KANT'S DOCTRINE OF CONSCIENCE.
The alleged Practical Reason with its Categorical Imperative, is
manifestly very closely connected with Conscience, although essentially
different from it in two respects. In the first place, the Categorical
Imperative, as commanding, necessarily speaks =before= the
act, whereas Conscience does not till afterwards. =Before=
the act Conscience can at best only speak =indirectly=, that
is, by means of reflection, which holds up to it the recollection
of previous cases, in which similar acts after they were committed
received its disapproval. It is on this that the etymology of the word
=Gewissen= (Conscience) appears to me to rest, because =only
what has already taken place is gewiss=[1] (certain). Undoubtedly,
through external inducement and kindled emotion, or by reason of the
internal discord of bad humour, impure, base thoughts, and evil desires
rise up in all people, even in the best. But for these a man is not
morally responsible, and need not load his conscience with them;
since they only show what the genus _homo,_ not what the individual,
who thinks them, would be capable of doing. Other motives, if not
simultaneously, yet almost immediately, come into his consciousness,
and confronting the unworthy inclinations prevent them from ever being
crystallised into deeds; thus causing them to resemble the out-voted
minority of an acting committee. By deeds alone each person gains an
empirical knowledge no less of himself than of others, just as it is
deeds alone that burden the conscience. For, unlike thoughts, these are
not problematic; on the contrary, they are certain (_gewiss_), they are
unchangeable, and are not only thought, but =known= (_gewusst_).
The Latin _conscientia_,[2] and the Greek _συνείδησις_[3] have the same
sense. Conscience is thus the =knowledge= that a man has about
what he has done.
The second point of difference between the alleged Categorical
Imperative and Conscience is, that the latter always draws its
material from experience; which the former cannot do, since it is
purely _a priori_. Nevertheless, we may reasonably suppose that Kant's
Doctrine of Conscience will throw some light on this new conception
of an =absolute Ought= which he introduced. His theory is
most completely set forth in the _Metaphysische Anfangsgründe zur
Tugendlehre_, § 13, and in the following criticism I shall assume that
the few pages which contain it are lying before the reader.
The Kantian interpretation of Conscience makes an exceedingly imposing
effect, before which one used to stand with reverential awe, and
all the less confidence was felt in demurring to it, because there
lay heavy on the mind the ever-present fear of having theoretical
objections construed as practical, and, if the correctness of Kant's
view were denied, of being regarded as devoid of conscience. I,
however, cannot be led astray in this manner, since the question
here is of theory, not of practice; and I am not concerned with the
preaching of Morals, but with the exact investigation of the ultimate
ethical basis.
We notice at once that Kant employs exclusively Latin legal
terminology, which, however, would seem little adapted to reflect the
most secret stirrings of the human heart. Yet this language, this
judicial way of treating the subject, he retains from first to last,
as though it were essential and proper to the matter. And so we find
brought upon the stage of our inner self a complete Court of justice,
with indictment, judge, plaintiff, defendant, and sentence;--nothing is
wanting. Now if this tribunal, as portrayed by Kant, really existed in
our breasts, it would be astonishing if a single person could be found
to be, I do not say, =so bad=, but =so stupid=, as to act
against his conscience. For such a supernatural assize, of an entirely
special kind, set up in our consciousness, such a secret court--like
another Fehmgericht[4]--held in the dark recesses of our inmost being,
would inspire everybody with a terror and fear of the gods strong
enough to really keep him from grasping at short transient advantages,
in face of the dreadful threats of superhuman powers, speaking in tones
so near and so clear. In real life, on the contrary, we find, that
the efficiency of conscience is generally considered such a vanishing
quantity that all peoples have bethought themselves of helping it out
by means of positive religion, or even of entirely replacing it by the
latter. Moreover, if Conscience were indeed of this peculiar nature,
the Royal Society could never have thought of the question put for the
present Prize Essay.
But if we look more closely at Kant's exposition, we shall find
that its imposing effect is mainly produced by the fact that he
attributes to the moral verdict passed on ourselves, as its peculiar
and essential characteristic, a form which in fact is not so at all.
This metaphorical bar of judgment is no more applicable to moral
self-examination than it is to every other reflection as regards
what we have done, and might have done otherwise, where no ethical
question is involved. For it is not only true that the same procedure
of indictment, defence, and sentence is occasionally assumed by that
obviously spurious and artificial conscience which is based on mere
superstition; as, for instance, when a Hindu reproaches himself with
having been the murderer of a cow, or when a Jew remembers that he has
smoked his pipe at home on the Sabbath; but even the self-questioning
which springs from no ethical source, being indeed rather unmoral than
moral, often appears in a shape of this sort, as the following case
may exemplify. Suppose I, good-naturedly, but thoughtlessly, have made
myself surety for a friend, and suppose there comes with evening the
clear perception of the heavy responsibility I have taken on myself--a
responsibility that may easily involve me in serious trouble, as the
wise old saying, _ἐγγύα παρά δ' ἃτα_![5] predicts; then at once there
rise up within me the Accuser and the Counsel for the defence, ready
to confront each other. The latter endeavours to palliate my rashness
in giving bail so hastily, by pointing out the stress of circumstance
or of obligation, or, it may be, the simple straightforwardness of
the transaction; perhaps he even seeks excuse by commending my kind
heart. Last of all comes the Judge who inexorably passes the sentence:
"A fool's piece of work!" and I am overwhelmed with confusion So much
for this judicial form of which Kant is so fond; his other modes of
expression are, for the most part, open to the same criticism. For
instance, that which he attributes to conscience, at the beginning of
the paragraph, as its peculiar property, applies equally to all other
scruples of an entirely different sort. He says: "It (conscience)
follows him like his shadow, try though he may to escape. By pleasures
and distractions he may be stupefied and billed to sleep, but he
cannot avoid occasionally waking up and coming to himself; and then he
is immediately aware of the terrible voice," etc. Obviously, this may
be just as well understood, word for word, of the secret consciousness
of some person of private means, who feels that his expenses far exceed
his income, and that thus his capital is being affected, and will
gradually melt away.
