holds everything together, the primal nature of God and all that exists from Him and through Him. If we compare this unifying love with Kant’s categorical imperative (especially in the sense understood by the neo-Kantians), and compare how they each bind together God, His human creatures, and the rest of creation, we see a great difference. In Kant’s conception we have a ­ruinous building, in which each stone ultimately depends on a necessary foundation stone to keep the whole structure from collapsing, namely, a singular “Thou shalt.” On the other hand, according to Scheler’s principle, everything that exists—God, ourselves, and creation—is given to us as primordially bound together in an immutable unity. When we reflect on the primal power of love pervading all things, we notice another analogy in the parallel between the urge of conscience and the magnetic needle of a compass. Just as the magnetic needle always responds to the magnetic field of the earth and orients itself along a general north–south axis, so also the urge of conscience is not a solitary atomistic urge, secluded from all others in solitary orientation, but, rather, in its expressions and activity, it is already responding in solidarity with the profoundest of all binding powers, with the primordial love pervading all things—ultimately, the love of God. The essential correspondence between this mental urge of conscience and primal love emerges even more decisively in Scheler’s philosophy, where the value of good is regarded as founded upon love:

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The moral goodness of a person (in its primordial sense) is determined by the measure of his love, and it even could be said that it is determined by this alone in the sphere of the absolute. Even the moral value of a community is determined, for example, by the total measure of love at its disposal. . . . Good is a value that intrinsically belongs to spontaneous free acts and the nature of personality alone, which are both in principle immune from outside influence. It is in their preference for acts of love that the value of goodness shines forth in those who love. . . . If we wish to ascribe to God the highest moral quality in its infinite mode of being, we can do so only by following St. John and St. Augustine in identifying love with the innermost nature of God Himself and declaring: He is ­Infinite Love. God’s “infinite goodness” and absolute moral perfection belong preeminently as attributes to this heart and center of divine activity.9 When we see how love is essentially connected with goodness here—how the urge of conscience in its loftiest form is this love that is itself a moral good, and how the good is realized through love—then this mental magnetism acquires an ultimately moral sense. If there were nothing in the world but love, then everything would be good. Since that is not the case, however, and since not everything is “good,” Scheler rightly says: “Today there is too little love in the world.” This is the love that is manifested in the urge of conscience and can establish, strengthen, and make all things “good.” From this standpoint a new panorama opens up for us in the following observation by Scheler: All love evokes a loving response, and thereby brings into being a new moral good, according to the principle of the solidarity of all moral beings. This principle implies, that with regard to their respective moral values, each is answerable for all, and all for each; that where the collective responsibility of humankind, as bearer of all moral values, is concerned with the Idea of the perfect Being, all stand proxy for one and one for all; and, therefore, that each par­ ticipates from the beginning in the other’s guilt.10

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This collective guilt goes far beyond the guilt of conscience. If we could feel ourselves implicated in the collective guilt of humankind, if those of us in the Christian religion could know that we also shared in the ­inherited guilt of all humanity, the experience of this guilt would no longer be that of conscience. Metaphysically or religiously we might feel such collective guilt, but in the guilt of conscience, only my own guilt is given to me, inasmuch as I alone am directly responsible for what I have done or permitted to be done. A purely personal urge passes through conscience here: it is my personality, my personal love, which reveals itself in the urge of conscience—not the collective love of humanity or inclination to identify myself with the whole of humanity. There is nothing in conscience of an impersonal pantheism in which everything dissolves together and loses itself in love. Only individual people are capable of love, and the urge of conscience is nothing if not thoroughly personal, and can be understood only as arising from the heart of a unique individual person. The analogy of the magnetic compass breaks down when we consider that the movement of the magnetic needle is the effect of various magnetic currents exerting their influence upon it, since the personal urge of conscience cannot be considered properly as resulting from impersonal, external factors. Since every love calls forth love, the urge of conscience can be caused by the love of another, but it arises as the expression of a unique personality. All compasses and magnetic needles are alike in their magnetic power. It is conceivable that one or another of them could grow gradually stronger or weaker, but the power in them, as such, is the same throughout. The difference with the urge of conscience, which as an act of love has a unique place in the entire cosmos, lies not only in differences of intensity between different people, but in differences of personality. Each of us can love only in our own manner, according to the kind of person we are. The biggest mistake is wanting to make all persons do the same thing. This is a mistake made commonly in education, for example, when all children are expected to be cut from the same cloth and educated in the same way. Each of us requires our own unique upbringing and education in accordance with our own particular nature and aptitude. The military is an exceptional case where the principle of uniformity can be applied, since everyone expects soldiers to be treated alike in how they are dressed and

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trained. But this unbending rigidity, which is necessary in order to achieve the military ideal of uniformity, already reveals how unnatural and artificial such an objective would be for people in general. This ideal would be nonsensical in the context of a school, where the focus of concern is upon individual students, each with their own distinct character, aptitude, nature, and prospect.11 Because human beings are persons and love as persons, the urge of conscience, also, can only be understood as personal. The value of the person appears in its highest form in Scheler’s notion of the primacy of love, and in its most pallid form in the neo-­ Kantian conception of Kant’s categorical imperative and concept of ­personality.12 This contrast between Scheler and Kant calls for a little more reflection. Although the urge of conscience is found in its primordial form in Scheler’s concept of “love,” the account of it given in the neo-Kantian view of Kant’s “categorical imperative” strikes us as mechanical and lifeless. In the latter, morally good action does not stem from instincts, urges, inclinations, or love, but solely from awareness of duty, respect for the law, and the pure “Thou shalt” of the magisterial categorical imperative. Each of us feels this imperative, this sense of duty, within ourselves, and each of us is bound to submit to the force of its summons for duty’s sake. Kant did not oppose actions stemming simultaneously from duty and inclination as though they were worthless, as though the only worthy actions were those occurring in the absence of, or contrary to, inclination. This, of course, is precisely what [Friedrich] Schiller falsely accuses Kant of in his well-known verses about Kant’s “rigorism.”13 Still, Kant elevates actions performed solely from a sense of duty to a higher level of recognizability for their pure “goodness” than those stemming also from inclinations. Hence, the accusation that Kant was a gruff rigorist may be unfair, yet he did treat the pure experience of duty as a moral criterion throughout his career.14 Over against this view, Scheler submits his opinion that moral good, in the most primordial sense, proceeds from love. He quite rightly refutes Kant’s one-sided ethics of duty,15 showing by means of an analysis of duty that it includes four elements incompatible with the purest “good.” (1) Duty contains a coercion or a compulsion in two directions: (a) against inclination and (b) against personal wishes. (2) In

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the coercion or compulsion of duty lies an element of blindness, which cuts off moral deliberation directed by insight or at least develops independently of it. It obliges by a kind of blind interior commandment, which has neither additional grounds for the obligations it imposes nor immediate intuitive plausibility. (3) Although this commandment comes from within, this does not diminish in the least its blindness or give the idea of duty any trace of higher dignity. (4) Duty has an essentially negative and restrictive character. Through all of this, moral insight is distinguished from a mere sense of duty. Accordingly, an ethics of insight must be distinguished from an ethics of duty. Where the content of a genuine duty impresses itself upon us as reasonable and good, it still remains an object of moral insight, but is not yet [a subjective] moral insight. Scheler has been attacked because of his criticism of the concept of duty. Michael Wittmann, for example, levels many criticisms against Scheler’s statements, although he does not see Scheler’s value theory in the proper light. Various other authors such as Erich Przywara, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and others have already defended Scheler, more or less thoroughly, against Wittmann.16 Unfortunately, these thinkers still concede too much to the criticisms of Wittmann. The problem is that the concept of duty is nearly as ambiguous as the concept of conscience, whether we consider it as reflected in our common parlance or in our technical theories. Accordingly, the question is whether we should direct our consideration to the objective phenomena at issue or to already existing concepts to which such phenomena rarely if ever correspond with any exactness. There is a concept of duty—a concept of the “sense of duty” preeminently (kat’ exochen)—which Scheler rightly contrasts sharply with insight and love. There are also objective duties as such—for example, that whoever assumes a position of responsibility also takes on the objective duties associated with it. Scheler gives complete recognition to this objective notion of duty in his concept of the “ideal ought.” One may assume various different attitudes toward these objective duties, however—one may discharge them out of (1) love, (2) insight, or (3) a sense of duty. These three different attitudes are conflated with objective duty in our language, however, and subsumed under the general concept of duty. If Kant prefers a feeling of duty that

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is free of any inclination, this is because he takes only the third attitude to coincide with “duty.” As soon as one compares these phenomena— the performance of objective duties from love, insight, or a sense of duty preeminently (kat’ exochen)—one notices the gulf separating these ­experiences from one another. One sees that a love for fulfilling one’s objective duties is no more likely to be experienced as a “duty” than our love for our mothers or a religious person’s belief in God. To die for love of one’s fatherland is not a phenomenon of duty, but one of love. To fulfill our duty out of insight into our objective responsibility is not a phenomenon of duty, but of insight. On the one hand, the language of duty still applies; on the other hand, where there is no phenomenon of duty, but a phenomenon of love or insight into objective duties, it is a question whether we wish to arbitrarily ground our concept of duty in the confusion of linguistic usage, or whether we will follow Scheler and allow the phenomenon of duty to determine our concept of it. Scheler deserves credit insofar as he is enough of a philosopher of being to allow his ideas to be determined by what is rather than by what people mean, what they think, or what they pass along as convention. Contrary to Kant, it must be maintained that an action performed out of love and not from a sense of duty is of a much higher value than one performed from duty and not from love. In fact, if the action follows from both together, the element of love stands far above the element of duty. If we view “conscience” according to objective appearances, however, then there are undoubtedly actions that are done (autonomously as well as heteronomously) out of pure respect for the law. In such cases, there are certain authentic experiences of conscience that occur only because a purely formal violation of the law (possible or actual) is at hand. Surely acts of conscience and experiences in which insight and love are the determining factors stand on a morally higher level and are of greater moral worth than those in which they are not. Yet both are properly part of a psychological investigation of conscience. Scheler’s ethics, considered apart from its academic validity and only from the standpoint of various psychological and ethical types, ­applies primarily to those who have enough love to be morally good. But with those who lack enough love, or cannot break through the

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fog of their inhibitions, or lack sufficient original insight because their knowledge is determined in a purely authoritative and heteronomous (perhaps religious) manner, Scheler’s principles are not psychologically adequate. Under such circumstances, an approach based on Kantian principles may have the better prospect, no matter how pale and mechanical it may seem to be. We may credit Kant with this much, that an action performed from duty is much more valuable than an action performed neither from duty nor from love, but from indifference or lack of interest, and also much more valuable than actions stemming from bad intentions, evil motives, hate, or resentment. Having pangs of conscience that come from transgressing against it is better than having no stirrings of conscience at all and feeling only indifference and disinterest concerning one’s depraved and evil deeds. These feelings of duty, along with the feelings of authentic conscience founded upon them, are real and valuable phenomena, but not as valuable as the experience of genuine conscience founded upon acts of love. Conversely, where a person has too little love to perform good deeds spontaneously and naturally, it is always better to obey the commands of duty than to prefer evil, even if one submits to its commands heteronomously and without the necessary insight. Those who act from duty and from obedience to its commands may not have as much understanding as those who act from love, but neither do they stray from the path as easily as those who follow evil inclinations and intentions, losing their way, and finding themselves increasingly isolated, lost, and alone. The Old Testament view of the Decalogue as the “way of the Lord” is profound, holding that whoever holds fast to it will not go astray, and that we must hold fast to each of the commands with our whole heart. The Decalogue is the signpost that points to a particular land. The view of those critics who see in the morality of the Old Testament a harsh “divine command ethic,” or perceive the God of the Old Testament as a loveless autocrat, is far too distorted and one-dimensional. The deepest significance of the Decalogue does not reside in its prescriptions or proscriptions as such, but in its function as a signpost. The purpose of the Decalogue, to show us the “way of the Lord,” could not have come from a loveless God. When laws are followed from a sense of duty and religious love for the One who gave the laws, this obedience doubtless

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has a high value. The fullest insight into this meaning of the Decalogue was first given by Christ, when He showed that the deepest core of its meaning lies in this: to love God with all our strength and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves—exactly the same principle of God’s primordial solidarity with His creation that Scheler has worked out in his philosophy. Although the Decalogue is valid as a signpost, we cannot see the destination to which its path leads by means of the Decalogue itself, but only the little stretch of our life’s path immediately in front of us. Yet through love, the lover’s eyes are opened to see where the path leads. We behold not only the little stretch of path before us but the destination itself. Both phenomena exist—the “love” and the “Thou shalt,” but a purely formulaic “Thou shalt!” alone is of marginal moral value. Even the Kantian “Thou shalt” could be viewed in its deepest sense as a form of primordial metaphysical love, an ontical17 principle of being, but the love in this case would appear lifeless, colorless, and mechanical. The religiously sanctioned “Thou shalt” (or “shalt not”) of the Old Testament Decalogue stands much higher, and has a far greater value and much richer content, than the Kantian categorical imperative (especially as understood in the neo-Kantian perspective). The latter appears, by contrast, as little more than a marginal, emaciated case of the former with its authentic primordial love. A person who had only love, and no inclination toward evil, and the most complete insight, would be the ideal good person in Scheler’s sense. But since there are probably no such persons, and since people generally have too little love, and since their unaided insight is clearly not so infallible or penetrating as it is often assumed to be, things do not go so well in the absence of au­ thoritative commandments and signposts. Yet Kant’s ideal of the good person, who acts purely from a sense of duty apart from any inclination, is no longer a real person at all. It has reached the very limits of what it is to be human, presenting to us a mere caricature.

BEFORE TURNING OUR AT TENTION MORE DIRECTLY TO THE SEC OND PROBLEM

of love and knowledge, we should like to consider Paul Häberlin’s treatment of the urge of conscience.18 Along with the role of the urge of conscience, which we have already considered in connection with feelings

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of love and duty, there still remain questions concerning the role of ­motives not yet considered, such as those of legislating conscience, or the experience of a call or summons of conscience, and so on, and here Häberlin’s treatment is pertinent. In his theory of conscience, Häberlin holds that the urge of conscience is not detached from its judgments, their authoritative character, or power to command. His view of conscience permits these to be merged together, but a particular emphasis emanates from the center (Zentrum) of its activity—the center from which the activity of conscience flows and also the ideal to which the call of conscience summons us. The judgment of conscience is an unconditional judgment concerning individuals and an unconditional demand upon them. This demand is absolutely necessary, and this judgment is absolutely true. All of the actual demands of conscience are, as a whole, as constant and integrated as the elements that make up a personality, and they mold together an integrated and constant system, ­represented by the ideal—or better, the “idea”—of the overall personality. For each personality, this idea is exactly what it should be. It accompanies the person’s real behavior as an unwavering guardian and guide, and it pronounces its infallible and unquestionable judgment upon it. It is our “alter ego,” or our normative ego, our abiding personal essence, which we are called to express in our actual behavior. We are not what we are. Thus our conscience perceives our self as having a double nature—empirical and ideal at the same time. Our “idea” is our actual nature, standing in contrast to our empirical behavior as an unconditional demand. Our only duty and task, our vocation and destiny, is to realize this “idea.” The conscience lends voice to this “idea.” Conscience, even bad conscience, does not exist primarily because evil exists, but because just such a positive ideal exists. Conscience is not essentially an instrument of reproof, but above all an expression and effect of this personal idea. Since we each individually have our own idea, our own unique task, and own personal vocation, each conscience is conditioned personally. One cannot rightly judge an artist, merchant, scholar, farmer, and manufacturer exclusively according to the same standard of universally valid duties common to all humanity. We each have something particular that is proper to ourselves alone. The demands of my conscience do not lose their absolute character when I learn that the

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consciences of others govern them differently. After all, they are different persons, and their “idea” is different from mine. We each have our own absolute destiny, our own absolute task, and our own absolute ­conscience. A very important feature of Häberlin’s theory is the heightened emphasis it puts on the absolute element in conscience, even if he puts the accent in the wrong place. Also very important is his strong emphasis on personalism. Häberlin has given us a reflection of a beautiful phenomenon that actually exists, and should ideally exist for everyone—the experience of personal vocation, of being called to our own unique task by a call that is exclusively our own and heard by no other. It is also true that this “idea of my personality” places actual demands upon me and can work as a motive for conscience. Häberlin goes too far, however, when he takes this phenomenon for conscience itself. First, this phenomenon is much more than conscience. For example, if I dedicated myself to my call (or vocation) with religious zeal, but without ever hearing the voice of a “Thou shalt,” my motive would not be conscience in Häberlin’s sense, but rather love. Zeal for my vocation would be present in this instance, but not conscience as specified in Häberlin’s sense. Second, conscience, in turn, is much more than the realization of one’s call or vocation. The voice of conscience is given in many different kinds of moral experience, which are not necessarily expressions of this sort of “idea” in us. Moreover, conscience is regarded as a psychological fact, and thus, when it is perceived by one of us, it convinces us of the positive or negative value of our actions, not of the “realization of our ideas.” The experience of a calling or vocation is too closely equated with conscience here, whereas it is a phenomenon that includes much more and much less than conscience (in the broader and also the narrower sense). Third, if we take conscience in its essential narrower sense, then a bad conscience would be an unlikely occurrence on Häberlin’s view, since conscience offers a positive summons or ideal. The only reason for a bad conscience—indeed, a true conscience, as we will see— is because of evil. This motive of conscience as described by Häberlin is also, along with love and the categorical imperative, an expression of a primal urge in ourselves, even though it is constituted in everyone in a particular

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way. It is important to note, however, that without this urge, there could be no conscience at all, certainly not in the true sense of conscience. We shall have to critically examine, however, whether this motive itself should be characterized as conscience. An essential point to be noted is that the urge of conscience in all of its forms considered here could exist just as easily—that is, indifferently with respect to—whether or not evil really existed in the world. The question, then, is about what happens when we bring the element of “evil” as an essential factor into the so-called phenomenon of conscience. More specifically, the question is whether such considerations do not yield a new group of phenomena that must be distinguished sharply from conscience in the sense used earlier in this chapter, and whether they do not bring us perhaps nearer to the actual experience of conscience in its primordial sense. Before we go into this, however, we must first give our attention to the second, still unresolved problem concerning “love and knowledge” in connection with conscience, and especially in connection with the urge of ­conscience.

The second problem: How moral knowledge is related to love As to the second problem of love and knowledge—since the urge of conscience vastly exceeds the scope of the analogy of the magnetic power of a compass, so the analogy also fails to work with the problem of “love and knowledge.” This is particularly true in the question of how the mental urge of conscience is related to the recognition of its aims—that is, the question whether the recognition is an activity in addition to the urge or whether it is already somehow resident within it. Scheler, by taking God’s deepest nature to consist in His love, and His act of creation as His principal gesture of love, allows knowledge to be founded logically upon love. For Scheler, “love is not only a purely moral attitude running alongside knowledge but a kind of root of knowledge already in itself, and love—precisely as our spiritual coexecution of God’s act of love—is the act by which we understand things, as it were, in God.”19 In the final analysis, the apriorism of love and hate is the ultimate foundation of all other apriorisms, and thereby also the

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common foundation for the a priori knowing of being and a priori willing of material contents.20 It is in this foundation, and not in the primacy of theoretical or practical reason, that the spheres of theory and practice find their ultimate phenomenological connection and unity.21 Whereas the Greco-Indian principle of “knowledge-based love” has the native tendency to lead people to isolate and disengage themselves from one another, and whereas the Greek notion of love for God takes people higher and higher above the community until they end up on a mountain top, the Christian principle of “love-based knowledge” brings them into a deeper and fuller relationship with their community, binding them together and creating solidarity. Following St. Augustine, Scheler sees how willing and thinking are moved by means of love, the third most primordial source of the unity of all consciousness. First it moves the act of knowing, and thereby it serves as a medium for striving and willing. Knowing is not always limited to things, but it is also necessarily involved in acts of taking interest and paying attention, and ultimately in acts of love.22 Scheler does not confuse the essential difference between love and knowledge, but knowing—and specifically the knowing of the essences and values of things—is really only possible where love is involved, where love opens the door to knowing, and thereby to willing. It is a metaphysical revelation concerning empirical knowledge and the knowing process when one discovers that knowledge is first given in sensation, not merely when stimuli alone are given, but when the subject’s act of taking interest advances to meet the stimuli. We know in the degree to which we love. Love, as such, is not a function of knowledge, but it makes possible the act of knowing by leading us deeper into truth. Acts of essential intuition, value-feeling, and insight into things are essentially different from love, but they are founded on love, and they are ultimately made possible as acts only by love. Hence, Przywara misjudges Scheler’s “theory of love and knowledge” when he claims that “Scheler’s system . . . follows from the exclusive alternatives of reflexive thought and emotion,”23 for in Scheler’s theory of intuitive rational knowledge, neither essential intuition nor an act of will is reducible to an emotion or to reflexive thought. On the other hand, however, Przywara is right in this much, that in Scheler’s theory of “love and knowledge,” the element of knowledge, as such, still needs to be worked out more clearly.

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The element of knowledge finds a strong emphasis in the work of the Groningen phenomenologist F. J. J. Buytendijk, although here it is harder to understand what is meant by love in the concept of “love with understanding.”24 He sees in love the bond between persons and their objective world, and also the power of the soul that separates that which is lived through in objective reality from that which is merely subjectively apprehended. It is the foundation whereby knowledge of reality first becomes possible. But it is not a faculty of knowledge. It is an objectifying tendency. The more it helps us come to know the world as an object, the higher love climbs as a subjective emotional tone in consciousness, constraining one to acknowledge not merely the existence of reality, but reality as objectively real—as something of value outside the subject. Love allows a person to make contact with objects that seem to retreat from one’s grasp even as they appear to become more real, not by a sort of passive osmosis or by any kind of active appropriation, but by an act of “losing-oneself-in” and “giving-oneself-to” them.25 It therefore opens to us the world of objective values—religious, ethical, scientific, and such. (In the experience of ethical values it appears as obedience, without which this world would remain closed to us! This is very important, because the call of the “ideal ought” is only grasped fully when obligatory duty is realized through an obedience of love.) It is through this love that a lowly biological datum such as “nourishment” can be given to us, not merely as something biologically useful or belonging merely to the life-milieu, but, like that which is called “our daily bread” in the wonderful biblical dictum, as something elevated far above anything merely human, as part of an objective reality visible only through love. “Our daily bread” is something objectively real, and the possibility of grasping this objective reality is given to us only through love. Thus even an apple can be seen objectively as a beautiful work of art, as a kind of fruit grown on a tree, or as nourishment provided for us, and so on. One does not ordinarily give a perceptible apple such an interpretation, but by means of love one comes into contact with this higher, objective, actually existing reality. This reality is not a product of the will. It is a voice calling to the will, which is responsible through the power of love to search through the world of objective values and norms from which it is otherwise closed off and, thus summoned, to

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desire the power of love through prayerful longing, and not to turn away grimly, eschewing any responsibility toward the values of beauty, worthiness, and goodness, to sequester itself in a gloomy self-determined and self-made world far from God. Such a world is no longer objectively real, but it has been degraded to an “environment” destined to vanish with the one who created it. In contrast to Scheler, however, Buytendijk does not see knowledge here as originally founded upon love. Rather, he holds that there is, in addition to all other forms of love, also a “love with understanding,” which reveals itself in acts of losing-oneself-in things, giving-oneself-to things known, and in the intuitive grasp of objective reality, in contrast to the mere mechanical conceptual processing of knowledge. The last word concerning the problem of “love and knowledge” is far from being spoken. What is essential for us here, as Scheler and ­Buytendijk both show us, is that there is a natural connection between love and knowledge, and that the way to the highest and most essential truths is opened to us through love. It is also essential to note, furthermore, that love and knowledge are not identical, but that each has its own nature—and that they nevertheless appear simultaneously in one and the same act, be it in Buytendijk’s “mystical love with understanding” or in Scheler’s “knowledge through love.” It is especially important for the urge of conscience, which in the deepest sense resembles a reawakened love, that this love is presented along with knowledge of “the beloved,” of objects, and of values. Where the urge of conscience appears—whether in synteresis, or in the call to perfection, or as a categorical imperative—it is presented together in some way with knowledge of the ideal ought. The greater the love is, the more “objectively real” the value is (Buytendijk), the “more the eyes of the lover are opened to the truth” (Scheler), and the clearer the call is about the ideal ought, because those persons who are called are the more obedient in their love (Buytendijk). We hear the call of objective reality and its values most clearly (and this reality at its most objective) where our own love is greatest. Conversely, the less love we have, the more weakly we will hear the call, and the more this objective reality will become merely a subjective environment. This agrees completely with the fact that true criminals are least likely to hear the voice of their conscience. When

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love is awakened in them, they see objective reality differently; new values appear to them; new character traits emerge in them; new ideals awaken in them; and they hear at the same time a clear call of objective reality; and then they hear within themselves the voice of their conscience. The greater the love, the more objectively real and valuable objects become. Hence, what would amount to slavish obedience to duty in the absence of love becomes, through love, a voluntary and even enthusiastic devotion to their own individual purpose, which at that moment lies fully within their own determination. Thus, without love, the Decalogue appears tyrannical, as no more than a heteronomous set of imperatives or naked commands, whereas through love it becomes, for the faithful, God’s signpost and, indeed, an expression of His love— just as Christ deepened the Decalogue by means of His commandment of love. The “objectively most real” meaning of (autonomous or hetero­ nomous) duties or normative ideals is not that which is clasped in the cold, loveless clutches of discursive thought. That, rather, is the meaning farthest removed from objective reality. The latter, by contrast, is given to us only in acts of loving understanding, transcending all “technical,” “academic” investigations and explanations.

AG A I N S T T H E BAC KG R O U N D O F T H E P R O B L E M S T R E AT E D H E R E C O N C E R N I N G

the relationship between (1) the urge of conscience and God’s love, and (2) love and knowledge, the problems to be treated in the remainder of the chapter now appear in a clearer light. Up to this point, we have taken conscience in the sense of an urge of conscience. “Conscience” is understood in this sense not only in many theories but also in the uses of everyday language. Is this usage correct? Is it the oldest? It is clear from this understanding of a mental urge that there is no essential need for assuming the existence of evil, as such, in any phenomena in which this urge arises. Neither synteresis, nor the categorical imperative, nor Häber­lin’s call of the ideal ego, and so forth assume that evil is a necessary fact or reality. Even in a world where there was absolutely nothing evil, it still would be possible (provided everything were understood as being in the process of development and realization) for all these phenomena to have appeared (including synteresis in its positive aspect of

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striving toward the good, though not in its negative aspect of repulsion from evil). Can “conscience” be rightly restricted to these phenomena? Does the essence of “conscience” not also include in some way the fact that evil really exists? Does conscience as such not also necessarily advance, in one way or other, the fact and reality of evil? We can see that Kant had a deep grasp of this matter from the fact that he did not think to call the categorical imperative “conscience,” but he described conscience as an awareness of whether or not we have followed the cate­ gorical imperative. The Scholastic and patristic writers also did not call synteresis “conscience” (conscientia) as such, but they held that the act and occurrence of conscientia is given only where the laws contained in it are applied to a particular case. If we inquire why we ask whether we have done our duty, or behaved well or in accordance with the law, it is apparent that we would not be asking such questions unless the opposite were somehow also a real possibility. Those who are really good have no occasion to question whether they have acted well, just as those who are really healthy, unlike the physically disabled, are completely unconscious about their health. In the “normal” course of things, one is suddenly brought up short: Have I acted well? Am I healthy? These questions already assume the possibility and reality of evil or illness. Is it not solely the existence of real evil that allows us even to consider the possibility that “conscience” in its most primordial sense also exists? If so, then we do not have the right, in principle, simply to label as “conscience” any of those moral phenomena highlighted by knowledge or mental urges as such. On the contrary, only those moral phenomena that are founded on the essential existence of (possible or real) evil have the right preeminently (kat’ exochen) to be called conscience. This becomes even more clearly evident if we investigate the urge of conscience in its relationship to “bad conscience.” An extraordinary and undeniable fact about ourselves is that, in addition to having an urge that is metaphysically elevating (in its most perfect form, love) we also have a contrary urge that is evil (in its most perfect form, hate). The former, which we call the “good urge,” belongs properly to conscience and comes to expression in love or a sense of duty. We call it “good” insofar as we can see in it the value of “good” in the person. A tree is known by its fruit. The latter urge, which prefers

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that of inferior value and results in evil, can arise only insofar as persons themselves are evil. These urges can also be termed “good” and “evil” inasmuch as a person possesses a will that either restrains or gives reign to one or the other urge, thereby yielding actions that are objectively good or evil. The evil urge cannot be set in motion unless a weak or bad will allows it to be indulged, and neither can the good urge, if it is restrained from the outset by a bad will. In our last chapter [chapter 10], we will encounter a still deeper justification of the terminology used here (which may seem somewhat mechanical and contrived, despite the fact that it renders helpful service here). The good urge (love) seeks to realize the objectively good, bringing about concord, strengthening bonds, and opening our spiritual eyes to see the highest (and objectively real) truths and values. The evil urge (in its most dreadful form, hate) always prefers what is of inferior value, always brings about evil, and multiplies adversities by producing isolation, separation, and division, blinding one’s spiritual eyes to objectively real truths and values. Both of these urges are in the human person. This is precisely the reason for our extraordinary, hybrid nature—simultaneously good and evil, caught between two worlds, two spheres, two powers, fluctuating back and forth between antithetical poles. Interpreted religiously, the two powers could be viewed as involved in a struggle for the possession of our very souls, our very persons. Only as persons can we be said to unite personal good with personal evil within ourselves. Those who say that they are unaware of evil are, as Scheler says, either animals or gods.26 Only God possesses the urge of love unmixed. However, a being that never did good, and sensed in itself absolutely no urge of love or good, would not be a human being at all, but a devil. Only a “devil” has an exclusively evil urge. It is precisely on this hybrid fact of a person being simultaneously both good and evil that the essential possibility of a true experience of conscience is based. The ultimate foundation of true conscience is given only in the mutual antagonism of these two urges—(1) the actual, probable, or possible victory of the evil urge over the good, and, over against this, (2) the real victory of the good urge over the evil. A bad conscience never arises where something wrong has not already been done, where the urge to do evil has not already been victorious. This

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much is clear and essential. However (and this is even more essential), bad conscience never even arises unless this evil urge, as victor, is not in turn again vanquished by the good urge. In the experience of bad conscience itself we witness the victory of the good urge. The good urge prevails as long as conscience speaks, and the person is morally elevated, and better than before. However, as long as the good urge does not vanquish the evil, as long as the evil urge demands the whole person for itself, and as long as the person really is evil, there is no experience of conscience whatsoever. The good urge must already have broken through in ourselves, and something good must already be in us, if we perceive the stirring of our conscience at all. As long as the evil urge prevails, conscience remains silent and the person is morally corrupt. Hence, the person with a troubled conscience stands that much “higher” than the one who is “without conscience.” The fact that an experience of conscience undoubtedly testifies to an “awakening of love” is of utmost importance—especially for a metaphysical appraisal of the phenomenon. The reason why conscience is biased in favor of the good and opposed to evil is grounded in the fact that conscience itself already represents a breakthrough of the good. Its bias here is a consequence of its nature. It is not good because it is biased in favor of the good, but rather biased in favor of the good because it is good, because its very nature is such that the good urge (love) is necessarily meant to conquer, triumph, and prevail. We must still consider an extraordinary fact. If we wished to find a mathematical symmetry in our psychological life, we might suppose that an analogous phenomenon would present itself if we reversed the relation between good and evil urges within conscience. Normally in bad conscience, as we have seen, the evil urge is at first victorious over its opposite, and then again vanquished, in turn, by the good. Now if we were to begin instead with a good urge, which was at first victorious over its opposite and subsequently vanquished by evil, then a new phenomenon would emerge: the absence of the cry “Stop!” Nothing analogous would arise here—absolutely nothing. The evil urge would proceed unimpeded, and it would be a matter of complete indifference to it whether or not the good urge was previously victorious.

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­ onversely, it is not at all a matter of indifference to those with a trouC bled conscience that an evil urge was previously victorious; indeed, this fact is precisely the animating content of their experience, the reason why they are ­troubled. What is the reason for this asymmetry here? Why is there no analogous phenomenon (such as an anticonscience phenomenon) when we reverse the relationships of the urges involved in a bad conscience? One cannot expect to credibly dismiss this asymmetry by simply remarking, “But of course, this is obviously how it is: just so!” This will not suffice. A reason must be given to explain why the summons to “Stop!” necessarily comes into play in one instance (as a retrospective phenomenon) and not the other. This reason must have an ontical foundation. No random empirical-psychological explanation will ever be able to account for this ontically based asymmetry. The essential answer is to be sought, however, in the direction of recognizing that the good urge of love is precisely the original power and primordial nature of all that exists. If the evil urge were the original power undergirding the nature of all things, then its victories over love would have likely produced an analogous anticonscience phenomenon and analogous cry of “Stop!” No phenomenon of conscience would have been evoked after the positive urge of love had been vanquished by the primal evil urge. But as Scheler says, where God is infinitely loving and His creation itself is a substantial gesture of love, and where love is the primal power undergirding all that is, it becomes ontically important that love has conquered the evil urge, which alienates and destroys, and it is not a matter of indifference to those who are troubled by their conscience that they have been bad.27 Rather, this fact is precisely their deepest grief, and they suffer from their guilt. If we compare this primordial phenomenon of conscience with other related moral phenomena, it is apparent that we have hit upon something here that is completely new, which sheds an entirely new light on the situation. Perhaps an analogy can best elucidate the meaning of this remark. All of us are familiar with well-known facial expressions and complexions (such as happy, bashful, youthful, and ruddy with the bloom of health, on the one hand, and sickly, haggard, and anemic with the pallor of illness, on the other—with countless varieties between

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these two extremes). If we compared any of these facial profiles with that of a lifeless corpse, it suddenly would seem to be filled with comparative vitality and color, and thus we would discover in the pallid complexion of the corpse a whole new dimension and meaning of appearance. Similarly, when one actually engages in personal evil and is aware of the fact, one’s moral consciousness takes on the new pallid colors of personal evil, just as bodily death is accompanied by an alteration of facial appearance and the new, lifeless pallor of death. (The point to be grasped in the analogy does not lie in a value-judgment, as such, but simply in the concurrence between the examples.) The novelty introduced by the primordial phenomena of conscience into the realm of moral phenomena may be compared, yet again, to the change that appears suddenly with a young lad who has fallen in love for the first time and sees the world and his whole environment in a new light. Not only does the focus of his world change, so that now his beloved occupies center stage, but everything takes on a new warmth, a new value, a new meaning, and a new shape through his awakening love. He also undergoes changes within himself, becoming much more sensitive, earnest, and perhaps preoccupied—but this preoccupation is the price for the incomparably more valuable deepening of his life. Likewise, a true experience of conscience not only involves a shift of accent among moral phenomena, so that personal evil now becomes the center of our focus, but it brings something essentially new into sharp relief: a new sensitivity. Conscience becomes just as sensitive as the love-struck lad. It is anchored fast to the heart of our experience (of evil), just as the only thing at the heart of the boy’s experience is his sweetheart. Conscience has no less intensity of interest in what lies at the heart of its concern. Even at the cost of sidelining our other interests, it absorbs itself in the question of our personal evil. The biggest mistake many theorists make is to overgeneralize and neglect dealing with essential details. They investigate conscience only insofar as it agrees with morals in general instead of inquiring whether conscience introduces anything new in the realm of moral experience. Because of this generalizing tendency, such thinkers treat conscience in a manner that flattens it out into something superficial, at the cost of  depriving themselves of specificity and depth. Scheler describes

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c­ onscience as subtle, tender, and alert—as something completely other than a cold and distant judge who, true to character, always arrives too late.28 It is not in acts of judgment, first of all, that the essential character of what we call “conscience” is displayed in its truest sense, but in a fine “ear” for the promptings of consciousness (whether an action is right or wrong) and in the ability to notice them and put them into practice.29 It is not only in this sensitive and delicate attitude toward (actual or possible) evil that we encounter what is new here (and more so in primal conscience than in other moral phenomena). Rather, conscience itself identifies and expresses what is profoundly new, just as the overly sensitive and delicate fretfulness of the love-smitten young lad also identifies and expresses what is new in his experience. In our actual experience of conscience, we see the essential difference between conscience proper and other so-called phenomena of conscience—from moral knowledge, on the one hand, to the moral urge on the other. It is clear that “conscience” is one thing, and that these others should be called something other than “conscience.” All of them are moral phenomena, certainly, but conscience proper is fundamentally and substantially different from everything else, just as a mother’s actual love of her children is different from love in general, or as the ashen color of a specific corpse differs from facial colors in general. Just as the ultimate basis of a mother’s love lies not in love but in the ontical bond between mother and child, and just as the ultimate basis of the ashen color of a corpse does not lie in the color as such but in the ontical bond between death and the corpse’s color, so also the ultimate basis of authentic conscience lies not in positive or negative moral experiences but in the ontical bond between those who experience conscience and God. An evil urge rends this bond. An attempt to further substantiate this last thesis will be made in the next chapter.

T H E R E F OR E , I T I S SIG N I F IC A N T F OR U S T HAT W HAT S O FA R HA S B E E N C A L L E D

the “urge of conscience” does not yet constitute conscience as such, that conscience is neither the call of duty nor the ideal summons of a vocation, nor the enthusiasm of love as such. All of these would be possible also in a world in which there existed no evil, or any evil urge, but

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true conscience is to be found only where evil is available—namely, that which is unworthy in any positive or negative behavior of a person. Such personal evil behavior must then have, as we will see, an ontically important meaning and stand in some kind of association with personal well-being. The voluntarist perspective has a relative right to emphasize that the element of urge is also essential to the experience of conscience, but it is mistaken if it supposes that it has thereby grasped conscience itself. The concept of duty constitutes the heart and backbone of Kant’s theory of morality, but he nevertheless places conscience far above duty. There is no duty of conscience, because conscience is the highest, ultimate authority that tells me whether I have obeyed the command of duty or not. It is this “awareness of whether.” Admittedly, he elevates the concept of conscience to a pure formality at the expense of its material content, but he must be given credit for seeing the issue with sufficient depth not to regard his categorical imperative as conscience or as the voice of conscience, as such, but seeing conscience, rather, as merely dependent on whether or not one has followed each imperative. He recognizes implicitly that human beings can also be wicked, evil, and disobedient, and that the possibility of conscience depends entirely on this fact. Schopenhauer also properly emphasizes the volitional element in conscience by calling conscience the self-awareness in our individual will of the suffering to which our activity awakens us. But by limiting conscience to our impetuous human will, which affirms life beyond those very limitations of the individual will from which suffering arises, he does not see the deeper volitional nature of conscience, for (in Scho­ penhauer’s own terminology) the volitional nature of conscience lies precisely in a negation, not an affirmation—in a self-negation of the ­impetuously affirmative will. But Schopenhauer does not let conscience dissolve in the suffering of this impetuously affirmative will, and therefore does not lose his way in a monolithic voluntarism concerning conscience. He also places conscience beyond the will to the extent that he suggests that the pangs of conscience are informed by the knowledge that (1) the principle of individuation (principium individuationis) is illusory, that the tormenter is really identical to the one tormented, and

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that he is forced to suffer precisely as he permits others to suffer, and that (2) the powerful will-to-live affirms itself as far as possible in this otherwise inherently horrible life. Nietzsche also sees a voluntary element in conscience, namely, the will-to-power. But the will of the weak and humble, whose ressentiment cannot be discharged externally and is therefore turned inward against itself, takes the self as an object of torment and oppression, and therefore allows its will-to-power to be vented against itself. It is not those who are the masters, the rulers, the mighty, and noble who discharge their will-to-power externally and have a bad conscience. This species of gnawing worm does not thrive well among the high and mighty, but only among the weak, the humble, the powerless, and the ignoble. The will-to-power appears in bad consciences as the will-to-self-abuse. But when and where does this self-abuse arise, and why? Nietzsche would perhaps answer: any moment when the weak, the foolish, become conscious of their inability to live out their will-to-power, any moment when they recognize their impotence. Quite apart from Nietzsche’s mythical “transvaluation of values,” is it true that human beings experience anguish of conscience when they internalize their own weakness (or, should we say, their moral weakness, their depravity or wickedness)? Only what we assess favorably [charity, mercy, meekness, and so on] is negative and valueless for Nietzsche. This contrast corresponds to the difference between two fundamental principles: Nietzsche’s willto-power and our love. The will-to-power conquers; love accepts what has value as a gift. The question as to which of these principles is right for moral judgment does not permit of being answered by rational demonstration or intellectual explanation, but only by intuitive insight. What is important for us in this connection is that Nietzsche also properly emphasizes the volitional element in conscience. And yet Nietzsche does not grasp the reality of conscience deeply enough, because it is simply not true that it is consumed with the kind of self-torment that he envisions. If we examine his understanding in light of our distinction between primary and secondary bad conscience, Nietzsche’s understanding falls solely under the heading of secondary bad conscience, but this secondary form remains without the supplemental depth of the ­primary. As we have seen, this is hardly a phenomenon of conscience.

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Simply tormenting and aggrieving oneself has nothing at all to do with conscience. The will-to-self-abuse could occur a thousand times without there being even a trace of any real conscience-activity. Moreover, the experience of guilt has nothing to do with self-torment, any more than those who have received payment for everything can still claim that payment by means of their will-to-power. The pain felt in primary conscience is no more intended by our own will-to-power than the pain we feel at a friend’s deathbed. What is essential in bad conscience is the moral appraisal of our own person and our experience of guilt, it is true, but Nietzsche’s view of bad conscience has nothing to do with this. Those belonging to the master class, the powerful and noble, lack a bad conscience, not because they are good (the same could be said of vicious criminals), but because they lack the possibility of introspectively examining their own worth or lack of it due to their inflated, outwardly directed will-to-power. Freud has also noted and stressed the volitional element in bad ­conscience—namely, that (1) it arises out of the libido (the Oedipus complex), and (2) it turns against its own libido under the pressure of education, morals, society, authority, and appears (as repressor, censor, super-ego, etc.) opposed to that which society calls “immoral” in this libido. Freud is right in this much: conscience is a type of censor and repressor of the “illicit.” However, it is interesting that even this “illicit” is a positive value for Freud, and that the repressor is a kind of tyrant, who deprives the natural libido of its freedom—freedom that could be regained for the ecstatic masses. Whereas we appraise conscience favorably as an inhibition of that which is evil, wrong, or illicit, Freud’s appraisal of this repressor is negative. This contrast is understandable in view of the fact that Freud’s conception of the human mind and human nature is monistic and reductionist: he finds nothing in our human mind that rises above the biological or bears witness to our transcendent life, but he reduces it to the biological level and classifies it under his concept of the libido. Here the natural contrast between spiritual love and biological libido vanishes for him (Freud understands by libido more than the narrowly sexual). Accordingly, we are confronted with the appearance of notorious confusions that psychoanalysis typically carries to extremes and amplifies in grotesquely distorted theses. For

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example, Oskar Pfister infers from Calvin’s strict teaching on predestination, in which “a sinister God predestines a huge multitude of people before their birth to the eternal torments of hell,” that “in Calvin’s soul there was always hidden without doubt an unconscious, repressed hatred of his father; otherwise he would never have arrived at such a sinister conception of God.”30 These same views lead Freud himself to such grotesque assertions as that the feeling of dread associated with conscience is simply an extension of the fear of castration, since the person with a troubled conscience must have been threatened previously with castration by some higher being, who then came to embody the ideal-ego.31 A further confusion arises out of the precarious method of trying to derive the idea of what is normal from the abnormal (i.e., from psychopathological cases). By this means, psychoanalysis ends up turning many things upside down and standing them on their head. It goes without saying that psychoanalytic theory rightly emphasizes the power of the biological libido in our human lives, and that it has provided a great service in this respect. It is true, moreover, that spiritual love also plays a large, if widely unrecognized, role in human life. By means of combining these two, essentially different realms monistically (and reductionistically) under the general concept of “libido,” psychoanalysis can demonstrate what a hitherto unrecognized power and significance this “libido” has in our human life. However, it misconstrues the mental or spiritual element, reducing it to a purely biological element—and does the same with conscience also. From this one can understand the tendency of psychoanalysis to try to explain the experience of guilt associated with conscience, as far as possible, in psychopathological or neuropathological terms. However, since conscience is for us an irreducibly spiritual phenomenon, and since the voluntary element in it is nothing less than a reawakened spiritual love, and since we emphasize the duality of spirit and nature, we must reject Freud’s theory of conscience as completely false. All moral phenomena that have this element of an urge at their center—whether love, duty, the experience of a vocation, the judgment of conscience, and so forth—are of great importance in the moral realm, but they do not fall under the heading of conscience proper. There-

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fore we must cross out all the understandings of conscience that are combined in Group 5 as not belonging to the true realm of conscience proper.32 If we are speaking about conscience in the precise sense, we cannot be referring to these groups. Albrecht Ritschl rightly distinguishes the legislative conscience sharply from the reprimanding conscience. Many thinkers mechanically combine “legislative conscience” with “warning conscience” and characterize the result as a “conscience antecedent to the action.” Likewise they conflate good and bad conscience, characterizing the result as a “conscience subsequent to the action.” There is nothing justifiable about such arbitrary, irrelevant classifications. Although “warning conscience” is quite certainly a genuine and fundamental phenomenon of conscience, “legislative conscience” is not. Moral laws, as Kant quite rightly says, are given by practical reason, not by conscience. In the course of our life experience—during which urges of good and evil, love and hate alternately occur, along with all their intermediate and sublevels of inclination in various connections—we form, after a protracted period of time, as a sediment of our experience, a more or less permanent disposition toward our environment. This sediment is what must be examined in order to discover the nature of each person’s “disposition.” A disposition is also a more or less enduring phenomenon and consists in a type of predilection and predetermination regarding that which lies in the future. Actions are engendered by this predisposition, and love and hate seek a way to press through it, like the sun’s rays through a dense fog. A disposition is determined by our urges and their various relationships that have been operative in our experience to that point. However, its future configuration is also dependent on the active measure of love and hate, goodness and badness, within us as individuals. A good disposition sometimes can suddenly change into a bad one (and vice versa). If an urge surfaces suddenly and violently, and then subsides again, a disposition can revert to its earlier state. But a disposition can also be so powerfully influenced by a sudden strong urge that it eventually settles in a position somewhere between its former and more recent states. Several “dispositions” can even coexist within us, if our experience of different groups of things and values, for example, also produces different attitudes in us of a more or

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less enduring quality. So it is possible that those who have the highest and most loving dispositions toward nearly everybody may also have acquired from their youth and upbringing a resentful antipathy toward their traditional religion. In such a case, these persons may also nurse, alongside their lofty and charitable disposition toward everybody, a truly spiteful disposition toward whatever relates to their traditional ­religion. A disposition is a more or less permanent, sympathetic, or anti­pathetic attitude toward the things and values around us. It is very important for any educational or self-educational undertaking to establish as much clarity as possible concerning this point. The relationship between true experiences of conscience and a good or evil disposition is exactly the same as the connection between true conscience and a good or evil urge. We have seen that knowledge and love are essentially necessary for true conscience but that neither of them constitutes the essence of true conscience. We shall next turn our endeavors toward understanding what the essence of true conscience actually is.

6 Emotionalism and Bad Conscience

We human beings stand in a threefold relationship to that which is. First, we stand within nature, and we face her. Biological principles and forces are at work within us, which govern the whole realm of nature. We call this relationship of the person to nature biological. The second relationship is social. Here we stand in relation to our fellow human beings and may experience this relationship as one of either solidarity or estrangement. A great deal of what cannot be explained and understood in us biologically can be understood socially. The social dimension is something qualitatively irreducible and unique, just as the purely biological is. Certainly the biological and social interact within us, but they remain two distinct spheres. Third is our relationship to God. There are many phenomena that cannot be understood either biologically or socially, because they belong to this third sphere, where we stand in a purely personal relationship to God. This sphere of the “religious” (theal) is qualitatively different from the others, although it also interacts with the others within us.1 We are the self-same persons who feel in ourselves the actions of nature, who are members of the community and society and are nourished by their cultural substance, and who speak to God in prayer. It is remarkable how the history of the theory of conscience shows us that various thinkers have sought to classify conscience according to each of these three spheres. Many thinkers, such as Charles Darwin, 157

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­ lexander Bain, Sigmund Freud, and others, see it as an entirely bioA logical phenomenon and ascribe it even to various animals. Others, such as Paul Rée, Friedrich Nietzsche, claim to find in conscience a purely social phenomenon, which first arose from human beings living together. Still others see in conscience only a religious phenomenon, the voice of God or a direct effect of God on human hearts. An investigation of the nature of “bad conscience” will throw considerable light on the question whether conscience can be understood in terms of the “biological,” “social,” or “religious” (theal), or in terms of any relation between these three. We must naturally select examples that are beyond doubt as authentic phenomena of conscience. Only from such examples, which are as “pure” and focused as possible, can we attain clear insight into the nature of bad conscience. By contrast, a mixed variety of data, seeming phenomena of conscience, and dubious examples can only confuse our view of the matter. By these “pure” examples we do not necessarily mean only experiences that are religious, as opposed to those that are merely moral. For the present, no distinction need be made between moral and religious phenomena of conscience. The nature of bad conscience can be grasped in both. If we now wish to understand such quintessential experiences of bad conscience, it appears that factors and elements here come into play that cannot be understood purely in terms of biological and social relationships. If we may refer to these biological and social factors as “worldly,”2 then “bad conscience” does not seem capable of being understood properly in a “worldly” way. In fact, from such viewpoints it even appears pointless or pathological. If one honestly attempts to u ­ nderstand such typical cases of conscience in a purely biological or social way, they will inevitably seem pathological or meaningless. (Trying to explain conscience, on the other hand, is a completely different matter, since explanation may always involve causal correlations of a “blind” sort.) Can it be considered “normal” for those with a troubled conscience to think they see someone stalking them in every random passerby, even though they know very well that their actions cannot be known to anyone else? Is it “normal” for people to never dare to look anyone in the eye but to always avert their gaze, to flee when nobody is pursuing, to turn themselves over to the authorities when not

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a shred of evidence exists to incriminate them, to accept undeserved punishment for themselves when there is no warrant, to focus increasingly upon nothing but themselves, to shun all society, to seek isolation even when friends wish to offer help? Is it “normal” for people to take their own lives when they enjoy social approval and sympathy for their actions, just as Judas Iscariot took his life after repenting his kiss of betrayal, even though his act was advantageous for him and his friends? Such behaviors can hardly be called “normal” from a social or biological point of view. On the contrary, those with a troubled conscience seem to be the victims of a psychopathological illness. Though the condition may be only temporary, it persists throughout the duration of the experience of conscience. Perhaps they suffer from a fixation (idée fixe), or are so overwhelmed by their emotions that they can no longer compose themselves or apprehend what is “normal,” but they are driven to distraction. In short, they seem neither healthy nor normal. Nietzsche’s claim is completely consistent with this “naturalistic” standpoint when he writes: “I take bad conscience to be a deep sickness, to which man was bound to succumb under the stress of that most profound of all transformations he has ever undergone—the one that cast a spell of sociability over him and changed him once and for all into a peaceable domestic creature.”3 We must satisfy ourselves with one of two options: either we must take the view that bad conscience is a psychopathological phenomenon, or we must accept it with utter seriousness and deny that it is either sickly or abnormal. On the one hand, if we take bad conscience to be a psychopathological phenomenon, we may wonder why those poor souls with tortured consciences take their torment so seriously, and perhaps someone should undertake to explain (as innumerable others also have) just how such a strange and sickly phenomenon is possible. Or, on the other hand, if we take bad conscience seriously and deny that it is either sickly or abnormal (so that bad conscience is seen as simply underscoring the seriousness of the experience of conscience), then in one way or another we must undertake to discover those factors (even though they may be new and unfamiliar) whereby the phenomenon of bad conscience acquires its profound importance and seriousness. These factors, in this case, cannot be “worldly,” but must be considered “supramundane.”

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We endeavor in the present work to show that this is the case. Once we understand that what seems “dreadful” in the experience of conscience is altogether “normal,” it is possible to see how the “worldly” understanding of the phenomenon as something psychopathological is pure illusion, in much the same way as those who are awakened from a dream see that what they have been experiencing is simply not real. There are no objective criteria by which we can determine readily which understanding is the right one—the prevailing view that what is “actually” going on is pathological or the “supramundane” understanding of it as quite normal. The objective phenomenon must reveal its own nature to us, which we either will or will not be able to see, and we must all draw our own conclusions regarding the matter. We must attempt to penetrate the nature of bad conscience by means of the most acute, genuine, and pure examples possible. The ultimate essence of every bad conscience is an experience of guilt. When we have a troubled conscience, we not only recognize our deeds as bad but experience our own culpability and responsibility for our deeds. Before whom, then, are we guilty? Before whom are we responsible for our deeds? Ourselves? Hardly. Such a bifurcation of ourselves into “defendant” and “judge” does not occur at all in the actual “primary experience of conscience.” Rather, through our troubled conscience we experience our depravity and guilt within the integrated totality of our own person. We do not experience ourselves as a good and just judge to whom we are also answerable. It is true that there is a conflict in “secondary bad conscience,” in which the guilty torment themselves and become angry with themselves, but the tormented part of their personality does not feel answerable before the tormenting part of the same personality. They punish only themselves here, because they are aware of their guilt and recognize the justice of the punishment—not because they feel guilty before themselves. Moreover, this self-torment cannot absolve them of their guilt. The poor conscience-stricken souls are incapable of helping themselves or finding peace, as long as they are thoroughly shaken by fear and shame. They would be able to help themselves, however, if they were their own judge. Yet the impossibility of helping themselves or ­remorsefully absolving themselves of their own guilt shows what nonsense it is to suppose that we could feel guilty before ourselves.

