On the Ethical Implications of the Call of Conscience

On the Ethical Implications of the Call of Conscience

Flower

(A nationally popular poem in Korea, Translated from Korean by Keon Andrew Cha)

-written by Chun Su Kim

Before I called his name,
He was just a gesture.
When I called his Name,
He came to me and became a flower.

Just as I called him,
Please, may someone call me,
With the Name befitting my color and smell,
So I can be the flower for the One.

We all long to be-
I wish that I for you,
And You for Me, be
An eternally penetrating glance.

1

Introduction

 In Being and Time (BT, from now on), Heidegger has attempted a phenomenological description of conscience as the call which brings Dasein back to himself and to reticence. Dasein, which is usually lost in the inauthentic mode of the They-self, can heed this call and realize the in-authenticity of being lost in the They, which includes mistaking contingencies of the They-self’s ethical demands as necessarily binding. Thus, Dasein can assume responsibility to affirm, deny, modify the previous ethical choices or even start new ones. However, the aporia arises in the analysis of conscience in BT, because Heidegger strongly emphasizes that the voice of conscience is silent. Thus, it becomes a question concerning how the silent conscience helps us to make specific choices in our concrete situations we are involved with. The answer is not found in the book, because Heidegger does not go beyond the phenomenological description of conscience, even though He does connect the call of conscience with another ethical concept of resoluteness. Because of this, Heidegger’s ethical philosophy has been accused of decisionism and even suggested as the reason why Heidegger became involved with the Nazis movement, which called for the resoluteness of German people in the form of blind obedience to its authority (Burch, 212). If conscience is silent and action is demanded without the intermediate process of differentiating right actions from wrong ones, what can prevent Dasein from making immoral choices, because it can no longer bear the heaviness of the tension, coming out of the call of conscience? If conscience is indeed silent, do ethical implications of conscience turn out to be arbitrary? Can the Ethics without codes is a good ethics at all? In this paper, I shall defend Heidegger by demonstrating that these questions arise because of the overlooking of Heidegger’s analysis of conscience as a phenomenon more primordial before any ethical action, which makes the latter possible and the two important aspects of Dasein, which are its facticity and its essential involvement with the truth. However, to strengthen the phenomenological ethics of conscience more fundamentally, I shall introduce the concept of Hengstenberg’s concept of Objectivity (Sachlichkeit), originally treated by Max Scheler and prove that this introduction is not an attempt to forcefully revise Heidegger’s ethical thought because Objectivity as Sachlichkeit has always been the essential dimension of the Being of Dasein.

Note: Other than the one quotation from the Concept of Time, which has been specified in the page, all the quotations of Heidegger are only from Being and Time (BT).

