Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 522

CON

SCIENCE
the mechanism of morality
JEFFREY BENJAMIN WHITE, M.S., M.A., PhD.
Copyright 2007 Jeffrey Benjamin White
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 1-4196-6572-3
And is not this universally true? If a man
does something for the sake of something
else, he wills not that which he does, but
that for the sake of which he does it.
-- Socrates
1
It all started with Ann-Ellen Marion and Dr. Dan
White. Each in their own ways has shown me strength,
courage, kindness and passion, the tensions of which
ground my every conception. I often miss the fireflies
and elderberries and the evening crickets in the rooms of
the house. From one side of a frozen winter river we
saw otters sledding the far bank to ramp out into the
ruddy water only to run up on a straight path in the snow
single file shaking droplets in the cold to wait and to slide
again on their backs and bellies skidding down and up
and out and, splayed wet fur in mid-air, splash. Dearly
missed is Scott Jeavons; sunsets on the lake, and
bicycles, and skipping school and Frisbee and life. We
would have seen more had the world run right. Good-
bye.

1
Plato, Gorgias, 1892, page 467.
ii
Acknowledgements:
The people in your life make you who you are.
So many have supported me, fed me and on whom I
have foundered. None have seen an adequate return.
Some have sacrificed as much as I for this end. Some
still do. I must first thank my brother Justin, without
whose patient and generous support I may not have
seen this month, or the last, or the one before. Also, my
brother Aaron, without whose respect I may not have
seen my self capable of this work, or the last, or the one
before. Thank you, both, and with them Renee and
Skyler and Avery, who stand to win or lose for what we
all do these days ahead.
Many others have been very good to me the
years spent in Columbia, nearly as many as those who
have not. Foremost are Professors Alexander
VonSchoenborn and John Jack Kultgen. In these men,
there are lives worth living. I hope to do them justice
with the rest of my own. Equally, thanks to Professor
Ron Sun of Rensselaer Polytechnic. It is his text, Duality
of Mind, which set the stage for this one. Also, thanks to
Professors Joseph Bien and Donald Sievert, without
whose timely support all was surely lost, and without
whom Id have known neither Rousseau nor
Wittgenstein, old friends all. Thanks also Patrice
Canivez: life is already another mans vegetable patch.
I am especially honored to recognize Professor
Bill Wickersham. Professor Wickersham lives for
opportunities for others to live well, even better than he,
and works hard at it. Bill, we all owe you, big time.
Thanks also to Professor Sam Richmond, without whose
encouragement and example I may not have recognized
the surest path to truth: long suffering with an open
heart. Special acknowledgement is also due to two
iii
young men who together dragged me from the ditch last
summer: Joel Dittmer and Jared Gassen. They stood
me up and put me first when I was only fallen and alone.
I could not have made it without you guys. Thanks.
Deep gratitude is owed to Professor Herb Tillema,
for patient hours in conversation on the substance
especially of the first and fourth chapters. Your support
and time meant the world to me; thanks Professor. And,
thanks to Dean Theodore Tarkow, whose support
financed the defense of my dissertation, the substance
of which comprises most of what follows.