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Are we guilty, then, because of our standing before our family and friends? No, that is not the answer either. Our family and friends are a matter of indifference to us here, if not positively obstacles to our experience of the most profound guilt. Whatever they may do is utterly inconsequential and inessential to us. They have nothing to say about what is happening to us in the deepest and most intimate part of our soul. They cannot help us, and their interference in our concerns strikes us as annoying and irrelevant. Are we guilty because we are answerable to the state, or a court of law? These, too, are ultimately irrelevant to us. Of what concern is the state to those whose true concern is their own immorality? Even if the state were to acquit them, they would continue to experience their guilt, and the deepest part of their conscience would not permit them to find peace or rest.4 Thus the binding power of conscience upon them is far greater than the functions and powers of the state. The state and its courts of law are, moreover, ultimately irrelevant to the experience of conscience. Are we guilty, then, because of those whom we have wronged? They cannot help us either, however. Not even their sympathy, help, and ­forgiveness will remove the blush of shame from our countenance, or ­diminish our affliction over our guilt, or allay the accusations of our conscience. This is most clearly evident where people make themselves guilty before themselves, as, for example, in the case of the Onanist.5 But even where they have wronged another, and have done everything possible to make it up, and the other has forgiven them everything, the ultimate point of the experience of guilt is still not fathomed. The deepest core remains still untouched. With all this, their innermost being is still not satisfied, their conscience still not assuaged, their guilt still not washed away. It is very strange that no human being, and no biological or social fact, can alleviate the guilt experienced by people with a troubled conscience, and yet that there is not a single human being before whom they feel themselves to be guilty, not even before themselves. Before whom, then? Their experience of guilt is displayed as something that transcends all social and biological factors. Cardinal Newman writes: “Conscience does not repose upon itself, but vaguely reaches forward beyond self, and dimly discerns a sanction higher than self for its

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­ ecisions, as is evidenced in that keen sense of obligation and responsid bility, which informs them.”6 Aptly Scheler claims: Behind the stirrings of conscience, its warnings, its counsel, its condemnations, the spiritual eye of faith is ever aware of the outline of an invisible, eternal Judge. These stirrings take the form of a wordless natural discourse, which God addresses to the soul, prompting the course of its salvation and the world’s. . . . I believe that if it were not for the participation of a divine Judge, those very stirrings would disintegrate into a multitude of processes (feelings, images, judgments) and that there would no longer remain any basis for conceiving them as a unity. Also, it seems to me that no positive act of interpretation is needed before we attribute the function of adumbrating such a Judge to the mental content of these stirrings: on the contrary, they exercise this God-intimating function of their own accord, and one would have to close or avert one’s eyes to avoid experiencing it as an integral part of them. Just as phenomena of color and tone, unlike pain and pleasure, do not present themselves as mere sensations of our bodies (which are simply “what they are”) but from the outset as objective phenomena that cannot be “sensed” apart from their function of conveying their own material infor­ mation about the real world, so there dwells from the outset within these stirrings of conscience the implication of some invisible Order, and of some spiritual, personal Subject presiding over it. We are no more led by a “casual inference” from these stirrings to God’s existence than we are led to the existence of a red ball by a “casual inference” from its prolonged red appearance. But in both cases something is presented in the experience, something transcending the medium of presentation, yet nevertheless apprehended in it.7 Only before God do those with a troubled conscience feel responsibility and guilt in the ultimate sense. They do not need to be reflectively “conscious” of themselves—any more than we have to be made aware of ­ourselves through an act of reflection in order to know many things. (Knowledge is a much more extensive concept than “being conscious,” just as “being conscious” is only one of many forms of knowledge.) They vaguely grasp beyond themselves, however, a dim Something. They

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sense it as a power, because they are afraid before it, they seek to flee from it, and they are ashamed before it. Believers recognize this power as their God. Nonbelievers profess by their attitude and their behavior that they experience themselves as standing before God, even if they do not believe in a personal God. Nonbelievers (for it is with them, and not with the believer for whom it is obvious, that we must attempt to grasp here the “supramundane” element) suspect or feel in the intense movements of conscience that the dim Something above them is an ordering principle before which they feel their guilt and responsibility. They sense that this ordering principle also must be a threatening power, because they are afraid of it, even though no reason exists in their social surroundings for this fear. They seek to flee from it to a place where nobody can follow them.8 This ordering principle poses a threat, but its power is just—or is justice itself. For those who are guilty deserve their punishment absolutely. They have no doubt of this. Any trace of injustice is absolutely foreign to this power. Even the smallest trace of possible injustice in this power would annul the experience of conscience. It is only because of their guilt that this power makes itself felt, and they experience its threat. Therefore there is a natural connection between their experience of guilt and their foreboding sense of a justice above themselves. They fear this justice because it reveals their guilt and portends the calamitous punishment they deserve. This just power that transcends them is omniscient and all-seeing. Thus it is completely foreign to those with a troubled conscience to be absolutely ignorant of their own guilt, even when they know that nobody has seen their deed. On the contrary, they experience their guilt immediately as universally known and perceived by all. Every person they come across could be “on to” them and seeking to expose them. They are distrustful of everyone and look about themselves fearfully everywhere. They are practically convinced that their guilt is known— absolutely known—and they act accordingly. This power is everywhere—even in the most barren solitude, even in private rooms that have been locked and bolted. They can flee wherever they want and as often as they like, but wherever they go, their

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souls remain restless and fearful, and they feel themselves surrounded by the threat and “danger” of justice. This power is given to them, however, not for the purpose of being hard and unbending, but for reconciliation. In the course of experiencing genuine remorse of conscience, they who previously lived in fear and dread feel the erstwhile threat and premonition of wrath fall away and vanish. Progressively they come to feel more and more relief, feeling “love” itself drawing near, until they find complete peace in the religious experience of forgiveness of guilt. This “power” is stronger than they. Even the most courageous people cower before it and flee. Against other persons and animals they can still make a show of force and defend themselves to the end. But against this power any struggle seems essentially ruled out from the start, and any attempt at self-defense seems impossible and pointless. Those with a troubled conscience either humbly submit or flee in an unending effort to escape. In the face of this power, they feel absolutely powerless. They feel their ultimate impotence. They feel themselves to be absolutely dependent. The last vestiges of independence and freedom vanish from their experience, and the intensity of guilt rises to the level of absolute desperation. This sense of powerlessness stemming from the cognitive dissonance of guilt, of absolute impotence before a transcendent justice, and of being utterly dominated by this power are all characteristic features of bad conscience. They have no rights in the face of this just power. They have no claim they can make upon it. Yet this power most certainly has rights and claims it makes upon them. In one way or other they are obligated to it, answerable to it. Precisely because it has a claim upon them, they experience it as something opposed to their bad conscience. If it did not have this claim upon them, its presence would not disturb them. They could still presume to respond, just as they might to one of their acquaintances, “What business of yours are my affairs?” But that is out of the question here. This power in our experience of conscience is invisible to our eyes, inaudible to our ears, and untouchable to our hands! Nevertheless this power is definitely there. When people have a bad conscience, every-

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thing points directly toward it, and its existence and presence provide the only possible explanation for such people’s behavior. It declares its presence in their restless souls and storms of conscience. This power is not capable of being conceived as “mundane.” It can only be described as “supramundane,” something perceptible and ascertainable only in ­religious experience. This power is not only a transcendent ordering principle, but it must be of an intelligent nature—Someone before whom we stand with our troubled conscience. As Newman rightly declared, “We are not affectionate toward a stone, nor do we feel shame before a horse or a dog; we have no remorse or compunction at breaking mere human law.”9 An ordering principle, a system of laws, a natural power, a blind power, an animal, a stone could never evoke such a response: it would be unintelligible. Only before a Person does it make any sense to speak of shame, fear, or remorse of conscience. Only before a Person do we feel responsibility and moral guilt. The only “justice” we can intelligibly fear is that embodied in a Person. Only of a Person can we ask forgiveness, not an impersonal “power of justice.” Only a Person can be presumed meaningfully to be omniscient and all-seeing—not an animal or a vague power above us. In summary it may be said that bad conscience points to Something above us—an ordering principle and power that we fear because it threatens us, a power before which we feel responsible and guilty, and from which we attempt to escape. This power is absolutely just, omniscient, all-seeing, and omnipresent. It is found among any of us with a troubled conscience. It seeks our reconciliation. It is more powerful than we are, so that we feel ourselves to be dependent entirely upon it and powerless before it. We feel this power’s claim upon us, and sense that we are somehow completely answerable to it. It is not something ascertainable by means of our empirical senses, but is “­ supramundane”— an intelligent being, a person.10 This power, attested by conscience, becomes intelligible in all these respects only when understood as a personal God. Only by assuming a personal God can we give unity and intelligible meaning to all of these functions and attributes. Only before a personal God can we behave as someone with a troubled conscience behaves. All of our actions declare our presentiment of a holy Judge

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whose presence we feel in the deepest stratum of our personal experience, even if we are not explicitly aware of this and may convince ourselves by reflecting on the matter that there is no God. Only theism or pan-en-theism11 can begin to fathom the depths in which the experience of conscience is grounded. Neither deism, nor pantheism, nor atheism can offer a meaningful or coherent understanding of the intimations of conscience. Deism cannot, because it is a system in which there is no relationship of mutual solidarity between God and human beings, but only an unbridgeable chasm (yet only in terms of solidarity does it make sense for people’s experience of conscience to draw them into a relationship with their God). Pantheism cannot, because it conceives God as impersonal, and atheism cannot, since it knows no God. Accordingly, each of these options leaves the deeper metaphysical foundations of bad conscience essentially locked shut and unexamined. God does not place the person with a troubled conscience before Himself by His own activity (bad conscience does not exhibit primarily the activity of a holy God, for then it would be something oracular). Rather, the ultimate object intended by every genuine stirring of bad conscience is felt and suspected by those with a bad conscience from the interior depths of their experience: they see themselves, in their guilt, suddenly placed before their holy Judge. Here we see how that which necessarily appears to be “abnormal” and “pathological” from a biological or social perspective becomes frightfully normal. What is seen as meaningless from a “mundane” perspective acquires profound meaning and becomes deadly earnest here. People with a troubled conscience feel at the deepest levels of their being something much more real and absolute than most others do, who let themselves be driven to and fro by the breezes of events in the shallow puddle of their more superficial experiences. Here we must grant fully to conscience that “normality” that is so frightful when viewed from a purely “mundane” perspective. The “sternness” that conscience so clearly exhibits comes into its own here and is given full rein. All of us experience in bad conscience (either consciously or as a vague presentiment) our own guilt and responsibility before God. This is the ultimate meaning and the innermost heart of bad conscience. Our shattered relationship with our Creator pervades the entire phenomenon.

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Before we enter any further into this relationship involved in guilt, we must try to reach a deeper clarification of a number of metaphysical elements in the experience of conscience. Here we shall attempt to fathom the deepest significance of some of the most intense movements of conscience, a significance that is found in the most intimate, interior levels of a person’s being, which are neither shared with nor open to inspection by anyone else. By means of this endeavor, we hope to come to a clearer understanding of the nature of bad conscience. People with a troubled conscience experience an absolute ontical (or existential) relationship: all that is relative, temporal, and superficial in the experience of consciousness is irrelevant—the colors, things, and persons around them are inconsequential to them. Moreover, the absolute, fundamental elements in their experience of conscience in the deepest levels of their being determine their conduct even at the relative, superficial levels.12 That which is socially and biologically unin­ telligible and pointless in their conduct is precisely that which shines through in the drama taking place in the deepest, innermost level (and also throughout the more relative intermediate levels) of their being. We shall attempt to understand this clearly in what follows. We often see in ourselves a desire to be left alone when we have a troubled conscience. We shun all company and seek to withdraw into complete silence and solitude. This conduct cannot be understood simply in social-psychological or biological terms. It is the result of a deep experience, namely, our ontical bereavement. Ontically we stand alone—completely alone. Our parents, siblings, and friends are perhaps round about us, and want to help us in our affliction, but their love and their help are now essentially matters of indifference to us, and actually stand in our way. Indeed, at the deepest and most intimate level of our being, where they cannot penetrate, we remain utterly alone. Why then do they seek to block our way to that which is most important for us in the present moment? We do not want their help, or even their presence. Even if we had a crowd of people about ourselves, we would still remain ontically completely alone and utterly forsaken within the affliction of our conscience, for we feel cut off from everyone around us, and, in the final analysis, even from God. We stand there, alone in the whole universe, lonely and forsaken, cast off by God. Nobody can help us but

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God. Yet between ourselves and God there is a yawning chasm. This terrible ontical abandonment constitutes the drama unfolding within our innermost nature. The experience is so profoundly intense that it lays claim over our whole person, even in the levels of our being relatively closer to the surface. Thus the effects of this dramatic occurrence can be felt streaming through the entirety of our spatiotemporal bearing in the world. Drawing back from all social relationships, we shun every­one, see nobody, speak as little as possible, become increasingly isolated, forsaken, and detached, withdrawing more and more into ourselves. We become increasingly oblivious of all our surroundings and hardly notice anything happening around us. Everything around us simply stands in our way. We simply want our spatiotemporal existence to reflect the loneliness we feel ontically within ourselves. It is no pointless coincidence or arbitrary morbidity that when we suffer from a troubled conscience, we can no longer take pleasure in social life, but behave in such a “bizarre” and “unintelligible” manner. We do not behave thus merely out of fear of punishment or fear of the discovery of our guilt. Such a view would be much too shallow. The behavior stems, rather, from a much deeper encounter with ourselves. Anyone who thinks that when we are desperate about our bad conscience we seek social isolation in order to escape social consequences has no understanding of the phenomenon or of those suffering from it. Another very interesting feature of our affliction from bad conscience is our “ontical discovery” of our guilt. This can be observed in any of us with an uneasy conscience. Even if nobody has observed our act, even if we know for certain that nobody could possibly know of it, and even if our act were an insoluble riddle to everyone, we still know just as surely that ontically our guilt is “universally known,” and we feel our guilt with every fiber of our being. It is extraordinary in such a circumstance that we, who have characteristically penetrated to this ontical depth, have no ambivalence whatsoever—no halfway measures about being “partly guilty” or “partly innocent.” We know that here we are either wholly guilty or wholly innocent, feel either completely forsaken or completely in harmony with others, and believe that our guilt is either entirely known or entirely nonexistent. We know that there is no talk here of a hiding place or covering for guilt, that the truth of the

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guilt broadcasts itself everywhere, just as the sun sheds its light over all of nature. Ontically our guilt is universally known. Ontically we stand before God, who sees all and from whom nothing can be hidden. This ontical, universally known quality of guilt is a profoundly deep and important characteristic of the experience of conscience. When we are suffering the experience of guilt, there truly exists for us ontically nothing but our guilt, which broadcasts itself in every direction, declaring its content throughout the ontical realm, and the more intensely the guilt is felt, the more clearly this characteristic is thrown into bold relief. Now, when this experience at the deepest level of consciousness lays claim to all other (even more superficial) levels by its troubling content, we see the same thing happening to us in our spatiotemporal environment as is happening to us at the deepest interior level of our being. We feel that the universal manifestness of our guilt means that we are being tracked everywhere like a hunted animal. Each and every person strikes us as a potential accuser, we observe each with suspicion, regard every­one with distrust, and each little startling sound in our long loneliness whispers to us: “I know that you are guilty!” From a “mundane” or “worldly” perspective, we simply appear insane: we have lost our ordinary bearings. From a “supramundane” (theistic) perspective, however, we are in a frightfully normal state and are much closer to the absolute truth than those who let themselves be carried along by the empirical stream of events at the (relative) surface-level of consciousness. Our guilt is no secret. It is known. It is not hidden or capable of being hidden from the “eye of God,” and this experience of the ontical manifestness of our guilt in the deepest stratum of our being again claims our whole person for itself, in every level of our existence, permeating our whole being. What we experience in the depths of our being, accordingly, we think is apparent everywhere around us. Everything declares our guilt to us, and so any person who happens to attract our attention seems to us to be an accuser. This belief, in the innermost depths of our heart, that God knows our deed—this certainty that it is absolutely known— does not remain latent in the recesses of our heart, but it comes to expression in our whole outward comportment: this alone is the reason why we so often look guilty. Everyone knows how guilty people will cast down their eyes at a question, blush red-hot with shame, act restless,

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and thereby betray a secret outwardly that is no secret at all deep down, but universally known. If the guilt could be concealed and kept secret in our ontical depths, there would be no need to thus betray it outwardly in unexpected moments of self-disclosure. Only by means of the most extreme ingenuity and cautious circumspection could any of us manage to conceal such guilt, which emanates from the very depths of our being. But when we have a troubled conscience and experience intensely the depths of our guilt, we believe that our guilt is manifest to everyone around us and hear accusations whispered in every sound about us. This can be understood profoundly also from another perspective. First, there is the biblical account of Cain’s experience following his murder of his brother: “Behold, Thou hast driven me this day from the face of the land; and from Thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will slay me.”13 Second, there are Newman’s words: “‘The wicked flees, when no one pursueth’; then why does he flee? whence his terror? Who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart? If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed must be Super­ natural and Divine.”14 Both these quotations already lead us on to the next important element, which is already set forth prominently and clearly in Orestes’s flight from the Erinyes.15 When we have an uneasy conscience, we find ourselves in ontical flight. We do not, and cannot, wish to appear before our holy Judge. We look everywhere for a way to hide from Him or escape from Him. Why else the continual flight, even where it is pointless to flee, where there is absolutely no longer any threat from society? From street to street, from place to place, we continue our ceaseless flight without rest, ignoring our exhaustion, plodding wearily onward, pressing determinedly farther ahead, on and on. But wherever we go, wherever we might want to catch a moment’s rest, conscience is there waiting for us, and there is no escape from our guilt and our holy Judge. No matter where we go, we cannot escape. From the “mundane” perspective, this flight is pointless, pathological. From the “supramundane” perspective, it is frightfully normal, entirely intelligible. Even here that deep, ontical experience shines through our socially pointless ­behavior—our deep,

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ontical flight and endless, futile effort to escape. Since the ontical relation exists always and everywhere, the urge to escape also exists always and everywhere (as long as there is an experience of conscience) and is indifferent to the empirical senses and their demands. The relative concerns of the empirical domain are immaterial here. The phenomenon may be compared to the terrible flight of Orestes from the Erinyes. Here we find the same drama presented in the form of myth. Orestes was finally able to end his flight only in the temple of Athena, where the goddess transformed the Erinyes (“the avengers”) into Eumenides (“the gracious ones”).16 Those with a troubled conscience likewise can end their flight only when they reconcile themselves with God. Only then do they receive a peaceful conscience—becoming, in Greek symbolism, the Eumenides. It is arguable whether the Greek myth serves as an illustration of our inward experience (and, if so, to what extent), but the precise parallel between the flight of Orestes and our flight from conscience shows that even the Greeks were not unfamiliar with this phenomenon and shared in the common human experience of an unsettled conscience in the depths of their hearts. In just the same manner, the fear of conscience is incapable of being understood as a social or biological phenomenon. True fear of conscience is not a fear of the social consequences of a person’s action, but an ontical fear of being itself. This is the deepest fear that there is: a fear before God. This fear shudders through the whole conduct of a person. One can see just how irrelevant social consequences are for this fear in cases where individuals hand themselves over to agents of the law even though there is no proof of their guilt or possibility of criminal conviction before the law (one thinks of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment), or cases where people take their own life even though their actions are exonerated by the courts and even celebrated by civil society (one thinks of Judas Iscariot). There can be mixed cases, in which such a (social) fear merges with this ontical fear to produce an intensified fear before the courts, but in the absence of this ontical fear, a purely social fear of the consequences generally has nothing to do with bad conscience. This ontical fear, this guilty fear before God, when expressed in a despairing conscience, is the most horrific fear imaginable.

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Such examples, of course, could be multiplied by uncovering the ontical depth in the phenomenon of conscience—which, for its part, is (as we have noted) radically distinct from social and biological forms of shame—and by examining the remorse and sorrow associated with conscience, and so forth. In any case, such examples clearly show all of us that in the experience of bad conscience, we are dealing with one of the deepest and most intimate experiences there is. We can see that relatively superficial levels of experience are inconsequential here; that the socially and biologically “unintelligible” behavior of those in despair of conscience is, in fact, ultimately the trauma of a dramatic experience before God in the deepest personal levels of their existence. In every ­example, we can see an uncompromising, absolute (ontical) element thrown into sharp relief. We can also see that if conscience is interpreted as though it were merely something “mundane” in order to ignore this dimension of ontical depth, then we are left with only one option: to declare that “bad conscience” is a kind of illness, something psychopathological in a person. We have taken our examples from the most extreme cases possible in order to set forth clearly in bold relief that which is most essential in conscience. There is no denying that when such extreme cases are viewed from a practical-empirical perspective, there is in fact a similarity to the experience of guilt found in psychopathological patients. Yet similarity must not be mistaken for identity. What we actually find here is the juxtaposition of the most extreme instances of what are in fact polar opposites, in just the same way that true genius is opposed to insanity. Many striking similarities present themselves, and when faced with the most exceptional cases, we might easily doubt whether we have before us a genius or someone mentally unbalanced. Yet here too we must not mistake similarity for identity. Acute phenomena of conscience are, in fact, clearly distinguishable from psychopathological experiences of guilt. When extreme scrupulous behavior is triggered by the first sign of the slightest, trifling offense, there is no denying that it is something pathological. Normally such extreme reactions are found only after acts incurring considerable guilt, such as murder and such. But that is a practical-empirical question. The chief consideration for us here lies in the question of the nature of the experience.

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We can see just how radically absolute the position of conscience is from its characteristics in the following examples. When we are plagued by a troubled conscience, we cannot escape our situation unless we are reconciled to God. Although it is possible, empirically speaking, for us to relieve our distressed conscience by anesthetizing ourselves with alcohol, this is immaterial. Self-deception is yet another means of escaping the situation that ultimately offers no escape at all, or, rather, it is unworthy of who we are, given our human nature. There is no other way out. Before us lies our responsibility and our sacred Judge. Behind us lies our act and our guilt. We cannot, will not, dare not move forward. In front of us stands justice, which we fear—the holy Judge to Whom we are answerable, before Whom we feel our guilt, and from Whom we wish to flee. There is no getting rid of our guilt without facing this absolute Judge. There is no moving on with our life while ignoring or skirting the past, or fleeing from the demands and laws of this allseeing Judge. Every route of escape is blocked. Without assuming responsibility we cannot advance a single step farther! Endless evasion is of no avail here. We are no less helpless to do anything about what lies behind us. What happened has happened and is now past! Forever! It is absolutely impossible to undo the act, to turn back the hands of time and change the deed, or to shed the guilt. The desperate cry of all who feel the weight of their guilt is this: “Oh, if only I could have the opportunity, just this once, to undo what I have done and do what I neglected to do, I could survive everything and reform!” It is certainly “disastrous” for those with a troubled conscience that the clock cannot be turned back, past occurrences cannot be changed, and guilt cannot be wiped away. The deed has been done! It is forever past! This is an absolute element in every experience of bad conscience. Often those who have harmed another will attempt to be a thousand times more helpful, in an attempt to absolve themselves of their guilt. Yet the action is not thereby undone, and the guilt is not thereby wiped away.

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It is no less “disastrous” for them that they cannot move forward, that they stand before their absolute Judge—Who is absolutely just and can declare His just punishment, Whom they cannot deceive and Whom they fear, and from Whom they cannot escape, yet want to flee, but cannot. Here, too, we have an uncompromising, absolute element in bad conscience. Between these two “disastrous” facts—the unalterable past and ­inescapable condemnation, each of them absolute, unalterable, and eternal—stand those experiencing guilt. The way is blocked both forward and backward. An eternal Presence is there—time stands still for them. They have no time for that which is relative and superficial around them—absolutely no time. Something much more important holds them in its power—namely, their guilt. They are so intensely sensitive to this guilt, that it is virtually the only thing they experience in their stream of consciousness. They cannot get away from it. They cannot get past their eternal Judge. They stand, there, between these two fateful facts, transcending the mundane stream of time and living through a timeless eternity. People plagued by a troubled conscience really have only one way out of this disastrous situation, which is nevertheless “natural” in the sense of conforming to our nature.17 This is to reconcile themselves to God through an act of repentance, to bow humbly before God, to entrust themselves to their holy Judge, and to experience the forgiveness of their guilt by God. As Scheler rightly observes, “Repentance assumes its full meaning and becomes fully articulate, as it were, only when we come to experience it as situated within a universal metaphysical-­ religious framework.”18 So long as a glimmer of pride or self-interest blocks our way to true repentance, there is really no “natural” way out. As Scheler says, “It is terrible that we can only recover our life on the dark, painful path of repentance. But it is splendid that there is a path to life for us at all.”19 SINCE CONSCIENCE EXHIBITS AN ELEMENT OF SUCH UNCOMPROMISING

absoluteness, must we therefore understand it to be a religious phenomenon? Those who are despairing in conscience experience most deeply their own valuelessness: “I am nothing,” they feel. They stand

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before their holy Judge, Who is absolutely just and bears an absolute value of goodness, and whether consciously or not, their actions declare before God: “You are everything.” Scheler rightly sees this “I am nothing—You are everything” relationship as “the most primitive expression of religious consciousness in the earliest stage of everyone’s ­development.”20 Here we see reflected the more or less pervasive nullity that the rest of existence acquires in relation to the “Self-subsistent Being” (ens a se)21 as naturally revealed in acts of religion. Only by moving beyond the relative nothingness of all things that first dawns on us in our relation to God, and by recalling the positive value possessed by all beings and by each of us as persons, do we gain an appreciation of a second experience—that of our createdness and creatureliness. This experience is pervaded both by the sense of nothingness felt by those who abandon themselves to God and by a moving sense of “selfhood” in the self-assertive act of affirming that our being, after all, “still” has a positive value. “I am not simply nothing after all; rather, I am a creature of God,” expresses the meaning-content of the second experience. In bad conscience (and especially in the fear and shame associated it) we find just the opposite relationship and a different tone in each of the two experiences. What we find is not first of all and primarily a surrender to God in which our nothingness is experienced in direct proportion to our experience God’s holiness, so that “You are everything” is the primary emphasis and the “I am nothing” is the secondary ­correlate—a view that can be expressed as “You are everything—I am nothing,” and in which the “I am nothing” grows along with the “You are everything.” Rather, the primary experience here is, first of all, our guilt, and God grows larger, more powerful, and more just—and perhaps more terrible or more merciful for us—in the same degree as we experience our guilt—a view that we can express by the inverse: “I am nothing—You are everything.” The “You are everything” grows together with the “I am nothing.” Moreover, the character of the nothingness here is a positive disvalue for us—a wrong and an evil. “I am a bad person—You are a holy, just (or merciful) Judge.” (God’s love and mercy are noted more readily than His justice, when one is penitent.) But at the same time we find that there is here (though not in repentance) a desire to cling fast to our unworthy experience, and hold fast to our ego,

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instead of surrendering completely to God. A glimmer of pride shines through the fear and shame associated with conscience. Absolute surrender to God precludes, however, any intention of trying to protect our “ego” before God’s justice. At the bottom of a fearful conscience lies the thought, “Although I am a bad person, I want to save myself from the danger with which God threatens me,” which makes an attitude of humility impossible. The only way out of the catastrophe of conscience is humble repentance. The second element of the religious act, the experience of createdness and creatureliness, resonates with the attitude: “You are everything”—“I am Your creature.” In those experiencing guilt, however, the sense of creatureliness still stands sharply opposed to the “You are everything,” because they feel: “I am unworthy to be called a creature God!” Those who are guilt-ridden do not dare turn their eyes hopefully up to God, with the thought, “You are everything.” Instead, the thought “You are everything” leaves them with downcast eyes, standing in fear and shame. An abysmal chasm separates the one “You are everything” from the other, the experience of guilt from the experience of creatureliness, those who are guilt-ridden from their merciful God. It is this rupture, this bleak fate, this alienation from everything, that surfaces in their experience of ontical abandonment. They are sapped of all tranquility by the ontical uncertainty of their fate, and they feel like a rudderless ship on a stormy sea. The cordial bond between Creator and creature, which declares itself in the feeling of creatureliness, has been sundered. (We can now see this in terms of the fact that love is the primordial principle of all Being, that conscience is, like the magnetic needle of a compass in the magnetic field of the earth, a reawakening of love within the encompassing love of God.22 We also see it in the sense that, just as the sudden fluctuations of a compass needle signal the influence of an alien magnetic countercurrent, so also bad conscience, in its tempestuous fluctuations, bears witness to the effect of a countercurrent against God in the experience of conscience. Accordingly, this thought concerning the feeling of creaturely brokenness acquires a still deeper significance. Bad conscience testifies that those who experience its accusations no longer fit harmoniously into the creation established by God’s

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love. The loving relationship between themselves and God has been shattered, and since love is an ontical principle, the rupture here is an ontical one. But since bad conscience also represents a new awakening of love, it also bears witness to the possibility in them of the healing of this fracture and the restoration of the bond of love between God and His creatures. Indeed, bad conscience can be regarded metaphysically as a response-love inspired by God’s love.) This is not to say that conscience is necessarily a religious act in any specific sense, or that it is only a religious phenomenon. On the contrary, those who are not “religious believers” also experience the phenomenon of conscience. Scheler rightly emphasizes the originality and irreducibility of religious experience, and that the realm of religious being and value can never be inferred from the nonreligious world of experience or acquired by idealizations of that world, but that it is accessible by means of the religious act alone. Nor does bad conscience disclose to us this realm of religious being and value, or bring us into personal connection with God. More than bad conscience is needed for this! The true act of repentance surely provides the basic condition needed, but the religious act is possible only on the basis of an understanding of divine revelation. Those plagued with a troubled conscience suspect and fear God’s power and justice, not as a positive revelation of God, but as a negative confrontation with God. Here Newman is mistaken if he believes that conscience is already a religious phenomenon in us—that God speaks to us personally or reveals Himself to us internally in conscience, or that conscience offers us a positive revelation of God. Any positive revelation is given only in religious experience. What is most essential in conscience is a negative revelation of God given to us through the positive understanding of our guilt. The experience of bad conscience (probably even in a religiously determined conscience) is therefore not necessarily a religious experience or phenomenon. It is at most a negative religious experience, inasmuch as those with a troubled conscience find themselves placed before God in the experience. But it is certainly an experience that may be called “religious” (theal) in the further sense, which we defined at the beginning of the chapter by way of contrast to social and biological experience.23 We can therefore briefly summarize by saying: bad conscience is necessarily a “religious”

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phenomenon (in the sense of “supramundane,” referring to God, that is, theal), but not necessarily a phenomenon of religion proper (i.e., founded on divine revelation, and passing over into a direct, personal relationship with God). And yet the experience of bad conscience cannot be said to be simply a moral experience, precisely because of these intimations and connections pointing to God. Thus, although the phenomenon is not necessarily a religious one, it is nevertheless much more than merely a moral one. It is a phenomenon antecedent to that which is religious, and yet, as Scheler says, it “only acquires its full meaning and its full expression when it is experienced within a universal metaphysical-religious framework.”24 Bad conscience lies open in the full light of its proper nature and significance only in the religious bad conscience, where moral guilt is experienced as sin, where moral unworthiness is experienced as being contaminated and defiled,25 and where the experience of conscience points to God. Here those who are guilty not only find themselves placed before God but encounter God in a positive religious act and, through their remorse, experience God’s love and mercy. Bad ­conscience thus occupies an extraordinary position between moral and religious experience. In fact, it can be seen as a transition from one to the other—as the connecting chain leading from an exclusively moral sphere, through a metaphysical-moral sphere and a negative-religious sphere, to a positive-religious sphere. In light of this, it is evident why this is precisely the point where so many religious conversions occur—why even the Apostle Paul himself appeals to the conscience of the Greeks, and why Newman lets conscience play such a central role in his philosophy of religion.

N O W, W H A T I S T H I S P E C U L I A R E X P E R I E N C E O F U N W O R T H I N E S S , T H I S

experience of guilt? It is not a subjective feeling, which coincidentally accompanies this or that incident. It is the reverberation produced in us by an objective state of affairs, since the guilt itself is something objective. This fact must be emphasized resolutely over against any suggestion of subjective emotionalism. As Scheler rightly states, “It is that quality of ‘evil,’ which the person himself, as the center of his acts, is

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continually increasing by means of his evil act. Guilt is a quality, therefore, and not a feeling.”26 The experience of guilt is the experience of this quality, which adheres to individuals whether they feel guilty or not. We have seen (in chapter 3) how the knowledge those with a troubled conscience have concerning their guilt and depravity, whether discursively or intuitively, is further deepened so that their judgment, “This action is wrong,” becomes enmeshed with the deeper judgment: “I am bad, I am evil.” The main weight of their guilt does not rest upon rational knowledge or emotional-cognitive understanding, but on the full experience of their guilt as a negative quality in their own being: “I, as an existing being, am evil; my being is evil.” Now, in this experience lies the extraordinary implication that those experiencing guilt no longer feel themselves to be in harmony with the rest of the world. It is as if this guilt made them worthless among existing beings. Every form of guilt associated with conscience accords with this completely, whether it is fear, shame, remorse, anger, and so forth. Those who feel the shame associated with conscience want to sink into the oblivion of “nonbeing” and would rather not exist at all than feel such shame. Those feeling the anger and torment associated with conscience would like, somehow or other, to wipe out the existing evil. Those feeling the remorse of conscience seek to overcome their affliction, which they feel to be rooted in the evil within them, by having their guilt forgiven and wiped away. The feeling of fear associated with conscience is rooted in this existing evil. Everywhere throughout the phenomenon of conscience, we see that our experience of “one who is evil” (ens malum) is an experience of a disharmony with “one who is good” (ens bonum).27 It is noteworthy that the experience of conscience seems to imply that all being should be good. The proposition “every being is good” (omne ens est bonum) is recognized here as an ideal; the proposition “every being is evil” (omne ens est malum) is here recognized and experienced fully as fact only by individuals with respect to their own being.28 When we have a troubled conscience, we are led to accuse ourselves by the thought that we are now an “evil being” (ens malum), and this is the basis of our agitation. We ourselves are the cause of this evil quality. Through our own evil wishes, desires, intentions, and actions, which we should have overcome, we have become just as evil as we now feel

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ourselves to be. We are no longer capable of doing “good,” no longer free to liberate ourselves from the evil within our being. All the best intentions in the world are naturally no longer of any avail. (These could only serve the purpose of unnaturally masking our guilt and thereby repressing our empirical-factual experience of guilt.) We must be renewed from the deepest recesses of our being, but this lies beyond our power. The only possible way for us to be delivered from the torments of our conscience, liberated from our devastating situation, and to escape from our own evil being (ens malum) is by means of a miracle, conversion, grace, and forgiveness of guilt—only through One who also has the power to renew us by penetrating the depths of our being and changing us. If we put what has been said into our “metaphysical” terminology, it is precisely because of this objective quality of evil that those with a guilty conscience no longer fit into God’s creation and have defiled God’s creation. Their existence therefore represents a disharmony, a discord, with all that God is, like a stain in a work of art, or like “thorns and weeds in God’s field.”29 Through this objective quality of “evil” in them, the bond that binds them to God in solidarity with Him and His creation is rent asunder. There is a rupture, a chasm, between themselves and God, which is unbridgeable from their side. An objective relationship is severed. They no longer stand within the order of things as God created them. They stand outside, secluded, alone, and forsaken. No longer capable of fitting anywhere within in the whole of creation, possessed of a feeling of worthlessness before God and their fellow human beings, witnessing the disharmony and discord that they are guilty of causing—this ontical rupture, this displacement and disconnection from Him in Whom alone their existence is grounded and established, indeed without Whom they could not exist, this experience of freely intended evil and wickedness in themselves—this is the ultimate basis upon which all phenomena of bad conscience are to be understood as transcending that which is merely biological and social. It is the illumination of this metaphysical state of affairs, and a profoundly personal insight into it—an insight of which one may not even be reflectively aware—that is expressed powerfully in the fear associated with conscience.

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The offenders are to blame for everything. They caused this. They are responsible for what has happened. Through their own evil deed, this “evil” quality clings to them, making them unworthy to take their own, personal place in God’s order of things. How can they appear before their holy Judge now, after this self-incriminating act? The experience of guilt is the experience of this broken relationship, caused by their own evil and wickedness before their Judge, from Whom they have received everything, and before Whom they stand guilty of everything, including their own existence. The experience of guilt is the emotional echo of these objective facts in the deepest levels of their being.30 All of this, however, forms the background of the following (previously treated) principles: (1) that conscience represents the breaking forth of an “urge to do good”31—that is, love; (2) that everything which exists does so through love, and within the love of God; and (3) that love is necessarily reciprocal, so that God’s love begets the love of those with troubled consciences—and because of this, everything said here gains a still much deeper meaning.

S C H E L E R HA S G I V E N U S A C L A S S I F I C AT I O N O F T H E S T R ATA O F E M O T I O NA L

life.32 He distinguishes feelings on four different levels—sensible, biotic, psychical, and spiritual—and shows us how these are essentially differentiated from each other, and how this ascending order of feelings leads us into progressively deeper levels of emotional life. The deepest feelings are the spiritual: [They] seem to stream forth, as it were, from the very source of spiritual acts. Everything given in the inner and outer world in these acts seems to be bathed in the light or darkness of these feelings. They “pervade” all special contents of experience. Their peculiarity can also be seen in that they are absolute feelings that are not relative to extrapersonal value-complexes or their motivating powers. . . . It belongs to the nature of these feelings that they either are not experienced at all, or they take possession of the whole of our being. Just as in despair there lies at the core of our personal existence and world an emotional “No!” without our “person” ­becoming a mere

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object of reflection, so also in “bliss,” at the deepest level of the feeling of happiness, there lies an emotional “Yes!” It is the moral value of our personal being itself to which bliss and despair appear to be correlates. Therefore they are the metaphysical and religious self-feelings par excellence.33 Thus the feelings of guilt in bad conscience also belong to these spiritual feelings, which are grounded in, and issue from, the deepest core of the person. Likewise, feelings of guilt penetrate all the other levels and, as Scheler says, “fulfill, as it were, our entire existence and our ‘world,’ from the core of the person.”34 Nothing but guilt is experienced in bad conscience, and it summons the whole person to account.35

W E H AV E S E L E C T E D T H E P U R E S T A N D M O S T I N T E N S E E X P E R I E N C E S A S

examples for our investigation in order to grasp clearly the characteristic features under discussion. These characteristic features apply universally. They apply where a troubled conscience suddenly raises its quiet voice but then falls silent again, where we spontaneously avert our eyes when confronted with a question about our guilt, and even where the guilt is insignificant, for there is no qualitative difference between smaller or larger transgressions, and even the smallest fault defiles “God’s creation.” They apply even where feelings of guilt are mixed with fear of social consequences, with cowardice about being detected in our guilt, with concern over appearing opposed to public opinion, or with regret over various other wrongs—none of which, taken in themselves, have anything to do with bad conscience. In all genuine experiences of guilt, whether intense or weak, the essence is the same. It can be difficult empirically to detect a genuine bad conscience merely by observing a certain behavior, just as it can be difficult to detect whether a natural movement is mechanical or biological merely by observing a particular movement. But we ourselves know full well whether we fear merely the consequences of our act or whether we experience our act itself as wrong and ourselves as “guilty.” Schopenhauer could rightly maintain that everything Kant says about those troubled by their conscience36 could just as well be said of someone who had lost a large fortune

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through a stupid blunder. Outwardly the two modes of behavior correspond exactly, but internally there is something completely different. There is also something in the external behavior of those with a troubled conscience that is even analogous to the demeanor of a dog cowering in fear of anticipated punishment for having done something forbidden. Nevertheless, the phenomena are essentially different. The dog has absolutely no sense of its own wrongdoing. Rather, its behavior is determined only by the expectation of punishment based on previous experience, together with its otherwise sympathetic relationship to its master. There is an essential difference between moral guilt and the simple “causation” of something. The businessman knows that he is the cause of his bankruptcy. Perhaps even a dog could detect the experience of having exercised a sort of biological causation, yielding a sort of “biological guilt,” but such a grasp of “natural guilt” would still be ­essentially different from the experience of moral guilt. These sorts of manifestations of apparent guilt have nothing to do with the phenomena of guilt proper. The phenomena of mixed guilt—guilt mixed with other kinds of fear—occupy an intermediate position between these two ­extremes.

TO BEGIN WITH, WE DISTINGUISHED A THREEFOLD RELATIONSHIP IN WHICH A

person stands: the (1) biological, (2) social, and (3) religious (theal ).37 The yield of our investigation was that the “religious” (theal) understanding of bad conscience offers a meaningful insight; that its severity and the severity of our experience of it are completely legitimate; and that a biological or social interpretation of it offers no more than a caricature of it as a psychological aberration or mental illness. On the latter (social) interpretation, those with a troubled conscience could be considered “normal” only if they dismissed their guilt as a “stupid blunder” and planned on never falling for it again (Schopenhauer). But the phenomenon would then have nothing to do with a bad conscience at all. On the other hand, neither can any view be considered correct that takes conscience to be the “voice of God,” the direct effect of God on our hearts, or a divine oracle. Even though this view is metaphysically and religiously conceivable, bad conscience itself does not point in this

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direction. Conscience may very well require a counter-phenomenon by which our bond with God is restored, such as the religious experience of forgiveness and mercy, and therefore bad conscience itself cannot be the last word, metaphysically speaking. The entire nature of conscience calls for this counter-phenomenon, yet bad conscience itself always remains an act of response directed toward God, an experience of placing ourselves before God, rather than an action of God toward us. As already noted, our experience of bad conscience is not necessarily a religious one in the strict sense, though it may be so. Bad conscience is “religious” (theal) only in the sense that it reflects our relationship to God, whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally. This is why conscience may never be regarded as a divine oracle or revelation. It is completely dependent (as we have seen in chapters 3 and 4) on profound human convictions about good and evil. Its insights imply moral judgments, rather than any sort of divine oracle or word from God. The towering authority of its conviction comes solely from its insight into the truth about our objective guilt (which, as far as it is concerned, is the ultimate truth and certainty)—not from God having whispered it into our minds or having given us conscience as an infallible faculty for discerning good and evil. Conscience is surely the “voice of God” in a figurative sense, for through it our disposition toward God is manifest, eternal values and truths are revealed to us more deeply and clearly than they could otherwise be known, and a spiritual urge of love for God is awakened in us, which can be seen ultimately as our response to God’s love. Nonetheless, it is only in a figurative sense that conscience is the “voice of God” in us. Conscience cannot give us what can be attained only through religious experiences—that is, through a direct encounter and relationship with God, a direct knowledge of God and a life lived in the presence of God. Conscience offers us no direct way to God, but only an indirect one. Even so, it also provides a way to seek and find God, which would otherwise be essentially possible only through directly religious experiences. Bad conscience has a frightening normalcy about it if we regard it as an experience of our broken relationship to God. This view guarantees the phenomenon its full and proper seriousness that resides deeply within it. It is not a game, a pretense, an illness, or a mere folly. No, it is

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utterly serious: it speaks to all of us who are conscience-stricken in the depths of our souls with such a terrible gravity that all of our other, ordinary concerns of daily life, our cares and sorrows concerning the things around us, vanish into thin air. The phenomenon profoundly ­reveals how wide of the mark those are who take bad conscience to be merely a product of social or biological factors and, ultimately, just a psychological abnormality. We have attempted to capture what the essential nature of conscience reveals to us, what its actions intentionally declare to us. Proceeding from the empirically given facts, we have sought to extract and distinguish the essential from the accidental. Our stance has been purely theoretical. Obviously those who are genuinely conscience-stricken do not have this theoretical attitude but are caught up in a completely practical concrete attitude toward those empirical points in which they are guilty—whether it be murder, the violation of a law they consider sacrosanct, or whatever it may be. Hence those who are conscience-stricken do not even need to be reflectively conscious of what their experience basically shows, what their objective guilt essentially says about their relationship to their Creator. They have only a practical attitude toward their culpability, which inspires fear, shame, remorse, a desire for isolation, and anger toward themselves, to mention a few examples.

THE EMOTIONALIST THEORY OF C ONSCIENCE UNDENIABLY HOLDS A RIGHTFUL

preeminence over any one-sidedly intellectualist, intuitionist, or voluntarist theory. A phenomenon without any emotional stirrings, or whose stirrings were only insignificant or subjective side effects of other phenomena, could hardly be a phenomenon of conscience. Nevertheless, a one-sided emotionalism that ignored the elements of knowledge and urgings in conscience could hardly do justice to the phenomenon either. By the same token, an emotionalism that recognized cognition and volition but regarded the seeds of conscience as residing exclusively in the urges of subjective feelings—an emotionalism, that is, that viewed these urges as no more than subjective feelings, and not as responses to objective matters of fact—would have to be blind to the essence of conscience. For a bad conscience has nothing to do with experiences of

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subjective states, or acts as such, but rather with objective states of ­affairs. An emotionalist psychologism or subjectivism cannot grasp the nature of conscience. Alongside the principle of emotionalism, the principle of the objectivity of the phenomena of conscience must be ­preserved. Therefore certain opinions cannot be accepted without qualification. For example, Leslie Stephen says: “Conscience is the group of feelings that makes conformity to the moral law pleasant, and nonconformity painful”; and J. S. Mill claims: “Conscience is a pain, a feeling, attendant on violation of duty and disinterested and confined to the pure idea of duty and not to any particular form of it”; and Harald Høffding claims: “Conscience is the capacity to have feelings of value-­ assessment. In the broadest sense, conscience is a relationship felt in consciousness between a dominant, governing central content and a peripheral content consisting of various transient thoughts, moods, and expressions of will. Conscience is born the instant there arises a feeling defined by the difference between the ideal and the real.”38 On the one hand, these definitions rightly stress in various ways the essential emotional nucleus of conscience. On the other hand, however, they one-sidedly view this single emotional factor in the various elements of conscience as though it were itself conscience, and they run the risk of losing themselves in an emotional subjectivism. Any kind of emotionalism that looks at the movements of conscience merely from the subjective side and seeks to “anchor” its perspective in some sort of formulaic relation, be it “conformity to moral law,” “the violation of duty,” or “the relationship between the central and the peripheral parts of consciousness,” is looking at the external and incidental aspects of the experience of conscience while failing to recognize its interior depth and actual essence. The superficiality of such theories becomes apparent when one asks critical questions, such as: “Why are feelings associated with these relations?” “Why are these feelings, and not their opposites, associated with them?” and “Why is there such an association at all?” No—the very stirrings of conscience themselves declare their own objective content, their objective guilt, and their objective “evil,” which are fully experienced in their negative disvalue. In John Calvin’s previously treated theory of conscience, law stands alongside an objective understanding of the emotions, enabling the peculiarity of conscience to

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emerge clearly.39 For him conscience is a feeling (or, better, a stirring) that does not permit us to intend evil in itself. Rather, conscience places us along with our guilt before God, preventing us from suppressing what we know, compelling us to confess it, pursuing us until we admit our fault. The “bare and naked knowledge of [our] guilt” might remain locked up within us, but, as a “feeling,” our conscience observes the secrets of our heart, so that nothing remains buried in the dark. In this respect conscience stands above the will. The power of conscience, as evidenced in the aphorism “Conscience is a thousand witnesses” (Conscientia mille testes), lies in the emotional reality of its stirrings. Likewise, in the Old Testament it is the “heart,” and not the reason or the will, that occupies the central place of conscience. In the New Testament, conscience appears in an original light and even more original depth as syneidesis (συνείδησις). This strength and profundity of conscience, which an objective emotionalism can grasp, is something to which no intellectualism or voluntarism can do justice.40

IF WE WANT TO DISTINGUISH THE EMOTIONAL STIRRINGS THAT ARE

proper to conscience from all those that are not, only moral and religious emotions generally come into consideration, and of these, again, only such as bear witness to moral guilt. All these stirrings of bad conscience bind together the objective circumstances of guilt. This guilt expresses itself in every feeling in a different way, with a different focus of interest, a different color and intensity. If we compare the most diverse feelings of conscience with one another—such as repentance, shame, fear, anger, and so on—we see extremely sharp differences. At the same time, their common denominator—guilt—clearly stands out. It would be a mistake to want to separate the feelings of repentance and shame from conscience, like Heinrich Gerland, just because re­ pentance and shame can be associated with any sort of acts, and not merely those that are contemptible and evil.41 Certainly, there is a type of shame that does not belong to conscience and is experienced in completely different contexts and with different contents. But such forms of shame are to be distinguished from the genuine shame found in conscience, which is not merely something that accompanies conscience,

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as Gerland suggests, but rather a genuine experience of conscience itself. Likewise the genuine fear associated with conscience must also be distinguished from any fear that is merely social or biological. Surely there is an essential difference between the fear of a barking dog or ­unpleasant social stigma, on the one hand, and the fear of conscience, on the other. The “fear” involved in conscience is, moreover, not merely an accompaniment of the experience of conscience, but an essential and fundamental factor in it. A classification of these proper phenomena of bad conscience is available to us, if we but look for a principle of division (principium divisionis) within the objective phenomenon of conscience itself. No classification based on nonessential, accidental categories—such as the usual distinction between the “antecedent” elements of conscience (warning, advising, legislating, etc.) and “consequent” elements (good, evil)—can do justice to the objective facts and must be rejected as contrived. The phenomenon itself, however, gives us an essential organizing principle. Every phenomenon of bad conscience contains three essential elements, or three essential factors: (1) the guilty, with their troubled consciences, (2) their accountability, which lies before them, as they face the holy Judge, God, and their punishment, and (3) their culpable deed, which lies behind them, along with its guilt. Although all three elements are contained in every phenomenon of conscience, one of these three will, nevertheless, always have the primary emphasis and stand out in sharp relief from the other two. In the fear of conscience, for example, the chief emphasis is on our coming punishment, the holy Judge, and our responsibility for our guilt. Thus the second element (2) is clearly the most pronounced. In the repentance of conscience, we who are experiencing the guilt are grieved over our act, our guilt. Here the third element (3) stands out most clearly. In the shame of conscience, it is neither our guilt nor our Judge that primarily stands forth, but rather our own negative value. The experience here is one of being self-judged. The first element (1) is the one most stressed here. Since fear looks forward into the future, and repentance looks back toward the past, and shame is self-referential, we can also refer to these

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three, respectively, as “future-oriented,” “past-oriented,” and “present-­ oriented,” and every phenomenon of conscience falls under one of these three categories (as can be seen clearly from the table several paragraphs below [see table 6.1]). We must also bring into play, however, a second principle of division (principium divisionis). In our treatment of intellectualist theories (chapter 3), we distinguished between primary and secondary bad conscience. In primary bad conscience, we experience our guilt before God in the undivided unity of our entire self. In our whole person, we experience fear, shame, or repentance. By contrast, in secondary bad conscience, this integral unity disintegrates and subdivides, under the experience of guilt, into two—a “better self ” (or “higher self ”) and a “guilty self,” with the former assuming an accusing or even harsh attitude toward the latter. The “better self ” takes its position alongside the holy Judge and wants to take over and assume the function of prosecutor. Without any compassion for its “guilty self,” it begins to rant and rave and rage against it, and to despise and hate it. If we arrive at this stage in our experience of a troubled conscience, we experience something substantially different from what we did in the primary stage. Both phenomena are genuine experiences of guilt. Both are authentic phenomena of bad conscience. But the primary experience of guilt is much deeper and much more fundamental than the secondary. In fact, unless the primary experience lies at the base of the whole phenomenon, it cannot be a genuine experience of conscience. It is a vastly more profound thing to experience this guilt as a whole and undivided person— to experience ourselves standing as a complete human being before God—than it is to avert our eyes from God, the holy Judge or the loving Father, and to take the holy Judge’s office into our own hands. The main weight in the experience of conscience shifts here from spiritual feeling, in the deepest sphere of our emotional experience, to a level that is not as deep, namely, to the psychical.42 Psychical feelings arise here and are roused against the poor “guilty self.” But as long as these psychical feelings are not founded in the spiritual stirrings of guilt and do not gain their animating force and warrant from them, they have nothing to do with actual experiences of conscience. As long as those who are conscience-stricken experience their

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guilt in its utter depths, however, they are essentially incapable of standing up to themselves and of accusing themselves. Only where the terrible intensity of the ontical tension has diminished—which all those with a troubled conscience experience after a while, since nobody can endure this high tension for long—do the fatigued physical and psychical powers reflexively resort to self-accusation. Only where their experience of guilt can no longer challenge their whole person in such a powerful way does it become possible for them to regard themselves as a distinct innocent entity and to condemn and torment themselves. These two phenomena exclude one another and cannot be experienced simultaneously together. The tendency of each runs in a direction opposite to the other, and it can only prevail with a tilting of one tendency in the direction of the other, which means that these phenomena can be experienced only alternately. Any attempt to identify these phenomena, such as is ordinarily made, is fundamentally erroneous. Each is essentially different from the other, although both share in common the experience of guilt. Here it should be emphasized that the self-torment involved in guilt offers a relative satisfaction, though not an absolute one. The guilt is not annulled by means of such self-punishment. It is vitally important to understand this. Secondary bad conscience can be oriented only toward the present; in principle, it looks neither to God nor to the guilty act, but only to the author of the act. It is also “present-oriented” in its inner construction in a somewhat different sense, in the manner of the “present-oriented, primary phenomena of bad conscience.” The anger of conscience (e.g., against oneself ) is present-oriented in a different way, much like the shame of conscience before God, despite the two diametrically opposed orientations of these phenomena. If we now apply these two principles of division (principia divisionis) together, we get the following classification of the most basic phenomena of conscience (table 6.1). As the clearest representative of each group in this table, here we select the following: fear of conscience, shame of conscience, remorse of conscience, and anger of conscience (against oneself ). In the phenomena of conscience as actually experienced, there is generally a mixture of several of the emotions exhibited in this table. For



Fear Anxiety Fright Despair Sorrow Discontent Dependency Etc.

in the face of the judge, one’s responsibility, justice

Future-oriented

Self-anger Self-deprecation Self-contempt Self-rage Self-hate Self-disgust Self-loathing Self-despair Self-torment (in all forms)

Shame Discomfort Guilt Reprehensibility Impotence Sulliedness Sinfulness Etc.

directed toward oneself

because of one’s own malice and wickedness

Present-oriented

Table 6.1.  Classification of the Phenomenal Forms of “Bad Conscience”

Primary Bad Conscience

Secondary Bad Conscience

Remorse Sorrow Mourning Pain Frustration Gloominess Loathing Disgust Fury Anger Despair Etc.

over the guilty deed

Past-oriented

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example, fear of conscience can coalesce together with shame of conscience and the feeling of sinfulness and frustration, simultaneously in a single complex unit. Pure repentance of conscience (e.g., without shame), and pure shame of conscience, and so on are very rare. In the table we see in each [vertical] category an entry for “despair,” and in two categories entries for “disgust,” “loathing,” and so on. Accordingly, the wording of these entries cannot be viewed as referring to identical phenomena. Despair over oneself in primary conscience is completely different from despair over a menacing evil, and neither is equivalent to despair over an action, or despair in secondary conscience. These represent four different phenomena. The same is true of other phenomena occurring within several categories under similar names. The past-oriented group acquires a special significance: (1) repentance (gloominess, etc.) provides, as we shall see, the only essential way of escape from a catastrophe of conscience. All other phenomena of bad conscience must lead to repentance if they are to terminate in accordance with their own meaning and nature. (An experience of conscience arises only where evil is overcome again through reawakened love, through which, on the one hand, guilt incisively apprehends the nature of the rupture and, on the other hand, there is an intention for immanent reconciliation. Only through repentance is it possible to obtain this intended reconciliation.) (2) Since disgust and abhorrence of one’s deed can very easily turn over into disgust and abhorrence directed against oneself, this group of phenomena forms the next transition from the primary to the secondary phenomenon of conscience. The transition of both other primary groups to this secondary one is much harder and more indirect because of the distance between them. So this past-oriented group provides (1) a way out toward reconciliation or (2) a transition to self-torment.