2

 Before seriously engaging with the concept of conscience as the call, it is essential to clarify the existential structure of Dasein. This in turn also requires the clarification of existence. When Heidegger introduces the term, Dasein, in BT, which simply means there-being, he does so, compelled by the need to talk about human existence, without being influenced by the over-determining prejudices of previous theological and philosophical anthropologies, which define man too hastily as a rational animal or the creature made in the image of God. Heidegger had to limit the semantic range of Dasein merely to existence and expand it only after Dasein’s multifaceted dimensions of existence become clarified or no longer problematic. However, this does not necessarily mean the undue mystification of Dasein, because the understanding of Dasein is something reachable by carefully looking at ourselves again and again, because Dasein is just us, before any over-determination of philosophical analysis. The analysis has uncovered the following aspects of Dasein. Most importantly, Dasein is the ground for the truth and even through which the truth comes into the world, because Dasein is in the truth. The truth, here, is primarily classical Greek conception of the truth as (aletheia) αλεθηια, which literally means the state of being uncovered. In Greek, there is another word which shares the stem with αλεθηια, which is lanthano (λανθανω), which means to escape the notice of. The word can be used in a translative sense. For example, if I λανθανω you, that means I do something without letting you take notice of it. 
 The fact that Dasein can uncover which has been concealed also implies that Dasein exists as a sphere where things can be covered up and later uncovered and Dasein has the ability to uncover by shedding light into the darkness where things are covered (Heidegger, 265 -270). Dasein justifies the Greek word, ανθρωπος, for man, knowing that another word for man in Greek is φώς, which is closely related to the ανθρωπος in pronunciation and shares the root with another Greek word, φαος, whose meaning is simply ‘light’ and its accusative noun form is surprisingly φως. Thus, Dasein is both enlightening and enlightened because it uncovers the hidden truths and overcomes the state of το λανθανεςθαι, the state of passively suffering the escape of notice (Heidegger, 49-52). This aspect of Dasein introduces another paradoxical dimension of Dasein that its truths have been covered without Dasein’s intention, suggesting a possibility that Dasein can be both simultaneously in truth and un-truth. How is this internal contradiction possible within Dasein? We have to understand that Dasein does not exist, facing the fact of its illuminating aspect. The fact that Dasein has a sphere of illumination means that Dasein has that sphere as its world, thus constituting it primordially as Being-in-the-world. Interestingly, Dasein is not alone in this world, for it always gets reminded by looking at others as other Daseins, thus sharing the world in the mode of Being-With (Boss, 12-21). This immensely complicates Dasein’s illuminative dimension. While Dasein actively illuminates the sphere of its existence, the world and the others in the world come to me in the mode of mattering (Wang, 366). The book on the table and the table holding up the book are physically in contact, but they do not matter to each other and are completely meaningless to each other, because “both the book and the table are heartless (Wang, 366).” However, when others come to me, they affect me and modify my existence. Behold. A small dot appears in my horizon. It comes closer and closer to me and calls my name. He is my professor, and the fact that he is my professor makes me comport toward him in a very unique way. He announces that the final due date for this paper is May 13th and I look at the calendar, the device made by the worldly people to check the dates in this world, according to the conventions of the world and the calendar speaks to me that today is May 1st. The world composed of the calendar and its conventional ways of designating ‘time’ in terms of the agreement which I am forced to comply to, and the professor, who became my professor without my permission and decided to go by this convention of designation are now making me anxious profoundly, for they concern me in the way of imposing the duty. The professor is imposing a duty on me: finish your final paper! Finish or get finished as my student! Now I look at my professor with the mode of concern or Care. I now have to take care to finish my writing this paper.
   We are still not yet ready to talk about conscience. The phenomenon of conscience is possible because Dasein, which is in the world in the mode of being-with-others, is finite and cannot control all possibilities or rather the presentation of the unique possibilities, given to it. This becomes more troublingly true when Dasein realizes that it is being-toward-death. Here, it is quite important not to view death naively by identifying it with the biological cessation of one’s life. Death should be viewed as the suggestion of utter finitude because it is paradoxically both the possibility of impossibility and the impossibility of possibility (Courtine, 103). When Dasein lives, it makes choices by deciding to translate some possibilities into actualities. However, the prospect of death affects Dasein in its inmost being, letting it realize that it is possible that possibilities might be no more, thus the impossibility of possibility or the possibility of impossibility. However, according to Heidegger, it is also death which makes possibilities appear as possibilities (Courtine, 103). God is never Dasein because He does not have possibilities as Dasein has possibilities. For Dasein, possibilities concern it as the matter of debts that have not been, which can be seen Keats’ fears in his poem, When I have fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeing brain.
Before high-piled books, in character,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain.