Supporting me in the broader sphere of life there
are Cortney McIntyre, and Tinatin Margelashvili. You
both have given me pause to value what otherwise I
have not, myself. Thanks also to Chun Quian for helping
with formatting, for friendship, and for finding my
traditional Chinese name:
I am grateful for the friendship of Christos and
Sandra, Lois, Sarah Suzie McElroy, and Jon Pez
whom I would like to thank especially. You all showed
up, every time, all the time, and Jon even got up early to
do it: thanks, Mr. Pez. Thanks to Bill and Ernie for being
themselves, to Colin Webb and Allen Talbert for letting
me be myself, to Mark Esser for caring anyways, and
alike Schyler, Kathy, Jonni, Ashley, Nick, Yvonne, Ezra,
Chandler, Michelle, Phil, Allison, Martha Kang, Meredith
Mountford, the Melissas, Doug, Linda, Trevor, the
Guptas, the Vallentynes, and so many others who loved
me even in passing, Tom, Liz, Leah, the Emilys, the Wuj,
Russ, Rachael, Katy, Beaker, Brandt, Ron, Trent, Jason
Top Hat Hedderman, Mark Kloeppel, Wes, the Johns,
Tony, Eric, Greg, Tiffany, Elaine, Solomon, the Kyles,
the Adams and Cameron and the crews at Addisons,
Shakespeares, Billiards, Sal from Eastside, Jeremy at
iv
The Artisan, everyone at El Rancho, Les Bourgeois, and
especially Lakota, the work stage for much of these last
years. There are far away from a long time ago Dan
Miller, and Ian Barrett, and Jason Collins, Lars
Allenstein, Kurt, the Steves, Chris, Nancy, Tim, Chuck,
Mike, Ted, David, Eric, Bones, Hovey, Joey, Ballgame,
Bill, Tony, T.C., Otto, old man Boraski and all the gang
for what could have been and was. Most of all, thanks to
Racheal Wehunt, who deserves more than anyone my
love for years of struggle. I will always hold on to a
selfish hope that you are better than well. Thanks to
Professors Ng, Diraj, Ball, Masnovi, Flechtner, Karen
and the Kulises, and especially to John Luoma for
encouragement and friendship during many ups and
downs beginning almost a decade ago and ending only
with his life. Thanks to Professor Ron Olsen who
believed in me and encouraged a practical interest in
Chemistry more than 15 years past. On the back of an
exam, I laid out a model life as a model chemical
reaction. He replied: Prove it. We are all still waiting
for that. From more than 20 years past thanks to Allan
and Nancy Eckert, for whom I produced an even earlier
version of the work at hand. I sketched a model man in
the space of a phenomenal vacuum. That they loved me
kept me going in that emptiness a very long while.
More than anything, I am grateful for the
hundreds of students with whom I have had the honor of
learning Philosophy even as I learned to teach it. This
text is my mind borne out, exploded and spread thin
beginning to end; you are, each of you, the threads that
held it together.
Everyone, I have become, if not better, then by
your influence simply what I am. Thank you, all of you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgements: ..................................................................................... ii
DIRECTORY: ............................................................................................... v
Preface: ...................................................................................................... vii
Forward: ...................................................................................................... ix
Introduction: Why Conscience, Why Now? ............................................. lxxxi
1. Conscience, and why we are awake. ......................................................1
2. Conscience, and why we live at all........................................................ 25
3. Conscience, and the different faces of the right thing to do................... 34
4. Conscience, and how to do the right thing at the right time................... 44
5. Conscience, and the limits of experience. ............................................. 54
6. Conscience, and the everyday. ............................................................. 91
7. Conscience, and the way of the world................................................. 102
8. Conscience, and the way we live. ....................................................... 129
9. Conscience, and the good................................................................... 152
10. Conscience, and the appearance of the good. .................................. 170
11. Conscience, and the fact of matter. ................................................... 199
12. Conscience, and freedom. ................................................................ 227
13. Conscience, and the just life. ............................................................ 245
14. Conscience, and the end of the world. .............................................. 273
15. Conscience, and the beginning of the world...................................... 314
16. Conscience, and the Constitution...................................................... 341
Appendix 1) Phenomenology and the Modern Tradition: ......................... 376
Works Consulted: ..................................................................................... 389
INDEX: ..................................................................................................... 414
DIRECTORY:
The Forward establishes relationships between
neurology and the moral exemplar, leadership and the
meaning of life, and the conflict between science and
religion over the right thing to do.
The Introduction presents Socratic Philosophy as
a method for the reconciliation of science and religion as
either struggle over the end of the world.
Chapter 1 develops the psychology of conscience
through the work of William James.
Chapter 2 deploys this psychology through the
example of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chapter 3 describes what an opportunity to do the
right thing looks like and how it arises.
Chapter 4 develops a theory of action which
meets the terms of such opportunities.