HERE A CENTRAL PROBLEM PRESENTS ITSELF TO US: WHETHER (AND TO

what extent) it is conceivable to move from the state of fear in one’s ­conscience to repentance, if repentance (and not fear) is essentially the only way out of the disaster. Scheler says in his essay “Repentance and ­Rebirth”:

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What radically contradicts this Fear-Theory is, above all, the fact that it is on the contrary fear itself that normally prevents us from reaching that unflinchingly self-possessed frame of mind in which true repentance becomes possible. Fear directs our attention ­outward—to an approaching danger. An aggressive criminal, as long as he knows that he is being pursued, will defiantly look for ways to conceal his crime and devote all his energy to the task of escaping detection. A more passive type might be cowed by fear and reluctantly yield himself to his fate. In either case, even if nothing else were to prevent his repentance, fear would do so. On the contrary, only when he knows himself to be out of imminent danger, can he find the self-possession necessary for true repentance.43 It is certainly the case that repentance “is not a developmental form of psychical fear.” A revolution of some kind is necessary if we wish to release ourselves of pure fear44 through an act of repentance. And only to that extent can we say that fear “inhibits repentance more than it ­facilitates it.” However, there is a factor in fear that is overcome by the increase of fear, which is precisely the inhibiting force in the fear of conscience, whose overcoming is what empowers the necessary revolution. This factor is our little “ego” affirming itself deep within ourselves. In repentance, those who are conscience-stricken completely give up themselves, asserting no trace of themselves. Here we have an action of humility par excellence (kat’ exochen), a completely voluntary surrender to a holy and abundantly merciful Judge. This surrender is not found in fear. On the contrary, what belongs to the essence of fear is withdrawal, self-preservation, and a self-serving tendency—not the surrender that is fundamentally necessary for repentance. There is a law, however, that the greater our fear, the less self-assertive we will be, and the more we are rid of our intrusive “ego,” the less we will be able to withdraw into a self-absorbed state. If our fear is increased to the uttermost, our “ego”—this remnant of the principle of pride—necessarily shrivels up into nothing and terminates in surrender: “O mercy!” or “O pardon!” At this point, the revolution yielding humility can take place. Every genuine fear of conscience is an experience of guilt (different, as such, from social and biological fear). Every genuine bad conscience also

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bears ­witness to a reawakening love, since the love or mercy of a holy Judge can at the same time suddenly illuminate this nullity of “self-­ centeredness.” Here, then, is the essential possibility for the revolution of repentance. The stronger the element of awaking love, the greater the understanding of one’s guilt, and the more unbridgeable the chasm appears, the more surely the revolution will follow. The weaker the love, the harder the heart, and the stronger the instinct of self-preservation, the more improbable it becomes that the revolution will occur. In any case, a true element in the fear theory is that an increase of fear necessarily has as a consequence a diminishment of the “ego” and, therefore, a capacity to bring those experiencing fear to a point where their inexpressibly small, proud “little ego” perceives its own nothingness and completely surrenders. An increase in fear can awaken humility. Herein lies the possible transition from the fear of conscience to repentance. For it is not only through becoming “self-possessed” that one comes to repentance.45 Repentance can burst forth all of a sudden, when one’s own guilt and wickedness become clear in the light of God’s love and mercy. Self-possession leads to repentance only for those who already love, who are already humble—never for the obstinate, the proud, or the haughty. As God’s aggrieved love calls the humble to repentance, so His wrathful love calls the proud and obstinate to repentance. Those who are arrogant, who trust only in their own “ego,” and are preoccupied only with themselves can attain repentance only by dethroning this “ego.” This dethroning starts with the fear of conscience and continues with the increase of this fear. In an act of desperate, complete surrender, the “little ego”—the greatest obstacle to repentance—is dethroned. And if there is then enough spiritual love, the revolution leading to repentance will occur, so that God’s love no longer seems wrathful, but merciful, and reconciliation and forgiveness can be sought and attained. Where fear of conscience is based on religious experiences of awe and respect for a just Divinity who metes out justice—experiences in which awe is simultaneously given with humility—the revolution and transformation of fear into repentance is also possible, as Scheler rightly maintains. Scheler’s examples of the fear of a pursued criminal, whether of the active or passive sort, do not seem necessarily to involve fear of con-

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science. Such fear can be understood as purely social or biological, and as such would naturally inhibit any act of repentance. It is a vast distance from fear of the social consequences of an act to fear of conscience proper, which recognizes guilt not only intellectually but also experientially, as one’s own guilt. Only when social fear is rooted in a genuine fear of conscience, and coalesces with this latter into a uniform “mixed” or “complex” phenomenon, can we say that, by the heightened experience of guilt and fear of conscience, it has crossed over into the way of repentance. Offenders do not yet experience the least bit of fear of conscience through their social fears, and they are perhaps farthest removed from it (which is evidently attested to by the fact that so few experiences of conscience can be observed among criminals in prisons). This fear of criminals is no more the fear of conscience than is the biological fear exhibited by dogs or apes when they expect to be punished after having done something forbidden. The fear of conscience transcends biological and social fear. Those with a genuinely troubled conscience do not fear social danger, but voluntarily turn themselves in to the law. This does not yet quiet their conscience, for that state is attained only through repentance, but the path from fear to repentance is now open to them. The more deeply they feel their guilt and nothingness, whether through fear or shame, and the more that love is awakened in them, the more quickly they will attain repentance, through which they may hope to find relief. If we view human beings through a more Calvinistic lens, we readily see their depraved nature, their hardness, their pride and arrogance, their self-glorification in their evil deeds—and we should emphatically like to bring such persons to the turning point of repentance. From this perspective, however, it is pointless to invite all such persons to become “self-possessed,” for by this means there is no hope of their ever arriving at repentance. Here, rather, the method of fear receives a certain internal warrant and a greater importance. If one does not see this depraved side in certain individuals, but rather the side that is still good in them insofar as they still evidence sufficient love, then it would be utterly wrong to want to drive them to repentance by means of fear. Here self-possession alone opens the way to repentance.

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Both paths to repentance have legitimacy, meaning, and value. One or the other path will be more appropriate or less, depending on how stubborn, proud, arrogant, or humble the conscience-stricken person is, perhaps due to a religious rebirth, or love itself, or for some other reason. What is significant for us here is that the path from genuine fear of conscience to repentance is not blocked, that the “ego-diminishment” that is immanent within fear is also the factor that directly removes the inhibitions blocking the path to repentance and absolute surrender. (Two components are present, therefore, in this fear: “ego-­reinforcement,” involving the desire to save oneself, and “ego-­diminishment.” The increase of the former is essentially paired with the decrease of the latter, and vice versa.) If we now take Scheler’s distinction between humility and pride, it will be immediately clear how and why fear, as a tendency of self-­ preservation, is not able to do what repentance can do by means of the humble surrender of the whole person. We are humble, he says, in that we let go of our entire self—and all of its possible value and respectability and worth, which pride firmly clasps—and we truly “abandon” and “give up” our self, without fear of what could happen to us, but dimly trusting that hereby, nonetheless, our welfare might be served. This realization arrives precisely upon the actual release of our self and its value, upon our venturing forth seriously into the terrifying emptiness that yawns beyond all self-concern.46 It dares you to be grateful about the fact that you are anything at all—rather than nothing! It dares you to give up all your assumed inherent “rights,” all your “worth,” all your “merits,” all human respect— above all, your “self-respect”—any pretension, any type of happiness, to be “worthy” and to understand this otherwise than merely as given: only thus shall you be humble.47 Thus repentance also calls to us: “Dare in the fullness of your guilt and wretchedness to just surrender yourself, to trust your Judge. Abandon all attempts to help yourself, every impulse of self-­preservation, self-excuse, self-respect, and self-promotion; rather give yourself, in full consciousness of your guilt, to Him before whom you stand.” Fear,

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however, calls out the contrary: “There is danger here! Retreat! Do not hand over yourself to the One who stands before you: He is just and will punish the unjust and wicked.” Fear wants to widen the distance between us and our Judge, whereas repentance wishes to close the space between them. But the greater the fear and the experience of guilt within it, the closer we come to “that which is feared.” It is very interesting that the increase of fear, which aims at widening the distance in question, actually narrows it. That distance is widened where fear is diminished to the point of disappearing—passing right over into “pride of being, which focuses on the substance of its own value, which alone is Dia­ bolical and leads to Hell.”48 The greater the degree of fear, the closer we move to the point where humility is possible and we are willing to sacrifice and risk trust, no matter what happens: “Humility is the virtue, which, by allowing one to bend and sink lower and lower in his own eyes, permits him to be led—above all through his humbled self— straight to Heaven.”49 Through this humility, this sacrifice and loss of ourselves in the things around us, our eyes are opened to the value of everything, and we are enriched and given mercy such as we could not have acquired by ourselves. In this way, repentance allows us to sacrifice self, and to dare to trust that in this solitary “natural” (wesensmäßigen) way of escape from the pangs of conscience, we may perhaps also find salvation, and repentance mercifully provides the penitent with peace and forgiveness, such as we can never obtain for ourselves when burdened by fear. Only through repentance is reconciliation possible: “Although repentance, as a personal act, is directed against our own guilt-laden heart, it freely transcends our heart and peers beyond the confines of its own impotence to assist its reimmersion in a suspected Center of things, the eternal source of all strength. Such is the immanent ‘sense’ of fully experienced repentance.”50

OF CONSIDERABLE IMPORTANCE IS THE FACT EMPHASIZED BY SCHELER 51

that repentance has a positive, liberating, constructive function, alongside (and even because of ) its negative, rejecting function: “It is only to the casual observer that repentance appears as a mere symptom of some disharmony of the mind or even as a useless deadweight that is more of

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a hindrance than a help along the way.”52 The situation is no different with those who see repentance as something psychological, such as “a self-indulgent wallowing about in one’s own sins.”53 To the contrary, however, we have seen that repentance, from a purely moral point of view, may be regarded as a form of the soul’s self-redemption—the only way of recovering its lost powers. Religiously, it is still far more: “the natural function, which God conferred upon the soul, so that it might return to Him if it strayed from Him.”54 Again: Repentance kills the vital nerve of guilt, by which it works. Only unrepented guilt has the power to bind and determine one’s future life, not repented guilt.55 Repentance drives motive and act—the act with its root—out of the living center of the person, and it thereby makes possible a free, spontaneous beginning—a virginal inauguration of a new course of life springing forth from the center of the personality that, by virtue of its act of repentance, is no longer bound. Thus, repentance effects a moral rejuvenation. Just as we see in the same act of climbing a mountain, both the approach of the summit and the valley dropping away beneath our feet, and experience both vistas in the same act, so in repentance the person at the same time both climbs upwards and sees the constitution of his old ego fall away beneath him.56 Moreover: Repentance is a purposeful movement of the mind with a view to guilt, aimed at whatever guilt has accumulated in the human being. The goal of this “movement” is an emotional negation and neu­ tralization of guilt’s continuing effectiveness, an inner striving to drive guilt out of the vital core of the person, to make that person whole.57 Guilt, which repentance disempowers, is an objective quality of the person: One of the darkest effects of guilt is that it hides itself, as it were, even as it grows, and blunts all sensitivity to its own existence. Con-

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versely, it is characteristic of the growth of humility that sensitivity to guilt functionally becomes more acute as guilt is objectively removed, and that therefore smaller and smaller lapses are felt to be grave. The act of repentance is directed throughout, not against the feeling of guilt as such, but against the objective quality of guilt itself. . . .58 In every case, the act of repentance must be induced by some feeling of guilt, usually unaccompanied at first by any particulars as to “what?” and “against whom?” and “who is to blame?”59 . . . Repentance truly annihilates that psychic quality called “guilt.” At least repentance in its perfect form can do this. It bursts the chain of evil’s reproductive power, transmitted through the increasing evil of various individuals and times. In this way it makes possible new beginnings in life, free of all guilt. Repentance is the mightiest power of self-regeneration of the moral world, whose breakdown it is constantly working to overcome. . . .60 Not utopianism but repentance is the most revolutionary force in the moral world.61 Scheler is correct where he sees in repentance one of the vital nerves of a guilt-destroying act. But repentance as an act of surrender on the part of the one with the troubled conscience, as an act of guilt-­ destruction, cannot work out the objective alleviation of guilt by itself, even if it defangs guilt and thereby destroys the immediate effects of its venom. To alleviate the guilt—or, to put the matter still more personally, for the forgiveness of guilt—an action on the part of the Judge is necessary. Repentance only achieves its highest power and form when forgiveness of guilt is simultaneously experienced with repentance. Only in this way is the profoundly desired and sought reconciliation finally attained, and the inner peace and repose of the heart finally found. This is only possible where repentance is experienced in a metaphysical and religious context. As Scheler declares: It acquires its full meaning only when it no longer strikes at the merely “bad,” but at that “bad” which is called “sin” in the eyes of God. By thus looking up to God, the soul learns to understand the peace and renewal of repentance as the mysterious process known as the “forgiveness of the sin” and as an infusion of a new strength from the center of the things. This power is called grace.62

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Those with a troubled conscience, in their experience of guilt, may suddenly obtain a real insight into their wickedness, into their conflicted relationship to the whole world, to God and His creation. They may suddenly find themselves standing—in their culpability, fear, shame, or repentance—before a righteous, holy Judge. They may realize that they cannot, in their own power, cast off their guilt, or cleanse and reconcile themselves. In fact, their sudden outbreak of bad conscience may coincide with an awakening act of love in the deepest center of their being. If so, this whole phenomenon of guilt calls for a counter-act, an act from the side of the Judge. Conscience as an experience of guilt is only half of the total phenomenon: it is an urgent question that calls for an answer—a signal, which, without a counter-signal, is incomprehensible; a half-sentence without a conclusion. Only in the metaphysical-­ religious experience of having guilt forgiven from God’s side is the second half of the total phenomenon given, the answer to the question, the counter-signal, the solution to the catastrophe. Here this new experience already exceeds repentance, in its pure religious gratitude and gladness over the repaired breach and the restored harmony between God and His creatures, and in its full enjoyment of a new, creaturely experience of spiritual blessedness. As Scheler rightly says: Perfect repentance appears to be sustained by God’s love in a double sense. First, in that this love, constantly knocking at the door of the human soul, sets up before us, as it were, the portrait of an ideal Being, enabling us to appreciate for the first time the baseness and narrowness of our actual human condition, in comparison with this vision. Second, in that we, after the spontaneous consummation of repentance, and through reflecting upon a growing awareness of forgiveness and sanctification, come finally to experience the strength we have received for that consummation as a gift of God’s love and mercy. This he experiences inasmuch as his loving approach toward God, rendered first possible in the process of repentance, gradually restores his full capacity for loving God, and, through removal of his guilty limitations and the barriers guilt has interposed, effects his reconciliation and reunion with the center of things. This we experience inasmuch as our loving approach toward

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God, first rendered possible in the process of repentance—[and in each phenomenon of conscience, also fear]—gradually restores our full capacity for loving God, and, through removal of our guilty limitations and the barriers interposed by guilt, effects our reconciliation and reunion with the Center of things. At first this stirring of love within us seemed to be our own love of God. Then we saw that it was God’s love for us.63

WE TURN NOW, IN CONCLUSION, TO SOME REMAINING METAPHYSICAL

problems of conscience. From a biological or social point of view, people with a troubled conscience must be regarded as abnormal, that is, as psychologically and mentally ill. In fact, however, from a perspective that transcends the “worldly,” the “biological,” and “social” (in other words, from a theal perspective), we have found them to be eminently “normal.” Far from resembling pathological patients, they appear altogether mentally healthy. Indeed, they seem much more profoundly in touch with reality than ordinary human beings. They do not seem the least bit abnormal to us, but eminently normal. If we view bad conscience from a still higher standpoint, however— if we see it as a phenomenon metaphysically connected with God and to the order of the world, and if we regard it against the background of an ideal existence and absolutely perfect God—then it presents itself as nothing more than a “terrible normality” rather than a symptom of illness.64 Of course, bad conscience is not absolutely “normal” or “healthy” in terms of the foundational metaphysical order of all things.65 The ultimate sense of conscience as a symptom of an illness penetrates deeply, because a symptom of an illness contains three elements: (1) It is an announcement of the presence of hostile elements in the body—a warning sign. (2) It is a crisis, because it breaks out as the result of a conflict between forces attacking and defending life. (3) At the same time it points the way to recovery, (a) negatively, by revealing the presence of the hostile elements, and (b) positively, by identifying what type of hostile elements they are and where they are

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located. As long as a symptom of illness does not break out, one knows nothing about the presence of these elements and forces, and a diagnosis and prescribed course of healing are impossible. Likewise, bad conscience includes these three elements: (1) It reveals to us the presence of an “evil inclination” in us—of real, personal evil. As to how and when this evil has commenced in us, it tells us no more or less than what the symptoms of a physical illness tell us about its origin. Yet it clearly and continually announces the presence in us of real evil—this assailant upon our ontical peace and personal welfare. The inner sense of the symptoms is that this inclination is no less hostile to our proper nature, our ideal existence, and to our personal “health” than life-threatening substances within a sick body would be. Its message is not merely that “something is present,” but rather, pointedly: “This something is hostile, dangerous, and must be destroyed.” (2) Here we come to the second element: the crisis. The forces deployed by this enemy cannot conquer our homeland by means of their own independent power. Domestic defense forces stand opposed to them. Robust combat units seek to destroy them. Spiritual love advances to confront personal evil. This is what gives rise to the crisis. This is one of the deepest meanings of bad conscience—namely, that a crisis of two opposed powers is found in us, in which the positive force of love overcomes the evil and destroys it through repentance, whereby we who are conscience-stricken can experience what is paramount— our recovery and personal “salvation” through the religious experiences of forgiveness. (3) Furthermore, bad conscience also shows us the way to recovery and healing—negatively, by showing us our guilt and enabling us to experience ourselves standing before our Judge, from Whom we are separated by a chasm, and positively, by directly admonishing us to humbly surrender ourselves, repent of our guilt, and be reconciled with our Judge. Bad conscience points to this religious realm, in which alone complete and final healing is possible. Of all the phenomena found in noetic-psychical processes, only these religious phenomena offer an answer to the call of conscience that corresponds to its proper nature. No merely moral phenomenon can, of itself, solve the crisis that erupts in bad conscience. These merely moral phenomena of conscience also

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necessarily point beyond themselves, in their essence, to a religious renewal by which we can experience the healing of our brokenness by God through the forgiveness of guilt and His loving mercy. Thus bad conscience, understood as a symptom of illness, finally has this sense: the healing of a wound, the preservation of our personal integrity in its ideal original sense, the restoration of ourselves as pure creatures, created in love by God, to our love for God. Where such symptoms of bad conscience appear, they represent a warning: Stop! Be careful! Your ultimate personal welfare is in danger, and you are destroying yourself by breaking off your relationship to God through your depravity. You isolate yourself by separating yourself from God, for you cannot exist without His love. This represents a warning against self-­ destruction for one and all. An animal necessarily obeys the laws of self-preservation and species-survival at work in it. Human beings may choose to obey the voice of their conscience or not worry about it, as they please. In their experience of conscience they have a warning signal, whether or not they adequately grasp its full meaning. If they choose to ignore the warning signal, however, then the consequences of their choice are their own fault. A bad conscience is entirely trustworthy, and one should heed its warnings since, in this capacity, it never errs. The bad conscience, however, does no more than this. It does not fall within its purview to establish positive laws of any sort. It is not a positive guide—only a negative one—but as such it is also personal and absolute, and this is why bad conscience does not have the function of a compass needle in any ultimate sense.66 For a compass needle always, always, points positively north, as long as no accidental countercurrent alters its direction. No, bad conscience has a function that is rather more like that of a seismograph: it reports dangers to personal welfare. Its warning function, however, must not be thought in any way to resemble a safety valve—for then it would only amount to a spiritual high-­ pressure vent that would let one continue to sin in peace. Moreover, the relationship between the high pressure and the safety valve here is reversed. For the greater the pressure of guilt and wickedness one experiences, the more the function of this moral “safety valve” is diminished, and the lesser the pressure, the more sensitive the function of conscience becomes. Thus conscience has exactly the opposite function of a safety valve. The absence of an experience of conscience is thus no

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guarantee of human goodness. Instinct guides the animal, but conscience can be silent. It can even impose silence upon itself. But as a symptom of illness, as a warning signal, as a function of spiritual self-preservation, bad conscience is an utterly unique phenomenon in a class of its own. Was this illness, in the final analysis, metaphysically necessary? Was it necessary for God to permit evil and wickedness? Would God’s creatures not be much more perfect and wonderful if there had been no evil, no wickedness, and nothing requiring the necessary consequence of a “bad conscience”? Why was all this necessary? Bad conscience thus calls for a theodicy. Guilt and evil are given most certainly, unambiguously, indubitably, and precisely in bad conscience. No phenomenon contains the evidence of guilt so concisely or so absolutely requires a theodicy as this. Curiously (and significantly), however, this phenomenon seems to be the only one calling for a theodicy that contemplates it with the detachment of a theoretical observer. Conscience-stricken people themselves have no trace of such an attitude, and if they did, their experience of conscience would vanish. Only one thing looms before them: “We alone are guilty”—and they dread the justice of God. They do not demand any theodicy. They know that God is not to blame for their guilt. If they believed He were, their experience of conscience would vanish. It belongs essentially to the experience of conscience that God is absolutely guiltless. This is very important to note. Nevertheless, we who are external spectators of the phenomenon may ask: “What is the origin of this evil, wretched, wicked conscience? Why does it arise?”—and thus we devise for ourselves a theodicy. But whether or not bad conscience necessarily requires a theodicy such as this, it still possesses the essential nature of a theodicy. For it is not evil (or even the urge to do evil) that triumphs—since as long as evil triumphs, there is no experience of conscience to be had—but rather, it is goodness that triumphs (along with the urge to love and do good). It belongs to the essence of bad conscience to utterly overcome evil, so that not even an active trace of it remains. Even the least counteraction of evil necessarily falls outside of bad conscience as such. Bad conscience contains in itself an absolute message: the absolute victory of

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love over evil—a grand and final theodicy. Thus conscience necessarily demands, and simultaneously contains, a theodicy. These are the fundamentals in the nature of bad conscience: • •

Evil and wickedness really, certainly, and evidently exist. Evil is absolutely conquered by reawakened love.

If either of these two were missing, there would be no conscience as we know it. Marvelous depths open themselves to us here. It is possible, at this point, to venture a very far-reaching metaphysical speculation—an undertaking that is proportionately the more interesting as it becomes the more dangerous. One might venture to suppose that what we are told here, if conceived on the level of microcosm, could be also thought on the level of macrocosm. It might be ­supposed, for example, that there is a natural correspondence between the personality of God (macrocosm) and our human personality (microcosm). Could it not be the case that such a unique phenomenon as bad conscience has as its basis an idea, fact, or relationship that is macrocosmic in origin? It is a bold metaphysical venture to consider the characteristic features of bad conscience in macrocosmic terms—to want to overhear a “macrocosmic message” in it. Perhaps it is a dangerous speculation, insofar as objective truth is sought by metaphysical means. Nevertheless, such speculation is not wholly without reason or authorization. On the one hand, there are specific macro- and microcosmic parallels between natures, natural orders, and natural laws—and therefore natural correlations, as we saw in the example just mentioned comparing the personality of God with our own human personality. On the other hand, bad conscience is a phenomenon that of itself sets forth macrocosmic problems already by virtue of the absolute elements in it. The following is to be regarded, therefore, as merely another attempt, a possible speculation, a personal venture, whose metaphysical hazards with respect to truth are fully recognized. (1) Does evil, which is given in conscience as something absolutely certain, evident, and real, also exist in some way on the macrocosmic level? If evil in its highest form is always personal evil, this question

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takes the form: besides God, who is absolutely good, is there also an evil spirit who is absolutely evil, and is the struggle of conscience in the innermost heart of each of us a reflection of this macrocosmic antagonism between God and the one whom we call the devil? An uncompromising Thomism could venture to accept such a view without much problem. And in many religions, if not in all, this cosmic conflict is presented in all of its dramatic richness of color and depth. It would be difficult, however, to accept a devil as an absolutely evil spirit from a pantheistic perspective, because pantheism would not conceive evil as belonging in the suprahuman realm, but only a step lower, in the human realm. The very idea of bad conscience is senseless from the perspective of pantheism, deism, or atheism, since they lack, respectively, the notion of personality (in pantheism), a mutual relationship between God and ourselves (in deism), and God’s very existence (in atheism). Hence, from these standpoints there is no reason for wanting to view evil in a macrocosmic manner. The theistic viewpoint comes closest to defining my personal position, but since a deeper orientation concerning these problems would take us far afield, we cannot pursue the matter here. (2) Personal love, within the phenomenon of conscience, conquers personal evil. From a macrocosmic perspective, this means that God’s love overcomes evil as such—whether this is understood theistically, so that God conquers the personal principle of evil (the “devil”), or pan-en-theistically, so that God conquers evil in us generally through his love—and this conquest, as the nature of conscience declares, is absolutely complete. (As we have seen, the phenomenon of conscience arises only where love absolutely conquers the urge to do evil. As long as evil prevails, the phenomenon of conscience never develops in us. Thus every attempt by evil urges to overcome conscience necessarily falls outside of conscience.) If we still continue to see evil around us today in evil deeds and desires, this would mean that evil, on the macro­ cosmic level, has not yet been overcome. Does the nature of conscience then testify in some way concerning that which is yet to come, as a message about the future—that this complete victory over evil, after all, still lies ahead of us? These questions ultimately venture into metaphysical territory. Many religions have dogmas with a parallel meaning and analogous content.

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(3) Conscience arises suddenly. Suddenly and unexpectedly we see our guilt before us. Suddenly, the victory of love appears. True conscience does not develop gradually—like an acorn into an oak tree, or by passing through countless forms and phases of development. Rather, it bursts forth suddenly in full bloom (whether it comes to us as a whisper or as a thundering accusation). The fact that the final conquest over evil does not follow incrementally upon gradual development but breaks forth catastrophically—does this not suggest macrocosmic implications? Does it not suggest that evil will finally be overcome only by a sudden intervention by God in the whole world order—that is, by an act of God—just as the experience of guilt already represents the act of spiritual love in us? Where the whisper of bad conscience tends to claim our whole person for itself, and where, as an acute experience of guilt, its message pervades every dimension of our experience, may it not be supposed that on a macrocosmic level God’s intervention in the entire world order would represent not only an intervention in spiritual evil of individuals, but in all spheres of reality, such that the whole creation would experience, accordingly, as Scheler says, “a free, spontaneous ­beginning, a virginal inauguration of a new course of life”?67 Furthermore, if love is the essence of God and at the same time the ontical principle of all that is, then a spontaneous renewal of the world by means of such an intervention appears to be metaphysically perhaps still more plausible. In the final analysis, however, these are hypothetical, metaphysical musings, and perhaps all-too-bold as philosophical speculations. Many religions, of course, including Christianity, have dogmas with a parallel sense and similar content. Others may take whatever stance they wish toward these dogmas and be as skeptical as they like about our attempt to interpret the microcosmic conscience in a macrocosmic manner. Yet it must be conceded that a profound analogy exists between the meaning content of the mentioned dogmas (and metaphysical speculations), on the one hand, and the actual content of demonstrable subjective experiences of conscience, on the other. Be that as it may, the important thing is that in the essence of conscience, whether or not one is inclined to put any stock in such (metaphysical) messages, evil is regarded as overcome completely through love. This is truly a fundamental theodicy. Whether or not the problem

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of evil and its origin can be theoretically resolved, victory over evil is a practical given here, and this is the matter of principal importance for everyone. On the level of microcosm, conscience testifies to us concerning our personal renewal. On the level of macrocosm, it may also testify of a final conquest over evil and a renewal of the whole world order and of all things. This future-oriented theodicy, both on the level of microcosm and macrocosm, satisfies our practical aspirations for life and personal healing in such a way that their fulfillment is not dependent on whether or not the theoretical problems concerning evil and its origin can be resolved. It falls to the researcher to inquire, nonetheless, into the solution of the theoretical question: How is God’s perfect nature compatible with the evil and wickedness, and pain and suffering found in His creation? What light, apart from that already seen here, does the essence of bad conscience throw on the problem of this apparent contradiction?68 Those who are conscience-stricken recognize for themselves, and for themselves alone, the guilt of their deed: “I am guilty, I am wicked, evil.” They have absolutely no doubt about it. Their guilt is perfectly clear to them, and absolutely certain. It might be an altogether human thing, but it would be completely antithetical to the phenomenon of conscience, for them to cast their guilt and blame upon another person and seek to excuse themselves. Their bad conscience, as such, recognizes perfectly well their own guilt. This means two different things with regard to the problem of the apparent contradiction. (1) It stresses the full reality of guilt. The whole edifice of bad conscience is founded upon the objective truth and reality of guilt alone. Hence, it contradicts entirely the internal nature and structure of guilt as viewed by those who wish to solve the problem of contradiction by degrading guilt to subjective feeling, fantasy, illusion, appearance, and unreality. The essence of conscience therefore renders this solution to the problem of contradiction impossible. (2) It stresses our own guilt, and the more it does so, the more strongly it emphasizes the negative fact (or positive fact, to the religiously determined conscience) of the absolute justice of God and His perfect right to punish. Those with a troubled conscience have no doubt

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about this whatsoever. If God were somehow even partially responsible for evil—either directly or indirectly, whether through some imperfection (e.g., if He were not omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent) or through being the actual cause of evil, wickedness, and suffering— then this characteristic feature of bad conscience, by which all guilt is ascribed to us alone and not to God, would fail to conform to the objective facts of reality. If we take seriously this characteristic feature of conscience, however, which seems to completely preserve God’s perfection, then any solution to the problem of contradiction that in any way directly denies God’s perfection is difficult to reconcile with the essence of conscience. We might still try to shift the onus for evil by means of the problem of human free will, so that, whether God is perfect or not, those with a troubled conscience would still have to take all the guilt upon themselves. Yet this does nothing to change the fact that on this view, God, because of His imperfection, would have allowed into His creation something monstrous and terrible and contrary to His nature and would be, therefore, either directly or indirectly responsible for evil—which would give the troubled individual an inherent right to declare: “If God were only perfect, I would not be so bad.” But allowing such a possibility within the internal structure of bad conscience would have the effect of utterly annihilating its present nature. It would take on a different nature and require a modified form. This circumstance renders improbable, at least, if not impossible, the opinion of those who see the origin of evil, and subsequent possibility of human evil, as stemming from the imperfection of God. For the nature of conscience shows us the perfection of God only indirectly, and God’s perfection is directly apprehended only through a religiously formed conscience. These two essential features now clearly reveal to us the impossibility of the first attempted solution, and at least the improbability of the second. This would seem to yield the following dualism: on the one hand, God’s perfection (as all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful), and on the other hand, recognition of the full reality of evil, wickedness, pain, and so forth. Only then can the only possible solution be given to the question as to why—that is, why did God permit evil, if He could have prevented it, or why were our intellects so created that they could not solve this problem? Such questions probably cannot be

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e­ xplained simply by reference to the nature of bad conscience. Thus, in order to solve the problem of contradiction, we must likely look into the reasons found in the philosophy of religion. In any case, the most important thing for us regarding the status of the problem is that bad conscience, according to its inherent structure, emphasizes the reality of evil and our own guilt, on the one hand, and God’s justice, perfection, and (through our repentance) His love and mercy, on the other. The essence of this phenomenon signifies nothing further regarding the problem of contradiction. It gives us no answer to the question why. It does not solve for us the theoretical problem of contradiction. It does solve the practical problem perfectly, however, because it represents in itself a conquest of evil, a reawakening of love, and an annulment of the contradiction. Although the essence of bad conscience removes the contradiction in a practical sense, this does not mean that people with a troubled conscience are therefore already in a state of innocence on that account. In addition to having the contradiction removed, they need the forgiveness and mercy of God, which they can only experience completely through encounters of a religious kind, in which the empirical reality coincides with the removal of the contradiction that lies in the essence of ­conscience.

7 Personal Evil and the Essence of Conscience

We have sought to refute the intellectualist, intuitionist, and voluntarist theories of “bad conscience.” What we have said by way of criticism of these theories holds, for the most part, also for their understandings of other authentic phenomena of conscience, such as “good conscience” and “warning conscience.” Since there is no need to repeat these criticisms here, we shall begin straightaway by undertaking to objectively examine the other authentic phenomena of conscience. Nobody doubts the existence of bad conscience as a positive phenomenon. Some may try to deny the importance of the phenomenon, but they still recognize the occurrence of qualms of conscience as a fact. However, some have doubted the existence of “good conscience” as a positive phenomenon. Thus Albrecht Ritschl says, for example: “Good conscience is generally something negative, that is, it is the expression for the absence of bad conscience.”1 And Wilhelm Gaß sees in conscience generally “nothing other than the constant companion of the difficulties, disturbances, or fluctuations produced in our consciousness, which should be reported when past or present, or avoided when pending and still possible”; it is “an incorruptible judge of our weakness.”2 Theodor Elsenhans, on the other hand, does not at all agree with these opinions, but affirms the positive existence of a good conscience, corresponding to the judgment, “This action is good,” based on the posi­tive urgings of conscience: “Each is a correlate of the other, or, 211

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as one could just as well say, bad conscience is the absence of good conscience. In either case, the cognitive value of this description is no more than if health were described as the absence of illness, or vice versa.”3 This last statement of Elsenhans shows that he is more concerned with psychological concepts than with actual objective phenomena. Yet it is these objective phenomena alone that can attest as to whether such a thing as “good conscience” exists, and, if so, in what sense. Generally speaking, most theories agree with the view of Elsenhans and likewise regard good and bad conscience as equally primary correlates of the phenomenon. Depending on whether I behave well or badly and whether I judge my behavior as good or bad, there arises a pleasant feeling of satisfaction, calm, and approval, or an unpleasant feeling of dissatisfaction, restlessness, and disapproval. Even as profound an authority on conscience as Newman says: “There are things, which excite in us approbation or blame, which we in consequence call right or wrong, and which, experienced in ourselves, kindle in us that specific sense of pleasure or pain, which goes by the name of a good or a bad conscience.”4 Even he treats both phenomena as correlative. When considering the stirrings of “good conscience,” he speaks of “self-­approval, inward peace, lightness of heart, the sunny serenity of the mind, the soothing satisfactory delight, a sense of deep place, a sense of security, a resignation, a hope.”5 Newman duly emphasizes the fact of good conscience, but it is not necessarily clear that this cluster of phenomena should be considered, alongside bad conscience, as equally primary. Scheler says that conscience—according to the practical meaning of the term—essentially functions negatively: Conscience represents something as bad or as something that ought not to be; it “raises an objection,” and so on. When we say, “Conscience is aroused,” this immediately signifies that it is set against a certain action. It never means that conscience tells us that something is good. Therefore a “guilty conscience” is a decisively more positive phenomenon than a “good conscience,” which is, strictly speaking, only the experienced absence or lack of a “guilty conscience” regarding a certain action that is morally in question. Also, if one “consults his conscience” prior to volitional decisions, it

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“warns” and “forbids” more than it recommends or commands. Hence, conscience has no function of providing original, positive insight. Rather, its function is only critical—partially one of warning, and partially one of directing.6 Here Scheler is surely underscoring a primordial fact that the phenomenon of conscience itself manifests to us. On the other hand, the claim that good conscience is only the experienced absence of bad conscience and has no positive content of its own, nevertheless, may perhaps be doubted. We must seek to determine whether or not there are objective phenomena that can rightly claim the name of “good conscience,” and, if so, in what sense. If good conscience referred, as Ritschl wishes to suggest, only to the absence of bad conscience, such that it would be equivalent to “Not-X” where “X” represents bad conscience, then of course there could be no coherent, positive phenomenon that could rightly be called “good conscience.” For in that case, “Not-X” could mean “A,” or “B,” or “R,” or “cow,” or “ink,” or anything else one wished. But such a ­vacuous, negative concept is worthless. There can be no good conscience, no ­obvious phenomenon to which this concept can refer, as long as it is ­understood as a mere “Not-X.” The “Not-X Concept,” being without content, could even have notions such as self-contentment, aesthetic satisfaction, libido, and so on classified under it and without inconsistency be called “good conscience.” As Ritschl himself stresses, moreover, “Cases of obstinacy in virtue, where there is no evidence of any degree of admonishment or bad conscience, are also in their own way witnesses to good conscience.”7 If there is indeed a genuine phenomenon of good conscience, it cannot be a “Not-X.” Thus we exclude any further reference to the “Not-X-Concept” in our treatment of good conscience and permit ourselves to be guided by the objective phenomenon alone. The first thing that virtually vitiates the claim that “good conscience” should be placed on an objectively equal footing with “bad ­conscience” is the following basic distinction between good and bad conscience. “Bad conscience” does not stop merely at the condemnation of our actions but is aimed at our guilt as the offending perpetrators, at our own fault. “Good conscience” surely judges our actions to be good,

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but is it also directed toward our own goodness? Does it belong to the essence of good conscience that it necessarily ends in an experience of our own goodness? Indeed, is this not precisely the experience of Phari­ saism? One could very well say that the more keenly we experience our own evil, the more valuable and genuine our experience of “bad conscience” is. Could we say the same thing about “good conscience”— namely, that the more keenly we experience our own goodness, the more valuable and authentic our experience of conscience is? Or is it not precisely the reverse: the more inauthentic and worthless our experience would be? It is certainly exceedingly strange that we, by experiencing our own goodness and worth, should become even less worthy and less good. Nevertheless, this is nothing other than the essence of the Pharisee, who can say: “See how good I am. Each day I observe all the precepts of the law. I am not a wicked, unworthy man,” and so on. Were it the case that “good conscience” also ended properly in an experience of our own goodness, the Pharisee would then have the best “good conscience” of all, and he would stand much higher morally than the tax collector in the parable, who was profoundly aware of his guilt.8 Scheler rightly observes, to the contrary: “There is only one pride that is diabolical: pride stemming from one’s own highest value, one’s moral value—moral pride.”9 The experience of one’s own goodness, the moral goodness of one’s constitution, is the highest form of arrogance there is, and if “good conscience” had this as its content, it would immediately lose its own high moral value and dignity as conscience. On the contrary, those who are genuinely good are the humblest people. To love, to serve, to help, to give themselves for others, to sacrifice themselves, to lose themselves in all that is worthy in all that is given to them—this is the true attitude of humility, the attitude we call good. However, if we said to these individuals, “You are truly good and worthy people,” they would be astonished: “We? Good? What do you mean?” Their whole attitude is directed toward objective value. They have no immediate awareness of their own goodness. Only by way of inference and reflection, only by turning back their attention upon themselves, from outward to inward, could they arrive at the conviction: “Yes, we are good people.” And in that very moment, their goodness

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would plummet many levels lower. They would no longer be as good as they were. What is important for us, however, is the fact that they do not primarily feel their own worth, but only the value of the things around them, and of their own nothingness in relation to objective reality. At the same time, however, they are happy in this respect, and spiritually rich. In their love, goodness, and humility, they give themselves to everything that has objective value, and they experience everything, ­including their own happiness, as simply given. Scheler writes: Accept every happiness gratefully, even the least little pleasure that touches your nerves, like the deepest happiness that spreads within you and leads you and all things into the light of God, and never imagine that you have “earned” even the smallest part. This is the commandment of humility. Humility is the only mode of love that has the solar power to break up the rigid ice with which wounded pride surrounds the empty self. Nothing is sweeter than when love quietly invites humility into a proud heart, and the heart opens itself and lets humility pour in.10 With love and humility, happiness flows into hearts as a gift of grace. Only thus can it be found. All who seek happiness in order to possess it for its own sake will never find it. Happiness comes as a gift of grace only into the heart of those who are “good” in the sense of having an attitude of humility toward objective values, through loving self-sacrifice for them, through losing themselves in them. An essential connection exists between love, humility, goodness, and happiness. Those who are genuinely good disregard their own worth and goodness, as such. How, then, if this is the case, can a “good conscience” still be directed to our own goodness? This is of course absolutely impossible. “Good conscience” is not an experience of our own goodness in the same way that “bad conscience” is an experience of our own moral depravity. Is “good conscience” then limited to good actions alone? Does it judge only these actions as good? One senses in this question that something quite insignificant has been brought into the foreground. To people who are really good it is ultimately a pointless question: “My

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a­ ctions may be good—call them whatever you want—I will be satisfied with whatever is given me.” Their attitude is completely different from that of someone we expect to have a “good conscience.” Do they then not experience the phenomenon of “good conscience” at all? Here we come to a substantial point. In the case of those who are genuinely good, as long as their loving “urge to do good”11 prevails and there is no question of an urge to do evil, it seems as if conscience does not even come up for consideration. It also seems as if good conscience is essentially bound in some way to the real existence of an “urge to do evil.” We must examine this more closely, because here we have suddenly acquired an opportunity for a penetrating look into the nature of good conscience—first (1) negatively, then (2) positively. (1) Can one say of all those phenomena, which in no way presuppose the existence of an urge to do evil, that they still somehow fall under authentic phenomena of conscience? The joy of the school boy who has given his sack lunch to a poor, starving, pleading child; the happiness of the poor widow who has sacrificed her last penny for the poor; the inner feeling of happiness, which many have found in nursing and caring for the sick and destitute; even the experience of religious happiness, “joy of soul” (animi hilaritas) and “serenity of soul” (animi serenitas)—none of these in any way presupposes the existence in these happy souls of an “urge to do evil.” All of these phenomena of happiness would still be essentially possible even if there were absolutely no evil in the world or any possible inclination toward evil. But does one have the right to call this phenomenon a “good conscience”? By no means. What does it have to do with conscience if a little boy finds joy in helping a hungry child, or if the religious enjoy bliss and happiness? If we call such feelings of happiness “good conscience,” are we not arbitrarily reading into the phenomena something that cannot be found there? Might not the expression “good conscience” be actually too superficial for such beautifully joyful phenomena as these? Does not conscience demand a completely different attitude toward its object, or behavior toward its object, than that exhibited by these happy souls? If “good conscience” were extended to include such phenomena, it would render them imperfect, if not impossible.

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“Good conscience” plays an actual role, in the final analysis, only where a possible conflict with an “urge to do evil” is available. Only where people can also be bad is there an essential possibility for “good conscience” to exist. Where nothing evil exists at all, it is nonsense to talk about a “good conscience.” For example, it would be absurd to say that God has a “good conscience.” His infinite goodness puts Him ab­ solutely beyond conscience. All moral and religious experiences that do not essentially presuppose the existence of an urge to do evil are also completely beyond conscience. On the one hand, Kant rightfully refrains from describing his categorical imperative as expressing the demands of “conscience”; on the other hand, Paul Häberlin wrongfully uses the term “conscience” for the demand (“call”) that we seek to realize a unique idea (or ideal) proper to our own personality.12 If a young oak tree had the freedom of a human being, but no “urge to do evil,” it would still have to follow the laws that govern it. The requirement that we realize our own determinate nature holds regardless of whether we have the possibility of being disobedient through an “urge to do evil” or have only the freedom to obey. From this it follows, in any case, that good conscience can only be an authentic phenomenon of conscience if it necessarily presupposes, in principle, the actual or possible existence of an urge to do evil. (2) From the various phenomena that are commonly referred to as “good conscience” and presuppose in some way the existence of an “urge to do evil,” we must exclude one phenomenon. There is a phenomenon, namely, which occurs in religious experiences after the repentance of conscience—the experience, namely, of having guilt completely forgiven. Here we find that peace and repose of conscience that are sought in a “good conscience.” Yet this experience in its beautiful forms of gratitude, love, and humility has nothing to do with “good conscience.” It is an experience beyond the stirrings of conscience. Those in this situation, having been forgiven, have no further awareness of wickedness and guilt, or any reason for calling to mind their forgiven sins, and no occasion to call them to mind, but lift their eyes beyond themselves and their guilt, and experience a genuine religious phenomenon that has nothing whatsoever to do with conscience. The authentic “phenomenon of good conscience” appears to be given to us in the following positive examples.

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Let us suppose that we are suddenly accused of an act of which we are quite innocent. Perhaps we are momentarily startled, but the next instant our conscience recovers our peace of mind and we are confident of our innocence and feel calm and secure in our conviction. The positive feeling that we exhibit here rightly deserves to be designated “good conscience.” Or, let us suppose we stand before a criminal court accused of some act of which we are also completely innocent. Yet all the evidence weighs so heavily against us that we are perhaps found guilty and condemned. In the deepest recesses of our soul, we know that we have been wrongly convicted, and we have a strange calmness of conscience, an inner peace, a feeling of security. There are historical cases of such persons having gone to their deaths with utter equanimity of conscience. Even if, following so-called doubts of conscience,13 it suddenly appeared that we had deceived ourselves about our guilt, it would still be the case that after all the discoveries of deceptions and errors of conscience, positive feelings of mental peace and innocence would surface in contrast to the earlier disturbance of “bad conscience,” and we who experienced these things could say with reason: “I have a good conscience.” Thus the primary emphasis is never on the fact that we are good, or that our actions are good, but rather that we have no guilt, that our actions are not bad or evil. In all these phenomena there occurs a positive feeling of security, once the possibility of real guilt has been excluded as false. This positive feeling, which preeminently (kat’ exochen) constitutes the essence of “good conscience,” could never occur if there were absolutely no possibility of guilt arising. Thus the real existence of an “urge to do evil,” or even the real possibility of such an urge, is an essential condition for the appearance of these positive phenomena. But a “good conscience” here does not only exist in the absence of a bad one and apart from any anxiety of the soul. Rather, it actively underscores this absence and is positive in its emphasis, not negative. This is where Ritschl is mistaken—in that he fails to recognize this positive element in “good conscience.” “Good conscience” does not underscore our goodness, but the fact that we are not bad. This is something completely different and has nothing to do with Pharisaism. “Good con-

Personal Evil and the Essence of Conscience  219

science” is not merely the absence of bad conscience. Therefore it is not merely a “Not-X,” a purely negative concept, but rather a positive underscoring of the “Not-X,” and therefore a positive, actual phenomenon. This same fact—that “good conscience” necessarily presupposes the essential possibility of an “urge to do evil”—can also be seen from the opposite point of view: When do we have a “good conscience”? When does the necessity arise for “good conscience” to stir itself up within our soul? When do we have to emphasize the goodness of our actions? Is it not when the threat arises that the opposite may be possibly true? We experience exactly the same thing in the area of health. When do we say, “I am healthy”? When do we experience our own good health? Is it not only when the opposite is given to us as a real possibility? Those who are really healthy are so healthy that they are not aware that they are healthy. If we begin to reflect on our health, if we become conscious of our health, we are already no longer as healthy as we were. Therefore the usual question we ask when greeting one another—“How are you?”—is an extremely strange one indeed (understood psychologically), because the question (1) only makes sense if it is supposed that you might possibly not be well, and (2) necessarily directs your attention toward yourself, evoking reflection upon the true state of your health, concerning which you would have been perhaps better off left undisturbed. It is exactly the same with “good conscience.” Really good people are so good that they are not aware of being good. Thus it is a fortunate thing (or is it?!) that according to our habit of greeting one other, a person is not also asked, “Do you have a good conscience?”—for such a custom would necessarily evoke many experiences of “bad conscience,” if not pharisaical feelings. “Good conscience” has occasion to arise only where the danger of its opposite is available in one way or other. An emphasis on peace of mind makes sense only if there is a possibility of being disquieted in some way. Without the existence of an “urge to do evil” (whether actual or possible) there is no possibility of a “good conscience.” In a certain sense, therefore, one could defend the paradoxical proposition that good conscience is only a form of bad conscience. People who are ­completely healthy and morally good know nothing of their health or ­goodness.

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Now, such a “good conscience” is quite likely possible as an accompaniment of inherently good actions. Those who provide for the poor, feed the sick, and help the hungry typically have the feeling of happiness that offering this assistance gives them. But alongside this feeling, they can also have an additional positive feeling about their performance of good deeds. “I am doing something good,” they tell themselves. Yet if this additional feeling is to be “good conscience” and not Pharisaism, it is absolutely necessary that those in question must feel the possibility of its opposite in some way. For example, they must have a sense that they are not ordinarily so good, or that they share in the collective guilt of the human race and so forth. Otherwise, the instant really good people are conscious that they are behaving well, their goodness falls a notch lower and destroys their genuine, pure feeling of happiness. Thus “good conscience” essentially presupposes the possibility of personal evil. Only from an “urge to do evil” or from the possibility of personal evil, does good conscience get its particular “coloring” (here we may recall our earlier examples of the pallor of death and amorous glances).14 Thus it is not only “bad conscience” but “good conscience,” as such, that is distinguished from all properly moral phenomena by reference to this quality of “personal evil.” But although bad conscience is more than a merely moral ­phenomenon—indeed, it is an ethico-metaphysical, prereligious, and also “religious” (theal) phenomenon, thus holding a special position between religious and moral phenomena—this depth seems to be missing from “good conscience,” especially when it lacks a religious formation. Authentic “good conscience” may be considered a moral phenomenon, but whereas “bad conscience” rises to a higher level through religious experiences, “good conscience” remains on the lower (relative)15 level and cannot be considered a “religious” (theal) or metaphysical phenomenon, even though it may appear in religious experience in the form of a religious “good conscience.” Good and bad conscience are not correlative phenomena. The deeper and more primordial of the two is bad conscience. Good conscience involves a positive emphasis upon the negation of guilt and, as such, is subordinate to the phenomenon of guilt. In a certain sense, it may even be called a form of evil, namely, that form which does not

Personal Evil and the Essence of Conscience  221

affirm guilt but negates it. Likewise “warning conscience,” which remains yet to be treated, is a form that either negates or affirms guilt, but it allows one to step back before committing the guilty deed. In each of these genuine phenomena of conscience lies the inherent cry “Stop!” Each enters into a different relationship to this “Stop!” Each stands in a different relationship to the (real or possible) personal guilt announced in this “Stop!” One may differentiate still other types of “good conscience”—a peaceful conscience, in which there is a positive experience of the absence of unrest associated with a bad conscience; a joyful conscience, in which there is a positive joy of nonguilt in place of the regret and af­ fliction over guilt associated with bad conscience, particularly where there has been apprehension about one’s guilt in a state of so-called doubting conscience;16 a grateful conscience, which is characterized by religious formation and gratitude to God for saving and protecting the fallen from their guilt and sin, and which displaces a future-oriented fearful conscience; a reassured and trusting conscience, which finds its reassurance and certainty regarding the negation of guilt in a religious confidence in God, which may be taken as a counterpart to the future-oriented despair of “bad conscience”; and so forth. It is interesting that in “good conscience” (1) we have no present-oriented phenomena, (2) that all the phenomena that are not religiously determined here are past-­oriented, and (3) that only the religiously determined phenomena can be both future- and past-oriented. This is in complete conformity with the essence of “good conscience.” (The designation of these phenomena as future- or past-oriented is based on an analogy with the “phenomena of bad conscience.” The analogy is not quite adequate, ­because “good conscience” probably does not anticipate the future in quite the same way that “bad conscience” does, but the designation can be maintained as a technical aid.) Finally, two pairs of parallel varieties of bad and good conscience still demand our attention. Among the phenomena of bad conscience, we are also acquainted with the possibility of an unhealthy experience of guilt. This may be pathological, but not necessarily neuropathological. It is an outcome of various peculiar feelings of guilt experienced by some people whereby

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they become more aware at every moment of nothing but their own guilt and depravity, perhaps even perversely seeking joy and gratification in their obsession. Such feelings can lead them to experience their guilt in a completely apathetic manner, the experience of guilt having been degraded by continual habit. Bad conscience can degenerate into unhealthy scrupulosity, which produces acute self-accusations at the smallest conceivable infractions that ordinarily would not concern anybody. These individuals may feel guilty for involuntarily killing an ant or a fly, or feel pangs of conscience over shifting a book from its usual place. Indeed, their anguish of conscience in such instances may be almost as intense as if they had committed a terrible murder. Perfectly parallel to the foregoing examples, we find even forms of “good conscience” that are likewise unhealthy. Excessive experience of “good conscience” can leave trace impressions behind itself that eventually yield a certain effect. We see this in the typical civil conscience, which is degraded by perpetual habit to a type of civil self-sufficiency in which a “man of good conscience” pats his belly and looks about himself with great self-satisfaction. Good conscience can also degenerate into a repulsively pharisaical, incessant self-glorification. In these unhealthy degradations of conscience, a “depraved urge” has once again overcome the normal “good urge” and thereby annulled the authentic forms of conscience. One can no longer properly consider these to be “conscience.” Finally, there is one other metaphysically important and noteworthy fact that we should take into consideration. How is it that if we are evil, we can have a profound experience of our own evil by means of our conscience, and the deeper our experience of this evil, the more valuable the phenomenon of conscience seems to be, yet if we are good, we cannot experience our own goodness by means of our conscience, and the more we desire to experience it, the more pharisaical and worthless the phenomenon seems to become? In terms of psychological symmetry, one would think that a soul’s experience of its own goodness must have exactly the same value as its experience of its own evil. So what is the source of this “asymmetry,” this lopsidedness? Does it not seem altogether unfair that I should always be condemning myself

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through my conscience, but never able to praise and applaud myself? Is it not unjust that conscience should be so remarkably biased that it begrudges me neither evil nor condemnation, but withholds all goodness and praise? This very “asymmetry,” however, has an ontical foundation, which lies in the “asymmetry” of our relationship to God. If God and I were of “equal magnitude,” so to speak, conscience would not be so asymmetrical. If I did not have God to thank for absolutely everything, including myself and my own existence, conscience would not be so lopsided. Yet whatever I have that is actually good in itself, I do not have of myself or from having created it, but because I received it from God. For this reason, to praise and glorify myself would involve a self-­ appropriation of what belongs to God alone. But if I am evil and depraved, then I alone am to blame, not God. Therefore I have only myself to accuse: I cannot impute my guilt to God. It is remarkable how sharply the nature of genuine conscience throws into bold relief the outlines of this ontically founded asymmetry!