 If we never cease to be as God and are able to translate all possibilities into actualities, possibilities are no longer possibilities in the absolute sense because they have been degenerated into the actualities not-yet-actualized, assuming God is a temporal being. However, since we die, it might be impossible for us to adopt some possibilities, thus letting them remain just as possibilities, and the possibilities we do decide to embrace as our possibilities thus become more meaningful. Some things are more precious because they do not last. A beautiful girl by the name of Grace is living next to my door. I always think she is so pretty, so kind, so attractive. I am however too shy to ask her for a date. So I linger, keep lingering before her door. Now, the time is coming for me to leave the country and I begin to be enlightened with the impossibility of seeing her in the future or the possibility of forever not seeing her. Previously, not asking her for a date is mainly due to my laziness, but now I have to make resolution, “Shall I call her for lunch, right now?” This possibility now concerns me tremendously and I tremble before it. Calling her for the date has now become my possibility, my possibility of being rejected and unloved, rudely awaken about my possibility that she has not cared about me from the beginning. Thus, both Death as “the possibility of utter impossibility of Dasein (Heidegger, 294)” and other similarly dramatic occasions individualizes me thoroughly. Both thus deliver me and authenticate me from my having been lost in the in-authentic They-self, whose major features are idle talk and curiosity (Heidegger, 211-217). 
    In this sense, the impending deadline of the final paper is structurally similar to death. The members of Heidegger classes might have been lost in the idle-talk for recent two months. They might have been faking their understanding of Heidegger’s philosophy, appearing to know everything about everything. They might have been glorifying their shallow opinions, but, lo, we all now have to write our final paper which is to be graded by the ultimate Judge of the classroom, who has been smiling all long and allowing us to joke all along. Idle talk is always the activity of the They, because it allows Dasein to hide and be nowhere in the They; the shallow student cannot be found out to be shallow to himself, (not the professor, for the professor is omniscience through and through) if the person remains silent during the lectures and repeat others’ insightful comments verbatim. However, none can take the responsibility of anyone in the class to write a coherent and well-thought final paper, just as nothing can take death away from me. It is my paper. I have to write the paper. It is me who has to accept all the consequences of the paper. I am completely alone. Before the paper, my professor might have judged me as ‘irresponsible’ in the past, but I could have kept transcending his judgment in bad faith, thinking I can prove my talent eventually. However, now the final paper as death suggests an end to the possibility of this transcendence or rather a possibility to be judged as one entire collection of gathered and actualized possibilities. This ends my curiosity, which has dispersed my being. Until yesterday, I have been endlessly reading this or that, constantly being fascinated by the wealth of Heidegger scholarship. However, the fact that I have to write one specific work demands that I collect my dispersed being, which was everywhere and nowhere in the mode of “distraction (Heidegger, 216).” Thus, I make a resolution, the commitment to the concrete emergent situation demanding highly specific intellectual efforts, “I will stop reading articles on Heidegger and Buddhism, for I am not capable enough to write on topics. I will rather write on the ethical implications of Heidegger’s conscience. I have thought about that for a long time.” I might no longer be able to persuade my professor that as an Asian, I am qualified to have well-thought Asian perspectives on Heidegger, but I have become indeed more authentic to him in the sense that I am corresponding to the task given by him, more faithfully and properly in the context of our relationship as the professor and the student.
      Now we are finally ready to analyze the concept of conscience in BT with its relation to authenticity and resoluteness. As a matter of fact, it has been done already without using the word, conscience. Before tackling into the problem of conscience, let us clarify just one more concept of authenticity. On the authenticity of Dasein, Heidegger explains “The authenticity of Dasein is what constitutes its most extreme possibility of Being. Dasein is primarily determined by this most extreme possibility of Dasein (Heidegger, the Concept of Time, 10).”

