The Voice of Conscience: A Political Genealogy of Western Ethical Experience

264 Pages·2013·17.191 MB·English

by  Mika Ojakangas

The Voice of Conscience
About the Series
The Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series stages an ongoing
dialogue between contemporary European philosophy and political theory.
Following Hannah Arendt’s and Leo Strauss’s repeated insistence on the
qualitative distinction between political theory and political philosophy, the
series showcases the lessons each discipline can draw from the other. One of
the most significant outcomes of this dialogue is an innovative integration
of 1) the findings of twentieth- and twenty-first-century phenomenology,
existentialism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction (to name but
a few salient currents) and 2) classical as well as modern political concepts, such
as sovereignty, polity, justice, constitution, statehood, self-determination, etc.
In many instances, the volumes in the series both re-conceptualize age-old
political categories in light of contemporary philosophical theses and find
broader applications for the ostensibly non- or apolitical aspects of philosophical
inquiry. In all cases, political thought and philosophy are featured as equal
partners in an interdisciplinary conversation, the goal of which is to bring
about a greater understanding of today’s rapidly changing political realities.
The series is edited by Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor in the
Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Other volumes in the series include:
Deconstructing Zionism by Michael Marder and Santiago Zabala
Heidegger on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Marcia Sa Cavalcante
Schuback, Michael Marder and Peter Trawny
The Metaphysics of Terror by Rasmus Ugilt
The Negative Revolution by Artemy Magun
The Voice of Conscience by Mika Ojakangas
The Voice of Conscience
A Political Genealogy of Western
Ethical Experience
Mika Ojakangas
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square
New York London
NY 10018 WC1B 3DP
USA UK
www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013
© Mika Ojakangas, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
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publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury
Academic or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-1-6235-6167-3
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
The wind blows where it wills, and you
hear the sound of it, but you do not know
whence it comes or whither it goes; so is it
with every one who is born of the Spirit
John 3.8
After God, let us have our conscience
[conscientia] as our mentor and rule in
all things, so that we may know which
way the wind is blowing and set our sails
accordingly
John Climacus, Scala Paradisi

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
2 National Socialism and the Inner Truth 11
The call of Heidegger’s conscience 16
Hannah Arendt and the nihilism of judgement 24
3 Conscience in Moral and Political Theology 29
Church fathers between the law and the spirit 30
Synderesis and conscientia: Scholasticism 40
Divine instinct 52
The spark of the soul: Eckhart and Tauler 55
A voluntarist bias of William of Ockham? 62
The Lutheran revocation 65
The return of the repressed: Spiritualists and pietists 74
Calvin’s compromise 79
The Puritan God within 83
On the modern protestant conscience 89
4 Conscience in Early Modern Moral and Political Philosophy 97
The witness of natural law from Suárez to Pufendorf 98
The candle of the Lord: Cambridge platonists 104
A crisis of conscience: Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke 110
5 The Conscience of the Enlightenment 125
The moral sense from Shaftesbury to Smith 125
The judgement of intuitive reason 130
The French experience: From Bayle to Rousseau 139
The German model: Wolff versus Crusius 144
Immanuel Kant and the infinite guilt 148
German idealism: Conscience as conviction 163
viii Contents
6 From Political Theology to Theologized Politics 175
7 Remarks on Late Modern Conscience 187
Internalized coercion: Nietzsche and Freud 188
The voice of the other: Levinas and Derrida 195
Ethics of the real: Lacan 203
8 The Western Politics of Conscience 211
On the Socratic origins of the politics of conscience 213
Conclusion 224
Bibliography 233
Index 249
Acknowledgements
First I would like to express my gratitude to the readers of the manuscript of this book,
Elisa Heinämäki and Sergei Prozorov, for their valuable comments and discussions.
I also want to thank Merja Hintsa for her assistance as I started to grapple with this
impossible subject and Tuomas Parsio for his indispensable help with Greek and Latin
materials as well as for his comments on my, perhaps extraordinary, reading of Plato.
My deepest thank I owe to Soili Petäjäniemi-Brown, not only for having corrected
my English in her efficient way, but also for her incredible patience with a writer who
apparently could not finish anything.
I also want to thank the wonderful – indeed amazing – personnel of the
Department of Social Science and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, where
this book was completed. My special thanks in Jyväskylä go to the members of the
Plato reading group: Mikko Yrjönsuuri, Miira Tuominen and Arto Laitinen. Without
them, I would never had grasped that it is not Nietzsche but Plato that cannot be read
without laughing often, richly and hilariously – and that those who have not done so,
have not, in a sense, read Plato at all.
To all the above-mentioned people (as well as to Markku Koivusalo and Olli-Pekka
Moisio!), I also want to express my gratitude for their friendship, which in this
‘heartless’ world is the most valuable treasure one can possess, at least if we are to
believe Aristotle and Cicero.
I also want to thank the series editor Michael Marder for believing in and advancing
this project, as well as the various people at Bloomsbury (particularly Marie-Claire
Antoine, Ally-Jane Grossan and Kaitlin Fontana) for their kind and professional help
at the final steps of the project.
Academy of Finland and the Network for European Studies (University of
Helsinki) provided generous funding for this research, whilst the Helsinki Collegium
for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki provided an excellent research
environment as well as a great opportunity to work with leading scholars from all over
the world. Without the support of Academy, Network and Collegium, this book would
have never seen the light of day.
The book is dedicated to my wife Elisa with love. I have investigated the history of
conscience for years and I am still perplexed about it. She knows it by heart.