GOOD CONSCIENCE, LIKE BAD CONSCIENCE, IS A GENUINE PHENOMENON

of conscience precisely by virtue of its real relationship to personal evil. Both involve an acknowledgment of personal evil—the former by way of negating evil, which yields positive joy and peace; the latter by way of affirming evil, which yields anxiety, fear, shame, and affliction. Both involve a relation of turning backwards toward a committed evil, which, whether denied or acknowledged, already lies behind ourselves. There is still another relationship, however, in which personal evil does not lie behind ourselves, but in front of us, and the connection is with an intended action that lies in the future. An affirmation or denial is also possible here. If personal evil is acknowledged and the danger is perceived, then we have a genuine phenomenon of warning conscience before us, which sharply cries out to us “Stop!” If personal evil is denied, we still have (as in “good conscience”) the possibility of evil, which constitutes the basis of the denial of guilt (in good conscience) and the cause of the warning signal “Stop!” But with the denial of this possible evil, there is no disconcerting uneasiness of a warning, but rather a calming authorization of the intended action, and a positive nullification of the uneasi­ ness associated with the warning. Our language provides no adequate

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term for this last phenomenon, and yet it is practically an everyday experience. If I see a man begging in the street and automatically reach into my pocket to give him something, a warning suddenly comes to mind: “Many beggars are swindlers, and it wouldn’t be right to promote such fraud.” I interrupt the movement of my hand, but at the same time I see that the poor beggar really is impoverished and not a swindler. In the same instant, I resume the movement of my hand, which had begun automatically and been interrupted suddenly, and give the beggar something. Perhaps the movement of my hand was interrupted for only an imperceptibly brief instant. Perhaps nobody saw it, not even the beggar. Yet something very specific happened within me, and this phenomenon of “negating a warming”—as the positive consent to the intended action that was warned against—belongs just as properly to good conscience as to bad. If I no longer wanted to give anything to the beggar after my negation of the warning, the voice of a new “warning conscience” would declare immediately: “It would be wrong not to help those in genuine need.” Thus we would have a contrary warning. At the same time it is conceivable that the beggar might, with an impudent look, wish to compel my generosity. This, in turn, would negate the second warning in me and lead my conscience to approve and consent to my earlier intention not to offer charity. Just as the focus of “good conscience” is not on being good but on disavowing of evil, so the focus of conscience in negating a warning is not on the fact that the intended action is good, but on the fact that the warning is wrong and the proposed action is not bad. What makes it difficult to understand this phenomenon as an independent one, however, is another moral phenomenon that ordinarily occurs with it at the same time—a phenomenon sometimes experienced more intensely but that has no connection to personal evil and thus cannot be considered a genuine phenomenon of conscience. If I help the poor, devote myself to my vocation with joy, or enjoy a sense of religious blessedness—none of which assumes the existence of any real evil in me—this does not yet mean that I have had any experience of conscience. Such phenomena are not proper to conscience as such, yet they can often occur together with a negation of a warning, which is a phenomenon of conscience. So if I give something to help the beggar

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on account of his need, it is possible that I may experience my feelings of compassion and “joy of being able to help” more intensely than I experience my negation of the initial warning against “supporting swindlers” or my subsequent authorization of the initially intercepted act of charity. This does not nullify the independent existence of such negations of warnings, however, as proper phenomena of conscience. This is seen most clearly when the intended actions, which conscience warns against, are personally important. Much clearer and more distinct, however, is “warning conscience.” In warning conscience one can see very clearly the essence of genuine conscience in its negative function (as relating only to personal evil), over against any representation of its function as positive (as relating to one’s personal goodness). “Warning conscience” always tells us what we are not to do, never what we ought to do. (Who does not think immediately here of Socrates’s daemon?)17 “Warning conscience” does not seek to inform us of anything, but on the contrary presupposes that we already know somehow that the intended action is wrong. It originates in our knowing an action to be evil but still wanting to carry it out. It stems from our knowledge of evil and our willingness to make allowances for it and to intend it along with an action (so that evil becomes not merely an object of knowledge, but a personal possibility and real danger). Hence, the focus that is usually placed on “warning conscience” must be shifted. It does not involve primarily a question of moral information. It does not aim to warn us against evil merely by giving us a cognitive understanding of evil. That objective has already been fulfilled by means of our negative judgment of the evil, which has nothing to do with genuine conscience. But where an “urge to do evil” stirs within me, and where I also intend to do evil, and where there is a real question of personal moral danger (and not merely a cognitive or conceptual danger of misunderstanding), a contrary urge of love also stirs within me with a voice of warning. In the absence of such an urging, I may have a clear grasp of the fact that what lies before me is evil, without in any way desiring the evil, or I may choose to avoid willing it precisely because it is evil, but in either case there would be nothing of a “warning conscience,” even though a

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c­ ognitive understanding of evil is typically accompanied by a negative evaluation of it. The active “urge to do evil” is a necessary presupposition of “warning conscience” and of a cognitive understanding of evil also. What matters is a real connection with personal evil, not merely a cognitive one (to apply Newman’s distinction between “real” and “notional” here).18 In “warning conscience” the question is thus not primarily, (1) How do I know that something is evil (for which the moral cognitive functions suffice to answer)?, but rather, (2) How do I know that I also want that which is given to me as evil? Notice how suddenly this question becomes superfluous, for the answer, after all, is given evidently and immanently in my act of willing. One might ask, however, whether warning conscience cannot be mistaken. In that case, Question 1 actually falls out of consideration, for the warning function of conscience does not lie here, and Question 2 clearly offers the answer no, the “warning conscience” does not err, for if I want to do evil (that is, what I recognize as evil), this intention is given to me so absolutely and evidently as evil that no self-deception is possible here. But suppose I did deceive myself here about what I take to be evil, and that what I thought was evil was actually good. This would not in the least change the fact that I intended to do what I thought to be evil, that my will thus remained evil, and that the warning retains its complete validity. This shift in how we view “warning conscience” also means, then, that it does not warn me when I merely detect evil, but only when I want to do evil. Thus, when I hear the warning voice within me, I have not merely grasped the evil in question cognitively, but also already desired it. (The same thing applies not only to an evil will, but also to any evil inclination, evil endeavor, etc.—and therefore to “urge to do evil” in general.) Normally, “warning conscience” alerts us to a concrete positive action (a “sin of commission”)—this theft, this lie, this murder, and such; but there are also negative actions (“sins of omission”) that it warns against: inaction, neglect of duty, disobeying the voice of conscience, unwillingness to help those in need, and so on. If the action is a positive one (a “commission”), then “warning conscience” expresses itself as an inhibition against the thing intended. If the action is negative (an “omission”), then the warning is expressed as an impetus to do the

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thing left undone or avoided. However, this impetus is not a positive push, as in the case of a feeling of duty or so-called legislating conscience, but rather a negative push away from inaction. For example, after going for months without writing an important obligatory letter, one can be overcome suddenly by a feeling of duty: “You should write.” This is not “warning conscience,” however. There is no evidence in this feeling of duty of having done anything wrong by failing to write, and so I need not condemn myself for having been bad. But when my attention is directed to the fact that I have already gone for a long time without writing (and it occurs to me how awkward the intended re­ cipient may feel), and I realize that I would be exceedingly remiss to wait any longer, then I really do stand confronting my personal culpability and hear conscience warning me: write! In this case, I do not write from a feeling of obligation, but from a feeling that it would be wrong to neglect my duty any longer. Hence, it is not from a positive push, as in the feeling of duty, but rather from a negative push of repulsion (“Escape from the danger of guilt!”) that conscience declares its warning here. Usually the attempt to understand conscience is made by approaching it from its functional side, by trying to determine the form of its function and distinguishing it from other related features. But this approach does not lead to the crucial feature that is uniquely proper to conscience, but it ends up constantly blurring the boundaries between the moral and religious phenomena of conscience, thus allowing the concept to fall into ambiguity and confusion. In the present work we have sought to approach conscience from the opposite direction, and to seek to understand conscience primarily in terms of its “nonformal,” “material” side.19 What are the material conditions that make conscience what it is? This is the fundamental question. We have found that in all genuine phenomena of conscience—in all appearances of evil, of good, and of warning conscience—a crucial material element is given, namely, personal evil. We have found, furthermore, that only this peculiar kind of evil (which is really experienced as evil in us) constitutes the ultimate basis of our stirrings of conscience, and that this element (the experience of personal evil in us) distinguishes conscience from all related phenomena. Finally, we have found that conscience experiences an ontical deepening through this element, much as, by analogy, the ultimate basis for the pallor of a corpse is death.

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If we now take together all the genuine phenomena of conscience (the chief phenomena of which we have treated under the headings of “bad conscience,” “good conscience,” and “warning conscience”), we can declare the following: that genuine phenomena of conscience are such moral and religious phenomena as exhibit an experience of a real personal relationship to evil, or, more concisely—genuine conscience is the real inner revelation of personal evil. Personal evil can be experienced as already actualized (in “bad conscience”), or as tending toward realization (in “warning conscience”), or as possible in principle but rejected in fact (in “good conscience”). ­Genuine conscience is something made known to us, not something we make known, for it is independent of an individual’s will, insofar as it can actually arise against the will. Genuine conscience is a real inner revelation. By “real” here we mean, in the first place, that which is not “merely intellectual” (recalling Newman’s essential distinction between the “real” and “notional”)—and, in the second place, to contrast it (insofar as the content of the revelation is objectively real) with a subjectivistic and psychologistic conception of conscience.20 This revelation is internal in that it arises spontaneously from the inner depths of the human soul and is of an emotional nature. No merely (discursive or intuitive) “intellectual” revelation of “personal evil” can be considered a genuine phenomenon of conscience. A real experience of personal evil is essentially required for this. Only “personal evil” plays a role in “conscience,” not evil in general or the evil of other persons. Those with a troubled conscience know that they are personally and individually— and therefore absolutely—responsible for their guilt, and this personal evil amounts to a personal tragedy for them. It is personal evil alone that distinguishes the significance of conscience so radically from other moral and religious phenomena and gives it such a uniquely novel quality. That is, it is strikingly novel in much the same way that the pallor of death that comes over a dead person differs decidedly from any other physical appearance of the living, or in the way that a young man’s outlook suddenly changes after falling in love, when compared to his ordinary outlook. Conscience bestirs itself—whether it as “bad,” “good,” or “warning” conscience—only when a real relation to personal evil is available in one way or another. Otherwise it has no reason for

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bestirring itself. No moral phenomenon that essentially lacks this real, lived connection with personal evil can be considered a genuine phenomenon of conscience. Thus, all the following sorts of phenomena fall outside of genuine conscience: moral self-knowledge, moral self-­ judgment (phenomena of conscience summarized in Group 4), along with any ­instinct- or urge-associated conscience, legislative conscience, and conscience understood as individual law, professional advancement, or the demand of duty (phenomena summarized in Group 5).21 In summary: genuine conscience (or the stirring of conscience) is specifically nothing other than an inner revelation of personal evil, whether this evil has been carried out (as in “bad conscience”), or is tending toward realization (as in “warning conscience”), or is possible in principle but actually rejected (as in “good conscience”). This revelation is an emotional response to an objective, personally important state of affairs. It is a warning against objective danger to our personal well-being. Conscience is an emotional power, which observes and betrays the secrets and confidences that lie in the innermost depths of our heart, so that nothing evil can remain shrouded in darkness.22 Accordingly, Scheler rightly stresses the positive nature of conscience precisely in its negative functions of warning, judging, and raising objections, insisting that “bad conscience” is a decidedly more positive phenomenon than “good conscience.”23 It would be possible, in conformity with general linguistic usage, to combine under a broader sense of “conscience” those other senses of the word technically rejected by us as alien to it—such as knowledge of personal good and evil, an urge (Drang) toward the good, and a tendency to realize the good.24 We could then seek the unity of this inclusive concept, not only in the corresponding moral nuances of each of the three views of conscience we have examined, but also (with Scheler) in an ­individual economizing form of moral knowledge given in all three views—knowledge about (and insight into) what is good and evil in itself “for me.”25 Although this concept of conscience does not apprehend the specific core of conscience that we have emphasized in the ­experience of personal evil (whether actual, possible, or negated), it nevertheless has validity as a broader concept reflected in our common linguistic use of the word “conscience.” The vernacular has quite rightly shaped this broader psychological sense of the word.

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A still broader concept of conscience that Elsenhans, for example, and many others endeavor to put forward as an alternative is “moral self-consciousness.” But the concept is so vague and abstract that it hardly corresponds to anything in concrete reality, and therefore it must be avoided. It is quite clear that a great deal falls under the heading of “moral consciousness” that does not belong to conscience at all, either in the narrower or broader sense mentioned above, or even in the usually somewhat indefinite vernacular sense.

8 The Problem of the Genesis of Conscience

If we turn our attention from the personal character and inner depths of conscience and compare various phenomena of conscience from different peoples of different times and nations, and if we focus not on the pure essence of conscience but on the randomly given empirical phenomena associated with it, a rich profusion of differences comes to light. One person may feel conscience-stricken over something that another would shrug off as insignificant. The same person might happily perform some action today that would bring terrible qualms of conscience a year later. Two people may each feel pangs of conscience, but for exactly the opposite reasons—for example, because one of them did and the other did not follow to the letter the formal religious demands of a particular sect. Catholics might accuse themselves over the fact that they have neglected going to confession—something that would never distress a Protestant. Our judgments of conscience may change over the course of years, and perhaps even reverse themselves. One nation considers morally good what another nation regards as immoral and depraved. Primitive peoples may have completely different views of moral values from those living in the developed Western world. Does this mean that all such judgments of conscience are mere conventions and nothing more than products of experience? Would anything absolute remain in conscience at all if we were privy to all the empirical pieces that composed it and understood how each of them developed and were 231

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put together? Do relativism and historicism not have a point in opposing absolutism because of such facts? Does not our experience, along with the data concerning the evolution of conscience, lead us inevitably to doubt the trustworthiness of conscience? These sorts of doubts were forcefully introduced in the last century. Consider but one of the authors of this new Western relativism: Darwin.1 The advent of Darwin in the West was like the peal of a new morn­ing bell, a bit strange yet enchanting in its own way. It was the voice of Heraclitus in a modern setting—panta rhei (πάντα ῥεῖ)—all is flowing, everything in flux. But the tolling of this bell also bore a message of death for much that was considered to be absolute. It served to announce the demise and burial of conscience, the downfall of this trusted voice within us: conscience was no longer anything absolute but merely the product of human habit, experience, convention, and so forth. It stemmed from revenge or fear, or was derived from an external authority, or was transmitted to us from our animal nature. We needed no longer be so naive as to obey our conscience. We have lately seen a vast multitude swept away by the enchanting peal of this new bell. We have stood by and watched as the vast majority of thinkers and scholars since Darwin’s time have responded to the unfamiliar peal of this bell by dedicating their service to endlessly reiterating the message: everything has come into being, everything is in the process of developing, and not even conscience is anything fixed or absolute, or provides a resting point in the stream of evolution. It is not only from the negative viewpoint of such denials that this new battlefront pursues its fight against the authority of conscience. To understand the positive power with which it fights, one must grasp the positive spell cast by the notion of evolutionary development. This ideal of perpetual advancement ­(expressed by the sentiment: “Ever farther! Ever forward!”), and this thought that everything evolved from a primordial point of origin by gradual development, and this hope that harmoniously binds together the whole realm of experience, offers deep inner satisfaction to the empirical orientation in research and fortifies the researcher with new enthusiasm. It is no wonder that this multitude of new combatants has met with great success, because the facts of experience made this new thesis probable. The marvelous harmony throughout the whole of creation,

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from lowly plants and ants up to mankind; the conspicuous parallels between human and animal development; the affinity between the lives of animals, children, and primitive life forms; the colossal mountain of factual material collected from all peoples and times that clearly seems to support the claims of relativity and of developmental and transitional stages—all of this speaks in favor of this new thesis. Thus, an unprecedented tidal wave has overwhelmed the earlier view that was oriented toward the absolute and eternal. As Rudolf Eisler relates: Darwin emphasizes the social origin of conscience (which he considers to be already present in animals by means of natural selection). Paul Rée derives conscience from the authority of social and religious forces. According to Ernst Laas, conscience is an acquired system of rules. Rudolf von Ihering explains conscience sociologically. According to Alexander Bain, conscience is an internal imitation of external legislation, to which insight and sympathy come by way of gradual development. Herbert Spencer attributes conscience to an inherited experience of utility and various inhibitions in the psyche. Likewise with Feuerbach, Jean-Marie Guyau, Ritter von Bartholomäus Carneri, Harald Høffding, Alexander Sutherland, Hugo Münsterberg, Ernst Bergmann, Samuel Alexander, Leslie Stephen (for whom conscience is the voice of the “public spirit of the race”), Friedrich Paulsen, Frank Thilly, James Sully, James Mark Baldwin, Friedrich Jodl, Thomas Hill Green, Georg Simmel (who considers it probable that pangs of conscience are the hereditary effect of the pain imposed over many generations upon the offender as punishment for immoral acts; and that conscience is the human race’s interiorly voiced desire or aversion for a deed), Wilhelm Wundt, Georg von Gizycki, Theobald Ziegler, and Wilhelm Jerusalem, among others.2 Paul Rée, who zealously strove to dethrone conscience from its position of authority and sharply set forth his own theory on the genesis of conscience in the face of his opponents’ counterarguments, says: “The existence of cannibals should answer the question as to whether those evaluations of eternity are relevant or whether they have become

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historical.” Then, after presenting a list of examples (which Michael Cronin and Theodor Elsenhans, among others, call very doubtful) intended to show what enormous differences there are in moral judgments everywhere, he concludes: “The opinion of philosophers that all people share a consciousness that reproves cruelty and praises benevolence is therefore incorrect.”3 Before we turn to examine various positive theories more closely, we must devote our attention briefly to the following questions. How does a genetic definition of conscience avoid begging the question (committing a petitio principii fallacy) from the beginning—by denying the personal element in conscience and recognizing its authenticity only where everyone at all times is agreed about what it says (as though it were no more than an agreement that 2 × 2 = 4); by focusing only on what is empirical and accidental to the exclusion of what is eternal and essential; and by assuming as a foregone conclusion that we have evolved from the realm of animals? How do genetic theories relate to the ambiguity of conscience, and what relative justification do they have? What forms of psychic genesis, if any, can be found in human beings? To what extent does conscience “develop” and “emerge” according to the three classes of theory we have distinguished?4 Most evolutionists maintain that if there were really such a thing as a reliable, infallible conscience, then all the consciences of everyone at all times would have to assert the same thing and could not disagree with each other. This ideal of universal validity comes from two ­directions—from the ideal sciences, such as mathematics, and from the experimental natural sciences. In both cases, the following principle applies: an exception absolutely undermines the rule or law, because these rules and laws apply absolutely and permit no exception. The same demand is also placed on conscience: even if the conscience of one person should assert something different (assuming that such an exception were not regarded as abnormal or pathological), conscience would no longer be regarded as an absolute authority—just as if it could be demonstrated by a person that the proposition “2 × 2 = 4” is false. If we examine more precisely the character of these two types of sciences, however, we see that their reasoning is true in a way that is completely independent of the human subject, that the content they reference is

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absolutely independent of an individual person’s particular nature, and that their laws are true regardless of whether they are grasped by a driver, porter, mathematician, baker, and others. But can the same thing rightly be demanded of the promptings of conscience, which have to do with truths that are determined personally rather than impersonally? Should the demands of the mathematical and natural sciences be set up as providing the generic template for what is “scientific” as such, requiring that even the life sciences and human sciences accept this standard in defiance of their own character? If there exist not only impersonal truths5 but also goods uniquely proper to an individual; if there is a “call of the hour”6 in political matters, or a unique demand of a momentary situation for a strategist; or if there are concrete intuitions and individual essences—then there must also be an ideal of individual validity and the ideal of universal validity. And if this is the case, there immediately arises a new philosophical question: What is the relation between these two ideals? It is a mistake, therefore, to try to impose a standard of universal validity where a standard of individual validity exists. I know of no phenomenon so deeply and completely personal as genuine conscience. Because of this mistake, these thinkers neglect the personal, individual element that constitutes the natural heart of conscience, aiming instead to garner that which is universal by comparing various dec­ larations of conscience independently of their personal contexts. But thereby they only succeed in apprehending that which is empirical and accidental, and contains apparent contradictions. They look for a basis for these data in evolution, endeavoring to find an explanation largely in amoral, bio-psychological factors, such as revenge, fear, libido, instinct, sympathy, and so on. In other words, a hypothetical explanation is designed and made to appear as plausible as possible; this hypothesis is then based on a second, likewise unproven hypothesis (beyond the additional hypothesis of universal empirical validity), namely, the evolutionary thesis, which accepts as true the gradual development of human beings from the animal realm. If this hypothesis involved nothing more than the assumption of development within each species (as Christian theism has hitherto accepted) rather than the emergence of one species from another, or an acceptance of the view (which Bergson and Scheler assume they find also in Aristotle) that development is not gradual but

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saltatory (by leaps and skips), and that there is therefore an essential difference between human beings and animals, then all of the foregoing genetic explanations of conscience would be necessarily false. Moreover, as long as it is not yet conclusively established which of these three evolutionary theories7 is correct, a genetic explanation of conscience as evolving from the animal realm would seem extremely doubtful. At best, these genetic theories are founded upon two very questionable hypotheses and, after being thus positioned, are used in turn to shore up these very hypotheses they are based upon. They assume that conscience has developed from amoral factors, and instead of permitting objective phenomena to direct the inquiry, they design a genetic hypothesis that already assumes the evolutionary thesis from the start. The concept of conscience is, moreover, tremendously ambiguous, as we have seen.8 One-sidedly evolutionist theories suffer from this problem too. On the one hand, these empiricists see the concrete phenomena much more clearly than the partisans of intellectualism, who view conscience as some sort of activity of reason, or an application of universal laws to specific cases and such. They see clearly the peculiar fact that human beings will reproach themselves where they have harmed others, that they will sometimes unconditionally obey a command of duty in the face of mortal danger, that they will repent of having stolen bread when they were starving, that they will praise benevolence and reprove cruelty, and so on—even while animals do none of these things. The numerous examples they always use are invariably concrete and bear a sense of reality—a characteristic too often completely missing from some intellectualist theories. But the primary concern of these empiricists is not whether these phenomena are feelings or judgments or anything of that sort. The primary question is this: Do human beings have something that the lower animals do not have, and, if so, how did they acquire it? What they want to explain is that which appears to transcend the biological in human conduct—any behavior that looks decidedly unlike that of an animal. This difference between the human and the animal is what they wish to explain, regardless of whether it is primarily a question of judgments, feelings, instincts, impulses, or anything else. On the other hand, however, we find also a second perspective here. It is not concerned with conscience as an event or process alone, but

The Problem of the Genesis of Conscience  237

also with the material content of its testimony. The most diverse declarations of conscience are compared—such as those involving the moral behavior of cannibals, medieval religious persons, or sophisticated Western agnostics. The comparisons yield huge differences, thereby sup­posedly “proving” the absolute relativity of conscience. Obviously, it is thought, conscience arises under the effect of an environment and ­develops within the context of a particular community. Thus it is a sort of “shadow” within individuals of their communal conventions, moral opinions, and so forth. This second perspective no longer clearly ap­ prehends the concreteness of phenomena but only the formally corresponding universal element—that is, the abstract moral thread that binds together all the numerous genuine, spurious, mixed, and also merely apparent phenomena of conscience, and, indeed, the moral process as a whole. It also seeks to clarify this completely universalized ­concept of conscience genetically. Both perspectives contribute their part to the ambiguity of conscience, and both contain the same methodological error, which leads to the mentioned question-begging fallacy (petitio principii). Neither does justice to the problem of conscience. The genetic unity of conscience is sought amidst the immense diversity of phenomena while overlooking the very multiplicity of essences that must be considered before problems of genesis can be properly addressed. This oversight underlies the methodological error by which these theories confusedly fuse together into a haphazard unity every sort of genuine, apparent, and mixed phenomena of conscience (such as the fear associated with conscience, animal fear of punishment, and fear of social consequences bound up with genuine fear of conscience). Nevertheless, these evolutionists are relatively right in one respect. “Conscience” doubtless does develop. It develops both within the in­ dividual and the community. Children do not have the same judgments of conscience as adults, and their judgments must be modified, ac­ cordingly, by obtaining new insights and acquiring further knowledge. Primitive peoples have quite different moral views from culturally developed Europeans, and it is pointless to expect the same expressions of conscience from both. Certainly conscience arises and develops. But the great error of these one-sidedly evolutionist theories is to regard this emergence and development of conscience as something absolute, and

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thus to want to derive it from completely amoral, purely animal phenomena and experiences. Conscience develops, however, only within definite boundaries and only from determinate factors that are anything but amoral. Because they overlook this, evolutionist theories become reductionistic and unbalanced. There are four types of genesis in psychology, two of which are found in the individual and two in the community: In the Individual 1. An instantaneous emergence of a psychological phenomenon or process—the momento-genetic. 2. The psychological development from childhood to old age— the psycho-genetic. In the Community 3. The psychological development of the community, race, and so on—the phylo-genetic. 4. The psychological development from the lowest animal species to the highest human type—the bio-genetic. Thus, we have four developmental problems with respect to conscience: Does conscience develop (1) momento-genetically, (2) psycho-­ genetically, (3) phylo-genetically, and/or (4) bio-genetically, and, if so, in what ­respect? But a cross section of considerations cuts through this problematic, namely: What are the various understandings of conscience, and does conscience develop in each of these four ways? The meanings of “conscience” can be divided into three groups:9 1. Conscience as a real internal announcement of personal evil 2. Conscience as a moral urge (Drang) 3. Conscience as moral knowledge Only the first of these do we accept as genuine conscience in the strict sense. In any case, combining these three meanings of conscience with the four types of psychological genesis yields, accordingly, at least twelve problems related to the genesis of conscience.

The Problem of the Genesis of Conscience  239

Conscience as a real internal announcement of personal evil We begin with the first understanding of conscience, genuine conscience. As we have seen, it cannot be assumed that a genuine experience of conscience exists wherever moral experiences are to be found. Genuine conscience can arise only where some sort of personal evil presents itself as a reality. The question of moral genesis thus narrows itself here to the question of the genesis of evil. Certainly it can be said of genuine conscience that it arises abruptly in the individual. Indeed, this abrupt emergence belongs to it essentially. Consequently, we acknowledge the reality of a momento-genetic development of genuine conscience. Because of this, we are able to ­examine its sudden appearance, along with its disappearance, and its cause as such. But can it also be said that there is a gradual psycho-genetic development of genuine conscience? We must dispute this. It is doubtless true that moral knowledge and perception develop along with an in­ dividual’s personal maturation. But genuine conscience appears anew with every occasion of its operation, and between any two such occasions there is no gradual development, but a complete break. It belongs to the nature of genuine conscience to arise instantly and to disappear instantly. Once moral insight and knowledge have developed, surely, any two expressions of genuine conscience must be considered distinct. One occasion does not develop gradually into the next. Rather, the second occasion arises as suddenly as the first. There is no psycho-­ genetic development of genuine conscience. Much less can the notion of a phylo-genetic development of genuine conscience be accepted when conscience involves a purely individual and personal experience. Conscience arises only in a person, and although phylo-genetic elements can be detected in a person’s conscience, these are present only because genuine conscience cannot arise without moral knowledge, and because this knowledge does indeed grow phylo-­ genetically and is acquired, therefore, quite indirectly. A direct phylo-­ genetic development of genuine conscience, therefore, does not exist. Still less do we accept the notion of a bio-genetic development of genuine conscience when animals are completely amoral, and there is

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an essential difference between human beings and animals in that which concerns morality. Still another metaphysical problem surfaces, however, at this point. Since conscience develops only through actual contact with personal evil, it may be asked: Where did this evil originate? Should the point of origin be set at the commencement of human development? What are the alternatives? Since we are dealing now with phenomena of conscience, and therefore with human phenomena (and not that of ­animals), this question about the origin of evil may be taken here as ­applying only to human persons. Only metaphysical speculation or dog­matic theology based upon divine revelation can hope to find an answer here. The answer to this question remains essentially locked for empirical science as such. However, since nobody can claim to have never been conscious of any guilt, and since the whole of humankind today may therefore be considered to be involved in knowing evil (and good), we can place the initial encounter of human beings with their own evil at the beginning of human existence. Nothing can be said here as to whether there was ever a time when human beings did not know or take part in personal evil, or whether the first possible human beings were already just as evil as they were good. Only the sudden emergence of the experience of conscience, in keeping with its nature, makes it possible to think of the emergence of human evil as also abrupt, which is to say, catastrophic, and since the whole point of conscience is to remove evil, this gives more ample reason for the assumption that evil did not originate with human beings but came from the outside. This is nothing other than the genetic form of the same problem that we touched upon at the conclusion of chapter 6, namely, how evil is conceivable or possible, alongside an all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving God. Therefore, ­genuine conscience develops only momento-genetically.

Conscience as a moral urge Conscience in the sense of an urge to realize the “ideal ought” develops both momento-genetically and psycho-genetically. Momento-genetically, it can fall silent and suddenly awaken again, disappear and reemerge,

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and it can be defeated from time to time by contrary urges and then suddenly break free again as a victor. Psycho-genetically, it can be present in an individual continually, grow stronger or diminish, or wax increasingly stronger in a child until it manifests itself, for example, in enthusiasm for a vocation. It is also possible for love to grow along with us as we age, and to continue to remain with us. But where the urge of ­conscience is personal and inseparable from us, a phylo-genetic or bio-­ genetic development of conscience is impossible. But this urge may be understood as metaphysical where it is taken as the first principle of all existence, and where it is understood (with Scheler) as a love that is established from the advent of humanity, as the personal human love (urge of conscience) of the first human beings. On this view, it is established with the formation of human beings as such. Conscience as a moral urge thus develops momento- and psycho-genetically.

Conscience as moral knowledge Conscience as moral knowledge in us arises momento-genetically when suddenly we awaken to a new realization or arrive at a new insight. It develops psycho-genetically when our moral insight develops from childhood to adulthood and moral knowledge increases as it is appropriated from our educators and community. It develops phylo-­genetically only insofar as moral knowledge is separable from individual persons and does not pass away with them but is passed down from generation to generation, always augmenting itself and evolving along with the community. Here it can be said with good reason that conscience is the voice of the community speaking through individual persons, inas­ much as they have taken over and assent to the moral knowledge of the community. To the extent that they develop their own moral insights in opposition to that common moral understanding, however, their conscience cannot be called the voice of the community in them. Very few people develop their moral convictions in conscious opposition to their community, however, so it is still possible to say in a general empirical sense (though not as it pertains to each individual’s own nature) that conscience is the interior voice of our nation or our community. The

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notion of a bio-genetic development of conscience in this general sense cannot be supported either, for as long as animals are amoral, no kind of psychic alchemy whatsoever is going to conjure up a moral knowledge and moral attitude in them. Conscience is metaphysically established as moral knowledge in its genetic aspect only with human beings, as such, since we can speak of moral insights and moral knowledge only with human beings and not with animals. But insofar as moral knowledge is probably not really possible until after the contrast between “good” and “evil” is understood, conscience in this sense can be established metaphysically only with the appearance of evil in human beings. Conscience as moral knowledge thus develops momento-, psycho-, and phylo-genetically. In summary: conscience as a moral emotional stirring develops only momento-genetically, as a moral urge (or love) both momento- and psycho-genetically, and as moral knowledge momento-, psycho-, and phylo-genetically, but conscience does not develop bio-genetically at all, since an essential difference can be seen morally between human beings and animals. Since genuine conscience always necessarily and essentially presupposes a moral knowledge and urge,10 and since all developmental factors and elements of a moral knowledge and urge consequently must be ­empirically available in genuine conscience, one can also differentiate psycho- and phylo-genetic factors and elements in genuine conscience, in addition to momento-genetic ones. However, these are only indirect suggestions, and not demonstrations, that genuine conscience arises otherwise than momento-genetically. Therefore, we must fully recognize the existence of empirical factors within each testimony of conscience that are acquired through its development and acknowledge that this testimony, when considered in terms of its relative developmental limitations—and quite apart from the particular person in question—may sometimes be debatable. If the question of the fallibility of conscience led one to suppose that, in order to be infallible, all normal individuals would need to have a correspondingly identical testimony of conscience at all times, in the same way that all normal individuals admit that 2 × 2 = 4, then conscience undoubtedly would have to be declared fallible. The only questions that remain

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are whether this definition of fallibility is correct; whether the testimony of conscience may be detached from the persons for whom it is absolutely true as long as their experience of conscience lasts; whether conscience is still fallible in its ability to personally bind someone; whether conscience primarily asserts something concerning a particular good or evil, or concerning good or evil in general; whether conscience is concerned not so much with the cognitive contents of its testimony as it is with the existence of an evil principle in us that knowingly wills evil; and whether the question of infallibility is ultimately dependent on conscience infallibly knowing that an evil principle is active within us, or whether it can also err concerning this. In order to do justice to authentic conscience, the question of infallibility must also be posed ­correctly. In any case, all those theorists who declare conscience fallible are correct if they expect a testimony of conscience that is universally valid (binding for all persons). If the operation of conscience were infallible, it would have to be some sort of divine oracle within us. The evolutionists and empiricists see conscience from the point of view of its em­ pirically accidental and relative limitations, however, and it must be admitted that from their perspective conscience has much within it that is “developed” and “acquired.” The question of fallibility has as much to do with the empirical workings of conscience as with its essential nature. The empirically relative “attire” in which conscience is clad accentuates its fallibility, whereas its internal nature highlights its infallibility. The overall cognitive content of the testimony of conscience may be relative, but conscience nevertheless still maintains that its testimony is absolute. These are the deepest contradictions of conscience that every theory of conscience must seek to resolve in its own way.

9 Some Theories of the Development of Conscience

The first genetic theory that we wish to examine more closely is the bio-genetic theory, which seeks to show either that the phenomena of conscience already exist in the life of animals, such as dogs and apes, or that human conscience can be derived from factors found in the animal psyche plus human experience. The problems are all the more important in that it must be clearly shown to what extent one may in­ terpret the troubled behavior of a dog as “conscience,” for example, when it sees its master approaching after it has done something forbidden. The problem here is obscured and confused exceedingly by the fact that we human beings are always inclined to read into the animal psyche too much that is properly human. Nevertheless, I am not of the opinion that there is such a vast chasm between ourselves and animals that we cannot understand the animal psyche. On the contrary, I believe that we can understand animals, for two reasons: we are biologically animals ourselves, and we are not only part of biological nature but transcend it.1 First, since we are not only spiritual beings but also natural, biological beings, we not only transcend nature but also reside within it. As microcosms, we not only experience mental life but take part in the domain of animal and plant life. We are able to understand animal life and the animal psyche by virtue of the vital, animal, or biological principle in ourselves. Herein lies the essential correspondence between 244

Some Theories of the Development of Conscience  245

ourselves and other animals, and, because of this, it is even possible to say that animals (dogs and apes) understand us, inasmuch as we enter into their milieu as biological beings. Second, as spiritual beings, however, we transcend nature and are essentially distinct from nonhuman animals. As such we possess the capacity for essential intuition and can grasp the essential difference of nonhuman animals from ourselves if we direct our attention to the pure essence of their animal nature. On the positive side, with this new insight, we can now fathom more deeply the animal psyche. On the negative side, once we come to know the animal psyche, we can extract from it those foreign elements that we ourselves have projected into it. The first reason offers a positive understanding of animal psychology; the second reason offers a deepened insight into animal psychology, along with a negative purging of errors from our views of it. In this way it is possible to get a more or less adequate picture of the animal psyche. The error of most genetic theories is based directly on the failure of researchers to clarify that which is essential to conscience and to discard numerous extraneous factors that are erroneously projected into their data. For an interesting, thoughtful, and scientifically oriented attempt to draw an essential distinction between human beings and animals, I should like to mention Buytendijk’s theory here, upon which I draw heavily in my own work. This biologist and phenomenologist from Groningen2 conducted his initial examination of the essential difference between human beings and animals in terms of physiology and biology,3 and he then turned to an investigation of the same difference from a psychological point of view, in which he was able to draw upon his rich background in ex­ perimental animal psychology. He maintains that it is not by thinking but by perceiving—that is, seeing into the heart of the reality at issue— that the essential matter is given to us. This act, in his view, is “more” than mere sense perception. As a result of his research, experiments, and observations, he offers us the following conclusions. As human beings we possess and live in an objective reality, and in a subjective conception of this reality. An animal lives neither in one nor

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the other, but in something completely different—namely, an environment, a life milieu.4 This milieu does not stand over against the animal (as the world stands over against ourselves as human beings), and the animal has no conceptions of it, even though it actively engages its milieu by means of its own psychic configuration or Gestalt. Because of this essential difference, human perception and behavior is something completely different from that of animals. To come into a relationship with a really objective world is to become human. It is a relationship that arises and is sustained by love. Love is the power of the soul that splits our lived experience into objective reality and subjective representations of it, whereby knowledge of reality first becomes possible.5 Through love we give ourselves to (and lose ourselves in) objective reality, thereby rendering that reality more evidently real and objective. An animal, on the other hand, because of its corporeal and psychic structure, enters into contact with a part of the real world, and this yields its life milieu. This milieu diverges into a complex totality of ­perceptions and behaviors, which should not be regarded as equivalent to human perceptions and actions but as involving a twofold process and connection with the environment: the life milieu is at once a perceptual environment and a behavioral environment. This life-milieu configuration signifies what it means to be an animal. It emerges and is sustained through emotive “affect” (Affekt).6 Affect (in contrast to love) leads to the fusion of subject and object, a “taking possession of ” objects, wherein objects exist for the sake of the subject alone and have only subjective meaning. Everything in the life of animals (their innate psychological nature and development, and also their affective stance toward the external world and resultant life milieu) is understandable biologically—that is, as following logically from the basic laws of animal life, the laws of self-preservation, and preservation of the species. Human life goes beyond the biological by means of the power of love. Human beings transcend the biological, and their experience of the world, stemming from love, is not merely of individual biological significance for themselves as organisms but also of personal value. Love constitutes the personality as a self-aware ego that is able to ac-

Some Theories of the Development of Conscience  247

quire a reality above and beyond the body, and it can also stand over against the body as its object. Now, if this essential distinction is correct, then experimental investigation must be able to show by way of its results: 1. That all psychological occurrences in animals are biologically explainable, and all human psychological occurrences have a personal character transcending biology; 2. That this characteristic feature must come to light even in (onto-­ genetically) growing human beings, that is, children; and 3. That between the higher and lower animals, there is no essential difference in what is essentially animal in nature.7 From these essential differences, from that which transcends the biological in us, comes our understanding of all secondary essential ­differences—such as insight into cause and effect, judgment, concepts, grasp of principles, morality, language, education, culture, religion, and so forth. Now, because we human beings do not live in our own life milieu, but know both animals and things as objects in their own right, we can be compelled and led by love to understand the organic unity of the animal environment, the bodily structure of animals, their habits, and to reflect upon the ideas thus realized. Animals are enclosed in themselves, isolated from objective reality, and they live in a corporeally and psychically reactive manner within their life milieu. Bound by their affective or emotional faculties to this environment, they do not seek to conceptualize objectives or strive for knowledge of truth, beauty, or morality, but are driven toward the goal of their existence: self-preservation and preservation of their species. The joyful cry of the cradled child, who follows the movement of its own finger with complete enthrallment, expresses a joy that awakens in a subject when, driven by the power of love (admiration in this case), it seeks to know objective things outside of itself and to lose itself in the immediacy of the real. That which is typically human can be understood by means of ­psychological laws plus the division between “subject and object.” The typical animal can be understood by means of psychological laws plus

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the “lived experience of a life milieu.” From this it follows that everything that can develop in human beings alone—culture, language, and such—is entirely missing in animals.8 Since conscience is a purely suprabiological phenomenon (not ­reducible to biological laws of self-preservation or preservation of the species), and since self-objectification, self-accusation, and insight into self-worth reside essentially and directly within the conscience, and since conscience is driven ultimately by the power of love—it is significant for us that not even a trace of conscience is to be found, therefore, in animals. Where analogous behavior occurs with animals we are involved in cases of semblance if not illusion, and we must be careful to check more precisely whether we have understood these cases objectively and correctly or whether we have projected too much of what is human into them if we mean to discover traces of conscience here. Taking as our point of departure the essential distinction that, although human beings and animals are both biological beings, only human beings are able to transcend the biological through their power of love (and also the principle of spirit in them), we shall now turn to consider more closely some other genetic theories. In the first place, we take up an interesting set of Wolfgang Köhler’s examples of so-called manifestations of conscience in anthropoid apes, which have a great deal of similarity with the human experience of conscience and which are ordinarily described as having a conscience. We have arranged these examples in a sequence of gradually increasing similarity with the human experience of conscience. In a very interesting and important paper on animal psychology, Köhler has provided for us a deeper view into the emotional life of anthropoid apes.9 Here we find also an emotional behavior of animals that manifests a continuous similarity to the behavior of human beings with a troubled conscience. Such experimental investigations offer us important empirical material for our solution to the question whether an animal has a conscience—in particular, a bad conscience. The whole problem here centers on the sequence of events: wrongdoing, punishment, wrongdoing again, then “conscience.” And the problem as ge­netically defined would therefore be whether or not experiences of conscience stem from the punishment associated with certain for-

Some Theories of the Development of Conscience  249

bidden deeds in animals during their (actual or intended) repetition of those deeds.10 Example 1. Köhler’s chimpanzees collectively protest punishment: It may happen that an offender is occasionally punished by means of a vigorous blow. At the moment the blow falls, the group howls as though with one voice. This provocation has little to do with fear. . . . In the end one must give up punishing even the nasty offenses, when the whole group is in the same area together with the offending animal. . . . In the rapid spread of revolting shrieks among all the animals, by which they seem to fan the flames of their p ­ assion into an ever greater rage, lies a demonic power from the deepest recesses of their organism. This deeply persuasive—one should even like to say, morally indignant—howling of the group, is evoked as effectively by any sort of accidental misunderstanding as it would be if it had been a real assault—even if most of the members did not see what first gave rise to the outcry of the animals.11 It is important for us to note that everything here in this group behavior is understandable in purely biological terms. Punishment here is an assault on one member of the group, no more. It is not here a question of moral indignation at all: the suprabiological element, which is essentially inherent in matters of morality, is utterly missing. The gap between purely moral and purely biological behavior becomes clear if one compares the reason for the shrieking of the apes and their (animal) perception of (what we in human terminology call) “punishment,” on the one hand, with an outburst of visceral human anger based on moral indignation, on the other. The difference is reinforced by the fact that most of the apes are angry without knowing why. Moral insight is ­completely inessential to this behavior of apes. Moral understanding completely transcends their outlook. The apes see only active physical occurrences on the vital (psycho-biological) level and react to these with a deeply vital provocation, and both moments are unique events of their environment. Completely missing are objectification, the splitting of subject and object, the discernment of a self standing over against an object—all of which are necessarily presupposed by moral recognition,

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evaluation, and conduct, as such—and none of which are proper to the nature of the chimpanzee. Punishment does not have a moral signifi­ cance for the apes, but only a vital one. It is an assault, a distressing arrest of their freedom of instinct. The practical meaning of the punishment is grasped, but not its moral significance. This contrast between vital rage and moral indignation opens the way to the contrast between the vital or biological experience of guilt, on the one hand, and the moral experience of guilt, on the other—if one may speak of an animal’s “grasp of guilt.” Example 2. Sultan’s punishment and revenge upon Chica: A more individual (but nonetheless amoral) phenomenon is seen in the following example. “When Sultan was still very young, I punished him, but he did not dare to avenge himself on me. Instead, he would promptly run in a fury at Chica, whom he did not quite like, and torment her, although she had nothing to do with the cause of his rage.”12 Even here the “punishment” is not really a punishment (in the moral sense) for Sultan, but an assault, a restriction upon his impulses. The revenge occurring here is just as vitally or biologically conditioned as Sultan’s grasp of “punishment.” Example 3. A chimpanzee’s “reconciliation”: Also very interesting is the following example, which shows how little was known about the chimpanzee psyche up until now, and how dangerous it is to identify this behavior of animals with similar human behavior. (Behavior is always external, and what matters here is precisely the internal, the way in which an experience makes sense to the subject acting in this way.) An otherwise quite well-behaved female snatched some food from the hand of a weaker animal several times, and she received for the first time a little rap from the researcher conducting the experiment: The animal jumped, recoiled, and glared at me in horror, slowly emitting a couple of heartbroken wails, with its lips pouting more than ever. The next moment, completely besides itself, it flung its arms around my neck and calmed down only gradually after I stroked her for a while. The need for reconciliation expressed here is a quite frequently observed crisis in the feeling life of chim­ panzees.13

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This example exhibits an excellent parallel to human behavior mani­ festing a need for reconciliation. Why did this little animal fling its arms around the researcher’s neck? Was it from any sort of moral perception of guilt and reconciliation, or merely from a vital perception that her beloved provider behaved unsympathetically toward her? Did she somehow feel, by being petted, that she had been forgiven her bad deed, or reconciled with her friend? As long as it cannot be clearly established here that this ape disapproved, rejected, condemned, or in some way grasped the negative value and wrongness her deed, and was therefore silenced by moral self-condemnation, the present phenomenon may be granted only a vital or biological value and significance, not a moral and or suprabiological one. The final examples bring us closer than ever to the “guilt problematic” as it relates to animals. Example 4. Chimpanzees collectively yield to “temptation”: I have not found that prohibitions, no matter how often repeated and reinforced by punishments, have had a beneficial effect over the time of my tenure here. If the chimpanzees are forcibly prevented from some desired but forbidden activity, and I then hide myself in order to observe what happens without being seen, it is quite amusing to observe how the animals first of all carefully look around suspiciously in all directions, and then, seeing no actual danger, gradually move closer again to the place of the forbidden activity, so that in a short time, overpowered by temptation, they plunge headlong into the activity again, as though there were no such thing as a human being and no possibility of a future reckoning.14 Example 5. Feces-eating chimpanzees: Their habit of eating their feces was often, and finally very severely, punished, but without much success. Yet frequently upon entering their stockade, I would miss an animal, and then after some searching, I would find it in a crate behind some vegetables, crouching on the floor, its whole face smeared with traces of its ­hideous meal.15

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Example 6. Chica hops when “guilty”: Sometimes the animals are sufficiently naive as to betray themselves by their distress, even when you yourself come to them quite unsuspecting. Thus Chica once began to hop from one foot to the other in an extraordinarily nervous manner when I showed up unexpectedly. As I approached her, she became increasingly agitated until, all at once, she let a quantity of excrement fall out of her mouth.16 Example 7. Chica hops when Tercera is the offender: One day Chica received me with the same distressed behavior, and would not stop her anxious hopping, even though I could not discover any guilt on her part. Alerted by this, I became aware that her friend Tercera was missing; . . . and upon closer inspection, she was discovered behind a crate and was found to be the offender on this occasion.17 The manifest parallels between the behavior of these “offending primates” and that of a human being with a troubled conscience are not to be denied. But a closer inspection of Köhler’s examples exposes dis­ similar elements that indicate clearly the differences between a genuine experience of conscience and an animal’s fear of punishment. Note that there was no essential difference between the agitated behavior of Chica when she was the “offender” and when her friend was. In both cases the agitation was similar—except that in one case it was Chica who was in danger, and in the other it was Tercera—and in both cases the agitation may be described as a purely vital (psycho-biological) response in the face of a threat. An essential feature of the genuine phenomenon of conscience, however, is that it never consists of a distress for others, not even for the best of friends. Wherever a distress for the danger of another person arises in people’s conscience, we find that the distressed persons themselves are invariably implicated in the guilt of the endangered party, and if there is no guilt, then we are no longer dealing with a phenomenon of conscience. Thus, if we wanted to describe Chica’s

Some Theories of the Development of Conscience  253

behavior in the first case as stemming from “remorse of conscience,” what basis would remain for denying that Chica’s behavior in the second case also stemmed from “conscience”? If we reject it the second case, we must also reject it in the first. We have no inherent reason for calling one a behavior of conscience and the other not. Both are instances of a vital (psycho-biological) awareness of an imminent danger. So long as Chica’s behavior in the first case (and the second) is understandable in purely biological terms, and so long as it cannot be shown that Chica also reproves the behavior in question or sees it as negative, and so long as her agitation can be traced back to an external danger but not an internal reason, we cannot speak here of conscience as conscience. Only in a figurative sense, based on superficial analogies, can one speak here about an “ape conscience.” The case is no different here than with the example of chimpanzees’ collective distress over the threat of danger or punishment, except that the offender here (Chica) knows that the danger and punishment applies to her. She knows this, not through insight into an essential bond existing between the punishment for a deed and the deed’s reprehensible quality, but in a purely biological way, through the constant experience of being assaulted every time she eats feces. Why is she assaulted? She does not know. She grasps only the practical import, but not the meaning, of the punishment. The fact that she somehow merits punishment transcends her capacity for discernment. She knows from previous experience, however, that an assault will follow as soon as she has been caught ingesting feces, and this is the basis of her anxiety. This experientially based knowledge manifestly and unambiguously explains this behavior. It is not a matter of moral insight into the negative value of the deed, or a moral experience of guilt, even of the most primitive kind. It is a question of whether the animal can experience or grasp even a biological “guilt” here—whether her knowledge about eating feces and the risk associated with it also includes knowledge of her own guilt, namely, that she herself is the cause of the coming assault. Since it cannot yet be determined whether the animal has any notion of a “cause,” which many find doubtful, there is even more reason to doubt that the animal can grasp the idea of biological guilt and her being the “cause” of anything.18 The animal surely does not know that she is “guilty” (her attention is certainly not directed toward

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the forbidden act, let alone the forbiddenness of the act, but toward the coming assault). All these purely biological elements determine the ­behavior in all the examples mentioned here, including the case in which the chimpanzees collectively yield to temptation and the concealed researcher observes the “offender” reverting to forbidden behavior as soon as the danger is past.19 Let us now compare the behavior of small children with the foregoing examples from the lives of animals. If a little boy sneaked some forbidden sweets on the sly, and his mother came and saw it, would we also have here in his case only a purely biological behavior? Would his guilty look, his downcast eyes, his tears, or his frightened retreat be unequivocally understandable only from the viewpoint of vital (psycho-­ biological) fear? Does the boy not at the same time approve or disapprove of his act? Does he not also feel that he deserves punishment, that the mother is treating him rightly or wrongly? Is punishment for him only an assault on the vital level, whose practical import he well understands, but not its inner meaning? Or does he not also understand (in some primitive way) the meaning of the punishment? Is the boy not aware of his guilt and, at the same time, that he is the cause of the ensuing trouble and sadness of his mother, and that he deserves punishment? Hence, is he not aware of his moral guilt? All of this is surely obvious to anyone who has learned to love the heart of a child.20 Certainly a purely biological reaction can often be seen in childish behavior, particularly when biological factors are connected with genuine elements of conscience. Nevertheless, one sees already very early in children that they understand, if only primitively, not only the practical, vital significance of punishment as an assault on them, but its meaning as punishment for deleterious, disobedient actions. This completely transcends the biological level. A little girl does something wrong and thereby makes her mother angry or sad and then goes away someplace alone and cries her eyes out all by herself. She feels in herself an impulse to never again do what she did and is then reconciled with her mother. She experiences this reconciliation not as a biological renewal of a broken friendship but as a loving forgiveness of a bad deed. She experiences something here different in principle from the ape that threw its arms plaintively around the neck of the researcher.21

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We must guard against taking superficial parallels in behavior between animals and human beings as a basis for presuming that no essential difference exists between their experiences. Otherwise we end up with such fallacious theories as those set forth by Bain, Mill, and many other evolutionists. Alexander Bain22 states that conscience arises in the child through external authority (requirements, prohibitions, and punishments), along with an internal imitation of this external authority. If this were true, one might hope that even Köhler’s apes could eventually acquire a conscience. We do not deny that punishment can indirectly influence the conscience in one way or another. By analogy a hen can break open an egg that has been incubating for twenty-one days with her beak in order to help out the baby chick, but we would never claim that the pecking of her beak is what created the baby chick. Yet this is exactly what Bain claims for punishment and external authority as the origin of conscience. If children did not already have the capacity to disapprove of their own misdeeds and feel the presence of evil within them, then not even an entire lifetime of punishments could produce a conscience in them. Punishment can help open children’s eyes to their own unworthiness, and thereby help to awaken their conscience, but it is incapable of calling conscience into being. Let us examine Bain’s argument more closely. He says, “The first lesson that a child learns as a moral agent is obedience, or acting according to the will of some other person.”23 Bain is mistaken when he calls this the first lesson. Before children are able to “obey,” they are ­already judging people and evaluating things around themselves, the actions of others, perhaps even their own actions, if only in a most rudimentary way. If children are naughty and scream, and do not want to submit, they have very likely already judged their action negatively. They know their attitude is wrong but do not wish to yield. The second error Bain makes is that he identifies “obedience” with “acting according to the will of another person.” Again it is evident to us here that his evolutionism allows him to see only that which is superficial but prevents him from recognizing the interior dimension of things. Is it not of the essence of “obedience” that it is an interior act, an inward consent, an “act of love”?24 Even where the value of a command or request is not apparent, this interior quality is nevertheless deepened through