However, Mariana Ortega, a Heidegger scholar from John Carrol University, poses an important question, for the sake of discussion not as objection, to the possibility of authenticity of Dasein with these words, “It is simply not clear how a Dasein that is dominated by the ‘inauthentic’ ways of being of Das Man – distantiality, averageness, and leveling down – can become authentic or resolute in the first place…. If it is now clear how Dasein enacts authenticity, then it is hard to see how the Heideggerian Existential Analytic is successful in providing an account of the conditions for the possibility for the ‘morally good’ and the ‘morally evil’, as Heidegger claims that it does (BT 332(286)) (Ortega, 17).” Both of her questions – the first on the possibility of authenticity and the second on the sociological value of Heidegger’s ethics - are extremely important to our enquiry concerning ethical implication of the call of conscience. As I mentioned before, Heidegger’s conscience is silent and it does not give any specific moral guideline. If this issues in an ethics devoid of concrete actions, which just calls for resolution, Heidegger might be rightly charged with supporting ethical relativism. However, I shall prove that this is just a grotesque misinterpretation of Heidegger, when we more carefully look at the phenomenon of the conscience, as the call in the light of the threefold structures of Dasein as being-in-the-world, being-with and being-in-the-truth.
Let us ask, “What is conscience?” Conscience is the call, but what is the call? The call is the calling of one to oneself and the structure of the call is essentially same in all forms of calling (Kukla, 13). Each call makes me recognize that I recognize that I am being called as the unique Dasein, which is me, and I also recognize that the calling one has been correct in calling me in the way he calls me and he has recognized me correctly (Kukla, 14). More strikingly, because its recognition is a certain form of identification, it imposes upon me a mode of being with its specific duties. I am walking on the campus. A traveler wanting to know directions approaches me and says, “You are a Virginia Tech student. Aren’t you?” If I answer, “Nope,” “I am not just being rude (Kukla, 14)”, but despising his authority to make demand on me based on his identification of me as a Virginia Tech student. The fact that he did identify me thus was already imposing a duty on me in the hope that I would be responsible for the calling of the duty: giving him the directions as a kind Virginia Tech student. The Conscience is such a call and it only appears as the call. It calls me to the authentic care (Heidegger, 319), but who is calling whom to what kind of authentic care? Dasein is calling Dasein to itself to be authentic to itself. We have already seen that Dasein is the sphere of illumination, enlightening and being enlightened.
However, Dasein is both equally in truth and untruth because it has been lost in-authentically in the They-self, its truths being covered up in idle talk, and it keeps fail to hit upon truths, because it has become double-minded, its vision distracted constantly by Dasein’s being curious. Dasein can never be totally depraved because it cannot stop illuminating its own sphere of existence. Moreover, the in-authenticity is paradoxically possible because Dasein is partially authentic all the times. It is actually fleeing before the most authentic possibility which will allow it to truly live (ζαω) by the way of being resolute and making choice, proper to the situation which it is involved because Dasein is always concretely in the world with others. Thus, even Dasein is most lost in the They, it never feels truly home in the They. I love Grace. The most authentic choice which will make my life fuller of meaning is to make a choice to disclose my heart to Grace, putting myself even in the risk of being affected in the form of rejection, because I care so much for her decision to accept my love. I am currently remaining as a coward, utterly inauthentic. However, authenticity still has an abode (ηθος) in me as my possibility because I cannot be completely blind to the sphere of illumination. I go out of my house. I am walking on the street, and lo, Grace is walking toward me, beckoning me with her wonderful smile, and she asks me how I am doing. I coldly answer, “Nothing spectacular happening!” I am lying. I am being inauthentic to her and myself, but I cannot avoid encountering her as long as I live around her, because I am in the world by being-with her in the same world. Then, am I now entitled to say, “My conscience is calling me to confess my love for her.” Surprisingly, I cannot, according to Heidegger, because the conscience is always silent. It is just calling me from the inauthentic they-self who goes to the bar to gossip about Grace with my friends, pretending that I am not her lover and she does not attract me, to the self who will be resolute enough to take the responsibility as her lover.
Is this ethical relativism? It is absolutely not. Rather, it is the clearest ethics because it demands me to be faithful to my specific Daseiness in the situation. What is conscience? Conscience is the call, because Dasein is always the call from itself to itself, because it is always enlightening and in the truth and untrue only in its dialectical relation to the truth. The Conscience as the call, thus revealed, is nothing but Dasein’s redeemability because it is fundamentally free in regard to the untruth, because its untruth can always be dissolved by its being truthful to its original illuminating. Its silence is actually its most eloquent testimony of its freedom. Its silence brings back Dasein to itself, not by giving the list of specific actions to be fulfilled, but simply refusing to confirm or deny any action it does in the mode of in-authenticity. When I was about to reuse a previously submitted paper, I felt deeply uneasy from deep within because I knew I was doing wrong against my own conviction about academic ethics. I kept asking myself, “What is the problem? Can you give yourself the specific reason why you should not do so?” Of course, I did not hear any inner voice, outwardly condemning me, “Thou shall not reuse your former paper!” However, the truth that I could not receive a definite approval from myself made me feel more uneasy and I had to eventually give up the idea entirely. My conscience seems to be a grieved mother who knows her son will try harmful drugs and still decides to say nothing either good or bad but simply gazes at her son, respecting his freedom completely and, thus, reminding the son of the fact that he is completely responsible for the deed he will choose. The son, if he really appreciates his mother, will seriously consider the need for reticence. The call of conscience is such a call for us to have reticence and be more careful lest we betray ourselves in the mode of in-authenticity.