We have seen that Kant represents the use of legal terms as essential
to the subject, and that he keeps to them from beginning to end; let
it now be noted how he employs the same style for the following finely
devised sophism. He says: "That a person accused by his conscience
should be identified with the judge is an absurd way of portraying a
court of justice; for in that case the accuser would invariably lose."
And he adds, by way of elucidating this statement, a very ambiguous
and obscure note. His conclusion is that, if we would avoid falling
into a contradiction, we must think of the judge (in the judicial
conscience-drama that is enacted in our breasts) as different from us,
in fact, as another person; nay more, as one that is an omniscient
knower of hearts, whose hests are obligatory on all, and who is
almighty for every purpose of executive authority.[6] He thus passes by
a perfectly smooth path from conscience to superstition, making the
latter a necessary consequence of the former; while he is secretly sure
that he will be all the more willingly followed because the reader's
earliest training will have certainly rendered him familiar with such
ideas, if not have made them his second nature. Here, then, Kant finds
an easy task,--a thing he ought rather to have despised; for he
should have concerned himself not only with preaching, but also with
practising truthfulness. I entirely reject the above quoted sentence,
and all the conclusions consequent thereon, and I declare it to be
nothing but a shuffling trick. It is =not true= that the accuser
must always lose, when the accused is the same person as the judge;
at least not in the court of judgment in our hearts. In the instance
I gave of one man going surety for another, did the accuser lose? Or
must we in this case also, if we wish to avoid a contradiction, really
assume a personification after Kant's fashion, and be driven to view
objectively as =another person= that voice whose deliverance would
have been those terrible words: "A fool's piece of work!"? A sort of
Mercury, forsooth, in living flesh? Or perhaps a prosopopoeia of the
_Μῆτις_ (cunning) recommended by Homer (_Il._ xxiii. 313 sqq.)?[7]
But thus we should only be landed, as before, on the broad path of
superstition, aye, and pagan superstition too.
It is in this passage that Kant indicates his Moral Theology, briefly
indeed, yet not without all its vital points. The fact that he takes
care, not to attribute to it any objective validity, but rather to
present it merely as a form subjectively unavoidable, does not free him
from the arbitrariness with which he constructs it, even though he only
claims its necessity for human consciousness. His fabric rests, as we
have seen, on a tissue of baseless assumptions.
So much, then, is certain. The entire imagery--that of a judicial
drama--whereby Kant depicts conscience is wholly unessential and in
no way peculiar to it; although he keeps this figure, as if it were
proper to the subject, right through to the end, in order finally
to deduce certain conclusions from it. As a matter of fact it is a
sufficiently common form, which our thoughts easily take when we
consider any circumstance of real life. It is due for the most part to
the conflict of opposing motives which usually spring up, and which
are successively weighed and tested by our reflecting reason. And no
difference is made whether these motives are moral or egoistic in their
nature, nor whether our deliberations are concerned with some action in
the past, or in the future. Now if we strip from Kant's exposition its
dress of legal metaphor, which is only an optional dramatic appendage,
the surrounding nimbus with all its imposing effect immediately
disappears as well, and there remains nothing but the fact that
sometimes, when we think over our actions, we are seized with a certain
self-dissatisfaction, which is marked by a special characteristic.
It is with our conduct _per se_ that we are discontented, not with
its result, and this feeling does not, as in every other case in
which we regret the stupidity of our behaviour, rest on egoistic
grounds. For on these occasions the cause of our dissatisfaction is
precisely because we have been too egoistic, because we have taken
too much thought for ourselves, and not enough for our neighbour; or
perhaps even because, without any resulting advantage, we have made
the misery of others an object in itself. That we may be dissatisfied
with ourselves, and saddened by reason of sufferings which we have
inflicted, not undergone, is a plain fact and impossible to be denied.
The connection of this with the only ethical basis that can stand an
adequate test we shall examine further on. But Kant, like a clever
special pleader, tried by magnifying and embellishing the original
_datum_ to make all that he possibly could of it, in order to prepare a
very broad foundation for his Ethics and Moral Theology.
[1] Both words are, of course, derived from _wissen = scire_ =
_εἱδέναι_.--(_Translator_.)
[2] Cf. Horace's _conscire sibi, pallescere culpa: Epist_. I. 1, 61. To
be conscious of having done wrong, to turn pale at the thought of the
crime.
[3] _Συνείδησις = consciousness_ (of right or wrong
done).--(_Translator._)
[4] The celebrated Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, which came into
prominence about A.D. 1220. In A.D. 1335 the Archbishop of Cologne was
appointed head of all the Fehme benches in Westphalia by the Emperor
Charles IV. The reader will remember the description of the trial scene
in Scott's _Anne of Geierstein_. Perhaps the Court of Star Chamber
comes nearest to it in English History.--(_Translator._)
[5] If you give a pledge, be sure that Ate (the goddess of mischief)
is beside you; _i.e._, beware of giving pledges.--Thales ap. Plat.
_Charm_. 165 A.
[6] Kant leads up to this position with great ingenuity, by having
recourse to the theory of the two characters coexistent in man--the
_noumenal_ (or _intelligible_) and the _empirical_; the one being in
time, the other, timeless; the one, fast bound by the law of causality,
the other free.--(_Translator._)
[7] Greek: _Άλλ' ἄγε δὴ σύ, ϕίλος, μêτιν ἐμβάλλεο θυμῷ, κ.τ.λ._