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authentic, childlike trust in parents and teachers. An “obedient docility” (Gehorsam-­Folgsamsein)25 does not come primarily from the “will of another person”—a blind, mechanical execution of a command is hardly obedience—but from an individual, interior, willing love. An obedient child obeys gladly, just as a disobedient child obeys grudgingly, and a grudging execution of a command falls just as short of obedience as a blind sense of duty falls short of love. The presence of obedient docility is determined not by external behavior but by an interior willingness— one of the most beautiful attitudes of humility. Bain’s thesis thus contains two essential errors, but upon this thesis he builds yet another: “The child’s susceptibility to pleasure and pain is made use of to bring about this obedience, and a mental association is rapidly formed between disobedience and apprehended pain, more or less magnified by fear.”26 This second stage of his theory also contains major errors. Once again, Bain is looking only at externals if he thinks obedience can be imprinted and seared into the souls of children by means of pleasure and pain. Does pain really achieve anything other than forcing children into a blind submissiveness that is not really ­“obedient” at all? It is not children’s sensitivity to pain, but rather their parents’ love that awakens true, inner obedience, even when this love crushes disobedience in grief or anger. It is not by merely submitting oneself to an alien will—which is mere servility—but by an interior, loving, voluntary self-sacrifice and self-dedication to the wishes of another that obedience is established. “Pain” arouses exactly the opposite attitude. Second, Bain errs when he mechanically juxtaposes pain with disobedience. This “association thesis” has been already refuted in detail:27 “The knowledge [that pain follows disobedience] leaves on the mind a certain dread and awful impression, as connected with forbidden actions; which is the conscience in its earliest germ, or manifestation.”28 This third stage unveils the fundamental error of the whole theory: conscience in its embryonic form is found in fear of punishment rather than in our insight into the evil within us! So far in these three stages we have yet to encounter a single moral factor. Everything is regarded as biologically determined, and we stand on the same level as Köhler’s apes. How are we supposed to regard the leap from a purely biological level to a moral level transcending the biological? He tells us: “As the child advances in the experience of authority, his habits of be-

Some Theories of the Development of Conscience  257

havior and his dread of offending becomes increasingly fixed; in other words, his sense of duty grows increasingly stronger.”29 Are we to suppose, then, that an ape is capable of being trained in this way to acquire a sense of duty? Surely not. Such an interior deepening of moral awareness transcends the capacity of animals. Yet if children are quite capable of it, what makes possible such an interior deepening of moral awareness? If new factors make their appearance here in the course of explaining this leap to the suprabiological level, does the essential possibility of conscience then not lie in these new, suprabiological factors? Bain does not see the sheer magnitude of the formidable leap he faces here and proposes to execute this feat by means of still other leaps: “A sentiment of love or respect toward the person of the superior infuses a different species of dread from what we have just supposed, the dread of giving pain to a beloved object,” he writes.30 Thus Bain, starting from a completely erroneous theory, presumes to approach a deeper understanding of conscience by means of his leaps: “We call it a higher order of conscience to act from love than to act from fear.”31 Only the former should be called conscience, on his view, and the latter has nothing to do with conscience. Finally, his last leap: “When the young mind is able to take notice of the use and meaning of the prohibitions imposed upon it, and to approve of the end intended by them, a new motive is added, and the conscience is then a triple compound, and begirds the actions in question with a threefold fear.”32 With this last leap, Bain assumes he will be able to explain all phenomena of conscience. Here he does not emphasize insight into “moral” value but rather the value of “utility.” Beyond this, he is right that insight and love are important factors in conscience, but he errs by laying his chief emphasis on a type of biological or social fear. The essence of conscience in all its forms remains, for him, fear of foreseen danger. In the religiously formed conscience there are the added factors of love and fear of God, to which it owes its entire power. It is only the reality of fear, finally, that constitutes the foundation of conscience for Bain, not the reality of evil in us (as in our thesis). In our view, there can be no conscience without evil—for Bain, there can be no conscience without fear. An interesting metaphysical problem presents itself to us here: To what extent is evil (or misfortune, in a cosmic sense) essentially connected with fear? It is certainly a mistake to say that if there were no fear

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in the world, there would be no misfortune or evil. But is the opposite thesis not more probable—that if there were no evil or misfortune in the world, then there would be no fear? This, of course, would make fear metaphysically an epiphenomenon of objective misfortune (in the case of biological fear) and of objective depravity (in the case of suprabio­ logical fear). If we agreed with this metaphysical thesis, it would stand to reason that we might think that Bain has grasped the heart of the problem of conscience here, but Bain is merely scratching at the surface. He is elevating something insignificant (fear) to the level of the essence of conscience, and his thesis can never do justice to authentic cases of conscience. We see here how he imagines that conscience has developed psycho-genetically, and how, starting from erroneous theories, he continually risks new leaps of thought, assimilating new factors into his theory, until he has merged and connected all of them in a highly complicated notion of “conscience.” There is no interior unity connecting all these factors, however, but only an external agreement concerning their source: fear of the unpleasant. Since Bain looks only at this external surface of conscience, its inner nature remains closed to him. Now that we have seen how different a child’s psychological experience of conscience is from what happens in the so-called guilt ex­ perience of animals, we shall consider how Darwin himself imagines human morality to have developed from factors on the animal level. Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary theory, says that he “fully subscribes to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important. This sense . . . is summed up in that short but imperious word ‘ought.’ ”33 Darwin highly esteems this “most noble of all the attributes of man,” but he wants to see “how far the study of the lower animals can throw light on one of the highest ­psychical faculties of man.”34 His basic thesis is this: every animal, whatever it may be, if only it is provided with sharply defined social instincts (including affection between parents and offspring), will inevitably attain a “moral feeling” or “conscience,” provided that its intellectual powers evolve about as far as those of human beings. He justifies this thesis with four arguments. First, these social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, and to feel a certain degree

Some Theories of the Development of Conscience  259

of sympathy with them. Second, as soon as its mental abilities have sufficiently ­developed, images of all its past actions and motives ceaselessly pass through its brain, and, as so often noticed, a feeling of dissatisfaction arises, possibly stemming from some unsatisfied instinct—a feeling of the abiding social instinct giving way to another instinct that is stronger for the moment, but neither endures nor leaves much of an impression. Third, once individual members of the animal community have acquired language and learned to clearly express their desires, public opinion emerges as an additional factor. Yet no matter how important this public opinion may be, approval or disapproval of one’s fellows is based on sympathy, which constitutes a substantial part of social instinct and cornerstone of moral feeling. Fourth, and finally, habit plays a very important role for the individual in determining the action of each member of the community.35 Thus, for Darwin, conscience evolves from social instincts and intellectual development (conscience, or moral feeling, is, for him, not merely a phenomenon focused on the subject, but a general sort of moral perception). Social instincts provide the material content for sympathy, the foundation stone for moral sentiments, and intellectual development provides the possibility for remembering past actions and motives. A moral being for Darwin is one that is able to compare its past and future actions and to approve or disapprove of them. (He does not mention the elements of freedom and responsible action.) Now, how should one imagine such a genesis of conscience taking place? Darwin himself illustrates the process by way of a clear example: the migration instinct is so powerful in swallows and house martins that, in late autumn, they abandon their young, letting them die miserably in their nests. At these times of year, these birds seem to become preoccupied throughout each day with nothing else but the desire to migrate. Their habits change, they become restless, noisy, and swarm together in dense flocks. As long as the mother bird feeds her nestlings or roosts over them, the maternal instinct seems to be stronger than the migrating instinct. Yet the more dominant instinct eventually prevails, and finally in a moment when her young are not in view, she flies away and leaves them. Once she reaches the end of her long journey and the migrating instinct has passed, however, what painful pangs of conscience

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the bird might feel, if she were equipped with such mental liveliness that she could not avoid images constantly running through her mind of her offspring freezing to death in the bleak northern wastelands.36 Let us take a closer look at this example and examine it carefully. Let us grant, for the sake of an argument, the dubious hypothesis that this martin—at the end of her journey, amidst her new milieu, and with her new instinctual impulses—could rise above these new circumstances and remember her young and conceive of their perishing from cold and hunger. What do we find? We see, at most, that she would feel an impulse to fly back to her offspring and shelter and warm them with her wings. Surely the suffering of her offspring would also distress her, just as it would if she saw one of her little ones fall out of her nest, but this instinctive sympathy, as painful as it may be, has nothing to do with pangs of conscience or moral judgment, even in its most elemental form. The martin’s feeling of distress would be directed toward the suffering of her offspring just as much regardless of whether she had any guilt in the matter or not. An unbridgeable chasm lies between a feeling of sympathy for the suffering of her offspring and a moral appraisal of the situation. The latter is made possible only by a completely new factor: a mind and love that transcend biology. Even if one thinks of animal social instincts such as “compassion” and “sympathy” as occurring in conjunction with an arbitrarily high degree of animal intellectual development, they will always remain a purely vital or biological sort of “fellow-feeling” (Mitfühlen)37 and never rise beyond themselves to the level of moral evaluation. These sorts of hypothesized connections between social instincts and levels of intellectual development are always superficial and mechanical and necessarily remain outside of the moral sphere. The mistake of Darwin and many others with him is precisely that, since they do not examine whether there is an essential difference between humans and animals, and therefore do not grasp what specifically transcends the biological in human nature, they assume it to be obvious that there is only a difference of degree (not of kind) between the two, and therefore read into the animal psyche that which is uniquely proper to human beings. This, in turn, reinforces their conclusion that animals are distinguished from human beings only by a difference of degree, and, by the same token, that human beings are distinguished

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from animals only by a difference of degree—which is nothing more than the question begging (petitio principii) of an undiscriminating ­evolutionism.38 Surely Darwin is right when, by means of many examples, he underscores the fact that a multitude of animals have social instincts. But from this point—from this fact that these animals have social ­sympathies—one never reaches morality without introducing supra­ biological factors. There are several reasons for this. First, if one of these social instincts were to become inoperative and then later recover its function again, it would not trouble itself over its past lapse but would simply seek to fulfill itself through its continued operation. From the feeling of being dissatisfied, an animal never arrives at the painful awareness of “feeling unfulfilled.” Such an awareness transcends it. Nevertheless, this sort of awareness is exactly what would be required if it were ever to attain moral experience in this way. Animals are enclosed within themselves, and the gap between the level of instincts and the level transcending instincts (will, freedom, reason, faith, love, insight into essences, moral evaluation, etc.) can never be bridged by gradual development. Second, it is questionable to what extent animals have genuine sympathy, if they have any at all. The word “sympathy” is highly ambiguous, as Scheler has shown.39 This ambiguity has led to great confusion in different theories, such as those of Darwin, Spencer, Bain, and others. This is certainly the case with the role played by sympathy in the cornerstone of Darwin’s theory of conscience. “Sympathy” (Sympathie) now can mean:40 (1) “mutual feeling” (Miteinanderfühlen), (2) “fellow-feeling” (Mitfühlen), (3) “emotional infection” (Gefühlsansteckung), (4) “emotional identification” (Einsfühlen), (5) “vicarious feeling” (Nachfühlen). Of these, evolutionists most commonly conflate fellow-feeling with emotional infection and emotional identification. Since animals doubtless have emotional infection and emotional identification, but since it is very doubtful whether they have pure fellow-feeling or genuine sympathy, one may not attribute sympathy to animals in this sense without further qualification. To “have a desire for the company of one’s companions and thus to feel a certain degree of ‘sympathy’ (Sympathie) with them” has not the least thing to do with genuine sympathy (Sympathie). It

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could just as well be either emotional infection, as the feeling of merriment in a cheerful tavern is infectious but is in no way to be confused with genuine sympathy, or it could be emotional identification with the herd and such, which also has nothing to do with genuine sympathy. The collective howling of Köhler’s apes, when one of them is struck, is also to be understood obviously as emotional infection or identification, and in no sense as genuine fellow-feeling. Also the instinctive “fellow-­ feeling”41 of the mother martin for the suffering of its baby bird is to be understood quite evidently as emotional identification. Genuine sympathy is suprabiological, as spirit and love are in human beings, and cannot be attributed properly to animals. Thus, Darwin takes fellow-­ feeling, an act that is properly typical only of human beings, and projects it into the animal psyche, wishing to explain thereby the formation of conscience. He also errs insofar as he regards animal “fellow-feeling” as an epiphenomenon of society, since fellow-feeling is, at the very least, the direct precondition of society, as Scheler has shown.42 Moreover, it is an error to think that experiences of conscience can be genetically derived even from genuine sympathy, as the following paragraph will show. Third, an ethics of sympathy, as Scheler rightfully stresses,43 can never do justice to the facts of moral life, since it always assumes what it wants to be deduced. Sympathy with evil, for example, is not of any value. Moreover, mere sympathy or compassion is blind to the value of its experience, because not all moral judgments are filtered through compassion, and because there is no compassion involved in moral self-evaluation, especially, for example, in bad conscience or in our moral evaluation of others. The two other factors that Darwin sees in the development from the amoral to the moral level—public opinion and habit—can be surely ignored, since they have nothing in principle to add except some in­ cidental empirical data of no essential significance for the genesis of ­conscience. In no way does Darwin succeed in using his psychic alchemy to conjure up an experience of conscience from the experience of animals. That claim to fame now belongs to another well-known alchemist of conscience. “Conscience remains with us,” says Paul Rée, “only as long as we do not ask where it comes from, but the moment we ask, it leaves us,”

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just like Lohengrin.44 In his work The Origin of Conscience, Rée raises this question with the result that, for him, conscience actually vanishes in the fog of his one-sided evolutionary fantasy. Conscience does not emerge already in the animal kingdom, says Rée. Darwin errs in this opinion. Its development is purely social. Conscience arises from (1)  punishment, (2) divine punitive sanctions, and (3) moral commandments and prohibitions. Punishment develops from revenge, and revenge stems from a feeling of inferiority: “The violator has demonstrated a surplus of power upon his victim. The injured party is rankled at the feeling of inferiority imposed upon him.”45 In order to rid himself of this feeling, he again injures someone else in return. He will not let himself be subjugated: Lohengrin has disappeared, and Paul Rée has achieved his objective. It is a popular theory that conscience may be derived from revenge. Rée’s opinion that revenge can be derived from the feeling of inferiority alone is erroneous insofar as an actually inferior person, such as a slave or weakling, never feels vengefulness.46 In addition to a momentary feeling of impotence, there belongs to revenge an implicit comparison of the offender with the victim,47 and along with this comparison, in turn, there is an awareness of a desire for retaliation: a “tit for tat.” Revenge does not arise from feelings of wanting to avoid being subjugated, as Rée believes, but rather from an unequivocal feeling of suffering injustice. Therefore, Rée errs if he regards the sweetness of revenge as something negative, namely, the negating of pain attendant to a feeling of inferiority, because its sweetness lies in the positive feeling of repayment. Just as Rée’s attempt fails to explain revenge in evolutionistic terms, he also errs by thinking that he can arrive at conscience by starting from revenge. He imagines his attempt at psychological alchemy in the following way: The death of bloody revenge48 begins with trying to achieve a peaceful settlement by means of money. The victim’s greed is one of the most powerful motives of this turnabout. The act of buying off vengeance is abetted by the community or state. At the heart of this development is the desire for peace brought about by hunger and external danger. Hunger forcibly leads to the cultivation of land and other trades.49

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It is assumed here that injuries are resolved peacefully. Furthermore, the state endeavors to reconcile the offender and victim, and the injured party must now offer a part of the ransom. This “peace money,” which the state receives for its intercession, is the precursor of punishment. The state increasingly steps to the defense of the injured party, peace increasingly prevails, and revenge declines. If the state grows in power, it no longer wants merely to reconcile opponents but to forbid revenge and punish offenders for violating the peace.50 Revenge thus becomes extinct by being displaced by punishment, which owes its existence to its usefulness. The state commands and prohibits, and people come to call that which is injurious “evil” and that which is advantageous “good,” and because they ascribe to their self-made gods their own earthly judgments about good and evil, these judgments come to be reinforced by heaven. Value judgments are first formed on earth, then these ascend to heaven and come back from the heavenly court ratified, approved, and hallowed by the divine Ruler of the world, and are then more authoritative and effective than before.51 However, this divine sanction is not yet enough. Next come the moralists, who, also with divine help, supplement these prohibitions and precepts of the state with their own moral prohibitions and precepts, thus commending self-gratification, self-­redemption, and so on. These moral precepts, prohibitions, and judgments are, of course, biased. They affect how words and facts are assessed—whether judgments are made with connotations of approval or disapproval—and how these connotations of judgments are merged together seamlessly in the education of children. By the time they become adults, then, they believe that their moral judgments are self-­evident, since they know nothing about how they were formed. In fact, their moral judgments, along with their conscience, have undergone quite a lengthy development: (1) from a feeling of inferiority related indirectly to revenge, then to punishment, and from there directly to the prohibitions and commandments of the state; (2) from there to heaven and back again to earth; (3) then to be procured and supplemented by moralists, until they find their way into the moral consciousness of their educators, and from there to themselves. Thus murder now seems to be reprehensible “in itself,” because nobody has experienced why it was originally condemned. Murder, however, is

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not evil “in itself,” according to Rée, but only harmful. To say that actions are “evil” means only that a consciousness in me condemns them. Conscience is a type of consciousness that explains one action as commendable and another as reprehensible. Rée has cobbled together from his fantasies a highly contrived theory. We have no need to offer any further critique disproving each stage of Rée’s phylo-genetic theory of conscience here, however, because the contrived nature of his theory is so obvious, and since we have already criticized the punishment theory of conscience in Bain’s psycho-­ genetic theory, and also because we will be encountering the revenge theory of conscience when we come to Nietzsche. We only cite his theory as an example of a radically biased evolutionist theory that ­attempts to explain every element of conscience by means of historical and psychological development, and to define it in an alchemistic manner as an amalgam of amoral factors. On the one hand, Rée’s theory of the psycho-genetic development of conscience attaches too much importance to the fact that children matter-of-factly take over from their teachers not only words such as “robbery,” “murder,” and “goodwill” but also their nuances of approval or disapproval.52 On the other hand, he misunderstands the most fundamental insight and conviction of children, since not everything in children consists of what they have taken over from tradition. Children can often develop their own moral judgments in ways that are contrary to traditional influences, and without this element of insight and personal consent, they could never establish such moral judgments in this way. Authentic conscience arises from this new additional factor of insight. The erroneousness of simply equating “useful” with “good,” and “disadvantageous” with “evil,” shows up already in the fact that much that is useful can be evil, and much that is disadvantageous can be good. Hence, these represent two different sets of values, intersecting one other. Nietzsche deduces conscience from an instinct that has been reversed, a will-to-abuse-oneself, we might say, out of a vengeance upon oneself. Scheler rightly shows, however, that there is no need whatsoever for the impulse of revenge against oneself to arise from a reversal of the instinct of revenge against others, since the former is just as basic

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as the latter.53 Nevertheless, a theory claiming that conscience must have developed from either of these two impulses is mistaken. For, as we have seen, the element of revenge is quite insignificant for genuine conscience, and if it should appear, it never does so in primary bad conscience, but only in secondary bad conscience. Thus, the impulse of revenge cannot be counted as proper to conscience here, if it is not based on the experience of guilt found in primary bad conscience. Revenge and secondary bad conscience both aim to take a type of “atonement” into their own hands. In the former case, it is unimportant why the atonement is required, since every unworthy behavior is capable of being atoned, not only behavior in the moral sphere. In the latter case, however, “atonement” applies only to moral guilt and to our own wickedness. Primary bad conscience does not desire to “atone” for itself, but to “be atoned for” by its Judge. Here we have a stance of antithetical opposition: we stand on the side of those upon whom54 the “revenge” or “punishment” is to be carried out—the side of those who fully recognize this fact and feel themselves placed before the judge—and not on the side that wants to take “revenge” or “punish.” We can see how an outer-directed revenge could be redirected inward, or how the experience of guilt, punishment, and retribution (in primary and secondary bad conscience) could be turned inward and become a codependent torment directed also against ourselves. But we never see a feeling of ­vengefulness—the feeling of masterful vengeful power—turning into the feeling experienced by the victim, the weakling—the feeling of the one upon whom revenge is carried out. Here the whole revenge-theory of conscience collapses, both in its phylo-genetic and psycho-genetic forms. The revenge-impulse of secondary bad conscience is a consequence of the experience of primary bad conscience. If the former is not founded on the latter, it is not a phenomenon of conscience at all. This is Nietzsche’s mistake—that he sees in conscience only the form of revenge against oneself, and he knows nothing of primary bad conscience at all. Under the heading of “conscience” he investigates a phenomenon that is not, in and of itself, genuine “conscience,” or better, he sees something in the phenomenon of conscience that is actually completely ­exterior to it and misjudges the actual essential core of authentic ­conscience—that is, the experience of personal evil. Since he does not

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acknowledge at all the existence of evil in human beings qua evil, this perceptible content of conscience remains necessarily closed to him. Herbert Spencer has applied Darwinian evolutionary thought not only to biology but in a more independent form also to ethics and sociology (and the human sciences in general).55 In his view conscience has also evolved. He equates conscience with moral consciousness. The essential movement of moral consciousness consists, according to him, in one or more feelings exercising a certain control over several other feelings.56 However, not every control exercised by feelings is moral. Restraint stemming from fear of a visible authority (legal punishment), an invisible authority (divine retribution), or society (public condemnation) is not, on the whole, something moral. Simpler and less idealized feelings are controlled here, as in the case of conscience, by awareness of more complicated and idealized feelings.57 But this control is a preliminary one, from which moral control subsequently develops. The former is still concerned with external, accidental, incidental, and contingent consequences of action, rather than with internal and essentially related consequences with which the latter (the moral) is concerned. In the case of a murder, for example, the former sees the legal ­punishment—namely, hanging, or the subsequent torments of hell, or society’s hatred—whereas the latter sees the victim’s fear of death, the annihilation of the victim’s happiness, the suffering of the victim’s relatives. Or in the case of a theft, the former sees the prison sentence, God’s anger, and social disgrace, while the latter sees the injury done to the victim of the theft. With still other examples, Spencer shows in this way that moral actions refer only to internal, and not external, consequences of an action. Where someone helps another in difficulty, the former sees the eventual reward, while the latter sees the improved lot of the bene­ ficiary. Things could not be otherwise, says Spencer. Only in a fixed and permanent community, which has acquired its stability through political, religious, and social restrictions and obligations, is it possible for the internal (and not only external) consequences of proscribed and prescribed actions to produce moral aversion or affinity. Hence, moral feelings have external authority to thank, in part, for their development. This general control of lower feelings by higher ones, however, has undergone its own development. In order to pursue this development

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briefly, we first need to consider more closely the leap that Spencer makes from the level of general emotional control to the level of moral control. Spencer has a candid view of what makes something moral. This is evident when he limits the moral to the inner consequences of an action and the amoral to external consequences. He is perfectly right, for example, when he does not describe as “moral” the biological fear evoked by the external consequences of a murder, but rather the fear evoked by the suffering of the victim and the victim’s relatives. Yet Spencer errs when he permits the latter to be viewed as developing out of the former. He makes a leap here that cannot be harmonized with the gradual development of the one into the other. It is identical to Bain’s leap from external to internal authority. In order to become a moral control over the inner consequences of action, the general emotional control exerted over the external consequences needs a new insight ­precisely into these inner consequences—a new insight that is first and foremost moral. Moreover, this new insight is just as (if not more) fundamentally given to us as knowledge about the external consequences of action. Not only is it erroneous to suppose that one develops out of the other, or that one could not exist without the other, but both are capable of existing side by side and even coming into conflict with each other. Elsenhans58 rightly stresses that one of these need not be taken into account (in the consideration of conscience), while the other unconditionally must. Indeed, it is not a matter of our interior authority having its support in the state’s authority, but rather, vice versa, of the state’s authority having its support in our interior authority. Laws of convention have an authority that is actually higher than that of the state. If the outward and inward consequences of an act stand in contradiction to each other, one could face up to the outward consequences, if need be, in order to avoid the internal consequences of the act. It is not true that the development of moral awareness requires external conditions (stability through state laws, etc.) to make it possible. For example, well before any external authority of the state, the relationship between parents and children is already given, along with the parents’ insight into the suffering of their children, if they have mistreated them in any way. Parents can learn to steer clear of such overreaching acts out of loving concern for their children and in order to alleviate their suf-

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fering (reflecting the internal consequences of their action). The inner impulse to compassionately help someone who is suffering, whether or not the suffering is a consequence of one’s own actions, is something given much more primordially than the external authority of the state. The latter comes only with social experience, as a consequence of action, whereas the former comes directly, without any need for such experiences beforehand. This weak point in Spencer’s theory of the development of conscience resides in the error of trying to derive everything from the theory of experienced consequences, whereas there is a great deal that can develop directly, without any preceding experiences. Hence, there is an unconcealable gap in his notion of the development of moral control from the general control exercised by mere feeling. Spencer’s opinion of duty is interesting. Duty is an abstract feeling, for him, and it has developed in the same way as all abstract ideas in general. It derives from external authority and contains within itself an element of compulsion, which is transmitted from political, religious, and social sources and transformed into an internal compulsion within the individual. The sense of duty is a temporary phenomenon and gradually diminishes in proportion to the increase of a person’s “ethical sensibility” (Versittlichung).59 Perseverance in always doing one’s duty ­finally transforms it into a joy, in which the element of compulsion vanishes and one’s duty is done without any feeling of obligation, but rather out of joy. Aside from a few erroneous points in Spencer’s theory of how duty develops, we see how his concrete sense of reality leads him here to the same insights that Scheler arrives at by means of his phenomenological analysis of duty.60 That is, the highest kind of moral action never stems from a sense of duty, but from insight and love, or, as Spencer says, from joy and desire. Spencer regards conscience in its present state of development as having emerged from a long evolution of the human race as a result of its experienced usefulness. Such moral intuitions and feelings, however, can be inherited (since Spencer assumes that even acquired characteristics can be inherited) and can prescribe actions for an individual regardless of their utility. Accordingly, conscience is an inherited habit of the human race.61 Spencer correctly detects that the moral disposition is hereditary, but it is a mistake to regard it as a habit that arises with

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experience. It is necessary for human beings to instill and cultivate a moral disposition, insight, and love. They are not “acquired,” and we must emphatically deny that they exist in animals. There is an unbridgeable chasm here, and an essential difference.62 According to Spencer’s view, then, we see a development that begins with a general control exercised by feeling (such as a dog demonstrates when it wants to do something forbidden, yet “restrains” itself from fear of punishment). This, in turn, evolves into a control exercised by moral feeling, which restrains us from doing a desired bad deed because of its internal consequences, and which is capable of being inherited as an acquired moral habit (both in terms of knowledge and feeling). This whole progression is regarded by Spencer against the following background. The goal of the evolution imparted to us by nature is life—the life of the individual and that of the community. Spencer defines life as the “continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.”63 Life expresses itself in action (conduct), which ceaselessly continues to evolve, since the goals of action become ever more numerous and more various, whereby life increases in breadth, intensity, and in length.64 Action develops in three directions: preservation of the individual (the agent), of the offspring, or of the race.65 Ethics, as such, is concerned with one part of human action or conduct, but since the part cannot be understood apart from the whole, action in general (and especially human action) must be viewed genetically. Actions are always adapted to purposes (aimless behavior is not action). Actions are good when they promote the life of the individual, good breeding, and society, and bad when they hamper them. The moral goal is one that involves a lust for life and for life-promoting activity. The best actions are therefore identical with those that are optimally well adapted and provide the greatest joy in life. The development of action now can be seen from four points of view: (1) Physically, action develops from indefinite and incoherent beginnings into something definite and coherent (moral conduct follows definite principles, while immoral or indifferent conduct is fickle and inconstant, and the most perfect balance of action is attained in the moral life). (2) Biologically, action is not considered purely formally as

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it is from the physical perspective, but rather considered with reference to its natural end. The course of development here aims at optimizing the adjustment of functions, which are always more perfectly adapting themselves, more perfectly preserving and expressing life, all the way up to the most perfect adaptation of moral action. (3) Psychologically, action develops from simpler beings to those with more complicated natures, that is, actions are governed decreasingly by momentary feelings and increasingly determined by feelings of a more complicated and ideal nature, which do not promise purely momentary pleasure but rather lasting happiness. Moral, religious, and social controls assist and promote this course of development. The highest kind of moral conduct regards the inner consequences of its activity and aims to achieve lasting happiness and the highest life-sustaining provisions. (4) Sociologically, action develops increasingly toward the goal of unifying the perfect life of each individual with the perfect life of all people, so as to bridge the gap between the individual and the community (or race). The life of all people should be the greatest possible in terms of length and intensity, and also breadth. Evolution resolves the contradiction between individual and community by gradually removing the opposition between the individual good and the social good. The highest level of development (the “limit of evolution,” in Spencer’s words) is not reached until spontaneous and disinterested benevolence is added to justice. The natural source of both is sympathy, which continually increases through “the survival of the fittest.” The end imposed by nature (life) and the end morally approved by human beings (abiding happiness) must both develop to a point where a harmonious connection is established.66 This whole course of development by which conscience is assumed to have evolved can be subjected to a brief and powerful critique, partially that of [Reginald A. P.] Rogers, by means of the following theses. (1) Even the most well-adapted conduct, the most highly developed conduct, the conduct that produces the most abiding joy, or the conduct of those most suited to outlive others (as distilled in the principle of “the survival of the fi ­ ttest”) is not necessarily the morally best conduct. (2) Moral judgments and moral insights derive from free will, and they are not as ­mechanical as Spencer supposes in his theory of development

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and ­hereditary descent. (3) The conflation of naturalistic life-goals, such as self-preservation and preservation of the species, with the loftiest moral goals, such as the monistic merger of life (nature) with morality (spirit), leads to nothing but confusion, and it prevents Spencer himself from seeing the leap involved in getting from the amoral to the moral level, as we have shown regarding his leap from the general control exercised by feeling, as such, to the specific control exercised by moral feeling. (4) He takes positions that may be described as ethical hedonism and utili­tarianism, which are difficult to reconcile and whose attempted reconciliation also leads to confusion.67 Spencer’s theory of conscience thus rests on an amalgam of correct insights and errors, which are the consequence of his evolutionistic outlook, and this leads him to misjudge the essential diversity and variation found in things—both in phenomena and in processes—and to seek their unity in their genesis.

10 The Reliability of Conscience

During our investigations into the nature of conscience proper, we have seen that the objective phenomenon itself testifies to its own absoluteness, indubitable trustworthiness, objective impartiality, absolute in­ fallibility, ultimate truth, and supreme authority as expressions of its ­essence. During our subsequent investigation of the development of conscience, we found that every phenomenon of conscience also contains many relative factors that considerably impair and endanger its infallibility and trustworthiness. The essence of conscience bears witness to its absolute validity, but the empirical development of the phenomenon reveals a prima facie doubt as to this absolute validity (Gelt­ barkeit).1 A contradiction arises here, which every theory of conscience seeks to resolve in its own way. Is conscience absolute or relative, or both—and if both, then in what sort of synthesis? Ideological evolutionists and empiricists resolve the contradiction by denying the absolutism of conscience, and by reducing it to a mere pretense or something subjective or imaginary. Even many advocates of intellectualist theories—who, by the way, are not ideological ­evolutionists—persist in maintaining the fallibility of conscience. Again, other partisan theories see an oracle of God in conscience, deny its relativity, and persist in their absolutism. Conscience never fails, in their view. One is only deceived about whether it was conscience that spoke or some other phenomenon within one’s psyche. 273

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Yet again, many theorists try to synthesize these contradictory elements in conscience. On the one hand, they may try dividing the phenomenon into two parts (for example, synteresis and its practical application, conscientia), of which the one is absolutely infallible and the other only relatively so. But because conscience proper must be identified with one of these parts, and not the other, the problem inevitably recapitulates itself within the “genuine” part of the conscience, and it must be asked again how the relative (or absolute) element within this genuine part is related to the absolute (or relative) element in the other part, and whether the preference for one of the parts as genuine conscience does not do injustice to both parts. On the other hand, they may seek to protect the unity of conscience and, at the same time, to design within this unity a productive synthesis of these contrasting elements. Without going into such theories here, we shall set forth our own theses concerning these problems. First, we have defined genuine conscience as the real internal disclosure of personal evil (whether it is an evil that is actually realized, or an evil inclination tending toward realization, or an evil that is possible in principle but actually rejected). Second, following Scheler, we have also formulated a further concept of conscience as the deposit of our insight (stemming from our personal life experience) into the good (and knowledge of the good) insofar as it is “the good for me.” Hence, our theses are now, first, that “genuine conscience” (in our first sense above) is absolutely trustworthy and infallible, and, second, that conscience (in Scheler’s sense above) is relatively trustworthy and fallible.2

Thesis A: Conscience as a real internal disclosure of personal evil is absolutely infallible We must try to determine exactly what conscience is saying when it stirs within us, and what it means to tell us by these stirrings, for the proper defense of the infallibility of conscience rests on our having a correct understanding of this matter.

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Genuine conscience says nothing about what is good, but it speaks only about what is evil, as can be seen from our definition and what we have previously examined in detail. In this way its fallibility is already considerably reduced, for “evil,” just like “illness,” normally stands out much more clearly and distinctly, precisely because it is experienced as that-which-should-not-be. That which is normal, healthy, and good is not “felt” or experienced at the same level of intensity as one “feels” or experiences that which is abnormal, sick, or evil. These unwanted feelings have an inhibitive effect on ordinary life, forcibly breaking into our consciousness and impinging upon us. It is certainly quite possible to be easily deceived or mistaken about what is normal, healthy, or good, yet the disagreeable and repulsive character of that which is abnormal, sickly, and evil goes a long way toward eliminating many sources of ­deception, thus considerably reducing the possibility of error. Genuine conscience never emerges as long as we remain in doubt about the moral value of an act. Only when we actually realize that an act was wrong does conscience appear. Moreover, since the experience of conscience is such an uncomfortable one, our conviction of guilt must have already reached the maximal level before we have any qualms of conscience about it. To this we may add that, wherever conscience speaks, it does so about truths that we consider to be the highest and utterly absolute. It is not our mere opinions or incidental, random preferences that are expressed in our conscience, but our highest and ultimate convictions. All these elements also reduce the fallibility of genuine conscience. The testimony of conscience, however, is not primarily about evil in general, but about a far more concrete and sharply focused individual and personal evil: my own, as it specifically applies to me. Evil as it applies individually means something different for those who bear on their shoulders the duties of the state, the responsibilities of church, school, industry, business, or transportation, and so forth. It is much easier to argue about individual duties for which each person must answer in particular than about the general duties that everyone has in common. Specific evils are easier to grasp because they are concrete and immediate, compared to evil in general, which is abstract and im­ personal. Certainly there is a relation between the two, and much that

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applies to one also applies to the other. It would be a mistake, however, to identify the two. Since bad conscience is directed primarily toward specific evils, its potential for fallibility is reduced further still. We could go on finding still other reasons for significantly reducing the fallibility of bad conscience and thereby raising its relative infallibility to the highest degree possible, but this would still never bring us to absolute infallibility. Although each progressive reduction in fallibility would certainly bring us closer to absolute infallibility, a leap would still be necessary in order to reach that goal, for each has a magnitude essentially incommensurable with the other, just as one can never reach eternity by merely adding together finite segments of time, since eternity differs essentially from time. Two such leaps are possible for the sake of preserving the infallibility of conscience: one that is usually attempted (as we shall see) and another that the phenomenon of conscience itself shows us.3 The leap usually attempted: the subjective absolutism of evil as relatively perceived. When we move from an objective, impersonal consideration of evil that can be imputed to us individually (individualgültigen Bösen) to a subjective, personal consideration of personal evil (personalgültigen Bösen) in conscience—that is, to evil as it applies to us ­personally—we undertake such a leap.4 As improbable as it may seem, even those who are conscience-stricken can be deceived about their objective evil (that which can be objectively imputed to them as individuals). Scheler correctly claims that we can be blind to our own objective evil (or good), and that others may actually grasp our particular moral defects more objectively and readily than we ourselves can, and open our eyes to them. Where subjective, personal evil is concerned, however, this is impossible, for the only part of objective evil in us that is personal is that which we recognize for ourselves. Personally applicable evil (personalgültigen Bösen) is frankly what is evil insofar as we ourselves recognize it. Thus many theologians define conscience as insight “into the will of God known to us.” Only to the extent that we perceive this “known will of God” does our conscience speak to us. Thus, by qualifying what is objectively evil in the individual by saying “insofar as it is personally recognized” and therefore personal evil, we have actually achieved an absolute. For genuine conscience and personal insight

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into objective evil always run parallel to one another, and this parallel relation remains absolutely constant. There can be no doubt that in this way we acquire a consistent personalism of conscience, for now it is understandable why the testimony of a child’s conscience must differ from an elderly person’s, a primitive aborigine’s from an urbane Westerner’s, or a religious preacher’s from an atheist’s. We all see what is good and evil in ourselves through our own eyes, and only insofar as we see in this way does our conscience speak, and to that extent conscience is absolute, binding, and infallible for us. Insofar as we do not see what is good and evil in ourselves, we have no conscience, and our conscience is silent, and where there is no conscience, we cannot even speak of ­“fallibility.” Conscience asserts its infallibility only when it speaks. Thus we have actually acquired an absolutism, but (and this must not be overlooked) at the expense of objectivity. We have not obtained an objective absolutism but a subjective one. For either this leap lands us in a tautology—“consciences say what consciences say”—or in the lap of a subjectivism such that, although we may be objectively mistaken about our own individual evil, our subjective insight is nevertheless absolutely binding on us, and conscience remains absolute and infallible for us. What can we call such infallibility other than pure subjectivism? We have attained absolutism, but at the cost of objectivity—and is it worth the sacrifice? If we want to preserve objectivity, on the other hand, then we must recognize the relativity of conscience at the cost of giving up its infallibility—if there is no other way out of this vexing dilemma. The leap revealed by conscience itself: the objective absolutism of the apparent evil as willed. The second leap saves the situation, even though it is based on the first. For it also starts from subjective, personally applicable evil and claims that conscience speaks only to the extent that we personally recognize evil in ourselves, regardless of whether or not we have objectively deceived ourselves regarding our evil. It retains the advantages of the personalism of conscience found in the first leap, but it continues with a further step and says: “If we personally see something as evil (regardless of whether we deceive ourselves), and we nevertheless choose and intend this evil—then our will is evil.” Even if we objectively desired something good, as long as we subjectively thought it was evil, our will would remain evil. Bad conscience

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is not directed against recognized evil as such, but against the depraved will that desires (or desired) that which is recognized as evil. Conscience never errs in this. Such a will is (and remains) objectively evil, and in this objectivity it is recognized as depraved. This second leap extricates itself from the subjectivism of the first. The absolutism, objectivism, and personalism of conscience (all three) are here rescued and reconciled. This leap shows us conscience itself, for it does not rouse itself against anything outside of its own sovereign realm, whether to advert to this or that recognized evil or to anything belonging to the functions of moral knowledge or evaluation, all the while ignoring conscience itself. As long as we merely detect evil, its danger remains theoretical but not real. But the moment we also desire and do that which we recognize to be evil, its danger becomes a reality for us, and it is only this real danger that conscience resists. When conscience declares, “We are bad” or “We are evil,” it is doubtless seizing upon an empirically given fact—whether it was a murder, or a lie, or such—that signals the moral corruption of our value-discerning and assessing ability. But it does not thereby intend to assert, “That which we have done may be considered epistemologically as evil,” but rather, “Something evil has awakened within us; we have desired that which we recognize as evil; we have given ourselves to evil; we have done evil.” This stance is completely different. Genuine conscience is not found in a theoretical epistemological attitude (“This or that is evil”), but rather in a practical realistic attitude (“We have desired evil, done evil, or avoided evil”). When conscience declares, “We are guilty,” it does not demand theoretical infallibility in our knowledge of its testimony, but rather, real, practical infallibility, for the moral experience of guilt does not emanate primarily from theoretical knowledge but from our personal attitude, inclination, disposition, and will. The infallibility of conscience lies in the fact that it knows with absolute certainty: “Something malevolent has awakened within us” (or not, as the case may be). Therefore, if we were acting from good intentions and a loving disposition, according to our “best lights” and with a “clear conscience,” and nevertheless did something objectively (“in itself ”) evil, our conscience would not reproach us, because we did not act from any principle of evil stirring within us, and our excuse for ourselves is completely justified insofar as we could not have known the truth. Con-

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versely, if we did act with bad intentions and a malicious disposition and did something that was not even objectively evil but positively good, our conscience would nevertheless still bother us, because we were acting from a principle of evil awakened within us, and we would have no justifiable excuse. Conscience does not concern itself primarily with the cognitive knowledge of objective values, even if the urgings of conscience are felt only where such knowledge is highest and most likely to result in personal self-restraint. Rather, conscience is concerned primarily with the interior experience of something evil in ourselves—with the fact that we are evil. After this shift of emphasis in determining how conscience applies, along with the deepened understanding provided by this shift, we can now define authentic conscience in this way: “Conscience is the real inner disclosure of personal evil in us, whether it is actually realized, merely tends toward realization, or is rejected (although remaining possible in principle).” This deepening of our understanding directs our attention to something essential. Evil resides in us as a matter of principle, as a principle of evil (conscience claims no more than this). This principle can express itself in evil inclinations, evil strivings, evil desires, an evil will, evil disposition, evil drive, and so on, which we have summarized generically as an “urge to do evil.”5 Although such phenomena all seem to harness the volitional element in various ways, their deeper unity is disclosed suddenly, not in the voluntary element as such, but rather in the principle of evil itself, which evokes the opposition of conscience. This “urge to do evil” is, therefore, nothing other than the voluntary aspect of the principle of evil. This is what provides our terminology with its ­ultimate inner justification and cancels out any notion that it is nothing more than a contrivance. The evil principle in us calls forth its antithesis in a principle of good, which expresses itself in conscience and overcomes the evil principle. We human beings are neither wholly evil nor wholly good, and the contrast between good and evil principles in our wills can be characterized unequivocally and adequately, without any doubt, by means of the terminology of “good and evil urges.” This shift in emphasis in the problem of application—that is, of ­determining how and when conscience applies to us—was necessary in order to do justice to conscience. When conscience appears to us

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clothed in its empirical “relative” garb, it presents itself as enmeshed with the evil that it recognizes in us (i.e., that which we intend, have ­performed, or avoided). Our moral insight and knowledge is given to us in the cognitive element of conscience, which is relative and fallible, codetermined by education, environment, and such, so that each of us is also bound to a certain degree to the relative insight of our community, our nation, and so forth. The community, nation, and cultural sphere, in turn, stand relative to one another in their respective insights and knowledge regarding morals, and it is from this fact that variations in ethos and ethics arise and upon which they are historically founded.6 To what extent these essentially coincide with one another or deviate from one another is, again, a problem for conscience. Conscience concerns itself with moral insight and knowledge concerning such matters only insofar as they are essential to its formation, and insofar as any who lacked such insight and knowledge concerning “evil” could never know whether they themselves preferred good or evil or were good or evil persons. However, since we have seen that intellectualism and intuitionism err by restricting conscience to cognition, whereas the pivotal essence of conscience is to be sought in a movement of the emotions, we cannot do justice to the problem of infallibility by maintaining that it should be confined to this question of relative insight and knowledge. In the stirrings of my conscience, and thus in my conscience as such, it is infallibly given to me that an impulse of evil has awakened within me, or was on the point of doing so—just as infallibly as I know, through loving, that I love. It is impossible to be mistaken in such a way that what I experience as love turns out in essence to have been hate, or for love to be illuminated within me by an interior hate. Love and hate can displace one another and change from one into the other, but I can never fail to see that it is love that I detect immanently within love, or hate within hate. Nor does conscience ever fail when it arouses itself against evil within me. We encounter here the same sort of absolute point that Descartes believed he had found following his methodological doubt in his cogito ergo sum: I can doubt everything, except the fact that I am doubting when I doubt, and therefore I am, I exist. Although we could uncover some philosophical mistakes here, the only thing we are concerned to see in this absolute certainty of Descartes is

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what he himself wished to see, namely, an absolutely certain, indubitable, and infallible foundation from which to proceed. The objective absolute that Descartes believed himself to have found is given in genu­ ine conscience as the principle of evil within me much more clearly, concisely, and adequately than any objective absolute is generally given in most other noetic-psychological phenomena. Certainly the evil that conscience seizes upon is given in its knowledge of this evil. However, conscience in itself has no inclination to acknowledge the theoretical truth that this apprehended evil is really evil, and consequently its infallibility cannot be verified. Hence, this is an inadequate definition of the problem. Conscience testifies concerning the practical truth that I desired what I “apprehended as evil,” that evil stirred within me, that I am evil, and therein it never fails. Conscience would not have told me anything if something actually had not stirred within me. If we are asked whether we should always trust our conscience, there is only one response to be given here: If your conscience stirs within you, trust it absolutely, because that which it declares in these stirrings applies to you absolutely, objectively, and personally, since it is responding to the evil within you. But insofar as your conscience is bound to your personal insight and knowledge of moral good and evil, and is relative and fallible, you are obligated to always sharpen your view and deepen your insight. If conscience has no reason to be alerted when you are doing that which is good, but is not even always aroused when you are doing evil, the absence of its voice is a very dangerous criterion upon which to rely. But since none of us is exclusively good, and we all also have evil within ourselves, you must take care that you cultivate an open and finely tuned ear for that voice within you, which, whether loudly or quietly, declares to you with absolute infallibility: “I am evil.”7 Here the profundity of the Calvinistic view of conscience is clearly seen: conscience is an emotion that attests to the fact that we ultimately hide and cover up nothing that is evil in ourselves, but we pursue and hound ourselves until we admit our guilt. It is an emotion that observes

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our secrets in the deepest regions of the heart, so that nothing evil ­remains buried in darkness. Here it suddenly becomes evident to us why, when our conscience troubles us, we are indifferent to our relative spatial-­temporal environment, and why we are concerned with something far more substantial and fundamental—that which, in moments of ontical loneliness, fear, flight, and self-disclosure, sharply defines our guilt. Conscience does not have to do with primarily what we recognize as good or evil, but with the question whether or not we also desire it; whether we (with Kant) have obeyed the voice of the categorical impera­ tive; whether we (with Scheler) have given ourselves in humility and love to what is valuable—or whether we have withdrawn ourselves in pride and hate from that which is worthy, and preferred instead what is worthless. Conscience then answers infallibly, and therein it never errs, whether good or evil was preferred. Voluntarism already goes deeper than intellectualism and intuitionism, since it stresses that its concern here is with realizing what is worthy in us, and eliminating what is worthless. The view that penetrates deepest, however, is emotionalism, which sees in the stirrings of the heart a disclosure of two opposed ­principles colliding within us and fighting for the possession of our being and our soul, and recognizes the fact that the good principle in conscience overcomes the evil, just as it warns us of the presence of the evil principle. We do not intend to examine all the diverse theories that seek somehow to reconcile the absolutism and relativism of conscience, but only to give our attention to one—namely, the patristic and Scholastic doctrine of conscience. For these thinkers, the absolute element in synteresis is given as a custodian and protector of the law of God within us. It recognizes the law, drives us toward the good, and restrains us from evil. It is the undimmed spark within us, which we still retain after the Fall of our first parents in paradise. They see the relative element in conscientia, which applies to specific cases the laws and norms, and so on, which are held in custody by synteresis. The former is fallible and relative, the latter infallible and absolute. Only the former, conscientia as act, represents for them conscience proper (kat’ exochen). This is odd, because for us synteresis stands infinitely closer to genuine conscience than conscientia. If conscience (das Gewissen) posi-

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tively stirs in us as a warning against evil, negatively it is still doubtless the guardian and protector of the good in us (e.g., divine law, in Scholastic terminology), and is therefore synteresis. It positively restrains us from evil and negatively drives us to the good. If we compare the two views to each other, it may be said that in our view of conscience we see it “from below,” looking through its stirring intentions “upward,” toward the Holy Judge, in whom alone all these stirrings find their ultimate unity and meaning. In synteresis, however, conscience is seen “from above,” as an act lent by God to human beings for the sake of their own salvation, to guard and protect His laws and ordinances that He placed in all things, so they would not infringe against them and consequently bring themselves into danger. If a tree were free not to obey the organic laws of growth, it would destroy itself by its “disobedience.” Likewise, we would destroy ourselves if conscience were not a guard and protector of our moral welfare, inciting us to resist disobedience against the ordinances and laws in us, and thus to protect ourselves. An analogy between these two views of synteresis and our view of conscience8— hence, the view “from above” and “from below”—can be seen in the following very clear visual example. If I am standing beneath a mountain and see a church against the slope of the mountain, then the steeple and the whole mountain point ever higher upward, to God: the church is there in order to honor and serve God. But if I stand on the summit of the mountain and now see the church juxtaposed against the slope of the mountain beneath me, and a village at the foot of the mountain in the background, then the picture says to me: the church is there for the sake of people, in order to lead them to God. Likewise the nature of conscience, when seen “from below,” places people before their Holy Judge, but when seen “from above,” it is there for the sake of people, in order to protect them and warn them and keep them from falling. Both perspectives—“from below” and “from above”—intersect in conscience. Conscience stands between the “below” and the “above.” It is the meeting place of God and ourselves, just as the church is, but in such a way that we, in the former instance, stand opposite God because of our guilt, and, in the latter instance, stand alongside God in union with Him through divine revelation. Conscience simultaneously reveals God to be a just, gracious, and merciful judge confronting human guilt (seen from below), and a savior, preserver, and protector through His paternal love

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and care (seen from above). Medieval philosophy did not proceed from “below” but from “above,” because of its religious attitudes and dogmas, but it sensed precisely the one-sidedness that lay in its persistent adherence to absolutism and renunciation of relativism. In order to reconcile the two, it did not also try to penetrate the nature of conscience so as to view it “from below,” or to let the phenomenon of conscience itself answer its questions, but designed a hypothesis based on a more or less intellectualist attitude. It made synteresis a disposition or habit (habitus) instead of an act—an act of conscience in our sense—and designed conscientia to serve as an act that had to apply the laws preserved in the habitus in specific cases, making the former infallible and absolute, and the latter fallible and relative. The upshot is that it attained in conscientia a phenomenon, which, in its syllogistic function, has nothing at all to do with genuine conscience. This was the methodological error of the Scholastic doctrine of conscience, that it tried to connect an image of conscience viewed “from above” with a construction that is intellectualistic and artificial, instead of phenomenologically investigating the nature of conscience objectively “from below.” We have seen in our treatment of good conscience that, when religiously determined, such a conscience does not occupy this high “religious” (theal) position between the moral and the religious. A good conscience that is religiously determined acquires a much deeper sense through religious experience. Calvin says that just as our works point (or “look”) to others, so conscience points (or “looks”) to God, and good conscience is thus nothing but inner purity of heart (integritas cordis).9 The heart’s inner peace lies in placing ourselves without timidity or fear before God in the certainty of His merciful forgiveness of evil in us. What Newman and others see as good conscience—that is, inner peace of heart—is experienced in its full depth in the religiously determined good conscience. Accordingly, this peace of soul, purity of heart, and peace of conscience are consistently connected with syn­ teresis, inasmuch as it awakens at the approach of evil and restrains us from it, and insofar as the absence of evil and its religious forgiveness are experienced in it. In religious experience, the configuration and formation of conscience reaches its full culmination, where there is a complete convergence between its nature and what we empirically know and ­experience.

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WE STILL WISH TO POINT OUT A PROBLEM THAT IS PARTLY METAPHYSICAL

and partly proper to philosophy of religion. Although this is not the place to pursue it in any detail, it is nevertheless very important for the ultimate metaphysical uniformity of conscience in us. If conscience— in particular bad conscience—points to a world-transcending justice and love in the Person of God, to what extent does the nature of conscience demand some kind of suprabiological immortality for human beings? One is reminded of the grounds upon which Kant accepted immortality. It is certain that complete mortality for us human beings, including our spiritual principle, cannot be brought into harmony with the essence of conscience. From the profound depths of conscience, however, it is possible to work out the “world-transcending” and “religious” (theal) characteristics that stand in sharp contrast to an absolute mortality and absolute annihilation of the whole noetic-vital person. The punishments that we fear when we have a troubled conscience are not primarily the biological and social consequences of our deed. On the contrary, we could take upon ourselves innumerable such punishments, without their bringing relief in any way to our troubled conscience. Such punishments are basically quite insignificant as far as the anxiety of conscience is concerned. The punishment that is feared by conscience has a “world-transcending” and “religious” (theal) depth and magnitude that cannot be fulfilled anywhere during our empirical life. In repentance and shame of conscience, in religious experiences of forgiven guilt, in peace and tranquility of conscience, and in gratitude of conscience, phenomena disclose themselves to us that cannot be ­harmonized with an absolute mortality of the whole self. (Furthermore, the reproaches of guilt and the pangs of conscience before death cannot refer teleologically back to life.) Either we must take seriously this demand of immortality that lies in the nature of conscience or interpret conscience, per se, as an illusion, a sham, and a subjective sequence of phantasmagoria. In the latter case, however, it remains an oddity that conscience declares its existential seriousness so strongly that any of us, whether or not we believe in God, can fall apart under the weight of our own remorse of conscience. Hence, either conscience is an i­ llusion—in which case the whole of human moral sentiment must be assessed as abnormal and perhaps generally psychopathic (inasmuch

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as it experiences conscience)—or an answer must be sought to the question of i­mmortality, which the essence of conscience demands as a full condition of its meaning. Calvin, who has some very profound phenomenological insights, calls conscience a proof and a confirmation of this immortality, as the dogmas of his theology positively maintain: “For how could a motion without essence penetrate to God’s judgment seat, and inflict itself with dread at its own guilt? The body is not affected by the fear of spiritual punishment, but only the soul, which must therefore be endued with essence.”10 To the extent that the nature of conscience poses macrocosmic questions, it will certainly be worthwhile to explore thoroughly this demand of immortality on the part of ­conscience.11 A related problem also demands our attention—the question, namely, concerning the connection between our biological mortality and evil in the experience of conscience. It calls for our attention because, on the one hand, different religions and theologies (e.g., the Jewish and the Christian) dogmatically posit an essential association between them, and, on the other hand, also because an essential metaphysical connection between them is not easy to demonstrate phenome­ nologically. We wish to express no judgment here concerning the very noteworthy natural-­scientific and natural-philosophical theories about life and death or about the cause of death (e.g., procreation), which would be presumption.12 It is surely permissible, however, to metaphysically examine whether these dogmatic discussions are completely senseless and unwarranted, or whether they may set forth a noteworthy thesis. We discovered earlier (in chapter 5) a striking analogy between the pallor of death in the facial appearance of a corpse (as compared to other, living facial complexions) and the experience of bad conscience (as compared to other moral phenomena)—an analogy based on the ontical symptoms of “death” and “evil” (or “sin”). Does this analogy also have a deeper inner sense and value? Both phenomena—“death” and “evil” (“wickedness,” “sin”)—are catastrophic in nature and have a metaphysi­cally repugnant character. Both destructively break into the flow of that which ideally ought-to-be. Both are absolutely negative. In my opinion it is quite possible for a profound essential agreement to be worked out between the two. Do these ontical phenomena at bottom

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merely stand adjacent to one another, or is there ultimately a basic underlying unity between them? Must we assume that they emerge metaphysically from two diametrically opposed sides and so seek to explain the origin of pain, evil, suffering, death, wickedness, malice, and sin from at least two different sources?—or may we look behind both for an underlying metaphysical unity? Supposing there were a perfect, personal God (as theism does, and as pan-en-theism can), would it not be possible, perhaps even probable, for there to be a real inner connection inside of us between both of these? From a metaphysical standpoint, then, one may not wish prematurely to refuse out of hand a dogmatic thesis such as this. If it is assumed (with these dogmas) that an essential, real, causal connection exists somehow between death and evil (sin), then it can be said that conscience, according to its nature, presupposes our biological mortality and even requires it. There is an analogous phenomenon of “mortality” that shows us the nature of conscience insofar as it already bears witness to the complete conquest in us of the urge to do evil—a phenomenon symbolically expressed in the well-known Christian declaration about “the dying of the old self in us,” which immediately opens up to us the depths of the problem of regeneration here. We thus see in conscience this double aspect of our biological mortality and suprabiological immortality (joined with the idea of regeneration), for the deepest and greatest paradoxes of life and existence are combined in conscience.