3

 I think I have done enough to prove that the silence of conscience does not mean the license for Dasein’s immorality. Even though Dasein receives no specific instruction from the conscience as the call, it has brought back Dasein who can never be completely fallen into the untruth of the authentic by reminding that it has been indebted to actualize its full potential in an authentic way. The authentic resoluteness to seriously heed the call of conscience is manifested in two major ways, according to Mariana Ortega, “(1) the possibility of being authentic by simply repeating norms and practices of the past while having a more explicit understanding of our ontological condition and (2) the possibility of modifying inherited norms and practices in such a way that we reshape them and forge a new understanding of them (28).” However, she continues to contend that these two results can never safeguard Dasein from falling into ethical relativism, because it lacks the method to work out “the concrete or ontic account of our ethic life (28).” It seems that she is obviously afraid of the emergence of people who try to justify their moral failures by emphasizing that they did their best to remain true to their self, according to their own interpretations of the situation. Who knows that Hitler might have been true to himself and sincerely believed that what he was doing was really good for the mankind under the context of his understanding of the German situation?
  The next challenge I shall address now is whether the ethics of the conscience can justify itself against the charge that the call of conscience is useless because it does not help to guide us when we have to make very specific choices, for it just remains silent. I believe that this accusation, too, is quite groundless when we become reminded again of the characteristic of Dasein’s being in the world in the mode of care to the all the worldly affairs (πράξαις), and the call of conscience which demands Dasein to do so as an authentic response to the truth of the affairs. However, the critiques of Heidegger have already made their standard higher and are not willing to be satisfied until they are instructed like children of what specific course of actions they have to follow, like Galatians who want to be under the Mosaic Law which treats them as slaves, even after they heard the gospel of freedom, which announced, “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free (Galatians 5:1, New International Version). Thus, to calm those who are too anxious before their freedom to “make oneself responsible (Heidegger, 327),” I shall deal with these worries with the two following responses. Firstly, I shall introduce the concept of Hengstenberg’s Objectivity (Sachlichkeit), to strengthen and perfect Heidegger’s ethics of conscience by demonstrating that the assuming of responsibility is always accompanied by the suggestion of a list of good possible actions. Secondly, I shall argue that the attempt to have the specific codes of action as absolutely normative is an idle fancy, because it arises from misunderstanding the moral agents as mechanically determined.
 What is Objectivity? Objectivity, according to Hengstenberg, is simply to be toward Being for the sake of Being (Hengstenberg, 39). Here, the word, Being, is used in the widest sense to denote the truth of all existents. Thus, Objectivity is a stance toward Being of all existents, according to their true situation as revealed to us, and Unobjectivity is to be against Being of all existents by disregarding the truth of their Being. Hengstenberg contends that man can assume such a stance of Objectivity toward Being because man has the ability to be concerned, liberated from the concept of purpose, implying that the utilitarian approach toward Being is not the fundamental nature of man’s stance toward Being. Objectivity is rather to go along with the being of all existents in their unique meanings (Hengstenberg, 45). The best of example of Objectivity Hengstenberg mentions is the scholar who is doing his study with no definitive purpose, because he purely loves the beauty of existents revealed through his study. This reveals Objectivity in the truest sense is synonymous with Love, for love is the project of facing Being of all existents to intensify their revelation as Beautiful in the faithfulness to the original meaning (Hengstenberg, 45-46). Here, the meaning of the original meaning is simply the truth of all existents. Let me clarify Hengstenberg’s points with everyday examples. I am currently the student of a professor. Thus, there is the truth of my existence as the student of a certain professor and the truth of his existence as the professor of me, who is his student. The moment he and I face this truth, which is undeniable, the truth suggests the ideal possible course of actions, which will make each one of us more ideal as the student and as the professor. The professor is in a sense involved in the world in the mode of being lost, especially distracted by the life situations which distract him from being truthful to his job as a professor. However, if he assumes the stance of Objectivity to his student, thus transparently viewing the original meaning of myself as the student, he begins to see how he can make me as a better student. The same applies to me as the student. To reveal my student-ness as more beautiful and his professor-ness as more beautiful, I go to his classes well-prepared and ask many insightful questions, giving my professor the opportunity to reveal himself as a good professor who appreciates the intellectual challenges coming from his pupils. If I only care for grades, I make myself unliberated from the sense of purpose, which limits me just to get by to receive good grades, I begin to distort and reduce the truth of my professor as a teacher into the assigner of grades, which is a degraded mode of ‘professor-ness.’ Thus, if he does not grade attendances, I immediately decide to skip his classes, which is utterly Unobjective in Hengstenberg’s sense, because I am taking the opportunity away from my professor to reveal himself as a good professor, thus Beautiful. 
