Session Information
13 SES 10, The Voice of Conscience, Resistance and Imperfection
Long Paper Session
Contribution
According to Rousseau, conscience and conscience alone can elevate human beings to a level above that of animals. It is conscience, understood as infallible judge of good and bad, which makes man like God. Conscience itself is, in this context, understood as divine, as an “immortal and celestial voice”. Therefore, if the voice of conscience is the same as the voice of God, then conscience is nothing human. However, although this interpretation is correct, there are some problems with it. If we take into consideration the fact that conscience is in the same context defined firstly as a unifying principle which makes us like God, secondly as a thing which is in the middle between God and man, and thirdly as a middle thing or mediation that integrates extremes organically, then conscience cannot be either simply human or divine. The second problem is the following: The voice of conscience is usually interpreted as a metaphor which associates the voice and conscience, but is it really simply a metaphor? However, even if we had the answer to this question, two other questions would remain: How can one who hears the voice of God know that he really hears his voice? And, if he is the only one who hears it, how can we know that he hears it?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
J.-J. Rousseau, Emile or On Education, Basic Books, 1979. L. D. Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. A. Philonenko, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la pensée du malheur, Vrin, Paris 1984. M. Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA. 2006. P. Ricour, Oneself as Another, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994. J-F. Lyotard, Le différend, Minuit, Paris 1983. N. J. H. Dent, Rousseau, Routledge, New York 2005. D. L. Williams, Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment, The Pennsylvania State University, 2007. J. Delaney, Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, Continuum, London 2006.
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