Thesis B: Conscience as a deposit of personal insight is fallible and only relatively trustworthy If conscience proper is infallible and its application is personal, objective, and absolute when it makes itself felt in opposition to real personal evil, then “conscience” in the broader sense, which addresses that which is good and evil for me, based on life experience and the insight gained to the best of my knowledge and belief, is probably subjectively absolute. At least this would be true to the extent that the testimony of conscience developed in tandem with our subjectively highest insights and remained in constant touch with those insights, and insofar as it was

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also (subjectively) absolutely binding and we remained completely convinced by it. But this does not mean that it is objectively absolute, for the accent in the question of fallibility is here moved back from the evil felt in me to that which is recognized as evil, and conscience can (in this sense) certainly err and mislead me concerning specific objective cases of good and evil, insofar as it aims to recognize the objective truth about them.13 Here conscience can and should be trusted—relatively, but not absolutely—since in principle the possibility of erring and self-­deception cannot be ruled out. In this sense we can speak of a conscience that errs (in the sphere of intellectually acquired moral knowledge), deceives (in the sphere of intuitively grasped moral values), doubts, advises, reminds, and so on. When in doubt concerning the value of an action, we should be prudent rather than foolish and require that we allow ourselves to be guided by recognized “authorities” who see matters with greater insight and objectivity. There are always those with a deeper view of such problems than the average person, especially those who embody the highest moral ideals and are regarded as role models for all people and all times. Since morality draws its highest level of vitality from religion, the greatest representatives of religion (homines religiosi) must not be forgotten here. The fact that moral error and deception are intellectually possible gives ample empirical justification to the standpoint of authority. To the extent that I see things correctly, my insight is my own, but where I can see no farther and the lines blur and disappear in a fog, I ought to trust the views of those who have seen more deeply than I and who I know stand on the moral high ground. Where I am no longer able to see, I am not entitled to offer preferences for one thing over another, since I could just as easily come to evil as to good in such a way. Where I can no longer see, guiding principles, moral rules, divine commands and prohibitions become more binding than ever. This is the precise point where religion can perform an extraordinary service. The boundary between insight and authority blurs toward both edges, and it is not the same for everyone; some require more authority, others less. But since morality attains its highest and purest luminosity in religion, it is also from this sphere that we may expect the most unambiguous answer that can be given to all doubts of conscience. The relative fallibility of conscience in this sense is so obvious that there is no need to entertain the notion any further, especially since the

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present work is devoted primarily to conscience proper. To examine the  fallibility of conscience in the broader sense would lead us into the problem of the verifiability and relativity of values in general, which Scheler has worked out in detail in his Formalismus, and which falls outside the task of the present work. It is important to recognize here that conscience in this sense is no more trustworthy than (and just as fallible as) our knowledge of moral values and laws. This leads us to a correlative problem: the question of the teachability of conscience. If the conscience is relatively fallible, how can I make it as reliable as possible? Can conscience be educated, and, if so, in what respect and in what way? “Conscience proper” transcends any form of direct education. To directly influence one’s actual conscience, either by means of self-­ education or education by another, is impossible. This already follows from the fact that the phenomenon comes and goes independently of any will to be educated, and it is only indirectly capable of being influenced by the will at all. Is “conscience proper” then capable of being influenced indirectly? If so, then we must ask how and to what extent? Knowledge (both intellectual and intuitive) and love (the “urge to do good” of voluntarism) are essential necessities for the formation and development of any conscience. Without these, it would not develop. They play a fundamental role in which conscience, in the course of its formation, adapts itself to their influence. These factors themselves, however, are probably capable of being directly influenced, so that it may be possible to influence conscience proper indirectly through them. By influencing and altering intellectual moral knowledge, intuitive moral insight, and voluntary urges of the will, one may also indirectly influence “conscience proper.” Intellectual moral knowledge can be amplified and deepened, and in relation to intuitive insight (value-feeling), it has the advantage of retaining a residue from earlier life experiences, which forms a type of deposit of earlier understanding that it has at its disposal, while intuitive insight must on every occasion perceive what it sees anew. Intuitive insight has the merit of being more lively, real, and concrete. Intellectual understanding has the merit of relative stability in relation to possible intuitive fluctuations, since the same objective values are not always ade­quately “felt.” Intuition, again, has the advantage of direct emotional immersion in the act of apprehending values. The cooperation of both

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is necessary. On the one hand, one’s intellectual understanding must be objectively broadened and clarified as much as possible. On the other hand, one’s intuitive capacity for value-feeling must be fine-tuned to be as sensitive and receptive as possible. An intellectual sermon on morals never has as much effect as the direct feeling of value and disvalue. In this regard, the capacity to feel is  one of the most beautiful but challenging problems of education. Though his approach is not completely without value, Friedrich Wilhelm Förster’s mistake lies in putting too much stock in the former ­approach of intellectual sermonizing on morals (he actually censures this approach, but he reverts to it in the course of developing his own theory). Nevertheless, such sermonizing on morals usually drives most listeners far away from any possible experience of values, leaving them cold and indifferent. This is particularly the case where an initial love of the topic, in the moral sermonizer and the listener, is lacking or fails to break through. But where both are animated by such love, a sermon on morals is not worthless and does not so quickly lose its capacity to influence, especially if it is short and powerful. Too many digressions are fatal to the desired effect. So if education is meant to develop moral understanding and the capacity for value-feeling as much as possible, it must give a still larger role to volitional factors, such as “the urge to do good” or to “love.” Every­thing depends in the final analysis on whether conscience develops or not. To awaken and increase love—the love for everything of value and for everything that can be made more valuable by loving—is the basic challenge involved in the instruction of conscience. Love calls us to give ourselves to and sacrifice ourselves for our beloved. We see here directly the value of the ideal role model. It is hard to imagine our having much success in morally educating our children by trying to impose on them, for their own sake, a disingenuous model of behavior and attitudes at odds with our own disposition and character. Such a contrived, cold, and loveless model of morality would amount to little more than a caricature, and most children would sense immediately its unnatural and stilted quality, and laugh and sneer at it. Parenting of this sort quickly degrades itself to a parody, turning parents into moral impersonators engaged in a dark comedy that ends up having the opposite

The Reliability of Conscience  291

of the intended effect. Here we see plainly, as in Kant’s ideal example of the duty-bound person, that if teachers wish to give their pupils a calculating model of duty, it can work negatively and have the opposite effect. By contrast, love works positively. It offers an example and does not even need the intention of posing an example, but it already is so in and of itself. The highest example educators can give their pupils, and at the same time the most natural, most authentic, and most influential, is to lovingly devote themselves to our objective duties, to lovingly sacrifice themselves for the education of their young, to lovingly realize the positive ideal of the “ought to be” held forth in love itself, to lovingly commit themselves to religion, surrender themselves to God, to help the poor and needy. Such love, animating everything they do, has a far deeper impact upon a pupil than the categorical imperatives of duty or intellectual moralizing of sermons. Even teachers working with poor educational methods amidst inadequate circumstances, provided they have love, have an infinitely more positive and character-building influence than those who teach in lustrous, palatial schools with the most excellent and impressive educational techniques but lack love. The love shown by teachers establishes mutual love even where their love is frustrated or clouded over because of the disobedience of certain children. With such love they can awaken these children’s own initial love and thereby deepen their insight and refine their capacity for value-feeling, thus eliciting a heightened conscientiousness. Thus if we develop moral knowledge, insight, and love as well as possible, it follows at least indirectly that conscience is also likewise ­influenced in the best possible way. The basic requirement for the edu­ cator remains what it always has been: “Be authentic in everything”—­ otherwise you will lead your children into falsehood. Nothing promotes mendacity in children so quickly as disingenuousness and lack of love in the example of their parents, because the demeanor that the parents wish to exemplify and convey to their child—is a lie. “Be authentic: do not lie with your tongue, or with your demeanor or eyes.” The adverse effects and dangers of the latter are greater and more deadly than those of the former. This demand of authenticity applies to everything—to the attitude of parents toward their own tradition and toward their own personal insights. Nothing corrupts and erodes one’s character more

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directly than lies. Thus the education of one’s conscience is nearly the same thing as formation of character or moral education. Since religious experience touches the deepest levels within a child, it is apparent that the best education of conscience (to the extent that this is indirectly possible) resides in the opening of the childlike heart to the depths of religious truths. One could add many other factors such as these that all promote conscientiousness (or diligence) and cultivate the soil for the plant of conscience, “this most uncanny plant of earthly vegetation,”14 to make it as fertile as possible—but these would lead us too far afield. The important outcome is that conscience proper can be influenced or trained only indirectly, whereas conscience in the broader sense can be influenced directly. Conscience and conscientiousness require integrity and firmness of character, and this is the highest ideal that education can achieve: a morally upright and resolute character, which finds its greatest joy in serving God and helping others. The most exalted conscientiousness is not bound, in the first place, to the contingencies of this or that act of duty, or this or that requirement. It is not found primarily in carrying out a thousand duties to their tiniest detail, but rather in the basic integrity and resoluteness of high moral character. The primary requirement of conscientiousness is a comprehensive disposition toward one’s surroundings. An examination of conscience is an exceedingly valuable method of educating conscience—quite apart from the Catholic Church’s conventions in the matter, in which it always remains questionable whether it is right to bind people to confess to another human being what they can really admit fully in the depths of their heart only to God. It is an undoubted requirement of those of high moral character to examine themselves and improve their capacity for sensing evil and to tune their ears to hear the sound of evil as sharply as possible. If we were perfectly good, there would be no need for such a requirement. However, since evil exists, and since that which “ought not to be” exists, such a requirement summons us as an objective duty to surrender ourselves willingly to the task of purifying our heart and character. If conscience is obviously elevated above all duty and transcends every duty as such, then conscientiousness remains within the bounds of an objective call of

The Reliability of Conscience  293

duty. We have no duty of conscience, though we probably have a duty to be conscientious. The highest act of human moral self-development is to respond to this summons of duty from a heart of love, as opposed to a feeling of duty. As Herman Bavinck observes: It is a duty for everyone to form his conscience, to purify its contents and rid it of false elements. The conscience is of an immeasurable weight. It is an insurmountable power in each person and in a whole people. It is not, however, the highest power. It knows no salvation, but only guilt, reproach, and pain.15 It cannot give us salvation, a full cleansing of our heart, or pardon of our guilt, but it does show us the direction from which these may be ­acquired—through positive religious experiences, and through entering into a personal relationship with God in order to receive from Him the merciful forgiveness of sin. In the Christian religion, which provides exactly what conscience requires as a response to its natural summons— namely, tidings of salvation from guilt and sin—conscience finds its highest authorization and most splendid fulfillment of its deepest conditions of meaning.

Notes

Editor’s Foreword 1. [Landsberg, Wesen und Bedeutung. See bibliography.] 2.  [For the first reference, see Scheler, Formalismus (4th ed., 1954), 331– 41; and the translation, Scheler, Formalism in Ethics, 317–28. For the second reference, see Scheler, “Reue und Wiedergeburt,” and its translation, Scheler, “Repentance and Rebirth.”]

Author’s Preface 1.  [Stoker uses the Dutch variant “Buijtendijck” in this sentence, which is not enclosed in parentheses in the original text.] 2.  [Stoker basically uses the term “ontical” or “ontic” to refer to that which is most real, most interior, essential, and basic in the nature and being of a person or thing. See the discussion of “ontical” in the translator’s introduction.]

Chapter 1  Current Scholarship and Orientation 1.  F. J. J. Buytendijk refers to Scheler’s phenomenological psychology as “depth-psychology.” See his articles on Scheler in the weekly paper De Refor294

Notes to Pages 12–20  295

matie (Amsterdam, 1921) [Buytendijk, “Kennis der Ziele-Diepte”; “Over het Berouw”; “Over het Ressentiment”; and “De Deemoed.”] 2.  [By “atomistic psychology” (Elementenpsychologie), Stoker is referring to empirico-positivistic theories like those of Gustav Fechner (1801–87), Richard Avenarius (1843–96), and Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), according to which the psyche was conceived as capable of analysis into discrete, empirically identifiable elements. David Hume (1711–76) and David Hartley (1705–57) are considered the founders of the associationist school of psychology, of which James Mill (1773–1836), John Stuart Mill (1806–73), and Alexander Bain (1818–1903) were later exponents.] 3.  [Here Stoker is referring to the last three parts of his work, which, following the introduction (chapters 1, 2, and Excursus), are devoted to “The Nature of Conscience” (chapters 3–7), “The Genesis of Conscience” (chapters 8–9), and “The Reliability of Conscience” (chapter 10).] 4. [Rée, Die Entstehung des Gewissens.] 5.  [Stoker never produced a major subsequent work on conscience, but he did suggest some further development in his interpretation of conscience in his later English essay titled “A Phenomenological Analysis of Conscience.”]

Chapter 2  The Ambiguity of Conscience 1. Jodl, Allgemeine Ethik, 326. 2. Rothe, Theologische Ethik, 21–29. 3. Külpe, Einleitung in die Philosophie, 348, §4. 4.  [An allusion to Scheler’s work, Vom Ewigen im Menschen/On the Eternal in Man.] 5.  What we are claiming here may be compared to what is frequently the case in our experience—namely, that the closer things stand to the center of interest in a given age, the more ambiguous the names for those things seem to become. The same holds for the names of things that have a constant importance for individuals, such as the word “life” today, for example. 6.  The following works may be consulted in connection with the following etymological section: Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch (1881); Heyne, Deutsches Wörterbuch (1890–95); Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854); Wander, Deutsches Sprichwörter-Lexikon (1867); Von Düringsfeld and Von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Sprichwörter (1872–75); Von Lipperheide, Spruchwörterbuch (1907); Herzog, ed., Real-Enzyklopädie (1877–88).

296  Notes to Pages 21–25

Franck, Etymologisch Woordenboek; Verwijs and Verdam, Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek; De Vries and Kruyskamp, Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (1912). Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (1911); The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907–14). Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue Française (1863–73); Larousse, Nouveau Larousse Illustré (1894–1904); Larousse, Dictionnaire de la langue Française (1872). Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1893–1949); Forcellini, Lexion Totius Latinitatis (1864–87). Estienne, Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (1831–65); Sophocles, Greek Lexicon (1887). 7.  Kähler, “Gewissen.” 8. Herzog, Real-Enzyklopädie. 9. Ritschl, Über das Gewissen. 10.  No more than the lack of certain names for colors in Homer’s writings would indicate that these colors had not yet been perceived in Homer’s time does the absence of a consistent word for “conscience” indicate that it was not experienced. It is often the case that, even in the development of language, the best-known things are precisely those that receive no special names. 11.  αἰδώς (αἰδέομαι), αἰσχύνη (αἰσχύνομαι), νέμεσις, σέβας, δίχη, το νόμιμον, φόβος, δέος, ἀλάστως, μιασμός, συννοῖα, σύνεσις (by Euripides for the remorse of Orestes; by Menander for “conscience makes cowards”), σύνοιδα, το συνειδός (for “guilty conscience” by Euripides and Aristophanes), ἐνθύμιον, γνώμη τῇ αρίστῃ, etc. 12.  Jones, “Conscience.” Compare with these quotations, however, what The Catholic Encyclopaedia says: “Neither for ‘obligation’ nor for ‘conscience’ had the Greeks a fixed term. Still the pleasures of a good conscience and the pains of an evil one were well set forth in the fragments, called by Stobaeus περι τοῦ συνείδοτος. These various quotations confirm the important fact, noted by Kähler (“Gewissen,” 11n), that the Greeks were familiar only with the “reprimanding conscience” whose influence is felt subsequent to an act, and that they were unacquainted with a “legislative, motivating conscience” whose influence precedes an act. Moreover, The Catholic Encyclopedia still uses “conscience” for ήε φρώνεσις, as does Sophocles’s Greek Lexicon, for ἡ ἔμφυτος. 13.  See Gerland, Das Gewissen, 262–303, not only for the referenced quotation, but for the other examples that immediately follow. 14.  [The reference here is to the painting Assassin Pursued by Furies (1870), by Arnold Böcklin.] 15. [Gerland, Das Gewissen.]

Notes to Pages 26–29  297

16. Rousseau, Emile, bk. 4, from the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” 17. Hatzfeld, Einführung in die Sprachphilosophie, 21. 18. Ibid. 19.  One’s conscience also may be “twisted,” “artistic,” “alive,” “loving,” “effortless,” “rash,” “admonishing,” “keeping watch,” “blood-spattered,” “courageous,” “gnawing,” “new,” “open,” “public,” “official,” “pharisaical,” “tested,” “private,” “prejudiced,” “pure,” “agonizing,” “raging,” “advising,” “expansive,” “quiet,” “righteous,” “governing,” “honest,” “pure,” “tearing,” “remorseful,” “judging,” “mild,” “sharp,” “shamming,” “timid,” “wounding,” “puny,” “stinging,” “dormant,” “weak,” “heavy,” “guilty,” “sure,” “worried,” “upright,” “strong,” “proud,” “punishing,” “dull,” “stormy,” “erring,” “deceiving,” “raging,” “dead,” “sad,” “trusty,” “uncontaminated,” “unhappy,” “impatient,” “incorruptible,” “judging,” “uninjured,” “unscathed,” “insurmountable,” “dishonest,” “damning,” “borrowed,” “betraying,” “convicting,” “injured,” “despairing,” “warning,” “esteeming,” “timorous,” “tender,” “testifying,” “wavering,” “doubting,” “compelling,” etc. 20.  One’s conscience also may “bite,” “soothe,” “rack,” “torture,” “torment,” “sleep,” “bludgeon,” be “stirred,” be “shamed,” “storm,” “err,” “deceive,” “warn,” “despair,” be “angry,” “doubt,” etc. One may “appeal to” it, “bind” it, “question” it, “express” it, “summon” it, “adapt” it, “set it in motion,” etc. Prompted by conscience, one may act, kill, etc. One can, in good conscience, constrain, give, take, speak, adapt, write, bind, etc. One can “have the conscience for” [doing] something, etc. One may “have a conscience,” “have no conscience,” “have not much of a conscience,” “form one’s conscience,” etc. One can act, hope, and so on “with,” “without,” or “against” conscience. One acts “unconscionably,” “conscientiously,” “with the best of consciences,” etc. In connection with conscience, one knows penitence, anxiety, questions, fear, freedom, distress, growth, pain, advice, concern, scruples, compulsion, etc. One knows an “abyss of conscience,” “thorns of conscience,” “stains of conscience,” “arrows of conscience,” the “touchstone of conscience,” “storms of conscience,” “accusations of conscience,” the “worm of conscience,” etc. 21.  “Conscience is cowardly; and if it is not strong enough to avoid wrong, it is rarely so right as to accuse itself.” “Nothing in the world is more easily ­deceived—not even women or princes—than conscience.” “To have no conscience characterizes the highest and the lowest, for while it is nonexistent only in God, it is nevertheless found truncated even in animals.” “Conscience is the incorruptible and unfailing judge whose judgment reaches even those who try to shut themselves off from it, no matter how hard they try.” “A bad conscience

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is a coward, which soon fears everything.” “A bad conscience is an unwelcome visitor, who gives one neither quiet nor rest.” “Conscience does not permit itself to be mastered or constrained.” “A good conscience is like a calendar in which one finds only days of sunshine.” “A pure, clean conscience is more precious than gold or jewels.” “A bad conscience believes that all its sins are written upon its forehead.” “A good conscience does not fear a thousand lawyers.” “A bad conscience flees even from toothless beetles.” “A good conscience is better than a tasty morsel.” “One whose conscience sleeps is easy prey for the devil.” “Whoever has a bad conscience thinks everyone is talking about him.” “A warm stove won’t comfort a bad conscience.” “He has no more conscience than a greedy mutt who hoards even what he can’t eat.” “If his conscience were a chest of drawers, one would find a prankster in each one.” Etc., etc. 22.  [See Wander, Deutsches Sprichwörter-Lexikon.] 23.  Accordingly, in French we find: “conscience paisible,” “tranquille,” “heureuse,” “timide,” “delicate,” “scrupuleuse,” “alarmée,” “trompée,” “large,” “facile,” “fermée,” etc.; and in Latin: “magna vis conscientia”; “adversarium erubuisse,” “expalluisse,” “quae signa connscientiae est”; “angor conscientiae”; “ipsa sibi carnifex conscientia est”; “mea mihi conscientia pluris est quam omnium sermo”; “conscientia mentem vexat”; “conscientia mille testes,” etc. 24.  See, respectively, Leslie Stephen, as quoted in Cronin, Science of Ethics, 1:466 [Stoker has “p. 491,” and references here two authors, both of whom produced books by the same title: (1) Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), the ­English philosopher, critic, father of Virginia Woolf, and author of The Science of Ethics (1882); and (2) the Rev. Michael Cronin, author of the work cited first above, which contains numerous references to Stephen’s work.]; Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (cited in Cronin, Science of Ethics, 480); Josiah Royce (cited in Cronin, Science of Ethics, 481); Lindworsky, Experimentelle Psychologie, 269; Christian Wolff (cited in Eisler, Wörterbuch, vol. 1, under “Gewissen”); Josef Klemens Kreibig (cited in Eisler, Wörterbuch); and Bavinck, Kennis en Leven, 24. 25.  [Stoker is alluding to Ockham’s “law of parsimony” (lex parsimoniae), commonly known as “Ockham’s razor.”] 26.  [“Reality” has been substituted for Stoker’s more nebulous “being” (Sein) here and in the preceding sentence.] 27.  [Stoker is here alluding to Scheler’s concept of God as a “Person of Persons,” corresponding to the idea of a single identical world (macrocosm) embracing the multiplicity of worlds (microcosms) corresponding to individual persons. Cf. Formalismus, 406–8, and Formalism in Ethics, 396–98.] 28.  Buytendijk would call this an arrogant position. See his Beschou­ wingen.

Notes to Pages 35–36  299

Excursus 1.  [More commonly synderesis, but Stoker’s use of synteresis is actually more accurate as a transliteration of the Greek συντήρησις, which scholars generally believe to have originated as a corruption of the Greek συνείδησις in medieval manuscripts of St. Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel (Commentariorum in Hiezechielem). For example, see Kries, “Origen, Plato, and Conscience,” 67; and see Verplaetse, Localizing the Moral Sense, 3, who says that as early as 1878, the German philologist F. A. B. Nitzsch (1832–98) “suspected that synderesis was a textual corruption of syneidesis,” but he had to wait until his discovery of several eleventh- and twelfth-century manuscripts in 1898 for “definitive confirmation”; see Nitzsch, Die Idee und die Stufen des Opferkultus. Stoker, however, favors an alternative hypothesis, as we shall see below.] 2.  “Non opus est hic sollicite distinguere συντήρησιν [see below] a conscientia. Fictum id vocabulum est, quo nec scriptura utitur, neque alius bonus auctor, nec vulgus in illa significatione, ut notes notitiam recti contrarii et ipsam legem naturae sive, ut quidam dicunt partem animae, quae semper adversatur vitiis. Cuius notionis [Stoker has “notioris”] exemplum non invenio in lexicis”; Johannes Cocceius, Lexicon et Commentarius, Opp. 2. ed. 1. Tim. ep. 1, 3 §16—cited by Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen, 216. [The Greek term used by Cocceius here, synteresin (συντήρησιν, “careful watching”) is a cognate of synteresis (συντήρησις), which, along with syneidesis (συνείδησις), sometimes also appears in these discussions about conscience.] 3.  [See Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen.] 4.  [More accurately, the three parts (or powers) of the soul are the logistikon (λογιστικόν), thymoeidēs (θυμοειδές), and epithumētikon (ἐπιθυμητικόν). These are distinguished clearly by Dooyeweerd, Reformation and Scholasticism, 158, as follows: “Beginning with the Phaedrus, the nous is for Plato only the highest and noblest part of the soul, the logistikon, which in a normative sense leads and governs the other parts. It is opposed by the part that is the seat of sensual desire (the epithumētikon) and that is controlled as such by the blind matter principle with its lack of form and measure. Intermediate between these two antagonistic parts stands that part of the soul (the thumo-eidēs) that is always ready to follow the leadership of the logistikon and reacts in anger whenever sensual desire manages to get the upper hand.”] [Referring to the animal forms (man, lion, and ox) used to represent these powers, Gaffney, Matters of Faith and Morals, 124, writes: “Jerome observes that ‘most people’ equate the first three figures with Plato’s three parts of the soul”; and Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen, 390, which Stoker later cites, says that these

300  Notes to Pages 36–38

­ arallels are employed by “most Greeks in a Platonic way.” Stoker also has Kalb p (“calf ”) for the last of these animal forms, but the conventional reference is “ox.”] 5.  “quartamque ponunt, quae super haec et extra haec tria est, quam Graeci vocant συντήρησις, quae scintilla conscientiae in Adami quoue pectore, postquam ejectus est de paradiso, non extinguitur, et qua victi voluptatibus vel furore ipsaque interdum rationis similitudine nos peccare sentimus. Quam proprie aquilae deputant non se miscentem tribus, sed tria errantia corrigentem, quam in scripturis interdum vocari legimus spiritum, qui interpellat pro nobis gemitibus ineffabilibus [Stoker has “inenarrabilibus”] (Rom. 8:26). Nemo enim scit ea, qui hominis sunt, nisi spiritus, qui in eo est (1 Cor. 2:11). Quem et Paulus ad Thessalonicenses scribens cum anima et corpora [Stoker has “corpori”] servari integrum deprecatur (1 Thess. 5:23).” Concerning the visions of Ezekiel 1:4–10, see opp. 5. ed. Vallars. Veron. 1736, 10—cited by Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen, 220. See also Gaß, Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik, 1:390. [Jerome’s Latin paraphrases of these New Testament texts here are quite free and imprecise. Many discussions of the first part of this passage in English translation have “in the breast of Cain, after he was cast out of paradise” here. This makes no sense, however, for two reasons: (1) Cain was never in paradise, but was born only after Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise; and (2) it does not accurately translate the Latin that Stoker has here, which is: “in Adami quove pectore, postquam ejectus est de paradiso.”] 6. Cathrein, Moralphilosophie, 1:469, is also of the opinion that synteresis (συντήρησις) is a misspelling of syneidesis (συνείδησις). 7.  [This sentence in Stoker’s text is grammatically problematic and nearly unintelligible, and has been translated in light of the passage in Gaß, Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik, 1:390, to which he is alluding, and interpreted in such a way as to render it consistent with the rest of Stoker’s argument.] 8.  [“Zahnel” is not identified by Stoker and does not appear to be referenced in the relevant literature, unless it is, perhaps, a misspelling of “Zahn,” from the patristic scholar Theodor Zahn (1883–1933).] 9.  [Albertus Magnus, Summa de Creaturis, II, q. 71, a. 1, writes: “Syn­teresis secundum suum nomen sonat haesionem quandam per scientiam boni et mali; componitur enim ex graeca praepositione “syn” et “haeresis,” quod idem est quod opinio (Stoker has “apinio”) vel scientia haerens in aliquo per rationem. Videtur quod synteresis sit quoddam conjunctum omnibus viribus superioribus animae;—synteresis est rectitudo manens in singulis viribus concordans rectitudini primae.”]

Notes to Pages 38–41  301

10. Windelband, Lehrbuch, 280. 11.  Kähler, “Gewissen.” 12. Ibid. 13.  Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, II, q. 73: “Synteresis lumen est naturae inclinans ad bonum et remurmurans malo.” 14.  “. . . an sit synteresis potentia vel habitus? An sit ratio vel voluntas vel alia potentia ab his differens? An secundum synteresin peccare sit? An extingui possit?”; cited by Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen. 15.  “. . . voluntas rationalis appetens bonum, dissentiens malo. Synteresis vis est motiva, quae semper nata est figi in superioribus, naturaliter [Stoker has “naturalitur”] movens et stimulans ad bonum et abhorrens malum, et in istis nunquam errat, necque secundum synteresim est peccare.” 16.  Albertus Magnus, Summa Theologiae, pt. 2, tr. 16, q. 99: “Rationis practicae scintilla, semper inclinans ad bonum et remurmurans malo; in nullo, nec viatore, nec damnato extinguitur in toto.” See De Quattuor Coaequaevis, pt. 1, in Summa de Creaturis, pt. 2, tr. 1, qq. 69–70, 225, cited by Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, 1:583; and Eisler, Wörterbuch, under “Synteresis.” Cf. Albertus Magnus, Summa de Creaturis, pt. 2, q. 69; Summa Theologiae, pt. 2, q. 99; Commentarii in IV Libros Sententiarum, II, dist. 24. [vol. 28 of Borgnet edition]; Compendium Theologicae Veritatis, chap. 51, cited by Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen, 227. 17.  [Stoker has “Antonius,” an alternate spelling for Antoninus of Florence (1389–1459).] 18.  St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 12: “Synteresis non quaedam specialis potentia est ratione altior, velut natura, sed habitus quidam naturalis principiorum operabilium, sicut intellectus habitus [Stoker has “habites”] est principiorum speculabilium, et non potentia aliqua.” [Stoker is here following the Latin text, not of the Textum Leoninum Romae 1889 editum, but of the Conclusio following the Sed contra in S. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, Tomus Secundus, 15th ed., ed. Jean Nicolaï, François ­Sylvius, Charles-René Billuart, and Claude Joseph Drioux (Paris: Apud Bloud et Barral, Bibliopolas, 1890), 71–72.] 19.  Ibid., a. 13: “Conscientia si proprie sumatur, potentia non est sed actus, quo scientiam nostram ad ea, quae agimus, applicamus: quam applicationem sequitur vel testificatio, vel ligatio, vel excusatio.” 20.  Ibid., a. 12: “Synteresis dicitur lex intellectus nostri in quantum est habitus continens praecepta legis naturalis, quae sunt prima principia operum humanorum.” 21. Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen, 49.

302  Notes to Pages 41–46

22. Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik. 23.  St. Antoninus of Florence, Sancti Antonini archiepiscopi Florentini ordini praedicatorum, Summa Theologica, 1. c., op. 10, cited by Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen, 51: “Fit in animo vel in mente hominis quasi quidam syllogismus cuius majorem praemittit synteresis dicens, omne malum esse vitandum. Minorem vere huius syllogismi assumit ratio superior dicens, adulterium esse malum, quia prohibitum est a Deo: ratio vero inferior dicit, adulterium esse malum, quia vel est injustum vel quia est inhonestum. Conscientia vero infert conclusionem dicens et concludens ex supradictis, ergo adulterium est ­vitandum.” 24. [Stoker translates “solvere et ligare” collectively as “verpflichten” (“oblige”).] 25.  Cf. Kähler, in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopädie, under “Gewissen.” 26. Ibid. 27.  [This distinction parallels that between Cartesian rationalism (according to which ideas are innate to the mind) and British empiricism (according to which ideas originate in sense experience).] 28. Butler, Fifteen Sermons, 1–48. 29.  [Ibid., from Butler’s preface.] 30.  [Butler is referring to our personal moral constitution, or what we might call our moral “character” or “disposition.”] 31. [Ibid.] 32.  [Ibid., Sermon I: “Upon the Social Nature of Man—Rom. 12:4–5.”] 33. [Ibid.] 34.  [Ibid.] He distinguishes also an antecedent and subsequent conscience: “The antecedent or directive conscience tells us what we are to do, and the subsequent and reflective conscience warns us what we are to receive.” [Here Stoker is following Pearson, An Exposition, art. 7, 347, as cited in Bernard, ed., Works of Bishop Butler, 45n7.] 35. [Butler, Fifteen Sermons, Sermon II: “The Natural Supremacy of ­Conscience—Rom. 2:14.”] 36.  Introduction, Kant, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre, 400. [Pagination is from the German critical edition of 1797. Cf. Mary J. ­Gregor’s translation, Kant, Doctrine of Virtue, 60–61, which I closely follow here and below. Hereafter these works will by cited as Tugendlehre and Doctrine of Virtue.] 37. [Ibid.] 38.  Tugendlehre, 401; [Doctrine of Virtue, 61]. 39. [Ibid.]

Notes to Pages 46–51  303

40.  Tugendlehre, pt. 1, §13ff., 437–38; [Doctrine of Virtue, 103], added emphasis Kant’s. 41.  One thinks, among other things, of the beautiful section in the ­Critique of Pure Reason (“Doctrine of the Elements,” pt. 2, div. 1, bk. 2, chap. 3: “The Ground of the Distinction of All Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena”), where Kant begins: “We have now . . . traveled through the land of pure understanding. . . . This land, however, is an island . . .” etc. [Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 235/B 294.] 42.  Tugendlehre, 438; [Doctrine of Virtue, 103–4]. 43.  Tugendlehre, 438–39; [Doctrine of Virtue, 104]. 44.  Tugendlehre, 439; [Doctrine of Virtue, 105]. 45.  Pt. 1, bk. 1, chap. 3, Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Vorländer ed. (1922), 2:126. [Cf. Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 3:98–99. Lewis White Beck’s translation of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, 101–2, is followed closely here. Note: Stoker’s original text does not indicate where he is directly quoting Kant and where his own words begin in this paragraph.] 46. Scheler, Von Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), erste Abhandlung, “Reue und Wiedergeburt,” 5–58. [Cf. Scheler, “Repentance and Rebirth,” 33–68.] 47. Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen, bk. 4, pt. 2, §41 [Cf. Kant, Religion within the Limits, 173–74, which is followed closely here. Note: in Stoker’s original text, this quotation from Kant’s Religion is embedded in a paragraph where it is not entirely clear where Stoker is quoting and/or paraphrasing in his own words.] 48. [Schopenhauer, Über die Grundlage der Moral, 177; On the Basis of Morality, 113. These will be cited hereafter as Grundlage der Moral and Basis of Morality. The added emphasis in the foregoing quotation is the translator’s. Otherwise all other emphasis is from the original source text.] 49.  Grundlage der Moral, §10. [Stoker has §13, but this appears to be an error. See Schopenhauer, Grundlage der Moral, §10, 176–77, and Basis of ­Morality, 112.] 50.  Grundlage der Moral, §10 and §20. [Stoker’s sentence is actually a ­composite of two disparate texts, one in §10, the other in §20. Cf. Schopenhauer, Grundlage der Moral, §10, 177, and §20, 258; and Basis of Morality, 113 and 196.] 51.  Grundlage der Moral, §16, 209–10; [Basis of Morality, 145]. 52.  Grundlage der Moral, §20, 259; [Basis of Morality, 197]. 53.  Grundlage der Moral, §13, 192. [Cf. Basis of Morality, 127, which is followed in the two foregoing quotations.] 54.  Grundlage der Moral, §16, 208–9; [Basis of Morality, 144].

304  Notes to Pages 52–55

55.  [Cf. Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille, 1:440, and Payne’s translation of Schopenhauer, World as Will, 341, which is followed loosely below.] 56.  Welt als Wille, 466; [World as Will, 362–63]. 57. [Welt als Wille, 469–71]; [World as Will, 364–65.] 58.  Welt als Wille, 469–71. [World as Will, 364–66. Stoker’s quotations here are amalgamations of noncontiguous sentences from Schopenhauer’s text. Payne’s translation is loosely followed here.] 59.  Welt als Wille, 478; [World as Will, 372]. 60. Nietzsche, Genealogie der Moral, 1, Abhandlung, §2. [Cf. the English translation by Kaufmann and Hollingdale in Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 461–62, which is loosely followed here, along with consultation of Francis Golfing’s translation in The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, 149–299.] 61.  Genealogie der Moral, Vorrede, §6; [Genealogy of Morals, 465]. 62.  [This French term for “resentment” was first introduced as a philosophical and psychological term by the nineteenth-century philosopher Kierke­ gaard, then independently taken up by Nietzsche and used with an expanded range of meaning, allegedly because of the absence of a proper equivalent term in the German language, according to Kaufmann, “Editor’s Introduction, Section 3,” Genealogy of Morals. See also the important 1912 essay by Scheler, in its expanded 1919 edition, Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen, translated into English as Ressentiment.] 63.  Genealogie der Moral, 1, Abhandlung, §8; [Genealogy of Morals, ­470–71]. 64.  Genealogie der Moral, 1, Abhandlung, §10. [Genealogy of Morals, ­472–75; Stoker leaves unexpressed Nietzsche’s thesis here that the self-­ identification of the ignoble as “good” evolves only as a pendant afterthought to their resentful reaction against the noble as “evil.”] 65.  Genealogie der Moral, 1, Abhandlung, §14; [Genealogy of Morals, ­482–84]. 66.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §2; [Genealogy of Morals, ­494–96]. 67.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §3; [Genealogy of Morals, 497]. 68.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §3; [Genealogy of Morals, ­496–98]. 69.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §4; [Genealogy of Morals, ­498–99]. 70.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §9. [Cf. Genealogy of Morals, 507–8; Stoker does not always indicate where he is directly quoting Nietzsche in this paragraph.]

Notes to Pages 55–60  305

71.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §10; [Genealogy of Morals, ­508–9]. 72.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §14; [Genealogy of Morals, 517]. 73.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §14; [Genealogy of Morals, ­517–18]. 74.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §16; [Genealogy of Morals, 520]. 75.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §16; [Genealogy of Morals, ­520–21]. 76.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §11; [see also §17; Genealogy of Morals, 475–79; 522–23]. 77.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §17; [Genealogy of Morals, ­522–23]. 78.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §18; [Genealogy of Morals, ­523–24]. 79.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §19; [Genealogy of Morals, ­524–26]. 80.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §20; [Genealogy of Morals, ­526–27]. 81.  Genealogie der Moral, 2, Abhandlung, §§21–25; [Genealogy of Morals, 527–32]. 82. Freud, Das Ich und das Es (1923) and Massenpsychologie, 7 (1921). [Cf. Freud, Ego and the Id and Group Psychology, sec. 7, both of which can be found in The Major Works of Sigmund Freud and The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, both edited by James Strachey.] 83.  [“Cathexis” refers to the concentration of libidinous psychic energy on an object. The expression “object-cathexis” is used by Strachey, Group Psychology, 678–79, in translating “Objektbesetzung.”] 84.  [The source for this quotation is Freud’s Das Ich und das Es, sec. 3; Ego and the Id, sec. 3, “The Ego and the Super-Ego (Ego-Ideal),” 705; but see also the parallel passage in his Massenpsychologie, sec. 7; Group Psychology, sec. 7, 679.] 85.  [Typically called the Electra complex, as proposed by Carl Gustav Jung.] 86. [See Das Ich und das Es, sec. 3; Ego and the Id, sec. 3, 706. In Stoker’s original text, this passage is not in the form of a block quotation, but embedded in the text without indication of where it ends.] 87.  [The following block quotation is an amalgamation of quotations from various different parts of Das Ich und das Es (Ego and the Id), not spe­ cifically identified by Stoker, but taken from secs. 3 and 4, as indicated below.

306  Notes to Pages 60–70

Accordingly, ellipses have been inserted to indicate breaks between passages with different sources, and sources have been noted.] 88. [See Das Ich und das Es, sec. 3; Ego and the Id, sec. 3, 706.] 89. [Das Ich und das Es, sec. 3; Ego and the Id, sec. 3, 707.] 90. [Das Ich und das Es, sec. 3; Ego and the Id, sec. 3, 707.] 91. [Das Ich und das Es, sec. 5; Ego and the Id, sec. 5: “The Subordinate Relationships of the Ego,” 713.] 92. [Das Ich und das Es, sec. 5; Ego and the Id, 714.] 93. [Das Ich und das Es, sec. 5; Ego and the Id, 716.] 94.  Cf. Scheler’s fundamental critique of Freud’s ontogeny in his Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, pt. 2, chap. 6, sec. 5. [Stoker cites Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle (1913), the first edition; but the year of publication he cites (1923) belongs to the second edition, substituted above. Cf. the English translation: Scheler, Nature of Sympathy, 180–209.] 95.  Das Ich und das Es, sec. 5, 42; [Ego and the Id, sec. 5, 707]. 96. Buytendijk, Bijdrage (1922). [Cf. Buytendijk, Mensch und Tier.] 97. Scheler, Wesen under Formen der Sympathie (1923). 98. [Freud, Massenpsychologie. The text of the following quotation after the ellipsis is not actually from Freud but from Le Bon, La psychologie des foules (cf. Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind), from which Freud is quoting.] 99.  [Cf. Freud, Group Psychology, 666.] 100.  Quoted from Gustave le Bon, Psychologie der Massen (see Freud, Massenpsychologie, 13). [For the last part of this quotation, following the ellipsis, in which Freud is quoting Le Bon, cf. Freud, Group Psychology, 667.] 101.  [Cf. Freud, Group Psychology, 671.] 102. [Rathenau, Days to Come, 51, writes that the “sentiment of justice . . . is the product not of responsibility but envy.”] 103.  [See note 27, above.] 104.  [Although claiming that his study of conscience is primarily psychological in nature, Stoker exhibits, both here and throughout his work, a sound sensitivity to a broad range of philosophical questions.] 105. Davison, Christian Conscience, 10. 106.  McDougall, “Is Conscience an Emotion?” 107.  [“The conscience that is alarmed,” “happy,” “shy,” “peaceful,” etc.] 108. Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil, 1:175. 109. Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung des Gewissens, 20. 110.  [Cf. and note the German title; see note 109.] 111.  Whether the good or evil is general or particular.

Notes to Pages 71–75  307

112.  [Stoker has katexochen, from the original Greek: κατ’ εξοχήν, from κατά (kata, “toward”) + ἐξοχήν (exochēn, “prominence”), often translated as “preeminently.”] 113.  We avoid the term “rationalist,” because it can be understood either as discursive (intellectual) or as intuitive. Intuitionism can be understood in either a rational or emotional way, but it would be an exaggeration to try to subsume the emotional (emotionell-kognitive) under the concept of the “­ rational.” 114.  These names for the groups must be taken in the broadest possible sense, because they are not completely adequate designations, but useful labels in the economy of concepts. Thus, for example, many things fall under the voluntarist heading that have hardly anything to do with the “will” or “elements of the will.” 115.  In connection with conscience proper, we shall henceforth have in mind only Group 6. 116.  [Ariadne, in Greek mythology, gave Theseus a ball of thread so that he could find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.]

Chapter 3  Intellectualism and Bad Conscience 1. Cronin, Science of Ethics (1920), 1:474–75. 2. Jodl, Allgemeine Ethik, 329. 3. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, writes: “The self-judgment in the name of the tribe is called conscience”; cited by Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 120. Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie, 432, says: “The whole aspect of our knowledge, whereby we are judged by ourselves as intending an act of a certain nature or restraining ourselves from it—is conscience.” Laas, Idealismus und Positivismus, 2:159, writes: “Conscience is acquired law”; quoted by Eisler, Wörterbuch, under “Gewissen.” Amezes, Vijf boeken van de Conscientie, says that conscience is “man’s judgment of himself, insofar as he is subject to God’s judgment.” Bavinck, Beginselen der Psychologie (1897), 111ff., and Bavinck, “Het geweten” (1922), 13–27, offers a less intellectualistic view of conscience. One could regard his two conceptions of conscience as more or less parallel to two medieval conceptions—one more patristic, where conscience stands above all the other faculties (like a watchful eagle), and the other more Scholastic, insofar as conscience coincides with practical reason and is no longer situated above the other faculties. If one view is more relativistic, the other is closer to absolutism. “Conscience is something absolute, unconditional, and valid for all,

308  Notes to Pages 77–89

something divine, which reveals itself in me” (Bavinck, “Het geweten,” in Kennis en Leven, 25). 4. Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung des Gewissens, 19. 5.  My emphasis. 6. Elsenhans, Wesen und Enstehung des Gewissens, 19–20. 7.  Here we mean psychological freedom. We do not intend to say anything here about the very difficult problem of metaphysical freedom. 8.  But is this not also what is primarily given in ordinary cases? We certainly believe so. 9.  Kant does not permit such an expansive understanding of conscience. For him conscience is only the awareness of this tribunal—and therefore purely formal. Other adherents of the intellectualist perspective, however, put a high value on this tribunal of conscience. 10.  Concerning the terminology of “primary” and “secondary,” I wish to refer to another distinction from Konstantin Schlottmann, who views “primary conscience” as consisting in moral awareness, moral laws, and norms, and ­“secondary conscience” as consisting in good and bad conscience. Elsenhans rightly says that good and bad conscience is primary, and that only later one’s thinking is led to the formation of moral norms and principles of conduct, and thus to “secondary conscience.” This distinction between primary and secondary he rightly does not regard as temporal, but a difference of principle (Elsenhans, Wesen und Enstehung des Gewissens, 183). Our own distinction between “primary bad conscience” and “secondary bad conscience” is obviously something completely different from Schlottmann’s. 11.  One could perhaps call this belief a “sham belief,” as there are also various other “sham” experiences. Concerning “sentiments” (Gesinnungen), especially on “false sentiments” (unechte Gesinnungen), see Pfänder, “Zur Psychologie der Gesinnungen,” 325–404, and also the 1910 Munich dissertation by Haas, Über Echtheit und Unechtheit vom Gefühlen (On Authenticity and Inauthenticity of Feelings). 12. Schopenhauer, Über die Die Grundlage der Moral, §9. [Cf. Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, §9. In the quoted passage, Stoker has “Fehmgericht” for Vehmgericht, a type of criminal tribunal in medieval Germany, which was probably an outgrowth of Frankish courts. E. F. J. Payne adds, in a note to his English translation cited above, that the Vehmgericht was a “secret court held in Westphalia from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, for the suppression of crime and maintenance of the Catholic religion” (Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, 105).] 13.  See the treatment of the Kantian theory of conscience in the Excursus following chapter 2. 14.  For this reason there is no true “doubting guilt.”

Notes to Pages 89–106  309

15.  Köhler, “Zur Psychologie der Schimpansen,” 2–46. [Cf. Köhler, Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen, 195–223, and Köhler, The Mentality of Apes, 281–342.] See also chapter 9 of this work. 16.  With good reason Dr. S. O. Los, “Het gevoel en de heilige Schrift,” 177, says: “Children sometimes feel sooner than their parents whether a matter is right.” 17.  Cf. the works of Freud, Oskar Pfister, and others. [Cf. Pfister, Der seelische Aufbau; Pfister, Psycho-Analysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister; and Freud, Sigmund Freud, Oskar Pfister: Briefwechsel: 1909–1939.] See also Scheler’s Wesen und Formen der Sympathie [and Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy]. 18.  Wertheimer, “Untersuchung zur Lehre von der Gestalt,” 47–58. 19.  [Stoker’s text in this paragraph has as an adjectival construction: “und summenhafte.”] 20. Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung des Gewissens, 162–77. 21. [Ibid.] 22.  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), 3.19.15, and cf. 4.10.3–4. [The passages are similar, but I have adapted my translation from the former as rendered by Ford Lewis Battles, in Calvin, Institutes (1960), 1:848.] 23. [Calvin, Institutes, 2:1181.] 24.  We follow the argument in Pfänder, Logik [see translation: Pfänder, Logic]. 25.  Cardinal Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, chap. 4, §3 [cited hereafter as Grammar of Assent]. 26. Ibid. 27.  Cf. Cardinal Newman, ibid., pt. 1, and especially his distinction ­between “real” and “notional assent,” chap. 4. 28.  Cf. chapter 5 of the present work. 29.  Shestov [Schestow], Tolstoi und Nietzsche (1923), 81ff. [Cf. Shestov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche.] 30.  Quoted by Barth, Römerbrief (1923), 164. [Stoker transposes a number of the quoted passages. We follow here the English translation in Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 185–86.] 31. Barth, Römerbrief, 165 [Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 186].

Chapter 4  Intuitionism and Bad Conscience

1. Bergson, L’Évolution créatrice, 52. 2. Pfänder, Logik, 88.

310  Notes to Pages 106–115

3. Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 65–76. We would prefer to say “intellectualist stance,” since the intuitive completely includes the rational. 4. Buytendijk, Beschouwingen, 11. [On Scheler’s distinction between pride and humility, see Scheler, “Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend”; Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen; and the English translations, Scheler, “Humility,” and Scheler, Ressentiment, respectively.] 5.  Bavinck [Stoker erroneously has “A. Bavinck”], Wijsbegeerte der Openbaring, 23 and 51–57. [The contents of this work were first presented as the Stone Lectures for the year 1908 at Princeton Theological Seminary, and they are available in the English translation we follow here: Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 27, 61–69.] 6. Heymans, Einführung in die Ethik, 221. 7.  Ibid., 242, 291. 8.  Ibid., 294–96. 9.  Ibid., 297. 10.  Cf. Eisler, Wörterbuch, under “Intuition.” 11. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, bk. 1, chap. 8; bk. 2, chaps. 1, 13. See also Rogers, A Short History of Ethics, 242. 12. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 211. 13.  McDougall, “Is Conscience an Emotion?” [Cf. McDougall, Introduction to Social Psychology, 198n1.] 14. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 1:163ff. [Cf. 4th ed. (1954), 179ff., cf. 38f.; and Scheler, Formalism in Ethics, 163ff., cf. 15f.]. Cf. also Traugott Konstantin Österreich on Max Scheler in Ueberweg, Grundriss. 15.  [Scheler: see the exact same pages from each edition of Formalismus and Formalism in Ethics cited in the immediately preceding note.] 16. [Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 165ff.; 4th ed. (1954), 182; Formalism in Ethics, 166.] 17. [Ibid.] 18. [Formalismus (4th ed., 1954), 84ff.; Formalism in Ethics, 16.] 19. [Formalismus (4th ed., 1954), 85; Formalism in Ethics, 17.] 20.  [Ibid. Thus Scheler would say that colors, by analogy, are found on the surfaces of the objects that “bear” them.] 21. [Formalismus (4th ed., 1954), 35ff.; Formalism in Ethics, 12ff.] 22.  [Comparable language about “modal-spheres” is employed in an analogous, though significantly different, way by Dooyeweerd, New Critique, vol. 2, General Theory of Modal Spheres, 55–413, and vol. 3, The Structures of Individuality of Temporal Reality, 54–156.]

Notes to Pages 115–117  311

23. [Values of this level can without doubt play a role in moral reasoning, but Scheler typically refers to them as values of “sensible” feeling, such as “pain” and “pleasure,” rather than values of “moral” feeling.] 24.  [“Consecutive values” are distinguished from “self-values,” to which they are related by way of dependence for their being as values. Cf. Scheler, Formalismus (4th ed., 1954), 124ff.; Formalism in Ethics, 103ff.] 25.  [Manfred Frings locates an additional modality of pragmatic values, including the useful and useless, between Scheler’s first and second ranks, but he admits Scheler did not assign them a separate rank; see Frings, The Mind of Max Scheler, 28ff.] 26.  [Scheler literally says that moral values are realized “on the back” (auf dem Rücken) of acts realizing nonmoral values, in order to describe how moral values are realized as by-products of bringing into existence something bearing a higher or lower (positive or negative) nonmoral value. An example might be a doctor treating sick patients to make them better, thereby realizing (bringing about) a positive nonmoral value of biological “health,” and at the same time a moral value of moral “good” as a by-product (“on the back”) of this act. Cf. Scheler, Formalismus (4th ed., 1954), 48; Formalism in Ethics, 27.] 27.  [Thus, for example, a sensible feeling-state, such as pain, can occur ­together with various intentional feelings directed toward this feeling-state. I may “suffer,” “endure,” “tolerate,” or even masochistically “enjoy” pain, but the feeling-­state of pain itself does not vary. There is no intrinsic object-relatedness in the feeling-state. Any reference to what may have caused the sensation of pain, for instance, is only established by means of an intellectual reflection subsequent to the moment in which the pain itself is felt. Intentional feeling, on the other hand, is directly and immediately object-related. It bears an inherent intentional reference to objects. This reference is not intellectual. It is not established externally by thought or by means of a mental representation or image. Rather, it is immediately evident in the intentionality of the feeling itself. According to Scheler, it is through such intentional feeling that values are revealed to us.] 28.  [On “interlacements” of the rational and emotional aspects of experience, cf. Dooyeweerd, New Critique, 3:625ff., pt. 3, “Introduction to the Theory of Enkaptic Interstructural Interlacements”; and Dooyeweerd’s theory of intermodal analogies in New Critique, 2:48ff., and Dooyeweerd, “Analogische Grondbegrippen,” and its translation, Dooyeweerd, “Analogical Concepts.”] 29.  Compare Hildebrand, “Max Scheler als Ethiker,” 626–37, where Scheler’s value-theory is defended against the criticism of Michael Wittmann. Furthermore, in this connection I wish to point out a work of Hildebrand’s, which unfortunately came into my possession too late to be adequately considered

312  Notes to Pages 121–125

here, namely, Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis (1922): 462–602. The problem of moral knowledge of value in its different forms becomes very detailed, treating value-perception, value-feeling, etc., along with the problem of value-blindness. Hildebrand rightly distinguishes the moral apprehension of value from “conscience” (ibid., 477ff.), because conscience is (1) confined to particular individuals, (2) directed toward values “for me,” not toward values “in themselves,” and (3) limited to negative values, to the allowed and forbidden. Although we can follow Hildebrand at length in these theses, we believe that conscience ultimately can only be grasped and understood in its depths when (as we shall see in the next chapter) we start from “personal evil” as an objective quality attached to a human subject. Only with the possibility of “evil” is there a possibility of conscience. In light of this, conscience must not be understood primarily as a personal value-sensing function. Nonetheless, there must be a reason why, among our general “value-apprehending functions,” conscience has been elevated to such prominence as such a special and distinct function. That conscience is (1) self-endowed, (2) directed toward values “for me,” and (3) limited to negative values are not reasons for its appearance, but only consequences of its nature. Conscience has these three traits because it arises in opposition to the reality of fundamental “personal evil” in us. Furthermore, the essence of conscience lies for us not primarily in one or another value-­apprehending function, but in the emotional “experience” of “personal evil.” Cf. also Hildebrand, Die Idee der sittlichen Handlung, 126–51. [Cf. Wittmann, “Dietrich von Hildebrand,” 144–254.] 30. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, §§136–42. 31.  [This is an allusion to Spinoza’s earlier-quoted dictum: “Truth is the criterion of itself and of the false.”] 32.  See the Excursus following chapter 2 of the present work concerning Butler. 33.  [See the discussion on the last pages of the Excursus following chapter 2, where the “Group 4” is linked with “Conscience as a moral knowledge.”]