 Love as the highest manifestation of Objectivity (Hengstenberg, 49) is especially testified by a good unrequited lover. The unrequited lover loves his beloved with no definite purpose, not asking anything specific treatment from the beloved, because he is constantly drawn by the truth of the beloved as beautiful and desirable. The beloved keeps hurting him by ignoring all his confessions of love, but he just loves her purely out of the joy of loving her in the hope that he will decorate her invisibly with his honors. However, the time comes that the beloved finally asks him to stop wooing her, because it bothers and annoys her tremendously. He thus realizes that his love is being despised, but this does not make him angry for the fear of violating her freedom. Despite his profound sadness, he is able to leave her alone in love, because he has been always free from the any desire to mold her according to his passions.
    Hengstenberg’s account of Objectivity and our possibility to be objective free from purposefulness can be nicely incorporated into Heidegger’s analysis of the illuminating aspect of Dasein as being-in-the world. Objectivity requires that we see things in their utmost matter-of-factness and this can be done only because Dasein illuminates, revealing the truth of the world, which includes the being of all existents. The fact that we can go beyond being agenda-driven also manifests that Dasein is fundamentally free to lose itself in the They in the mode of fleeing in the face of the truth or to make resolution for authenticity. Dasein hears the call of conscience which refuses to agree with Dasein’s inauthentic endeavors by remaining silent, negating and precluding the possibility of Dasein to be absolutely self-deceptive beyond redemption. If Dasein obeys this call, he now objectively responds to the situation. The silence of conscience thus practically helps Dasein in its ethical choice, not by giving specific moral codes, but by reorienting Dasein toward the truth. The spontaneous revelation of the ideal course of actions immediately accompanies this reorientation. I confidently assert that this is the governing insight which Kant must have hit upon in developing his famous ethics based on the categorical imperative, which says, “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law (Kant, 37).” Action always happens in a situation and the attempt to act correctly requires the correct interpretation of the situation. After the interpretation is over, we act as if we will a universal law, because I have to assume my interpretation strictly corresponds to the demand of the situation revealed as such according to my interpretation. 
  Secondly, I will fully expose the folly of the naïve assumption that having specific codes of absolute correct action in advance will help to settle ethical problems fundamentally. Imagine an absurd story that Omniscient God actually comes down into the world of human beings and decides to suggest ethical choices for every person in all situations. The accuracy of His prediction that such an ethical action is perfect and the individuals who listen to God’s suggestions find themselves inclined to agree intuitively. Will this make everyone absolutely ethical? That will be true, only and only if God’s suggestions automate our responses to be in line with them. However correct ethical suggestions are, none can follow them completely blindly, merely because they are correct, because we always have the freedom to be Unobjective by fleeing before the face of the truth. I might truly know that skipping classes is bad for me, but the mere correctness of this ethical demand does not inspire me to obey the demand, and I successfully find myself always coming up with strange ‘better reasons’ to disobey the demand. The overlooking of this aspect of our ethical life is the pseudo problem constantly emerging in any purely rationalist ethics, “How can a rational animal like us make such an irrational choice against our best judgment?” Imitating Nietzsche, Let us say of this confusion, “Enough, enough!”
  In non-modal formal logic, if A is necessary, given B and we have B, we necessarily have A, because necessity relationship here is always the necessary relationship of strict logical causality. However, in deontic logic, a subdivision of modal logic dealing with possibilities, introduction of necessity is always an introduction of a new possibility (Girle, 170-176). Not to make my professor unhappy, it is necessary that I write my final paper. However, it does not mean I will actually write my final paper in all possible worlds. It simply means that it is possible that I finish my final paper not to make my professor angry. What is the source of this possibility but the indeterminacy of Dasein? No ethical choice mechanically determines man’s choice of actions. Every time man stands before any ethical suggestion, he freshly finds himself free in regard to the suggestion, thus disobeying even in the risk of inauthenticity. Thus, let us silence the critique’s complaint, “If the conscience is silent, how can it help us to make concrete choices?” by replying, “Even if our conscience is loud enough to tell us specific things to do, it means absolutely nothing because we are free to remain lost in inauthenticity, which is why the conscience calls us in the first place!”