Chapter 5 introduces the ACTWith model of
conscience on the basis of the results of the preceding
sections, and sets the model in motion as the beating
heart of conscience.
Chapter 6 illustrates conscience at work in the
world through historic examples of conscientious
persons.
Chapter 7 investigates the consequences of
conscience at work in the world through Socrates
example and Philosophy.
Chapter 8 informs moral theory by bringing the
results of the preceding sections to bear on Kants
philosophy of conscience.
Chapter 9 brings the conscience to bear on the
space of the readers own life through an affective
reformulation of the Cartesian method by way of
Diogenes bath-tub.
Chapter 10 brings the reader face to face with the
mortal depths of conscience through Martin Heideggers
moral psychology.
vi
Chapter 11 shows that it is the purpose of the
moral life to live conscientiously.
Chapter 12 shows that freedom to live
conscientiously is the self-determination of the story in
terms of which one discovers life meaningful.
Chapter 13 illustrates the meaningful life story
through Socrates example and Philosophy while faced
with the tragic irony of his unjust execution by corrupt
leadership.
Chapter 14 confronts the reader with the injustice
of his own world, and with the ill-logic underlying it.
Chapter 15 arms the reader with the ACTWith
model in the face of injustice and corruption.
Chapter 16 reinforces the conscientiously
motivated reader to do the right thing by recalling the
role of conscience in the minds of the architects of the
Democracy of the United States of America.
The Appendix uncovers the role of traditional
Philosophy in the moral life by excising the dead tissue
of the modern, analytic tradition.
The Preface summarizes the text.
The Author confesses that the text is not perfect,
but encourages the reader to carry through for the fullest
understanding of Conscience: the mechanism of
morality.


-- The 1
st
of May, 2007
vii
Preface:
Men do not know how what is at variance
agrees with itself. It is an attunement of
opposite tensions, like that of the bow and
the lyre.
-- Heraclitus
2
Therefore the sage is guided by what he
feels and not by what he sees.
-- Lao tzu
3
When the natural world changes, when objects
like the ocean and the ozone change, we change. When
the weather changes the science changes, never the
other way around. Our stories are simply a series of
adjustments over long periods of time taken in terms of
the always current situation. Much of our situation has
always been hidden from us. Many of our old
adjustments no longer apply. The instrument for
evaluation however hasnt. This is the conscience.
In wondering about the right thing to do, one has
three options. There is the consultation of religion.
There is the consultation of others. There is the
consultation of ones self. As religion is what others say
that god has said, the first two amount to the same thing.
As every one must consult himself in giving consultation
to others, the second two amount to the same thing. In
consulting with ones self, there is the conscience.
A man is different from a rock. A man has a
metabolic potential above that of things at rest in the

2
Fragment 45.
3
Tao Te Ching.
viii
world. A man may use his metabolic potentials to move
away from rest and into turbulence, into the unknown. A
man may discover. He may become otherwise. He may
open to the unknown and order it in himself through his
experience. He is synthetic. A rock is not. This is
mans freedom, to become himself through the exercise
of himself. A rock is not free, and insofar as a man does
not exercise this freedom, he may as well be a rock.
You see as we grow, we do not simply embody
regularities around us, but we have the capacity to take
in disorder and order it along the way. A rock will heat
and cool, becoming what it is because of its
environment. A rock cannot open to some things and
close to others. Persons have a limited capacity to open
to the world, or to close off from it. In being open to the
world, internalizing disorder and ordering it in
understanding, we create structures of thought. We
build systems of explanation. We arrange what had
otherwise been unarranged. We understand. This is the
work behind being able to answer any question that
begins with Why? We offer this fruit to the following
generations. This is wisdom. This is a product of
conscience.