Chapter 5  Voluntarism and Bad Conscience 1.  [Stoker has the Latin: “Inclinans ad bonum, appetens bonum, stimulans ad bonum et remurmurans malo, dissentiens malo, abhorrens malum.” The link between scintilla and conscientia, first made by St. Jerome, was later introduced among the medieval Scholastics by Alexander of Hales. Cf. the Excursus following chapter 2 of the present work.] 2.  [See chapter 2 and the Excursus following it for St. Jerome’s reference to the image of an eagle for synteresis.]

Notes to Pages 125–133  313

3.  See Eisler, Wörterbuch, under “Gewissen”; Kähler, “Gewissen”; and Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung des Gewissens, 168ff. Concerning the quoted definitions, which are cited in the works just named, for more information consult Struve, “Zur Psychologie der Sittlichkeit,” 1–41, esp. 10ff.; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 44, 53; Crusius, Kurzer Begriff der Moraltheologie, 132ff.; Beneke, Grundlinien der Sittenlehre, 379, 471–75; H. L. Martensen, Rudolf H. Hofmann, and Wilhelm Schmidt held conscience to be an organ of divine will—see Martensen, Die Christliche Ethik, 126; Hofmann, Die Lehre von dem Gewissen, 83, 159; Schmidt, Das Gewissen, 83, 159. 4.  [See translator’s introduction on translation of the German Drang.] 5.  [Stoker’s frequent expression kat’ exochen derives from the Greek κατ’ εξοχήν; from κατά (kata, “toward”) + ἐξοχήν (exochēn, “prominence”), which we typically translate as “preeminently.”] 6. Häberlin, Über das Gewissen. 7. Passavant, Das Gewissen, 4ff. 8.  An excellent account of Scheler’s philosophy can be found in Przywara, Religionsbegründung, 51–53. 9. Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (2nd ed.), 188–89. [Stoker’s quotation is an amalgamation of sentences taken from disparate paragraphs; cf. Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, 163–64. Ellipses have been inserted where Stoker omits intervening text from Scheler.] 10. Ibid. 11.  This element has been worked out thoroughly in the pedagogical theory of Maria Montessori. 12.  That the “original Kant” is not like the Kant portrayed by neo-­ Kantianism is shown incisively by, among others, Heimsoeth in his treatise “Persönlichkeit Bewuβtsein” (1924), 227–57. 13.  [Friedrich Schiller’s well-known verses caricaturing Kant’s “rigorism” include his “Scruple of Conscience” (“Gewissensskrupel”): “Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do so with pleasure. / And thus I am oft plagued that I have no virtue” (“Gerne dien ich den Freunden, doch tu ich es leider mit Neigung. / Und so wurmt es mir oft, daβ ich nich tugendhaft bin.”); and “The Verdict” (“Decisum”): “There is no other advice: you must seek to despise them, / And do with disgust what your duty commands” (“Da ist kein anderer Rat, du muβt suchen, sie zu verarchten. / Und mit Abscheu alsdann tun, wie die Pflicht dir gebeut.”); see Schiller, Werke, 1:357.] 14. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 233 [4th ed. (1954), 242; cf. Formalism in Ethics, 227]. 15.  Formalismus (1921), 194ff. [4th ed. (1954), 207–9; cf. Formalism in Ethics, 192–94].

314  Notes to Pages 134–150

16. Przywara, Religionsbegründung; and Hildebrand, “Max Scheler als Ethiker,” 626–37. 17.  [On the meaning of “ontical” and “ontic” in Stoker, see the translator’s introduction.] 18. Häberlin, Über das Gewissen. 19. Przywara, Religionsbegründung, 53. 20.  [That is, the specific objective “contents” of willing, in the sense of what is willed, such a specific “good.”] 21. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 60 [4th ed. (1954), 85n1; cf. Formalism in Ethics, 64n20]. 22. Scheler, Schriften zur Soziologie [1:110–47, “Liebe und Erkenntnis” (1923)]. 23. Przywara, Religionsbegründung, 159. 24. Buytendijk, Bijdrage, 52–55. 25.  In order to offer a more adequate account of Buytendijk’s thoughtful view, we append the following observations: by virtue of love, human beings stand above the biological (as we shall see more exactly in chapter 9); they are persons, and what they grasp through this objectifying love has a personal, as opposed to biological, value for them. This love unifies personality as a self-­ conscious ego, which has a reality above and beyond the physical, and which can place itself as an object over against the physical. Love appears in different forms as it experiences this or that part of objective reality, and in each case it has a different feeling and a different name. As “centrifugal force” acts so as to cast us outward into the sensible objective world, for example, love manifests itself as “wonder,” drawing us outside ourselves. Objective reality is not given to us here as a phenomenon of consciousness, but as an objective world. It has an objective value that grows in proportion to the ascendancy of love, and it recedes to become part of our environment, valuable only for the subject and not objectively in itself, in proportion to the diminishment of wonder. 26.  See Scheler, “Reue und Wiedergeburt” (1921), 44 [4th ed. (1954), 51; cf. translation, “Repentance and Rebirth,” 57]. 27.  Where conscience emerges—where, therefore, the good urge has vanquished the evil—the objective guilt of those with a troubled conscience is still not cast off (reality is not so simple). It sticks with them and they cannot ­shuffle it off. Throughout their experiences of conscience, therefore, they continue to see their guilt as adhering to them. See chapter 6. 28. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 205 [4th ed. (1954), 217; cf. the translation, Formalism in Ethics, 202. Scheler is contrasting his views with those of F. J. Herbart.]

Notes to Pages 150–158  315

29.  Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 197 [4th ed. (1954), 209; Formalism in Ethics, 194]. 30. Pfister, Der seelische Aufbau, 23ff. 31.  Freud unfortunately does not explain the source from which the female dread of conscience arises! 32. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (1923), 1:12ff. [4th ed. (1954), 33ff.; On the Eternal (1960), 39ff. For “Group 5,” see Stoker’s classification of six types of theories of conscience at the end of the Excursus following chapter 2.]

Chapter 6  Emotionalism and Bad Conscience 1.  “Religion” is taken here in the very broad sense of “founded on a religion or revelation of God.” There are “religious” acts, which are not religious in an ecclesiastical or dogmatic sense, e.g., the unfulfilled longing for God that is not tied to any positive revelation of God. The concept of God that is sought here is purely a sociological postulate, and not one set forth by religion or theology. For example, there are those who accept an intelligent Primal Ground of all things but do not wish to stand in a direct, personal relation to this Primal Ground, do not worship Him, do not believe in His personal divine revelation, do not look to sustain themselves in religious conduct or to stand in any relation to “their” God that could be called religious (in the ordinary sense). Yet this relationship is completely different from their social relationship with their fellow human beings. We call this relationship “religious” (in quotation marks), because no other word exists. We would like to call it theal, a neologism based on an analogy with [the adjectival] “social” and [Greek] “theos.” Paracelsus uses a kindred word, namely, dealisch, where he sees as the three fundamental components of reality: (1) the “elementary,” of which the corporeal body consists, (2) the “sidereal,” of which not only the stars, but also the life of the spirit, is formed, and (3) the “dealische,” i.e., the rational soul, which comes of God. (See Messer, Geschichte der Philosophie, 2:16, in [the chapter entitled] “Wissenschaft und Bildung.”) “Theal” is perhaps still preferable to “dealischen” because of its analogy with “theistic” and “theism.” [Stoker varies his spelling of theal (theale, theales) according to the German grammatical context. In his Oorsprong, vol. 2, chap. 6, “Wysbegeerte van die Skeppingsidee,” written in Afrikaans, Stoker uses the term teale (without the “h”), which he describes as an “ontic a priori” or “principles of being” (synbeginsels) that are part of the cosmos.] 2.  I wish to avoid the overburdened and imprecise contrasts between “this-worldly” and “other-worldly,” “immanent” and “transcendent,” and prefer

316  Notes to Pages 159–163

instead the contrast between “mundane” and “supramundane,” without specifying even a provisional positive content for the concept “supramundane.” Accordingly, the following is not to be understood by “supramundane.” (1) Something mystical, demonical, superstitious, or irrational, but rather, by contrast, something rationally understandable and comprehensible. (2) A positive circumstance of religious belief. Actual believers can have many pure experiences of conscience in their religious encounters, but even those who are not actually believers can have such experiences. The experience of conscience is thus by no means a specific, actual religious experience. In this instance, it lacks the personal revelation of God. Nevertheless, in connection with personal acts, it generally offers allusions, intimations, and indications of an ultimate, non-“worldly” understanding of God. (3) “Supramundane factors” should also not to be understood to mean the direct effect of a supernatural power on the individual. It could well be that this is conceivable and possible, since religious conversions are often thought to occur. Bad conscience, however, is not an infallible divine oracle that always receives inspired verdicts from transcendent realms. Therefore, by “supramundane” is understood, provisionally, only that ­relationship which is not understandable biologically or socially, and which is somehow grounded in a suprabiological and suprasocial sphere. It signifies negatively and formally what theal is intended to signify positively and ma­ terially. 3. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral [Abhandlung 2, §16; cf. Genealogy, Second Essay, §16, 520]. 4.  Cf. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov [the protagonist from Dos­ toevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment]. 5.  [“Onanist” derives etymologically from Onan, the second son of Judah in Genesis 38, who refused his levirate obligation under Jewish law to provide his brother’s widow with children by committing the act of coitus interruptus, but is also used as a euphemism for one who masturbates.] 6. Newman, Grammar of Assent, chap. 5, §1. 7.  Scheler, “Reue und Wiedergeburt” (1923), 5–6 [4th ed. (1954), 29; cf. translation by Bernard Noble in Scheler, On the Eternal (1960), 35, whose translation is followed closely here]. 8.  Regarding the same phenomenon, Newman points out in his Grammar of Assent, chap. 5, §1: “‘The wicked flees, when no one pursueth’; then why does he flee? Whence his terror? Who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart?” One may wish to compare with this the ­several parallel phenomena of conscience brought into sharp relief in the Old Testament.

Notes to Pages 165–175  317

9. Newman, Grammar of Assent, chap. 5, §1. 10.  A deeper substantiation of these assertions can be found a few pages below, where some absolute elements of bad conscience are worked out. 11.  [The term is hyphenated here to clearly distinguish it from “pan­ theism.”] 12.  [Stoker contrasts the “absolute” level of consciousness, as the profoundly interior locus of concern for those issues involving a troubled conscience, and “ontical” guilt with the “relative” levels of consciousness, which are closer to the surface, more superficial, and concerned with the “spatiotemporal environment.”] 13.  Gen. 4:14. 14. Newman, Grammar of Assent, chap. 5, §1. 15.  [In Greek mythology, the Erinyes ( Ἐρῑνύες, pl. of Ἐρῑνύς, Erinys; literally “the avengers,” from Greek ἐρίνειν, “pursue, persecute”) were subterranean female deities of vengeance who correspond to the Furies or Dirae of Roman mythology. In Aeschylus’s tragedy Eumenides, Orestes, the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, is pursued by the Erinyes, who seek to avenge his murder of his mother for her murder of his father for his murder of his daughter, Orestes’s sister, Iphigenia.] 16.  [Orestes is tried in court by the Erinyes acting as advocates for his dead mother, Clytemnestra, and Apollo acting as counsel for Orestes. In the end, Athena casts the deciding vote for acquittal, and she persuades the Erinyes to accept the verdict, bringing about their “transformation” and identification with the Eumenides—from Εὐμενίδες, pl. of Εὐμενίς; literally, “the gracious ones,” but also translated as “kindly ones.”] 17.  Ways of escape that are “inordinate to our nature” (unwesensmäßig) are those such as alcoholic intoxication, suicide (Judas), lying about one’s innocence, pretending to be innocent, letting others believe one is innocent, etc. 18. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 50. [Stoker has “50ff. and 52ff.” but is paraphrasing from 50; cf. 4th ed. (1954), 54; On the Eternal, 60.] 19.  Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:52. [Cf. 4th ed. (1954), 54; cf. On the Eternal, 61f.] 20.  Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:386 [4th ed. (1954), 163; On the Eternal, 167]. 21. [Ens-a-se (from Latin ens “being” + a “from” + se “itself,” from which derives the term aseity, the property by which a being exists of and from itself, which is ascribed to God) is a term Scheler uses for God, except in his last period when God is replaced by a world-ground conceived as an ens-a-se with two attributes, “spirit” (Geist) and “urge” (Drang), and God is reduced to a ­possible endpoint to be realized through the interaction between these two ­attributes.]

318  Notes to Pages 176–182

22.  See chapter 5 of this work. 23.  See the comments concerning the concepts “supramundane” and “theal” at the beginning of this chapter. 24. Scheler, Vom Ewigen [(2nd ed., 1923), 50; cf. 4th ed. (1954), 54; On the Eternal, 60]. 25.  Cf. the beautiful work by Otto, Das Heilige, 68ff. [Otto, The Idea of the Holy]. 26. Scheler, Von Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:39ff. [cf. 4th ed. (1954), 48; On the Eternal, 54]. 27. [“Ens malum” must not be taken as connoting any suggestion of “the devil” here anymore than “ens bonum” should be taken to imply “God.” Stoker’s theme here is, rather, the “ontical” depth and metaphysical reality of evil in ­experience.] 28.  It would make an interesting study to investigate the various principal influences on the phenomena of conscience, and to examine the possible ways in which these phenomena might be manifested among individuals from the more pessimistic Indian worldview of the “omne ens est malum,” and also the more optimistic Western worldview of the “omne ens est bonum.” 29.  [An allusion to the parable of the sower in Luke 8:4–15.] 30.  Cf. Girgensohn, Der seelische Aufbau, 389: “One may distinguish four varieties of condition that involve self-condemnation and guilt-consciousness: first, an awareness of moral shallowness and lowliness in the presence of God; second, an awareness of one’s own wickedness and impurity; third, a tormenting awareness of culpability through one’s own willing; and fourth, a form of awareness of separation from God ‘on account of one’s own unworthiness.’ ” 31. [Gute Drang and böse Drang have sometimes been translated as the “urge to do good” and “urge to do evil,” rather than “good urge” and “evil urge,” depending on the context, as here, when the emphasis is more on what is expressed by the urge than on the urge itself.] 32. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 340ff. [4th ed. (1954), 341ff.; cf. Formalism in Ethics, 328ff.]. 33. [Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 354f.; 4th ed. (1954), 355; Formalism in Ethics, 343.] 34. [Ibid.] 35.  Many psychologists make the mistake of overlooking these depthstrata and depth-perspectives. One can never arrive at the proper evidence by reducing all levels of our experience to one, or by projecting these diverse strata of experience into a single irreducible level of consciousness, and then taking and analyzing this postulate as if it were a psychological entity.

Notes to Pages 182–198  319

36.  Cf. Excursus following chapter 2, and also chapter 3 of this work. 37. Cf. the comments concerning the concepts “theal” and “other-­ worldly” at the beginning of this chapter. 38. Stephen, Science of Ethics, 265 [as quoted in Cronin, Science of Ethics, 1:480]; Mill, Utilitarianism, chap. 3; Høffding, Ethik, chap. 4, §1 and §6. 39.  [For the previous treatment of Calvin’s theory of conscience, cf. chapters 3 and 5 in this work.] John Calvin, Institutes, 3.19.18 and 4.10.3–4. 40.  Cf. Bavinck, Bijbelsche en religieuze Psychologie, 59ff. 41. Gerland, Das Gewissen. 42.  Cf. Scheler concerning the strata of emotional life, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 340ff. [4th ed. (1954), 341ff.; Formalism in Ethics, 328ff.]. 43. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (1923), 1:31 [cf. 4th ed. (1954), 43ff.; On the Eternal, 49ff.]. 44.  Pure fear of conscience is taken as a contrast to biological or social fear. One of them may be found “mixed” with the other—as, for example, when yeast is “blended into” a dough—and thus a “phenomenon of mixed conscience” is formed. 45.  [Here Stoker uses the word “Sammlung,” which is literally “collection,” “assembly,” or “gathering,” but can also mean, among other things, “composure” or “contemplation.” Here it has the sense of being “self-composed” or “self-­ integrated” or even perhaps “self-recollected.” We render it as “self-possession,” following Bernard Noble in his translation of Scheler’s use of the term in On the Eternal, 49ff., his translation of Scheler, Vom Ewigen (1923), 1:31; 4th ed. (1954), 43f.] 46.  [Stoker closes Scheler’s quotation here, even though what follows is properly a continuation of it, and he footnotes Scheler at the conclusion of the quotation.] 47.  Scheler, “Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend” (2nd ed., 1919), 1:18 [4th ed. (1955), 17f.; cf. Barbara Fiand’s translation of an excerpt in Scheler, “Hu­ mility,” 200–209]. 48.  [Scheler, “Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend” (2nd ed., 1919), 23; 4th ed. (1955), 22.] 49. Ibid. 50. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:51 [4th ed. (1954), 54; On the Eternal, 61]. 51. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:12ff. [4th ed. (1954), 33ff.; On the Eternal, 39ff.]. 52.  [Stoker neglects to close his quotation here, which also appears to be a paraphrase of Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 7; 4th ed. (1954), 30: “Nur

320  Notes to Pages 198–208

dem oberflächlichen Blicke erscheint Reue als bloßes Sympton irgendwelcher innern Disharmonie unserer Seele oder gar als unnützer Ballast, der uns mehr lähmt als fördert.” Cf. On the Eternal, 36.] 53. [Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 10; 4th ed. (1954), 31; On the Eternal, 38.] 54. [Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 13; 4th ed. (1954), 33; On the Eternal, 39.] 55.  [Stoker transposes the two foregoing sentences from Scheler’s original text.] 56. [Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:17; 4th ed. (1954), 36; On the Eternal, 42.] 57. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:39ff. [4th ed. (1954), 47; On the Eternal, 53]. 58. [Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:39ff.; 4th ed. (1954), 48; On the Eternal, 54f. Notable discrepancies exist between Scheler’s original text and Stoker’s quotations (or paraphrase) in these passages. Stoker also skips segments of text without indication.] 59. [Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:40; 4th ed. (1954), 48ff.; On the Eternal, 55.] 60. [Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:41; 4th ed. (1954), 49; On the Eternal, 55.] 61. [Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:42; 4th ed. (1954), 50; On the Eternal, 56.] 62. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:50 [4th ed. (1954), 54; cf. On the Eternal, 60]. 63.  Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:58 [4th ed. (1954), 58f.; On the Eternal, 64f. The bracketed portion of the text quoted above is an insertion by Stoker.]. 64.  Metaphysics thus presupposes here a theistic and, in a certain sense, pan-en-theistic, world of thought, insofar as we are convinced that only theism or pan-en-theism can grasp the deepest meaning of conscience, which must remain closed to pantheism, deism, and atheism (as generally understood). 65.  Cf. Bavinck, “Het geweten,” 13–27. 66.  See the first part of chapter 5. 67. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:18 [4th ed. (1954), 36; On the Eternal, 42]. 68.  This metaphysical contradiction between a perfect God and “evil” (including both suffering and wickedness) is a particular problem for theism. But even a pan-en-theism that accepts a perfect divinity cannot escape the problem.

Notes to Pages 211–216  321

Various types of solutions have been attempted. Some thinkers deny the reality of suffering, evil, and wickedness. They take these to be mere appearances, thereby eliminating the contradiction. Other thinkers find an incompleteness in the nature of God, whereby evil, suffering, the wickedness become possible (but they deny God’s wisdom, omniscience, or omnipotence). Still others accept this dualism as an incomprehensible mystery to us, because our reason is clouded by sin (in Christianity), or because the solution of the problem, in and of itself, transcends our reason (for Kant). Finally, we also find thinkers who accept the contradiction as fact and look for an answer to the question as to why God admitted suffering, evil, and wickedness into His creation and into His decrees. One then finds answers, such as: for His honor’s sake, His own glory’s sake, or in order to make possible the greatest act of love from His immeasurable font of love—namely, by means of His love, to carry, lift, and to save those who are wicked, evil, suffering, sinful, and despised, or, in order to let human beings pass through a stage of evil, wickedness, and suffering in their development, so that they might reach a higher stage of evolution. Human beings do not face suffering and evil indifferently. In their “conscience” they have an experience that directly touches these macrocosmic problems and can throw light on the proper understanding of the problem.

Chapter 7  Personal Evil and the Essence of Conscience 1. Ritschl, Über das Gewissen, 13. 2. Gaß, Lehre vom Gewissen, 89. 3. Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung des Gewissens, 185ff. 4. Newman, Grammar of Assent, chap. 5, §1. 5.  [Ibid. Stoker here conflates parts of a number of different passages in Newman.] 6. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 374 [4th ed. (1954), 335; Formalism in Ethics, 322]. 7. Ritschl, Über das Gewissen, 14. 8.  [The reference is to the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9–14.] 9.  Scheler, “Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend,” Vom Umsturz der Werte (2nd ed., 1919), 1:20 [4th ed. (1955), 19]. 10. Scheler, Umstruz der Werte (2nd ed., 1919), 1:19 [4th ed. (1955), 18]. 11.  [In passages such as this and the following, where the expressive dimension of good or evil impulses comes to the fore, gute Drang and böse Drang

322  Notes to Pages 217–229

have been translated as “urge to do good” and “urge to do evil,” as noted in chapter 6.] 12.  See chapter 5 for Kant and Häberlin. [Stoker’s description of Häberlin’s position has been very briefly enlarged for clarification.] 13.  See chapter 3. 14.  See the last part of chapter 5. 15.  [Stoker’s spatial metaphors can be confusing. Here the experience of good conscience is said to remain at the “lower (relative) level,” and not rise to the “higher” level as bad conscience does through religious experience. In other places the metaphors are reversed and the stirrings of bad conscience are said to occur at a “deeper” and more “profound” level, as compared to the “higher” and more “superficial” levels of one’s consciousness. Yet the intended meaning in each case is the same: bad conscience is the more important heart of our moral experience.] 16.  See chapter 3. 17.  [Greek δαίμων—the term used in classical mythology for benevolent or benign nature spirits, a form of which (daimonion, literally, a “spiritual something”) is used in Plato’s Apology of Socrates (31c–d, 40a) for the interior “voice” that frequently warns Socrates against mistakes.] 18. Newman, Grammar of Assent, chap. 4. [Newman distinguishes between notional and real assent, where the former is conceptual and abstract, and the latter is personal, concrete, and existential.] 19.  [Stoker’s emphasis on the “nonformal” or “material” side of conscience here stems from his commitment to phenomenology’s preeminent focus on ­describing the internal essential contents of experienced phenomena rather than merely trying to explain them in terms of their external “formal” or “functional” relations.] 20. Newman, Grammar of Assent, chap. 4. We have used the word “inner” [in the previous sentence] in a dual sense, insofar as it is permitted when both senses fulfill one another, manifest a deep agreement, and actually emphasize two sides of the same coin. The same applies here for the word “real.” As follows from our earlier discussion and from this definition, our conception of conscience merges together personalism, emotionalism, and objectivism. What still remains to be treated—as we shall see in the last chapter—is absolutism. 21.  See end of [the Excursus following] chapter 2. 22. Calvin, Institutes, 3.19.15 and 4.10.3–4. 23. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 374 [4th ed. (1954), 335; ­Formalism in Ethics, 322]. 24.  See end of [the Excursus following] chapter 2.

Notes to Pages 229–242  323

25. Scheler, Formalismus (2nd ed., 1921), 336 [4th ed. (1954), 337; Formalism in Ethics, 324].

Chapter 8  The Problem of the Genesis of Conscience 1.  [Of singular relevance to this chapter is Stoker’s later contribution dealing with the theory of biological evolution, “Die Desendensieleer” (1927). See also the analysis of Stoker’s theory of biological evolution with reference to the theory of Jakob von Uexküll, in Strauss, “Die vakwetenskaplike en wysgerige betekenis van Stoker,” 491–500.] 2. Eisler, Wörterbuch, under the heading of “Gewissen,” 433–34. [Taken as a whole, Eisler, “Gewissen,” 429–34, references many of the works and authors cited by Stoker, including Darwin, Descent of Man; Rée, Die Entstehung; Laas, Idealismus und Positivismus; Ihering, Der Zweck im Recht; Spencer, the social Darwinist and author of First Principles; Wundt, Ethik; Gizycki, Moralphilosophie; Ziegler, Das Gefuhl; Jerusalem, Lehrbuch der Psychologie; Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie; and Høffding, Ethik. Complete names of authors have been provided in the text by the translator.] 3. Rée, Entstehung des Gewissens, 15, 25. 4.  See the end of [the Excursus following] chapter 2. [There Stoker discusses his grouping of theories of conscience under the three headings of rationalist, voluntarist, and emotionalist.] 5.  [Stoker has “Wenn es a-personale Wahrheiten gibt” here, but this has been modified by the addition of “not only” and “but also” in the translation in order to make sense in context.] 6.  [Scheler’s ethics stresses the importance of the kairos (καιρός) or “call of the hour,” in the sense of the right moment for a particular act, or the particular moral demand of the moment as perceived by each individual.] 7.  [The theories, respectively, that evolution occurs (1) only within species, (2) from one species into another by means of gradual development in an unbroken phylogenetic continuum, and (3) from one species to another by means of saltatory skips or leaps, which would explain the “missing links.”] 8.  Chapter 2 of this work. 9.  See the end of [the Excursus following] chapter 2, and chapter 7. [The list below essentially inverts Stoker’s earlier listing of three basic theories of conscience—the rationalist, voluntarist, and emotionalist. Here Stoker identifies the emotionalist as conscience in the “strict sense.”] 10.  As we have argued in chapters 3–5.

324  Notes to Pages 244–251

Chapter 9  Some Theories of the Development of Conscience



1.  [This sentence has been inserted to clarify Stoker’s transition to his next two paragraphs.] 2.  [Stoker refers to Buytendijk as a “Groninger,” or resident of Groningen, since he had been appointed professor of physiology at the University of Groningen in 1925, at the time of publication of Stoker’s present work. After the Second World War, Buytendijk was appointed professor of general psychology at the University of Utrecht.] 3. Buytendijk, Bijdrage (1922). 4.  [Cf. note 1 in chapter 8 concerning an article by D. F. M. Strauss comparing Stoker’s views on biological evolution with those of Jakob von Uexküll. Especially noteworthy are Uexküll, Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909) and Theoretische Biologie (1928).] 5.  Cf. the discussion of Buytendijk’s problem of “love and knowledge” in chapter 5. 6.  [Either a precognitive instinctual reaction (or postcognitive response) to stimulation presupposed in the formation of more complex emotions as part of the process of an organism’s interaction with its environment.] 7.  [By contrast, animals are regarded by Gehlen and Portmann as milieu-­ bound and environmentally determined, and human beings as instinctually impoverished yet open to the world by; see Gehlen, Der Mensch (1940), and Portmann, “Vorwort” (1956).] 8. For experimental investigation and utilization of this theory, cf. ­Archives Néerlandaises (1905). 9.  Köhler, “Zur Psychologie der Schimpansen,” 2–46. [Cf. Köhler, Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen, 195–223, and The Mentality of Apes, ­281–342.] 10.  [Headings have been inserted for clarity.] 11.  [Köhler, “Zur Psychologie,” 13–15; Intelligenzprüfungen, 205–6; Mentality of Apes, 297–99.] 12.  [Köhler, “Zur Psychologie,” 15; Intelligenzprüfungen, 207; Mentality of Apes, 300. Sultan and Chica are the names of the two chimpanzees discussed in this paragraph.] 13.  [Köhler, “Zur Psychologie,” 19; Intelligenzprüfungen, 209ff.; The Mentality of Apes, 304.] 14.  [Köhler, “Zur Psychologie,” 21; Intelligenzprüfungen, 212; Mentality of Apes, 309.]

Notes to Pages 251–254  325

15.  [Köhler, “Zur Psychologie,” 22; Intelligenzprüfungen, 212; Mentality of Apes, 309.] 16.  [Köhler, “Zur Psychologie,” 22; Intelligenzprüfungen, 212; Mentality of Apes, 309.] 17.  [Köhler, “Zur Psychologie,” 22; Intelligenzprüfungen, 212ff.; Mentality of Apes, 309ff.] 18.  The Groningen biologist and animal psychologist Buytendijk, for ­example [is doubtful about the possibility of nonhuman animals experiencing guilt]. 19.  Max Scheler has taken pains to understand what is essential in human beings, and he has consequently thought through the problem of the essential difference between human beings and animals from various sides in nearly all of his works. In his essay Die Formen des Wissens und die Bildung (1925), he has summarized briefly and precisely the most fundamental of these questions as they concern the problem of education from the perspective of his philosophy. Furthermore, he also recently has widely promoted his particular theory concerning the “moral.” Human beings and animal both have “goods.” Both “feel” the value of these “goods.” An animal can perceive only biological values, whereas we human beings can perceive both biological and spiritual values. An animal cannot detach the values it perceives from the goods in which they are perceived. It cannot compare values to each other, or prefer some to others, independently of the goods in question. It cannot grasp the order of ranks of ­values or let its actions be determined by the laws of values and preference. Only we human beings are capable of all this. Just as we can perceive the essential laws of contingent existence, and just as we can determine our course by our objective circumstances, and not, like an animal, by instincts alone, so we can prefer the higher or lower in the objective ranking of values, and determine our course by means of these laws of value-preference, and thereby choose to be moral or immoral. An animal is imprisoned in its world by biological chains; we can stand objectively over against our world and transcend life by our spirit. We are paradoxical beings, simultaneously vital (psycho-biological) and supravital (spiritual), at once a “blind alley of nature” and a way out of this blind alley. This theory of Scheler’s about the essential difference between human beings and animals interconnects in many ways with Buytendijk’s theory, although one must not lose sight of their differences. Buytendijk seeks to trace back all essential differences as much as possible to the principle of love as the power for producing the subject–object distinction, the power that breaks through biological chains and produces, from a subjectively determined environment, an objective world. Scheler, on the contrary, sees essential differences in ­various

326  Notes to Page 254

spheres—whether it is in essential intuition and the perception of essential laws of contingent existence, or the perception of laws of value-preference, or the will, love or hate, language, art, religion, society, human tools, or the like—and does not attempt to combine these in any sort of fundamental class, although he does acknowledge Spirit as the fundamental principle of unity. Concerning our definition of the problem, Scheler’s theory fits very well with everything we have argued here, and it sheds a bright new light from another angle upon the explanation of the problem. 20.  It is a failure of modern child psychology that it has devoted so little attention until now to this very substantial side of the child psyche. The spiritual elements in the child psyche (especially moral and religious experiences) also call for deeper investigation. Until now, it was chiefly the vital, biological, and psycho-physiological elements in the child that were researched at the expense of the suprabiological, spiritual elements. 21.  Some points should be made here regarding the upbringing of children. Parents can be the cause of their children reacting to punitive assaults in a purely psycho-biological way (like the reactions of all animals—Köhler’s apes, for instance), and this usually happens if their punishment is cold, loveless, and mechanical. If parents perform their punishments out of love, by contrast, the act of punishing takes on an internal depth of warmth and acquires an objective meaning. Children intuitively feel the inflamed or grieved love from which the punishment issues in such cases. Since love elicits reciprocal love, and since children’s love is powerfully reawakened through punishment (as paradoxical as this may seem from a mechanical perspective), the children’s reaction is ­suprabiological—a genuine experience of conscience. Children accordingly stand well above the level of animals, and they become what they are destined to be: human beings. One of the most important reasons for the emotional “wall” that arises between parents and children in later years is the cold, loveless punishment and pardon children receive from their parents—a purely mechanical u ­ pbringing, a purely animal “discipline.” Nothing is more dangerous in an upbringing than loveless punishment. Yet nothing is more character-­ forming or personality-strengthening than loving punishment, where it is needed, for this is the first step toward the ideal of virtuous and principled self-correction and self-edification. At the same time, this is the basis for developing conscience as the best possible compass of one’s own character. Everyone has evil inclinations, even children. All of us must therefore endeavor to overcome the evil in ourselves if we want to achieve our ideal character as human beings. The fact of evil must be reckoned with as a matter of principle, especially in the rearing and education of children. This principle makes punish-

Notes to Pages 255–261  327

ment necessary, whether it is applied in anger or in grieved love. Loving punishment is not only sometimes necessary, but is also very well suited for teaching a child correct behavior, in contrast to bad behavior. Unloving, ­mechanical punishment, however, like undeserved or unfair punishment, strengthens the principle of evil in a child. 22. Bain, Emotions (1859), chap. 15: “The Ethical Emotions or the Moral Sense”; [2nd ed. (1865), 252–94]. 23. [Bain, Emotions (2nd ed., 1865), 284.] 24.  As Buytendijk has subtly termed “obedience” (see chapter 5 of this work). 25.  A somewhat cumbersome translation of the Dutch term Gehoorzaamheid. 26. [Bain, Emotions (2nd ed., 1865), 284.] 27.  See Wertheimer’s criticism of the “association theses” in chapter 3. 28. [Bain, Emotions (2nd ed., 1865), 284.] 29. [Ibid.] 30. [Ibid., 285.] 31.  [Ibid., 286.] 32. [Ibid.] 33. Darwin, Abstammung des Menschen, 1:125. [Cf. Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1:70. The placement of quotation marks in Stoker’s text does not consistently indicate where he is quoting.] 34. [Abstammung des Menschen, 1:125ff.; Descent of Man, 1:70ff.] 35. [Abstammung des Menschen, 1:127; Descent of Man, 1:71–74.] 36. [Abstammung des Menschen, 1:138ff.; Descent of Man, 1:84.] 37.  [“Co-feeling” or “shared feeling” have been suggested as more accurate translations for Mitfühlen; however, as we shall see, “fellow-feeling” is already an established translation for Mitfühlen in Scheler studies, and one must allow for ways to distinguish the meaning of other German terms, such as Miteinanderfühlen, which has no less title to be translated as “shared feeling.” See discussion below.] 38.  See chapter 8 of this work. 39. Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, chaps. 1–3, 6–8. 40.  [The following terms are notoriously difficult to capture exactly in ­English translation. Some, like Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk in their English translation of Formalismus, render Nachfühlen as “re-feeling” and Miteinanderfühlen as “co-feeling,” which makes cumbersome jargon out of what is fairly straightforward German. In Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, Scheler understands Miteinanderfühlen, Mitfühlen, Gefühlsansteckung, and

328  Notes to Pages 262–268

Einsfühlen as four different forms of sympathy. In his English translation of this work, The Nature of Sympathy, Peter Heath offers the following translations of the relevant terms in his translator’s note (liii): “Sympathie: Sympathy (generic term)”; “Mitgefühl: Fellow-feeling, companionate feeling, sympathy”; “Miteinanderfühlen: Community of feeling, shared, mutual feeling”; “Nachgefühl: ­Reproduced, vicarious feeling”; “Einfühlung: Empathy”; “Einsfühlung, -gefüh: Identification, sense of unity”; “Gefühlsansteckung: Emotional infection.”] 41.  [“Fellow-feeling” (Mitfühlen) is placed in quotation marks except where applied to human beings in order to effectively communicate Stoker’s understanding that it does not apply properly to nonhuman animals.] 42. Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. 43.  Ibid., chap. 1. 44. Rée, Entstehung, 230. [Lohengrin, who first appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, is a character in German Arthurian literature, the son of Parzival (Percival), a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden named Elsa, whom he forbids to ever ask his identity, and when she asks, he leaves.] 45.  [Ibid., 40.] 46.  Ibid., 40ff. 47. Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (2nd ed., 1919), 1:58; [4th ed. (1955), 42ff.; and Coser and Holdheim’s English translation, Ressentiment (1998), 32ff.]. 48. Rée, Entstehung, 53ff. 49.  Ibid., 95ff. and 123ff. 50.  Ibid., 134ff. 51. Ibid. 52.  Cf. Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung, 225. 53. Scheler, Vom Ewigen (2nd ed., 1923), 1:35; [4th ed. (1954), 45ff.; On the Eternal, 52]. 54.  Unfortunately “avenge” (sich rächen) is used only intransitively; it won’t do to convert this expression from the active form to the passive, e.g., “on the side of the one who is to be ‘avenged’ or ‘punished’” (auf der Seite dessen, der gerächt, gestraft werden soll). Therefore we must substitute a somewhat awkward paraphrase. 55. Spencer, Data of Ethics, esp. chaps. 1–8; Collins and Carus, Epitome, part 5, Prinzipien der Ethik; Rogers, Short History of Ethics, chap. 8; Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung, 226ff. 56. Spencer, Data of Ethics, 98ff. 57.  Collins and Carus, Epitome, 602ff. 58. Elsenhans, Wesen und Entstehung, 226ff.

Notes to Pages 269–276  329

59. [Versittlichung is difficult to render in English because of the lack of any conventional equivalents. Though “moralization” sounds better than “ethi­ cization,” it carries misleading connotations of “self-justification,” like “rationalization.” Yet “ethicization” is a neologism too turgidly Teutonic to sound natural in English. Hence, we have opted for a more circumlocutious use of “ethical sensibility.” The essential idea is that, as our sense of duty is internalized through the increase of our “ethical sensibility” (Versittlichung), it increasingly becomes a spontaneous inner disposition to act according to the moral law, and the external sanctions of “duty” (political, religious, and social), and the element of inner “compulsion” stemming from them, consequently begin to diminish.] 60.  See chapter 5 of this work. 61.  See Spencer, Data of Ethics, 250n, and 84ff. 62.  See chapters 8 and 9 of this work. 63. Rogers, Short History of Ethics, 261; see 249n1. 64.  [Stoker refers to “action” (Handeln) almost exclusively throughout his discussion of Spencer, even though Rogers’s summary of Spencer on which Stoker relies nearly always refers to “conduct,” which carries a distinctively moral connotation.] 65.  See Rogers, Short History of Ethics, 249n1. [Stoker has “and universal action” (und universales Handeln) at the conclusion of the foregoing sentence, which has been corrected to “or of the race” in order to conform to Roger’s summary of Spencer’s theory.] 66.  [Rogers has “pleasure” instead of “abiding happiness.”] 67.  Cf. Rogers, Short History of Ethics, 261ff.

Chapter 10  The Reliability of Conscience 1.  We prefer the word “geltbar” to the word “gültig,” since “geltbar” means “that which can be valid,” whereas “gültig” means “that which is valid.” What we want to examine is not the fact but the possibility and limits of validity (Geltens). [Rather than creating a cumbersome English neologism such as “­ validability” to translate Geltbarkeit, we have simply resorted to “validity,” trusting that Stoker’s note here will suffice to indicate that the question at issue is whether conscience is capable of being “validated.” A chief concern is its ­reliability.] 2.  [Stoker’s theses have been given subheadings for increased clarity.] 3.  [Italicized subheadings have been inserted below to indicate the two “leaps” Stoker clearly intends to distinguish in his discussion.]

330  Notes to Pages 276–286

4.  The personalism intended here is empirical, as our further treatment of the question clearly reveals. In addition to this empirical personalism, there is also one that is absolute—e.g., in the sense held by Paul Häberlin. The empirically minded person might well know of people who represent an “ideal” or “absolute” type of person—the sort of persons who “should-be”—and yet still be mistaken in identifying them. Over and above an empirical personalism of conscience, there is also doubtless an absolute (“ideal”) personalism. If we were to strip away everything empirical and accidental in every experience of conscience, we would arrive at the core experience where the absolute or ideal person is revealed—of which one may rightly say (with Bavinck): conscience is the law of our person. It would be impossible, without straying too far afield from our topic, to proceed any farther here concerning this metaphysical personalism, in which each person is a singular and unique phenomenon, or, in religio-­ philosophical terms, a phenomenon in which a particular idea of God is expressed. This also still leaves the question as to how empirical and absolute personalism are related to each other in our experience of conscience, and to what extent each of us can fathom the absolute core of our person, and thus how we can possibly know ourselves without plumbing these ontical depths. [The fact that “individual” and “personal” can be taken as roughly syn­ onymous in English prevents Stoker’s contrast here between “individualgültigen Bösen” and “personalgültigen Bösen” from being very helpful when translated by the natural English cognates, such as “individually applicable evil” and “personally applicable evil.” His meaning appears to be adequately clear, however, if we contrast the “objective, impersonal” with the “subjective, personal.”] 5.  See the conclusion of chapter 5. [In passages such as this, where the expressive dimension of good or evil impulses comes to the fore, gute Drang and böse Drang have been translated as “urge to do good” and “urge to do evil,” as noted in chapter 6.] 6.  See Scheler, Formalismus, chaps. 5–6. 7.  [In the German text, the foregoing is not set off as a block quote but marked with a quotation mark (at the beginning only), indicating that it is intended as a piece of hypothetical moral advice.] 8.  [Stoker is comparing the Scholastic view of synteresis with his own, which is akin to his view of conscience proper and incorporates elements of both the perspective “from below” and “from above.”] 9. Calvin, Institutes, 10.3.4. [“Integrity of heart” would be a more literal translation of integritas cordi, but “purity of heart” is closer to Stoker’s translation of it as Reinheit des Herzens.] 10.  Ibid., 1.15.2. [The translation loosely follows that of Ford Lewis Battles in Calvin, Institutes, 1:185.]

Notes to Pages 286–288  331

11.  See the conclusion of chapter 6. 12.  [Stoker is referring to theories based on observations of biological cases where death is the price of reproduction, such as with the praying mantis, salmon, or marsupial mice.] 13.  The conceptually very clear, if somewhat intellectualistically conceived, view of conscience found in the recent work of Valentin Hepp, Het ­Testimonium Spiritus Sancti (Part 1: Het Testimonium Generale, chap. 8: “Het testimonium generale en het geweten”), came to my attention only after the first section of the present work had gone to press. Nevertheless, I would still like to offer some remarks upon it in this connection. Hepp states that general testimony (testimonium generale) may not be confused with conscience. There are two different forms of conscience, the natural and the enlightened. The first form belongs to every human being; the second only to the religious faithful. General testimony (testimonium generale) and conscience are both instances of inner testimony. But: (1) conscience attests to human intellect, while testimony (testimonium) attests to the Holy Spirit (Spiritus Sancti); (2) the attestation of conscience is directed to the moral life of human beings, the Spirit attests to the truth; (3) conscience is by nature negative, testimonium positive; (4) conscience has existed only since the fall of humankind into sin, testimonium from before the Fall; (5) conscience is based on syllogistic thinking processes, testimonium is not; (6) conscience is fallible, testimonium is not; (7) conscience is not always sure (certain), testimonium is; (8) the attestation of conscience can be set aside, but that of testimonium cannot. Since we have been dealing in our present work with only what Hepp calls “natural conscience,” and have dealt with “religious conscience” only to the extent that it corresponds to the former, we can ignore Hepp’s arguments here about testimonium (and also “enlightened conscience”). Nevertheless, his view of conscience as a witness against evil in us (as understood in our theory) is nothing short of profound. Re [regarding] 1: With good reason Hepp rejects an idolization of conscience (Conscientialismus), which regards conscience as the voice of God, a type of Oracle, which gives infallible knowledge to us. With less than good reason, however, he regards the essence of conscience as residing in the human intellect. Although conscience in its testimony is indeed dependent on the respective knowledge of “good” and “evil,” its essence lies in its profound moral stirrings. It is in the “heart,” not in the “understanding,” that conscience—as conscience—is primarily to be sought. Re 2: Hepp rightly claims that conscience refers itself to the ethical life of the person. A distinction between a speculative and a practical judgement, in which conscience is seen as a practical judgment (according to Willem Ames;

332  Notes to Pages 292–293

cf. also Thomas Aquinas’s Intellectus practicus), is debatable and fruitless in this regard, inasmuch as (1) it can be conceived only with difficulty what important difference this subtle distinction makes, particularly as judgment remains concerned with reality, whereas only the experience of guilt brings us into direct connection with our “personal evil”; (2) the term “practical intellect” (as meant here) has had, moreover, a particularly unfruitful history from the philosophy of the Middle Ages up until the present; and (3) it is still more difficult to discover the objective phenomenon suggested as the “practical intellect,” once it is placed in relationship with the “will.” Re 3: We fully acknowledge the negative character of “conscience.” Re 4: That conscience developed only after the advent of original sin is a fact to which we have given full metaphysical assent in the insight that conscience is only possible, in principle, where evil is a given; the same follows also from our definition of conscience. Re 5: Hepp claims, without warrant, that conscience is based on a rational syllogism; it can be based just as well on an intuitive value-feeling; and it is based on a moral urge within us. Re 6: Conscience as an inner stirring against the principle of evil in us is infallible. Only if we give the concept of conscience a broader range, including the moral knowledge of that which is good or evil for me, can we say that conscience is fallible. Re 7: Conscience as a stirring within us is always sure and certain; if nothing evil had awakened within us, conscience would not have stirred at all. Only in the broader sense as moral knowledge can conscience be unsure and uncertain in its epistemic testimony about morals. Re 8: One cannot always deny the testimony of conscience. In principle conscience stands above the will, and even with the greatest effort of the will one can often fail to silence its voice, and instead be compelled to submit to it and obey it. The principles of conscience that we have described here, for our part, can be found throughout the whole of the present work, but are treated in detail especially in chapters 3–8 and 10. 14. [Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, Second Essay, §14, 376; Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, §14, 518.] 15.  Bavinck, “Het geweten” (1922), 26.