4

Conclusion

  The first chapter of Christian apologetic classics, Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis starts with the transcendental argument for the universal moral law (Lewis, 3-9). The argument is transcendental because C.S Lewis attempts to demonstrate that the phenomena of excuse, accusation and moral approval cannot be even thinkable unless they are based on the hidden fact that we already agreed on the universal moral law. This line of reasoning has been extremely popular among many Christian apologists who repeat this again and again, risking boring all other intellectuals. However, if they more carefully read Lewis, it will be not too difficult to find out how confusing C.S Lewis becomes in a later chapter of the same book, when he talks about murder. He tries to defend the commandment, “Thou shall not kill,” while defending the concept of just violence (Lewis, 104-109), which might have been historically necessary, noting the fact Lewis complied his own speeches, which were made to support Christianity during the Second World War and edited into the book, itself. His ingenious stroke is to make distinction among killing and murder and argue that Jesus taught us not to murder, thus allowing the room for just killing, especially during the act of the war. Whether such a distinction is justified indeed (obviously not for all Christian thinkers such as Watchman Nee and Tolstoy) or whether there is indeed the universal moral law we agree even unconsciously is something I shall leave the reader to decide. 
 My contention is that deriving the universal law from guilty feelings which drive us to make excuses is to speak too much of our conscience. If we agree with Heidegger, we have to hold that the account of conscience from the perspective of traditional Christian theology is always too hasty. When we are trying to do something obviously wrong, our conscience does speak, but not loudly as to enunciate, “Thou shall not…” Its silence just reminds that we are acting not out of the truth of ourselves, but in fear or impulsivity. Acting according to the truth is always the genuine will to power, because it always comes from moral strength derived from the confidence of resolution that comes from the realization that we are acting in all honesty. Greek word for power, ἐξουσία (ekousia: ek(out of) + ousia(being)), agrees with this understanding of power. The fact that C.S Lewis felt the need to carefully distinguish killing and murder is the full testimony that man might ethically engage in killing if it does not betray the truth of his being toward the truth of the situation of the world in which he finds himself already involved: the safety guard who dives into the ocean risking his life to save a three-year-old girl about to get drowned. The safety guard probably makes such an action, not because he hears his inner voice urgently shouting, “You shall save that girl!” Rather, he looks objectively at the situation. He looks at the three-year-old girl, whose beauty of being calls for its own protection and resists being destroyed by such a horrendous violence of the nature by shouting, “Save me!” However, the conscience remains silent and it is still possible that he hesitates before his possibility to dive into the ocean. The conscience only reveals it is indeed his possibility that he saves the girl.
      However, the fact that the safety guard automatically feels the ethical impulse to save the girl is still utterly mysterious for me. As Heidegger argues, Dasein is revealed as “wanting to have a conscience (Heidegger, 314).” However, if Dasein is indeed the caller of the conscience, why can I ignore our own talk all together? Answering that Dasein finds its unjustifiability painful is just another reporting concerning Dasein, not the clarification of why Dasein feels that way in the first place. It is no wonder Heidegger uses the word, ‘uncanny’, to describe the phenomenon of the conscience as the call. Does it not suggest that it is finally the time for us to talk about the essence of man? Should we not do so at least in a dynamic sense? Since Dasein is truly free, we cannot pin down Dasein as it is impossible to pin down the position of particles based on quantum statistics. However, the fact that so many things appear beautiful to most of us like the unavoidable visitation of irresistible intuition (the mother breast-feeding her child, a girl sharing her food with her poor friend and pretty faces of so many pretty female students) and so many things (Holocaust, the rape of children, and the killing of animals for fun) appear horrible to most of us does persuade me that Dasein has many structures of being which are equiprimordial in Heidegger’s sense. 
 If Leibniz’s question was why there are some things rather than nothing, my question is why we are as we are, not as we are not. This utterly mysterious and beautiful truth that I cannot find the answer within myself as a man and can discover more and more only about equiprimordial structures of being, simply because I am being in a certain sense, is the inspiration of my religious faith, the faith in God, who I believe without any rational reason to be attracting me to himself by structuring me to see Him irresistibly beautiful.

While Waiting for You
(Another popular Korean poem translated by Andrew Keon Cha)
Written by Hwang Ji-Woo
Waiting for you at the place
To which you are about to come,
All the steps of many are
Knocking and surprising my heart.
Even the sound of a leaf being stepped
Comes toward my heart so loudly.
Anyone who has waited knows
What a waiting I am having.
I am already here.
Someone comes, not you.
This time, wrong again!
And the Door closes.
O Beloved…
I am waiting for the person eternally
Delaying – and now I start walking
Toward you, from afar, toward you---
For you are taking so much time to come,
So slow, infinitively slacking and
Here, I am coming, while you are delaying,
Through the door passed through by the They,
Being surprised wrongly by their steps,
I am going toward you, yes you,
Still waiting for you to Come.

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