To discover effectively we take up and embody
what might be called transcendental logics or
programs of inquiry. Some might call them search
routines, methodological tools for finding things. And by
this I do not mean a toothpick or even a shovel, or a
notebook and an ear to the ground. I mean a life which
grows into the world as it is revealed, a life active in the
discovery of the world. This life becomes the catalyst of
the world that builds bridges from dust. The goal of this
life is that one may say, at the height of his development,
I am a method of discovery.
ix
Forward:
I think Western culture has things
backwards. We equate comfort with
happiness, and now were so comfortable
were miserable. Theres no struggle in our
life, no sense of adventure. Ive found that
Im never more alive than when Im
pushing and Im in pain and Im struggling
for high achievement. In that struggle, I
think theres magic.
-- Dean Karnases
4
Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
-- Portia, The Merchant of Venice
1) Picture your self, chained in a cave
First, a few words about conscience and
leadership. There are a few famous leaders who show
up most frequently in the history of conscience. There
are Jesus of Nazareth, Saul, later Paul, and Martin
Luther King, Jr., Socrates and others. All of these
people led by reconciling contrary positions, thereby
providing for the space for peace, justice, and freedom
when otherwise there may have been only intolerance,
ignorance, and violence. It is in understanding these
leaders, their motivations and their methods, that the
mechanism of conscience will come clear in the
following investigation.
King was perhaps the single greatest leader and
man of conscience in modern times, and is the first to

4
Outside Magazine, January 2007, page 64.
x
demonstrate conscience at work in reconciliation of
contrary positions in chapter 2. The middle chapters
further review historical heroes of conscience, from
Arthur Miller to Rosa Parks, who reconciled their own
interests with those of others and led the way to a better
world. The last chapters leave it to you to do the same.
Socrates life of conscience is historys most
famous, and it is his example, above all others, which
lights our way to this end. Socrates provides the best
example of the conscientious life, not only for what he
did, but because he talked about it. Socrates felt that
people are essentially good. He argued that a person
always does what he thinks is the right thing to do, and
that when he does the wrong thing he is simply the
victim of bad information. He understood that people do
what they do on the basis of what they understand. So,
Socrates spent his time asking why people did what they
did so that they could understand to do better the next
time. This is a fitting industry for so famous a teacher.
After all, the object of learning is not simply the
correction of incorrect information. It is the correction of
incorrect action.
Socrates was especially concerned with what the
leaders of society thought were the right things to do.
He understood that less powerful people are influenced
to do as their leadership does. A good leader does the
right things, and influences others to do similarly. A bad
leader does the wrong things, and influences others to
do similarly. So, bad leadership is especially damaging
to society. This means that it is especially important that
a leader has correct information. Otherwise, he may do
the wrong thing; and, shown such an example, lots of
other people will do the wrong thing, too.
xi
Socrates pointed out that anyone can be a good
leader. Socrates himself was a good leader. What
made him so good? He understood that anyone could
lead by doing the right thing at the right time provided a
little wisdom and the opportunity to use it. His mission in
life was to lead people to gain the wisdom necessary to
pursue these opportunities. He inspired people to do
what is right by getting them to think about what is right
so that they would be ready to do the right thing when
the chance presented itself. Thats what this book is
about, too.
The following text is primarily a work of
Philosophy. Philosophy is the love of ideas, especially
new ideas. It is in new ideas that information about what
is right comes to light. Without new information, new
ideas, new opportunities to do the right thing wouldnt
even show up. Wed just keep doing as we always did,
and never ask whether or not it was right. Doing the
same thing over and over, there would be no need for
conscience. Neither are leadership or philosophy
necessary in a clockwork world of habit wherein no one
asks any questions or learns anything new. But, the
world is not a clock, there are lots of questions in need of
answers and a lot more to learn; so, Philosophy,
conscience, and leadership are good things after all.
Conscience and leadership are about doing the
right thing. Doing the right thing involves new ideas.
Simply having a lot of information, no matter how special
or specialized, isnt enough when it comes to doing the
right thing. This is why Socrates gave the people who
claimed to have a lot of special knowledge such a hard
time. They were often the worst leaders. Though many
even claimed to be Philosophers, or men of
xii
conscience, without being open to new ideas, they were
neither. Think about it.