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Index

absolutism. See qualities of conscience Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), 37–38, 40 Alexander of Hales on synteresis, 39 ambiguity. See qualities of conscience Amezius, Guilielmus (William Ames), 75 analogies (metaphors) for conscience catastrophe, 176, 192, 200, 207, 240 —disastrous, 14, 173–74, 192 —repentance the only escape, 192 compass, 128–30, 176–77, 326n21 —fails, 132, 140, 203 —lacks personal element, 132 —role of urge overlooks, 140 crisis, 202 eagle, 125 —Alexander of Hales, 39 —Bavinck, Herman, 307n3 —Saint Jerome, 36–37 —Scholasticism, 64 figurative sense of conscience, 67–68 349

judge, xxvii, 22, 24, 84, 150, 160, 170, 173–74 —absolute power of, 163–64 —Butler, Joseph, 45 —conscience as, 64 —flight from, 163–71 —forgiveness by, 199 —God as, 162, 165–66, 174, 181, 189, 197, 200 —justice of, 163, 174–75 —Kant’s ideal person, 45–49 —others or the state as, 161, 179 —Rousseau, 25 —Scheler, 162 —self as, 79–81, 160 seismograph, 203 —opposite of safety valve, 203 tribunal, 80–81, 83–87, 95 —criminal court (Vehmgericht), 308n12 —Kant, 46, 49, 308n9 —Kant criticized by Schopenhauer, 86–87

350 Index

animals have no conscience, 248–53, 260 immersed in milieu, 236, 246–49, 260–62 —human transcendence of, 146–49, 254, 260 lack moral insight, 183, 242, 247–57, 260 —children contrasted, 254 lack notion of cause, 253 as originating conscience, 232, 244 psychology of, 5, 244–45, 248–57 —biological guilt, 183, 253 —Buytendijk, F. J. J., 245–46 —humans transcend, 244–49, 254, 260, 262 —Köhler, Wolfgang, 89, 248–57 —punishment, xxviii, 89, 183, 195, 237, 249–57, 326n21 —reconciliation, 250–51 —revenge, 250 unaware of guilt, 253 See also evolution; theories of conscience, biological Antoninus of Florence, Saint, 41 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 40–41 Augustine, Saint, 131, 141 authority. See qualities of conscience Avenarius, Richard, 295n2(chapter 1) Bain, Alexander conscience —based on fear, 257 —as internal imitation of external legislation, 133 —evolution of, 255–56 —obedience and, 255–56 —as reaction to punishment, 89–90

and Nietzsche and Rée, Paul, 265 promoted associationist psychology, 295n2(chapter 1) Barth, Karl, 103–4 Bavinck, Herman on duty to form conscience, 293 and intellectualist view of conscience, 75, 307n3 intuitionism as presupposing ­revelation, 107 and personalism, 330n4 revelation as presupposition of science, 107 Scholasticism and, ix, xxiii, xxxviiin43, xxxviiin47 Beneke, Friedrich Eduard, 125 Bergson, Henri, 106 biology conscience as suprabiological, 8, 142, 183, 236, 248 —Buytendijk, F. J. J., 62 influence on conscience, 8 —Bain, Alexander, 89 —development, 238 human nature transcends, 260 See also evolution; theories of conscience, biological blame, 89–90, 125, 223 and bad conscience, 125 as origin of conscience, 89 Butler, Joseph, 43–45 absolute certainty of conscience, 122 benevolence, 44 Buytendijk, F. J. J. animal psychology, 245–46 conscience as suprabiological, 62 humility and, 107 influence on Stoker, xviii, 8, 10

Index 351

phenomenological psychology and, 12 —on Scheler and, 294n1(chapter 1) recommended Scheler to Stoker, xviii role of love in understanding, 142–43 Scheler and, xviii, xxxvin12, xxxvin15, 8, 107, 142–43 call of conscience, 150, 235 cannot be silenced, 123 categorical imperative and, 217 figuratively divine, 184 —but not supernatural, 183 not yet conscience, 150–55 relative, 235 and Stoker’s influence of Heidegger, xvi summons whole person, 182 uniqueness, 150 —personal, 138–39, 235 See also duty, call of Calvin, John conscience —confirms immortality, 286 —points to God, 284 —as tribunal, 95 good conscience as purity of heart, 284 psychology of, 154 Scheler on, 5 Calvinism Bavinck, Herman, ix conscience in, 281–82 controversies over Stoker, xxii–xxv, xxxviiin47, xxxixn50 depravity of human nature, 195 Dooyeweerd, Herman, xix, xxi

ethos of Stoker, xv, xix–xxv, xxxviiin43, 5 influence on Stoker, xi–xii Kuyper, Abraham, ix, xxii lacuna of literature on Stoker, xvi–xvii, xx neo-Calvinism, ix, xix, xxi–xxii Reformational philosophy, xix–xxv —diminishing interest in, xxi Scheler on, 5 Vollenhoven, D. H. Th., ix, xviii categorical imperative, 46, 125, 127, 291 and conscience, 127, 144, 217, 282 in Kant, 124, 143–45 —duty and, 291 —love and, 130, 291 and love, 291 in neo-Kantian perspective, 137 and Scheler, 133 and voluntarism, 127, 130, 133, 137, 139, 143–45, 151 cathexis, defined, 305n83 Cathrein, Victor, 75 Clifford, William K., 75 Cocceius, Johannes, 35 commands, 119–20, 136, 137, 255–56 conscience and, 213 Decalogue, 100, 102, 136–37, 144 divine, 288 and duty, 151, 236, 313 Freud, 60 heteronomous, 144 humility and, 215 interior, 134 origin of conscience, 263 state, 264

352 Index

community (human solidarity), 129–32 collective guilt, 132 conscience as voice of, 241 love, knowledge and, 141 universal love, 129–32 compassion (Mitleid) Schopenhauer on, 50–51, 53 conscientia, 20–24, 36 as conscience in Alexander of Hales, 39 fallible and relative, 40, 282 relation to synteresis, 36, 39–42, 145, 274, 282–84 —as syllogistic, 41–43 consciousness and conscience, 20–22, 69 —confused, 30 —in post-Reformation Protestantism, 42–43 —in Stobaeus, Joannes, 21 moral, 21, 31, 67, 69, 77, 267 —Diodorus of Tyre, 21 —Elsenhans, Theodor, 69 —Rashdall, Hastings, 69 —of self, 230 united by love, 141 Cronin, Michael, 75, 234 Crusius, Christian August, 125 culpability, 160, 185, 227 and God, 200 Darwin, Charles evolution and conscience, 258–63 relativism and, 232 social origin of conscience, 233, 258–59 Davidson, William T., 68 Decalogue, 100, 102, 136–37, 144 love of God and, 136

—Christ, and, 137 See also commands demise of conscience, 232 determinism. See freedom and ­determinism development of conscience, 8, 73, 146–47, 232, 234 bio-genetic, xxviii, 239–40, 244 momento-genetic —conscience as, 238–41 —defined, xxviii phylo-genetic —defined, xxviii —not conscience, 239–40 —Rée, Paul, 265 psycho-genetic —defined, xxviii —growth of moral urge, 241 psychological, 237–38 —vs. theoretical meaning, 26 sudden, 239–41 types of, 238 See also origins of conscience; ­theories of conscience, genetic theories Diodorus of Tyre, 21 discernment as essence of conscience, 92, 95, 98 Newman, 161 disposition inclination and, 155 love, hate and, 155 urges and, 156 Dooyeweerd, Herman diminishing interest in, xxi pioneer of Reformational ­philosophy, ix powers of the soul, 299n4 on “Reformational” vs. “Scholastic” currents in Kuyper, xxii

Index 353

Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 4, 25 Raskolnikov, 171 —vs. Macbeth, 100–102 doubts of conscience, 218 Drang. See urge (Drang) duty, 145, 151, 186, 126–27, 291–93 blind, negative, 134, 256 call of, 70, 150, 229 commands of, 151, 236, 313 conscience and, 46–47, 292 feeling of, 133, 227 —Freud, 64 —Kant, Immanuel, 45–49, 151 —and joy, in Spencer, Herbert, 269 —opposed to wishes, 127–28 —and respect as conscience, 44 —sense of, 133–34, 256–57, 269 to form one’s conscience, 293 inclination and, 133–34 Kant and, 45–49, 133–34, 151, 291 love and, 291 —higher than duty, 135 as motive, 133–34, 136 —love and, 133–35 Schiller, Friedrich, 313n13 Spencer, Herbert, and, 269 spontaneity and, 329n59 urge of, 70, 125–26, 154 —not yet conscience, 150 —synteresis as, 100 warning conscience and, 226 See also ideal ought education, 132–33 and conscience in Rée, Paul, 264 directly of conscience impossible, 289 duty to form conscience, 293 fallible, 289 love and, 291

via love and knowledge, 289 moral, 290–93 Eisler, Rudolf, 233 Elsenhans, Theodor affirms good conscience, 211–12 conscience —“elements theory” of, 94 —as moral consciousness, 69 —moral insight, 268 —moral self-consciousness, 230 —as self-legislation, 76–77 opposed Rée’s relativism, 234 emotions. See feelings Erinyes, 170–71, 317nn15–16 essence of conscience bad conscience, 188 discernment, 92, 95, 98 emotion, 8, 24, 67, 185–86 —Scheler, xxxixn51, 140–41 —Stoker, xxvii, 71–72 essentially negative, 211–14 —Gaß, Wilhelm, 211 —Ritschl, Albrecht, 211, 213 —Scheler, Max, 112–13 fear as basis of —Bain, Alexander, 257 innate vs. acquired (formed), 65 —inherent, in Kant, 45 nature of, xxv–xxviii, 14, 73–74 not moral knowledge, 239 objectively absolute, 288 personal, 138–39, 235 —identified with person, 67–68 —personal importance, 19–20, 120 phenomenological description of, 11, 66–74 —bad conscience, 160–70 positive element in, 218, 229 power of, 163–65, 174 practical reason as

354 Index

essence of conscience (cont.) —Aquinas, 41 —Cronin, Michael, 75 —Kant, 45–49 presupposes existence of evil, 216 —knowledge of, 242 primary vs. secondary conscience, xxviii, 81–83, 152, 160, 189–92, 266, 308n10 self-referential, 77–78 —shame, 188 —unlike collective guilt, 132 spiritual, 8 subjectively absolute, 287 etymology conscience morale, 20 conscientia, 20–24, 36 —and Origen, 37 —relation to synteresis, 36, 39–42 geweten, 16, 20, 23 Gewissen, 16, 23–24 relation to “consciousness,” 20 syneidesis (συνείδησις), 21, 23–24, 37 —in New Testament, 187 synteresin in Cocceius, Johannes, 35 synteresis (συντήρησις), 35–42 —mistransliteration of syneidesis, 36–37 —relation to synderesis, 299n1 —as syn + haeresis in Albergus Magnus, 38 —from synterein (συντηρεῖν), 37 See also language about conscience Eumenides, 171 evil biological mortality as, 286–87 blindness to, 276

conquest by love, 205 conscience and, 144–45, 240 consciousness of, 240 —as subjective, 276 and good, Scheler on, 114–16 good creation and, 180 inclination, 202 macrocosmic, 205–7 —devil and, 206 —unintelligible in pantheism, 206 metaphysical, 180 Nietzsche, 54 objectivity of, 180 origin of, 240 presupposed by conscience, 216 presupposition of conscience, xi problem of, 210, 286–87 urge, 147 —involuntary, 279 See also personal evil evolution evolutionary theories of conscience, 232–35, 255 —Darwin, 258–63 —Eisler, Rudolf, 233 —evolution within species, 235 —intellectualists and, 235 —neglect personal element, 235 —Spencer, 267–72 evolutionists, 75, 234, 263, 267, 270–71 theories of development, 235–36, 238, 258–63, 267, 271, 323n7 See also theories of conscience, genetic theories examination of conscience, 293 fear. See feelings Fechner, Gustav, 295n2(chapter 1)

Index 355

feelings affect (Affekt) —defined, 324n6 —love contrasted, 246 animal, 259–62 biotic, 181 Butler, Joseph, 44 Calvin and, 95, 186–87 classified by Scheler, 181 compassion (Mitleid), 50–51, 53 conscience and, 130, 132, 160, 275 —classification of related emotions, 191 —genuine and nonessential, 188–89 —and heart in Old Testament, 187 —Mill, J. S., 186 degraded by intellectualist theory, 95 despair, 97, 171–72 —classification of, 191 —Judas Iscariot, 171 —Newman, 97 disposition(s) and, 155 dread of conscience, 11 duty, 133–34, 256–57 —joy in (Spencer), 269 envy in Freud, 64 fear, 23, 85–87, 89–90, 179, 193 —banished by forgiveness, 197 —basis of conscience in Bain, Alexander, 257 —classification of, 191 —ego-reinforcement and, 196–97 —future-oriented, 188 —of God, 171 —of God, and Newman, 170 —vs. moral insight, 256 —not biological or sociological, 171

—opposed by reconciliation, 193 —as origin of conscience, 232 —of others, 163–64 —overcome by repentance, 193 —punishment, 159, 237 —relation to evil, 257–58 —role in punishment, 188 feeling-states, 114–16, 311n27 fellow-feeling (Mitfühlen), 260–62 —amoral, 260 —precondition of society (Scheler), 262 guilt, 167–69, 173, 181, 187 —classification of, 191 —distinct from shame, 172 —not subjective, 178 —pathological, 171–72, 221–22 happiness, 182 —does not presuppose evil, 216 —as gift, 215 impotence, 164 intentional, 116 —act of love, 132 —conscience, xxxi —Scheler, 114–16 —value-feeling(s), xxiv, 116–20 isolation from reason rejected by Stoker, xxxixn51 Kant and, 44–49 love —apriorism of, 140–41 —conscience and, 137–38, 181, 200–201 —God, 129, 136 —ground of conscience, 123 —hate and, 116, 119, 140–41 —mother’s, 78 —of neighbor in Nietzsche, 53, 129 —of self, 44, 112 —spiritual, 85, 99, 102

356 Index

feelings (cont.) moral, xxvi, 67, 71 —conscience as, 67 —Darwin, 258 ontical abandonment, 168 ontical bereavement, 167 past-, present-, and future-­ oriented, 190–91, 221 pharisaical, 214, 218–19 primacy of —vs. intellectual judgment, 93 —Scheler, xxxixn51, 140–41 —Stoker, xxvii, 71–72 psychical, 181 —vs. deeper spiritual, 189 psychology and —gestalt and associationist ­theories, 93–94 remorse, 179 —classification, 191 respect, 44, 47, 133, 134, 194, 257 responsibility, xxvii Scheler, 181–82 self-feelings, 182 self-love, 44, 112 sensible, 181 shame, 169, 172, 189 Sidgwick, Henry, on, 112 spiritual, 181–82 —deepest, for Scheler, 181, 189 sympathy, 259–62 —blind to values, 262 —ethics of, inadequate, 262 torment, 160 of value-assessment in Høffding, Harald, 186 vengefulness, 263 See also guilt; ressentiment Feuerbach, Ludwig, 233

forgiveness and alleviation of guilt, xxvii, 161 conscience dormant in, 217 divine, 174, 284, 293 —banishes fear, 197 and fear and sin, in Scheler, 199–200 impotence (Nietzsche), 54 maternal, 254 miracle of, 180 —personal, 165 non-divine inadequate, 161 religious experience of, 184, 202 sense of guilt and, 104 —biological, 254 —love and, 164 Förster, Friedrich Wilhelm, 290 freedom and determinism bad conscience and, 78, 164 Luther, 103 Schopenhauer, 49–50, 77–78 Freud, Sigmund, 4, 58–64 psycho-analytic studies, 12 volitional theory of conscience, 153–54 why included in analysis, 34 Gaß, Wilhelm denies existence of good conscience, 211 on synteresis, 35 —contra Albertus Magnus, 38 —etymology of, 37 Gerland, Heinrich conscience in art, 25 shame and conscience, 188–89 God absolute power, 163–64 act of forgiveness, 199

Index 357

cannot have “good conscience,” 217 conscience and, 177, 316n2 conscience points to, 178, 184, 283–84 as construct, 58 Ens a se, 175 evil and, 180, 205–6, 209 —practical solution, 210 —theodicy, 204–5, 208–10 fear of, 171 —banished by forgiveness, 197 forgiveness, 174, 199–201, 284, 293 —Scheler, 300 humility before, 175–76 intervention of, 207 as judge, 162, 173–74, 181, 197 justice, 163 Kant’s ideal person and, 47–48 limited philosophies exclude, 32 love and, 129–32, 148, 177, 194, 200–201 —Decalogue and, 136–37 —Scheler and, 200 —urge of conscience, 144–48 loving Father, 189 perfection, 209 Person, 165 Person of persons, 32, 129–30, 298n27 —Newman, 165 person’s value before, 176 as power of conscience, 163–66 reconciliation with, 171, 173–76, 196 respect for, 194 right to punish, 208 —Nietzsche, 57–58

good bias favoring, 147–48 and capacity for doing evil, 220 dependent on love, 135–36 evil and, 116, 202–8 —Kant, 116 —Rée, Paul, 264 —urges, 145–46 God and, 130–31, 148, 209–10, 223 love and, 130–31, 148, 181 motives and, 133–34 —Kant, 133–34 obliviousness to, 219–20 respect for, 44 urge, 124, 181 vs. useful, 265 value, in Scheler, 115–16, 129–31 See also types of conscience, good conscience guilt, 82–83, 120, 160, 178, 198–99 actual vs. possible, 85 animals unaware of, 253 assumed to be universally exposed, 168–69 before whom?, xxvii, 160 —God, 57–58, 162, 165, 169, 187 —ideal self, 138, 144 —Kant’s ideal person, 47 —others, 161, 179 —persons, 165 —self, 160–61 —state, 161 —super-ego, 60–62, 125, 153 —See also analogies (metaphors) for conscience, judge biological, 153, 183, 253 cannot be imputed to God, 223 certainty of, 80, 82–86, 89–91, 120–22, 169, 275, 280

358 Index

guilt (cont.) —compared with Descartes, 280–81 collective, 131–32 —vs. personal, 132 concealed, 170, 198–99 conscience and, 82, 182 —advisory conscience vs., 17 culpability and, 227 direct intuition of, 108 experience of, 86–89, 97, 163, 168 —deeper than judgments, 96 —heightened by love, 194 —as sin, 178 fear of, 85–87, 163–66 —banished by forgiveness, 197 —not biological or sociological, 171–72, 183 flight from, 168–71 forgiveness and, 199, 217 freedom from, 198 God’s knowledge of, 169 intuitionism and, 118 involuntary, 123, 279 irrevocable, 173 judgments of, 92 —confused with conscience, 97 law and, 103–4 objective, 97, 121–22, 186, 199, 314n27 ontical discovery of, 168 origin of —debt (Schuld), in Nietzsche, 54–57 —Oedipus complex, in Freud, 60 others’ knowledge of, 167–70 overcome by reconciliation, 192 personal, 132 punishment and, 248

quality, not feeling, in Max Scheler, 179 repentance and, 198–99 requires forgiveness or punishment, xxvii —Scheler, 199 See also feelings, guilt; forgiveness Häberlin, Paul conscience —call of, 217 —as ideal self, 139, 144 —opposed to wishes, 127–28 personalism, 139 urge of conscience, 137 voluntarist theory, 70, 125 Hatzfeld, Helmut, 26–27 Hegel, G. W. F., 121 Heidegger, Martin assessment of Stoker’s Das Gewissen, xvi influenced by Stoker, xvi influence on Scheler, xxxvin14 Hepp, Valentin influence on Scheler, xxxviiin43 theory of conscience, 331n13 Heymans, Gerard intuitionist aspirations, 108–10 objectivity hypothesis, 109 Hildebrand, Dietrich von, xxvi, 134, 311n29 history of concept of conscience, 35–74 medieval, 35–43 —conscientia and synteresis, 39–42 modern, 43–64 post-Reformation Protestant, 42–43

Index 359

Høffding, Harald, 233 conscience as capacity for value assessment, 186 Homer, 24 Hume, David, 295n2(chapter 1) humility Buytendijk, F. J. J., on, 107, 294n1(chapter 1) condition for reconciliation, 194, 196–97 before God, 175–76 pride and, 107, 214 Scheler, 196, 282 ideal ought, 70, 134, 142–43, 240 Ihering, Rudolf von, 233 immortality, 285–86 incentives. See motives inclination disposition and, 155 duty and, 133–36 evil, 202 passive, 126 infallibility. See qualities of conscience innocence, 83, 190, 210, 218, 317n17 child, 90 good conscience and, 218 partial innocence impossible, 168 self-deceived, 83 intentionality of conscience, xxxi of feelings, 116 —value-feeling, xxiv “irrationalism” in phenomenology attributed to Scheler, xxiv–xxv Reformational critique of, xxiv–xxv, xxxixn50

Jaspers, Karl limitations of rational stance, 106 Jerome, Saint, 36–41 first used synteresis in sense of conscience, 36 identified synteresis with symbol of “eagle,” 37 synteresis as post-lapsarian spark of conscience, 36, 39 Jodl, Friedrich, 233 on ambiguity of conscience, 16 identifies Aquinas’ synteresis with practical reason, 41 —as subjective appearance of natural law, 41 intellectualist view, 75 Jones, W. H. S. on Greek synonyms for “conscience,” 24 judge. See analogies (metaphors) for conscience, judge judgments of conscience, 22–23, 31, 45, 75–81, 138 —experience of conscience deeper than, 96, 119 —in the mentally ill, 79–80, 91 —not universally valid, 76, 234–35 —relativity and, 75, 231 —self-accusation, 80–81, 84, 179, 181, 192, 222 —self-bifurcating, 160, 188–89 —as self-referential, 76–81, 189 of duty, 45 of guilt —confused with conscience, 97–99 —different from experience of, 119 —as universal, 168

360 Index

judgments (cont.) moral, 18, 31, 41, 76 —animals lack, 260 —basis for obedience, 255 —children, 265 —conscience deeper than, 96 —vs. intellectual judgments, 93 —vs. judgments of conscience, 76–81, 242–43 —personal vs. impersonal, 235 —relative, 123, 231, 235 —universality, 234–35 —universally valid, 76 Pfänder, Alexander, on, 96, 106 justice, 163, 165, 174–75 of God, 194 presupposes Person, 165 punishment, 174, 197 —divine right, 208 sense of, 163 Sidgwick, Henry, on, 112 Kähler, Martin antecedent vs. consequent ­conscience, 22 on etymology of conscientia and syneidesis, 21 relation of Scholasticism to ­Aristotle, 39 Kant, Immanuel conscience, 45–49, 145 —not categorical imperative, 145, 217 —troubled, 182 —will subject to, 127 duty, 291 on good and evil, 116, 145 immortality and, 285 intellectualism, 45–49 moral education, 291

overestimates reason, 106 practical reason —source of moral laws, 155 primacy of conscience —over categorical imperative, 145 —over duty, 64, 151 rigorism, 133 and Scheler, 130, 133–37, 282 tribunal concept, 86 —attacked by Schopenhauer, 86–88 voluntarism, 145, 151 —and categorical imperative, 125 See also categorical imperative Kasowski, Gregor B., xvi katexochen (κατ’ εξοχήν), defined, 307n112 knowledge and education of conscience, 289 founded on love, 140–41 of God through conscience, 184 of guilt, 168–69, 187 insight (Scheler), 229 love and, 137, 140, 144 love with understanding ­(Buytendijk), 142–43 moral, 237–38, 279–81 —Calvin, 95 —conscience as, xxvi–xxviii, 17, 67, 70, 92, 229, 238, 239 —conscience more than, 77–79, 98–99 —deception about, 276 —develops gradually, 239, 241 —education of conscience, 289–90 —Elsenhans, Theodor, 230 —insight in Scheler, 229 —in intellectualism and ­intuitionism, 118

Index 361

—presupposed by conscience, 124, 242 —Stoker, xln56 —See also theories of conscience, intellectualist theory practical, 281 and warning conscience, 225 See also moral insight Koffka, Kurt, 12 Köhler, Wolfgang on chimpanzees, 89, 249–51, 253–54 conscience and apes, 248 and gestalt psychology, 12 Külpe, Oswald, 18 Kuyper, Abraham founder of neo-Calvinist movement, ix influence on neo-Calvinist movements, xxii Laas, Ernst conscience socially conditioned, 233 rationalist, 75 language about conscience colloquial, 26–30 psychological development, 25–30 theoretical (logical) —distorting, 30–31 —as impoverishment, 28 word “conscience” —Greeks lacked, 296n12 —Rothe, Richard, opposes, 16–17 See also etymology law and conscience Barth, 103–4 Calvin, 186 Dostoevsky, 100–102 guilt, 103–4

Kant, 46 Luther, 103 respect for, 135 underestimated by intuitionism, 103 Lipps, Theodor, 125 Lohengrin, 263, 328n44 love vs. affect (Affekt), 246 apriorism of, 140–41 awakening of in conscience, 147, 177, 192, 194, 200 and conscience, 119, 124, 130, 132 consciousness united by, 141 Decalogue and, 136–37 —Christ and, 137 discovering role, 117 disposition(s) and, 155 duty, 291 —inferior to, 135 and education of conscience, 289–91, 293 forgiveness and, 164, 194 God and, 129–31, 176, 189, 194 —forgiveness and, 194 as ground of conscience, 119–20, 123–24, 132, 177, 199–201, 248 and hate, 116 heightens sense of guilt, 194 intentional, 116 knowledge and, 137, 140, 144 —founded on, 140 mother’s, 78 motive for morals, 135–36 neighbor (Nietzsche), 53, 129 obedience and, 255–56 personal, 132 primary principle of all being, 176 self-love and conscience —Butler, Joseph, 44

362 Index

love (cont.) —Sidgwick, Henry, 112 spiritual, 85, 99, 102 transcends biological milieu, 246–47, 260 truth and, 143 understanding and (Buytendijk), 142–43 universal, 129 —Kant, 130 —Scheler, 129–30 urge, 146 voluntarism in Scheler, 125 warning conscience and, 225 Luther, Martin conscience related to God, 43 law and freedom, 103 Martineau, James, 125 McDougall, William behavioral psychology, 12 conscience as person, 68 subjectivity of moral intuition, 113 medieval doctrines. See history of concept of conscience, medieval mental illness, 79–80, 91 conscience symptom of, 201–2, 204 guilt as abnormal, xxvii, 91, 159–60, 166, 169, 184 psychopathology, 159, 171–72 metaphors for conscience. See analogies (metaphors) for conscience metaphysics Aristotelian-Thomist, xxiii Dooyeweerd, Herman, and, xxxviiin47 elements in conscience, xxiv, xxxi– xxxii, 9, 71, 84, 94, 99, 167, 201 —bad conscience, 177

—basis of forgiveness as, 200 —collective guilt as, 132 —evil as, 180, 222, 240, 257–58, 286–87, 318n27, 320n68 —God and, 177, 201, 207 —love, 137, 141, 145, 147, 177, 206, 241 —microcosm and macrocosm, 205–8 —personalism, 330n4 —prereligious (theal), 220 —problem of mortality, 286–87 —question of immortality, 285 —speculation about, 205–7, 240 —uniformity of conscience, 285 —urge, 99, 124, 145 —See also ontical (ontische) element in conscience grounding of conscience, 19, 104, 166, 242, 320n64 Newman’s view questioned by Scheler, 5 and phenomenology, xxxixn50, xxxixn53 problem of good and evil, 180, 184 religion and, 174, 178, 183, 207 Schopenhauer’s system, 49 sensed self-value, 182 Stoker, ix, xi, xv, xxiii, xxv, 4 Mill, John Stuart associationist psychology, 295n2(chapter 1) emotionalist theory, 186 evolutionist theory of conscience, 255 moral consciousness. See consciousness, moral moral facts, 114 moral feeling. See feelings, moral

Index 363

moral insight, 134, 242, 280–81 animals lack, 183, 242, 247–57, 260 children, 241, 265 —compared with animals, 254–56, 259–60 derives from free will, 271 development, 239, 241, 255–56 and external consequences, 268 vs. fear, 256 given in conscience, 280 Heymans, Gerard, 111 infallible, 280 relativism, 276, 278 sense of duty not, 134 subjectivism, 276 moral instinct, 67, 125 moral judgments. See judgments, moral moral knowledge. See knowledge, moral moral urge (Drang) of conscience, 23, 67, 70–71, 124, 126, 130, 145, 154, 238, 240 arises momento-genetically, 240–41 categorical imperative, 125 and duty, 154, 229, 291–93 falls silent, 240 love and, 130, 132 love of God and, 144 not yet conscience, 154–55 personal, 132 presupposes knowledge, 127 self-referential, 132 spiritual, not biological, 126 synteresis and, 125 motives, 50, 126, 128, 138–40, 257, 259 active and intentional, xxi altruism (Nietzsche), 53

duty, 133–35 egoism, malice, compassion in Schopenhauer, 50–51, 53 inclination, 132–33, 135–37, 155 insight and love, 269 love of God and others, 124, 129–30, 133 for morality, 135–36 need not be strong, 128 ressentiment in Nietzsche, xxviii, 53–54, 57, 152, 304n62 synteresis, 40 Newman, John Henry, xxvii conscience, 212 —and despair, 97 —discernment of, 161–62 —fear of God, 170 —good conscience, 212, 284 —persons, God, and, 165 —religion and, 177–78 influence on Stoker, 5 real vs. notional, 226, 228 shame, 165 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4, 53–58 bad conscience as sickness, 159 criminals least troubled by conscience, 119 mercy as privilege of powerful, 55 origin of conscience, 265–67 punishment as origin of conscience, 55–56 relation to Paul Rée and Alexander Bain, 265 voluntarist theory of conscience, 70, 125, 152 Nitzsch, Friedrich August Berthold synteresis as mistransliteration of syneidesis, 36–37, 299n1 —criticized by Wilhelm Gaß, 37

364 Index

Oedipus complex, 58–60, 62, 153 ontical (ontische) element in conscience abandonment as, 167–68 bereavement as, 167 definition, xxxi–xxxii, 194n2 (author’s preface) as existential, 99, 167 as fear, 171 foundation of —reason, 148 —truth, 33 —values, 105 love and, 137, 148 in maternal bond, 150 metaphysical, xxiv, xxxi–xxxii, 9, 71, 84, 94, 99, 167 personal evil as, 151 in values, 119 See also metaphysics Orestes flight before the Furies, 24, 170–71 profound representation of ­conscience, 24, 170–71 reconciled via religion, 171 Origen of Alexandria etymology of conscientia, 37 origins of conscience, xxviii, 14 amoral factors, 236 animal nature, 232, 244 arises abruptly, 239–41 Bain, 255–56 blame, 89 evolution, 232, 234, 258–63 fear, 232, 256–57 moral insight vs. fear, 256 Nietzsche, 54–58, 266 not biogenetic, 239

Oedipus complex in Freud, 58–60, 62–63, 153 psychic inhibitions, 233 punishment, 263, 267 ressentiment in Nietzsche, 54–58 revenge, 232, 263, 266 social conditioning, 233, 263–64 —Rée, Paul, 263–65 social instincts in Darwin, 259 —sympathy, 259–63 See also development of conscience; theories of conscience, genetic theories Passavant, Johann K., 128–29 Paulsen, Friedrich, 75 personal evil actualized, 228 blind to, 276 collective guilt, distinct from, 132 conquered by personal love, 206 conscience and, 144–45, 150, 228–29, 238–39, 274–75 —desire for, 282 —misjudged by Nietzsche, 266–67 consciousness of, 275, 278–81 —abrupt, 239–41, 279 —absolute, 79–83, 274 —dormant when forgiven, 217 —dormant when repented, 198–99 —origins of conscience and, 240 desire for, 226, 282 evil inclination, 202 experience of, 13, 72, 78–79, 81–83, 86, 96, 149, 228 —deeper than good conscience, 222 —independent of religious awareness, xxvii, 177

Index 365

—not feeling, 178 —subjectivism, 276 —warning conscience and, 227–28 genuine phenomena of conscience and, 223 God’s good creation and, 180 indifference to, 100–102 intention, 226 knowledge of, 278 ontic meaning, 151 possible but rejected, 228 presupposed by conscience, 78–83, 220 —Stoker, xi–xii, xiv, xxvii–xxix, xln58, xln65, 150–51 real, 228 revelation in genuine conscience, 228–29, 239, 274 tending towards realization, 228 warning conscience and, 225–26 See also evil personalism, 277, 330n4 of conscience, 277 Häberlin, Paul, 139 metaphysical, 330n4 Newman, 322n20 persons center of acts (Scheler), 178–79 conscience identified with, 67–68 —personal importance, 19–20, 120 forgiveness, 165 God, 165 and good and evil, 146 interpersonal solidarity through love, 129–30 love, 129–30 Person of all persons, 32, 129–30, 298n27 presupposed by

—conscience, 164–65, 182 —justice, 165 —shame, 164–65 value of, 175–76 Pfänder, Alexander, 96 arrogance of rational judgment, 106 influence on phenomenological psychology, 12 Pfister, Oskar, 154 Pharisaism, 218–19 absent in good conscience, 218 as degenerate good conscience, 222 moral self-value and, 214 phenomena of conscience genuine, 67, 69, 73, 221, 227–29 —bad conscience, 223 —experience of evil, 227–28 —genetic theories cannot distinguish, 237 —good conscience, 211–24 —past-, present-, and future-­ orientation, 190–91, 221, 223 —and personal evil, 223, 227, 275 —revelation of personal evil, 228–29, 238 —warning conscience, 221, 223–24 inauthentic, 221–22, 227, 229–30 negating a warning, 223–24 See also qualities of conscience phenomenological method adapted by Stoker to Reformed outlook, ix, 3–4 Calvinist controversies over, xxiv–xxv description of conscience in, 11, 66–74 —bad conscience, 160–70

366 Index

phenomenological method (cont.) Dooyeweerd, Herman, critique of, xxxixn50 metaphysics and, xxxixn50, xxxixn53 Stoker’s, ix, xxvi, 3–4 —descriptive, xxvi —material (nonformal), 227 waning popularity of, xxi philosophy of religion, 210, 285 and conscience in Newman, 178 Stoker’s analysis, 4 Plato, 43 Plutarch, 24 powers of the soul, 299n4 conscience as potential, 39–40 practical reason, conscience as Cronin, Michael, 75 Kant, 45–46, 155 preference and acts of love, 131 good or evil and, 282 and knowledge, 118 and values, 117, 325n19 pride humility and, 107, 197 in own goodness, 214 Scheler, 107 Przywara, Erich, 134 love and knowledge in Scheler, 141 psychological development of conscience, 237–38 —vs. theoretical meaning, 26 language about conscience, 25–30, 229 moral, 271 pathology, 159, 171–72 psychology affect (Affekt), 246

—defined, 324n6 of animals, 5, 244–45, 248–57, 259–60 —forgiveness, 254 —humans transcend, 244–49 —Köhler, 89, 248 —lack moral insight, 183, 242, 249–54, 260–63 —punishment not understood, xxviii, 249–57 —reconciliation, 250–51 associationist, atomistic, 12, 77, 295n2(chapter 1) —Bain, Alexander, 256 —elements theory, 93–94 —Elsenhans, Theodor, 94 —intellectualist theories, 77 —refuted by Wertheimer, 93 behavioral, 12 Calvin, 154 of children, 5, 89–90, 255–56 —forgiveness, 154 —moral insight, 241, 254 —pain, 255–56 —punishment vs. love, 256 development, types of, 238 of fear, 23, 85–87, 89–90, 163–66 —banished by forgiveness, 197 —changed to repentance, 194, 198 —of God in Newman, 170 —See also feelings gestalt, 12 —Wertheimer, 12, 93–94 guilt as normal vs. abnormal, xxvii, 91, 159, 166, 169–70, 184 —abnormal from social standpoint, 201 —pathological guilt feelings, 171–72

Index 367

—symptom of illness, 201–2, 204 inadequate treatment of conscience, 12 influence on conscience, 8–9 maternal forgiveness, 254 phenomenological, 12 psychoanalysis, 61, 153–54 psychopathology, 91, 159–60, 171–72 punishment, 89–90 —Darwin, 263 —Freud, 63 —and guilt, 248 —Nietzsche, 55–56, 265–66 —Simmel, 233 of religion, 7 scrupulosity, 172, 221–22 of solidarity with others, 129–30 Stoker’s analysis of, 4, 11 sympathy, 259–63 See also feelings; Freud, Sigmund; guilt punishment animals and, xxviii, 89, 183, 195, 237, 248–54, 326n21 anticipated, 163, 183, 188, 195 biological fear of, 8, 183, 195 children, and, 89, 254–56, 326n21 —contrasted with animals, 254 deserved, 163 divine, 174, 188, 197, 285 fear of, 159, 168 guilt requires, xxvii immortality and, 285 just, 174, 197 love and, 256, 326n21 origin of conscience —Rée, Paul, 263 —Spencer, Herbert, 267

psychology of —Bain, Alexander, 89, 255–56 —evolutionary theories, 233, 263–67, 272 —Freud, 63 —Nietzsche, 55, 265–66 —Simmel, Georg, 233 —Spencer, Herbert, 270 and revenge, 263–64, 328n54 —in animals, 250 self-accusation and, 81, 160, 190 social fear of, 195 spiritual, 286 qualities of conscience absolute, 42, 89, 120–23, 131, 138–39, 163–64, 173–74 —in Butler, Joseph, 122 —and certitude of guilt, 84, 91, 121–23, 163, 169 —and conquest of evil, 204–5 —demand of, xxix, 9, 44–45, 81, 128, 138, 176, 191, 204–5 —feelings of, 164, 167, 181, 190 —and God, 131, 201, 204 —in Hegel, G. W. F., 121 —impartiality, 110, 163, 165, 175 —infallible, 281–82 —as judge, 172–74, 175 —ontical element in, 167, 172 —questioned, 231–32, 234–35 —regarding evidence of guilt, 121, 204 —regarding personal evil, 79–83, 274 —and relativism of, 41–42, 65, 120–23, 138–39, 282 —in Scholasticism, 42, 282–84 —in synteresis, 282

368 Index

qualities of conscience (cont.) —validity of, 14, 65, 138, 234, 273–74 —of warning conscience, 226 acquired, 243 —factors, 8–9 —vs. inborn, 65, 70 —moral knowledge, 288 —as phylo-genetic, 239 —subjective absolutism, 277 —system of rules, 233 ambiguity, 13, 16–18, 66, 72–74 —sources of, 18–19, 21, 27–30, 32 authority —Butler, Joseph, 43–44, 122 —ground of, 122, 184 —and Kant’s ideal person, 47–48, 64 —rejected by Paul Rée, 233 —See also validity fallibility, xxviii–xxix, 13, 65, 84, 138, 184, 242–43, 274–75, 277, 280–82, 284, 287–88 —of conscientia, 36, 39–40, 42, 274, 282, 284 —and evolutionists, 234, 273 —in genetic theory, 242–43 —of moral insight, xxviii–xxix, 274, 280–81, 287–89 —recognized evil, 288 —reducing, 275–76 —relativism and, 231–32, 274, 276 —Rousseau, 25 —of synteresis, 36, 42, 274 —testimony not universal, 242–43 —Valentin Hepp, 331n13 —and warning conscience, 226 falls silent, 182 infallibility, 65, 134 —absolute, 274, 276–77

—authority, 9, 273 —certainty of guilt, 278 —disclosure of personal evil, xxviii, 277, 282 —divine oracle, 13, 315n2 —as judge in Rousseau, 25 —relative, 274 —in Scholastic paradox, 42 —subjectivism and, 277 —in synteresis, 36, 39–40, 42, 274, 282, 284 innate (inherent), 65, 70, 105 —inclination, 125 —Kant, 45, 47 —structure of bad conscience, 210 —as synteresis, 38 involuntary, 123, 127, 279 nonmoral elements —amoral factors, 236 —Schopenhauer on, 51, 182–83 reliability, xxviii–xxix, 14, 84, 234, 273–93 subjectivity and, 129 —biases, 110–11, 147 —intuitivism, 113 —Jodl, Friedrich, 41 —Kant, 45 —McDougall, William, 113 —Scheler, 129 suffering, 110 —Nietzsche, 53, 55–56 —Schopenhauer, 51–52, 64 supramundane, 159, 165, 201 —defined, 315n2 —as normal, 160, 169–70 —not necessarily religious, 177–78 —personal God and, 165 —in theistic perspective, 169 See also phenomena of conscience

Index 369

Rashdall, Hastings, 69 rationalism and intuitionism, xxvi, 67, 70–73, 98, 307n113 Kant’s formalism, 106 limitations of, 106 rationalists, 75 reason Kant, 45–49 Schopenhauer, 50 reconciliation, 174, 187, 193, 272 in animals, 250–51 in children, 254 and conscience, 187 Rée, Paul Bain, Alexander, and, 265 conscience dethroned, 233 evolutionist, 75, 263 and Nietzsche, 265 origin of conscience, 14, 263 —phylo-genetic, 265 —revenge, 263–64, 266 —social, 233 Reformational philosophy, xix–xxv lacuna of literature on Stoker, xvi–xvii, xx pioneers in, ix Stoker’s place in tradition, ix–x relativism of conscience, 42, 65, 75, 231–34, 237, 280 —cultural, 231 —Rée, Paul, 233–34 —temporally conditioned, 42, 167 Heraclitus and, 232 of moral insight, 276–77 reliability, xxviii–xxix, 14, 84, 234, 273–93

religion acts of, 175 authority, 288 Christian, 132, 293 and conscience, xxvii, 154, 163–66, 184, 293 —in post-Reformation Protestantism, 43 —relation questioned, 174, 177 —in Scheler, 16 Decalogue and conscience, 100 definition of, in Stoker, 315n1 deism undermines bad conscience, 206 education and, 291 experience of forgiveness, 184, 197, 202, 284 healing through, 202–3 morality and, 288 non-religious spheres and, 178 Orestes finds solace in, 171 pantheism, 132, 206 —bad conscience senseless for, 206 philosophy of, in Stoker, 4 proper, 178 relation of conscience to —antecedent to, 178 —determined by, 284 —independent of, 158, 177 —irreducible to, 158 religions, 206–7, 286, 288 role in conscience questioned, 174 sin, experience of, 178 theal, xxxviin24, 157–58, 284–85, 315n1 —areligious, 178 —bad conscience and, 201, 220

370 Index

religion (cont.) —conscience as, xxvii, 177–78, 183–84, 201, 220 —defined, xxvii, 315nn1–2 theism, 206 traditional, 132, 156 values of, 115 repentance, 81, 176–77, 187–89, 192–203, 210, 217, 285 Buytendijk, F. J. J., on, 294n1(chapter 1) and ego-diminishment, 196 and guilt, 188, 198 Judas and, 159 Kant, 49 looks to the past, 188, 192 only solution for conscience, 176, 192 path to, 195–96, 202 psychological view, 198 reconciliation and, 174, 187, 193 —conscience and, 187 Scheler, 173–75, 192, 197–98 transforms fear, 194 uniquely human, 236 uniquely religious solution, 202 See also forgiveness ressentiment Buytendijk, F. J. J., xxxvin12, 294n1(chapter 1) Nietzsche, xxviii, 53–54, 57, 152, 304n62 origins of word, 304n62 Ritschl, Albrecht, 155 doubts existence of good conscience, 211 on “legislative” and “reprimanding” conscience, 23 Rosenkranz, Johann K. F., 75

Rothe, Richard criticized by Stoker, 17 opposes term “conscience,” 16–17 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques eulogy to conscience, 25 Scheler, Max assessment of Stoker’s Das Gewissen, xiv–xvi, 3–6 Buytendijk, F. J. J., and, 142–43 conscience —antecedent to religion, 178 —essentially negative, 212 —and moral insight, 229 ethics of sympathy inadequate, 262 fellow-feeling (Mitfühlen), 262 happiness as gift, 214 on humility vs. pride, 107, 196, 215 influence on phenomenological psychology, 12 influence on Stoker, xxiv–xxv, 3, 8–9 Kant and, 130, 133, 282 love —vs. duty, 269 —foundation of knowledge, 140 —God and, 129–32, 140 moral pride, 214 person as center of acts, 178–79 his phenomenology adapted to Reformed outlook, ix positive nature of bad conscience, 229 primacy of intentional feeling, xxxixn51 reconciliation with God, 174 relationship to Stoker, xviii, xxxvin15 repentance, 174, 192, 194, 197–201

Index 371

on Stoker’s Calvinist ethos, xv, 5 values —blindness to, 276 —objective, 114–15 —ranks and feelings, 115 voluntarist view of love, 125 Schiller, Friedrich on duty, 313n13 on Kant’s “rigorism,” 133–34 Schleiermacher, Friedrich conscience as individual calling, 70 Scholasticism Calvinist controversy over, xxii–xxv, xxxviiin47, xxxixn50 and conscience, 282–84 Dooyeweerd, Herman, on, xxxviiin46 and Kuyper, Abraham, xxii Reformed, xxii and relation of conscientia to synteresis, 41–42 in Stoker —Calvinist allegations of, xxiii —Stoker’s counterarguments, xxxviiin47 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 49–53 on Kant’s theory of conscience, 182–83 on Kant’s tribunal concept, 86–88 voluntarist conception of conscience, 125, 151–52 self ideal self, 138 Kant’s ideal person, 47 nothingness before God, 174–75, 194–95, 215 self-deception, 83, 91–92, 276 —impossible in warning conscience, 216

self-encounter in guilt, 168 self-feelings, 182 self-judgment —bifurcation of self in, 81, 160, 189 —guilt and, 179, 181, 190, 192 —judgment of others and, 76–78 —Kant, 47, 49 —shame and, 188 —torment, 192 self-love, 44, 112 self-value before God, 175–76 —sense of, 182 as super-ego in Freud, 60–62, 125, 153 Shakespeare, William, 4, 25 Macbeth vs. Raskolnikov, 100–102 shame, 11, 93, 185, 190, 195, 200, 223, 285 bad conscience, 160–63, 169, 175–77, 179, 187–88, 192 biological, 172 conscience and, 24, 31 before God, 189 lack of, 97, 165 —before animals, 165 before the law, 81 before Person, 165 present-oriented, 188, 191 repentance and, 187 and self-judgment, 188 before Something, 162–63 syllogism of Saint Antoninus of Florence, 42 Shestov, Lev Macbeth vs. Raskolnikov, 100–102 Sidgwick, Henry, 111 Simmel, Georg conscience as moral urge, 70 —origin in punishment, 233 voluntarism, 125

372 Index

sins forgiveness of, 199 of omission, 226–27 See also personal evil society and conscience, 157, 159 societal influence, 8 —conscience as abnormal, 201 —conscience irreducible to, 157, 171 —Rée, Paul, and Nietzsche, 158 —Schopenhauer, 51, 79, 87, 183 —Spencer, Herbert, 271 Spencer, Herbert conscience —effect of consequences, 269–70 —as inherited utility and in­hibitions, 133 —as moral consciousness, 267 —product of evolution, 269–72 duty and joy, 169 theory of conscience, 233, 267 —Darwinian, 267 —evolutionary theory, 267–72 —sympathy and, 261 Spiegelberg, Herbert on Stoker’s Das Gewissen, xiv Spinoza, Baruch truth as criterion of the false, 121 Spranger, Eduard, 12 Stephen, Leslie, 186, 233, 298n24 conscience and race, 233 Stobaeus, Joannes conscience as “consciousness,” 21 Stoics terms for “conscience,” 21, 24 Stoker, Hendrik G. background and education, xvii–xix, 5

Calvinist ethos, ix–x, xv, xix–xxv, xxxviiin43, 5 —Calvinist philosophical tradition, ix–xx —co-founder of Reformational philosophy movement, xix —controversy over Stoker, xxii–xxv, xxxviiin47, xxxixn50 —editor of Philosophia Reformata, 18 compared with Jakob von Uexküll and Adolf Portmann, xi defense against charges of “Scholasticism,” xxxviiin47 influence on Martin Heidegger, xvi lacuna of literature on, xvi–xvii, xx —Calvinist disagreements over Stoker and, xxii–xxv —isolation in S. Africa and, xx —and waning popularity of Christian philosophy, xxi —waning popularity of phenomenology and, xxi mentors —Bavinck, Herman, xxiii–xxiv —Buytendijk, F. J. J., xviii, 8, 10 —Dooyeweerd, Herman, xx —Kuyper, Abraham, xxii —Scheler, xxiv–xxv, 3, 8–9 —Vollenhoven, D. H. Th., xx phenomenological method, ix, xxvi, 3–4 —adapted to Reformed perspective, ix —aims guided by phenomena alone, 66 —descriptive, xxvi —material (nonformal), 227

Index 373

—parallels in Catholic philosophy, xxxixn53 place in the Reformed philosophical tradition, ix–x on primacy of intentional feeling, xxvii, xxxivn51, 71–72 reception of Das Gewissen, x, xiv–xvii —by Heidegger, xvi —by Scheler, xiv–xvi —by Spiegelberg, Herbert, xiv rejects Scheler’s isolation of emotion from reason, xxxixn51 remembered by Strauss, D. F. M., xi Scholasticism and, xxiii–xxiv view of conscience —Augustinian-Calvinist perspective, xi–xii —development of his view, 7–8 —etymology of “conscience,” 36–38 —summarized, xxv–xxix Struve, Heinrich von, 125 subjectivism of biases of conscience, 110–11 —favor good, 147 of conscience, 129 emotionalism and, 185–86 evil and, 276 and intuitionism, 113–14 Jodl, Friedrich, 41 Kant, 45 McDougall, William, 113 Scheler, 129 suffering Schopenhauer on, 51–53 synderesis relation to synteresis, 299n1

syneidesis (συνείδησις), 21, 23–24, 36 Nitzsch, Friedrich August ­Berthold, on, 36–37 synteresin (συντήρησιν) cognate of syneidesis, 299n2 and conscientia in Johannes Cocceius, 35 synteresis (συντήρησις), xxvii, 35–42, 64, 99–100, 144 absolute, 282 in Aquinas, 41 cognate of synteresin, 299n2 disdained by Johannes Cocceius, 35 distinguished from conscience, 145 as habit (habitus), 39–40, 284 infallible and absolute, 282 as mistranslation of syneidesis, 36–37 more technical in Latin than Greek, 35 and natural law, 41 as post-lapsarian spark of conscience, 36, 39–40, 125 as power (potentia), 39–40 and practical reason, 41 relation to conscientia, 36, 39–41, 145, 274, 282–84 relation to good and evil, 39, 143 Saint Jerome and, 36–41, 125, 312n1 as urge to keep laws, 100 as watchfulness, 37, 64–65, 307n3 theal. See religion, theal theodicy, 204, 208–10 bad conscience calls for, 204 evil as contradiction of God, 208–10 given in conscience, 204–5 practical solution, 210

374 Index

theories of conscience biological, 157–58, 244 —and animal milieu, 236, 246–49, 260–62 —Bain, Alexander, and, 157, 257 —bio-genetic, xxviii, 239–40, 244 —conscience considered abnormal, 201–2, 204 —conscience irreducible to, 62, 126, 142, 157, 171, 183, 246–47, 260, 271–72, 285 —Darwin, 157–58 —Freud, 153–54, 158 —mortality and evil, 286 —shame and, 172 —See also animals; evolution blame theory, 89–90, 125 —Bain, Alexander, 89 Calvinist, 281–82 as divine oracle, 13, 65, 70, 183–84, 243, 315n2 —disputed, 184, 273 elements theory, 93–94 —Elsenhans, Theodor, 94 —refuted by Wertheimer, Max, 93 emotionalist theory, xxvii, 8, 24, 67, 71–72, 185–86 —compared with intellectualist, 24, 93, 118, 185 —Høffding, Harald, 186 —Kant, 45, 49 —Mill, J. S., 186 —momento-genetic, xxviii, 238–41 —preeminence of, 185, 282 —problems with, 178, 185 evolutionist, 232–33, 235, 236–37, 255, 263, 269–72 —Darwin, 232, 258–63, 267 —human transcendence and, 146–49, 254, 260

—Rée, Paul, 265 fear theory, 193 genetic theories —Bain, Alexander, 255–58 —bio-genetic theory, 244–45 —Darwin, 258–63 —Köhler, Wolfgang, 248–54 —question begging, 234, 237, 261 —Spencer, Herbert, 267–70 —types, 238–42 —unity of conscience eludes, 237 intellectualist theory, xxvi–xxvii, 7, 24, 67, 70, 74–76, 88, 95 —Aquinas, 41 —atomistic, 77 —Butler, Joseph, 43 —conscience as judgment, 75–76, 88–89, 92 —conscience as syllogism, 13, 42–43, 70, 75, 86, 88, 118, 122, 284, 331n13 —critique of, 98–99 —Cronin, Michael, 75 —emotions degraded by, 95 —evolutionary theories and, 236 —Förster, Friedrich Wilhelm, 290 —inferences vs. experience of guilt, 97–98 —and intuitionism, 98, 109, 113–14, 307n113 —Jodl, Friedrich, 75 —Jones, W. H. S., 24 —Kant, 45–49 —and rationalist theory, 307n113 —rejects intuitionism as subjective, 113–14 —Saint Antoninus of Florence, 41 —Wertheimer, Max, 93 intuitionist theory, xxix–xxx, 66–67, 70, 98, 103, 307n113

Index 375

—emotional intuitionism of Scheler, 114–17 —focus on the given, 106 —intuition of guilt, 108 —intuition of guilt as more reliable than inference, 109 —intuition of values, 104–5, 117 —intuition of values as morally self-referential, 118 —revelation and, 107 —subjectivity and, 113–14 —underestimates law, 103 —utilitarian intuitionism of Henry Sidgwick, 111–12 —values given in intentional feeling, 108, 116 philosophies inimical to conscience, 32–34 reductionist theories —biological, 62, 126, 142, 157–58, 171 —pleasure principle in Freud, 62 —sociological, 157–58, 159, 171 relativist theories, 7 —conscience as temporally conditioned, 42, 65, 231, 280 —evolutionists and, xxviii, 232, 234–35 Scholastic doctrine, 41–42, 282–84 scientific or theoretical (logical) conceptions —vs. common views, 26 —distorting and impoverished, 27, 30–31 —vs. practical views, 185 —syllogistic, 13, 41–43, 70, 75, 86, 88, 118, 122, 284, 331n13 as self-legislation, 77 voluntarist (volitionist) theory, xxvii, 67, 70, 151, 307n114

—deeper than intellectualism or intuitionism, 282 —and divine will, 125 —Freud, 153 —innate inclination and, 125 —and moral will, 125 —Schopenhauer, 52 —synteresis and, 125 warning conscience, 73, 221, 225, 229 —and duty, 226 —essential function of conscience, in Scheler, 213 —and knowledge, 225–26 —legislative conscience and, 155 —and love, 225 —and Socrates’s daemon, 225 —and urge to do evil, 225–27 See also conscientia; synteresis; types of conscience, religious Tolstoy, Leo, 4, 25 truth and conscience, 184 criterion of the false in Spinoza, 121 and love, 143 and objective guilt, 123 types of conscience accusing conscience, 82 acquired (formed) vs. innate, 65 advisory conscience, 17 antecedent (anticipatory) conscience, 22–23, 302n34 bad conscience, 73–74, 78–79, 97, 139, 176–79, 201–3, 219–20, 228–29 —as abnormal, 201 —and accusing conscience, 82 —and animals, 248–54 —as areligious, 178

376 Index

types of conscience (cont.) —blame for, 181, 223 —classification of phenomena, 191 —correlative with good, 212 —criminals and, 55, 76, 92–93, 119, 194 —deeper than good conscience, 220 —discernment, 92, 95, 98 —experience of, 158–59 —freedom and, 78 —immediate intuition of, 108 —irreducible, 159 —and judgments, 95–96 —Kant, 86 —more valuable than good conscience, 222 —Newman, 161, 166, 170, 177–78 —Nietzsche, 54–58 —as normal, 159–60, 166, 169–70, 184 —points to God, 178 —positive nature in Scheler, 229 —prereligious, xxvii, 220 —presupposes personal evil, 78–83, 96, 140 —presupposes transcendent judge, 163–65 —presupposes victory of good urge, 147 —primary and secondary, 81–83, 160, 189–92 —and religion, 100, 102, 194, 174 —religious view of, xxvii, 177–78, 183–84, 201, 220 —Stoker, xi–xii, xiv, xxvii–xxix, xln58, xln65 —as symptom of illness, 201–3 —See also religion, theal

deceiving, 91 doubting conscience, 84–85 erring conscience, 91–92 —as conscientia, 40 —impossible in Kant, 45 —See also qualities of conscience, infallibility good conscience, 73, 92, 211, 218, 229 —analogy of health, 219 —asymmetry with bad conscience, 148, 222–23 —as correlative with bad, 212 —Elsenhans, Theodor, 211–12 —excessive experience of, 222 —existence doubted, 211 —God cannot have, 217 —and innocence, 218 —lacks depth of bad conscience, 220 —negative function, 211–12 —Newman, 212, 284 —obliviousness to, 219–20 —and the Pharisee, 214 —positive element in, 218 —presupposes possible evil, 216–17 —vs. religious conscience, 284 —silent, 182 guilty conscience, 82–83, 120 —animals lack, 260 —arises abruptly, 207, 239–41, 279 —awakening of love and, 147, 177, 192, 194, 200–201 —in Cain, 170 —certainty of, 80, 82–86, 89–91, 120–22, 169 —deeper than judgments, 96

Index 377

—distinguished from advisory conscience, 17 —experience of, xiv, xxiv, xxvi– xxviii, 13, 79, 81–83, 86, 94, 168 —flight from, 163–71 —in intuitionism vs. intellectualism, 118 —involuntary, 123, 279 —and law in Luther, 103 —Newman, 170 —Nietzsche, 54–55 —as normal vs. abnormal, xxvii, 91, 159–60, 166, 169, 184, 201 —and warning conscience, 226 —See also guilt, before whom? innate vs. acquired (formed), 65, 70, 105 —inherent (Kant), 45 legislating conscience —Greeks unacquainted with, 296n12 —vs. reprimanding conscience, 23 —warning conscience and, 155 in linguistic locutions, 28–29, 297nn19–21, 298n23 moral, 7 —la conscience morale, 20 —Stobaeus, Joannes, 21 peaceful conscience, 171, 221 in proverbs, 29, 297n21 relative, 7 —evolution and, xxviii, 232, 234–35 —temporally conditioned, 42, 65, 231, 280 religious, 7, 8 —Newman, 177 —Nietzsche, 53–54

—in post-Reformation Protestantism, 43 —questioned, 174, 177, 183 —role of Decalogue in, 100 —Stoker, xxvii, 315nn1–2 reprimanding conscience —Greeks familiar with, 296n12 —vs. legislative conscience, 23 subsequent conscience, 22, 302n34 as voice of community, 241 urge (Drang) vs. blind impulse, 126 of conscience, 23, 67, 130, 137–40, 144, 238 —as act of love, 132 —arises suddenly, 239–41 —dormant, 126, 240 —education of, 290 —exceeds “compass” function, 140 —falls silent, 240 —God’s love and, 144 —judgments and, 138 —not yet conscience, 150–51, 154–55 —personal, 132–33 —presupposes knowledge, 125–27, 242 —spiritual, not biological, 126, 142 —stronger than will, 126 definition, 126 dispositions and, 156 evil, 145, 156 —conscience presupposes possibility of, 216–17 —devil and, 146 —good and evil, 145–47, 156 —and warning conscience, 225–26

378 Index

urge (cont.) good, 124, 181 —and conscience, 216 gradual growth, 241 insightful, 126 intentional, xxxi, 126 love and, 120, 123, 127, 130, 146 —warning conscience and, 225 moral, 67 —instinct, 125 translation problems, xxx–xxxi validity (Geltbarkeit), xln55, 14, 65–76, 234–35, 243, 273, 329n1 See also qualities of conscience, infallibility; reliability values blindness to, 262, 276 functional, not real (Scheler), xxxixn49 good and evil, 115–16 intentional feeling, given in, 108, 116 intuition of, 104–5 love higher than duty, 135 moral, 92, 114, 214 moral knowledge of, 70, 74, 102 negative, 100, 103 —guilt, 179 nothingness before God, 174–75, 194–95, 215 objective, 90, 103, 107, 114–19, 142 person and, 116

primary phenomena, xxiv, xxxix49 ranked, 8, 114, 128, 135 religious, 115 Scheler, xxiv, xxxixn49, 9 —Wittmann, Michael, criticizes, 134 of the self, 175 —diabolical pride in, 214 Stoker, xx, xxxixn51 Vollenhoven, D. H. Th. pioneer of Reformational philosophy, ix recommended Stoker to F. J. J. Buytendijk, xviii Wander, Karl F. W., 29 Wertheimer, Max gestalt psychology, 12 refutes atomistic thesis, 93 will (volition) conscience and, 151 education of conscience, 290 evil urge and, 279 Kant and, 127, 151 Nietzsche, 152 powerless before conscience, 123, 127, 279 Schopenhauer, 52–53, 151–52 and warning conscience, 226 Windelband, Wilhelm, 38 Wittmann, Michael, 134 Wolff, Christian, 75 Wundt, Wilhelm, 233, 295n2 (chapter 1)

HENDRIK GERHARDHUS STOKER (1899–1993) was a leading Calvinist philosopher who taught in South Africa throughout his life. Image reproduced with kind permission from the Stoker family.

PHILIP E. BLOSSER is a professor of philosophy at Sacred Heart Major Seminary.