It doesnt matter what someone knows if he
doesnt get the right thing done by it. That is the
problem with most people who claim to be
Philosophers and with everyone else who claims to
lead by way of some special knowledge and not by his
conscience. Socrates was a Philosopher,
5
and a
teacher of Philosophy, so he spent a lot of time
confronting others who claimed also to teach Philosophy
but who led people, not to follow their consciences, but
with the promise of special knowledge. He thought they
were doing the wrong thing. He was right.
The people he had the most trouble with were
those who treated wisdom as if it were some sort of
commodity, like gold or wine, to be bought and sold.
They would claim to have special information, so they
would hoard it, and protect it, as if it were an object that
could be stolen. They would only share their special
information in private, where Socrates would practice
Philosophy in public. They would maintain that what
they knew was not suitable for all persons to know, only
special persons, people who could afford to pay.
Socrates, on the contrary, spoke with anyone and
everyone who was interested in Philosophy, and in doing
what is right and what is good. Socrates was a
Philosopher. These other teachers were known as
sophists.
6

5
Often in this text, though not perfectly consistently, I will capitalize
Philosopher and Philosophy when making a point that this is Philosophy
done right, the Mother of all inquiries, as opposed to some lesser or even
misguided practice.
6
Sadly, sophist describes the currency in academic philosophical
leadership today.
xiii
Sophists led other people around by holding out
their special knowledge like a carrot. Once people
were chasing this carrot around, the sophists acted as if
keeping it safe were a full-time job. Meanwhile, they hid
a clear view of their carrot behind special language and
convoluted argumentation. They claimed that an
adequate appreciation of their carrot required a special
education. Then, they kept this special education hidden
away.
If someone doubted the sophist had any special
information in the first place, they were simply ignored.
If others merely failed to appreciate the value of their
carrot, though granted that they might have one, the
sophists simply asserted that those people were not
educated well enough to know. From those who
presumed that their carrot had value, and could afford it,
the sophist extracted a large fee for an education in the
special identification of carrots. Then, having seen what
their carrot looks like, and having learned to identify that
sort of carrot as that sort of carrot, these people would
lead others around in the same ways with other secret
carrots. Whether or not these carrots were real is beside
the point; after all, it may be considered the trick of a
very special education, indeed, to find a carrot where
there is none. It doesnt keep people from believing in
them, and following fantasy carrots to violent ends and
even early graves.
Little has changed since Socrates time. A carrot
is still a carrot, and I am still at a loss as to why it costs
so much to know that! The real issue seems to me to be
whether or not the carrot is rotten, granted that it exists
at all. In any event, we are best off led by our own
senses. When it comes to doing the right thing, this
xiv
sense is conscience. This book is about identifying the
conscience. The rest is up to you.
But, just to make sure there is no mistaking a
conscience for a carrot to be bought or stolen, lets
follow Socrates lead a little further. Socrates was a
strong critic of the sophists and their methods, and not
simply because they charged too much for fantasies
about carrots. One of the worst things anyone could
ever do, according to Socrates, is to charge for access
to information that doesnt lead to right action. Why?
Because charging for something makes it appear
valuable, even when it is not. Having spent money to
gain access to some teacher with special information,
the student may begin thinking that now he knows
something special, too. More importantly, he may begin
to think that simply having this information makes him
potentially a teacher of others. He may begin to think
that he should be paid for access to this information just
as he paid for access to the same information. Finally,
because this information cost him so much, he may
begin to think that others should value what he has to
say and do on its basis, whether his special knowledge
is really valuable or not. In other words, the erstwhile
student may mistake himself for a leader, and hold his
carrot out for other people to follow in confirming this
same mistake, too.
Repeat this process for a few generations. It is
no mystery where such a cycle leads: to the sort of
nepotism and inbreeding which plagues leadership, and
the academy, today. What troubled Socrates most was
that it all starts with Philosophy, with sophistical
teachers tooting their own horns and elevating only the
students who will polish them.
xv
This may seem like a minor point, but it is not. It
is no coincidence that in a society wherein
fundamentalism and intolerance are on the rise, this
fundamentalism and intolerance is reflected on the
highest floors of its institutions of learning. Simply put,
the academy is the birthplace of social leadership.
Todays leaders of tomorrows leaders are todays
teachers of todays students. If the right things dont get
taught, today, the right leadership does not get the right
things done, tomorrow. So, the leaders of an
increasingly dogmatic society are increasingly educated
by dogmatic teachers to lead in increasingly dogmatic
terms. This is no mystery.
Socrates knew this. He tried to teach people how
to do the right thing. But, he had limited success, and
often wondered whether doing the right thing could be
taught, after all. He called the knowledge to do the right
thing virtue. Virtues are such things as courage,
honesty, temperance, friendliness, etcetera. All of these
virtues apply to specific contexts. On Socrates count,
there is one virtue from which all these others are
derived. This mother virtue is practical wisdom.
Practical wisdom is knowing to do the right thing
at the right time, regardless of the context. Socrates
sought to teach this virtue through Philosophy. He did
not hold class behind closed doors, or write lessons. He
did not limit philosophy to one context or another. He
did not charge people to see his carrot. He taught
philosophy by demonstrating what it is to live a
Philosophic life, and he did it in the open. He was wise,
and he practiced his wisdom publicly for the benefit of
his society. There is nothing mysterious about that.
The condition of the industry of philosophy is a
direct indication of the health of the society in which the
xvi
philosopher practices. It is no coincidence that we live in
an increasingly vicious society full of increasingly narrow
minded and vicious philosophers. Socrates, King, Mill,
Jefferson, Kant, Rousseau, Peirce, Dewey and others
like them had been leaders of free thought in free
societies, and whose influences have since been felt in
every dimension of human life. It is no mystery that
contemporary philosophers are increasingly champions
of dogma and conservatism, whose influences are
confined to dry classrooms under artificial light from
which what is taken hardly applies to human life in the
natural world, at all. What is a mystery is how such an
education could ever make for a good leader, a wise
teacher, or a healthy society in the first place.
Socrates understood that a society is only as
good as its leadership, and its leaders only as good as
their teachers. People do the right things by recognizing
opportunities to do the right things, and their teachers
teach them, and their leaders show them, how. It is the
goal of a good teacher to empower his students to
recognize these opportunities, and the goal of the good
leader to empower his fellows to pursue them. This is
why Philosophy is so important to the healthy society,
today.
Philosophy is especially important for a
democratic society. The great strength of a democracy
is that it is a nation of leaders. This is the strength that
underwrites such pronouncements as liberty and justice
for all. Everyone is empowered to do the right thing.
Socrates lived in a democracy. He understood this, too.
Early in the famous book The Republic, in the
second chapter, Socrates tells us that the only just
society, the only healthy democracy, is that in which
each of its citizens is free to be a Philosopher. What he
xvii
means here is not that a few people are well educated
and become teachers while everyone else slaves in
factories, and a few elites become wealthy and famous
at everyone elses expense. What Socrates means here
is that a society is only just when everyone is
empowered to lead by looking for opportunities to do the
right thing at his own expense. That is why Philosophy
is so important to the healthy democracy: liberty and
justice for all means that everyone is free to seek new
ideas and opportunities to do the right things, and are
empowered to do them. Philosophy is not merely a field
of study. It is the way of life which gets the right things
done.
Socrates demonstrated this way of life as he
lived, openly, everyday. Every opportunity for right
action begins with the recognition that the right thing to
do isnt necessarily what one already knows to do.
Accordingly, every opportunity for knowledge begins with
the recognition that whatever it is one already knows,
there is no guarantee that the right thing will get done by
it. As true as this may be, few teachers have the
courage to show it. Socrates, however, did.
Socrates understood that the value of knowledge
isnt what one already knows, but what one will someday
do with it. This is why he had a reputation for being the
wisest man in Athens, even though he ran around saying
that he didnt know anything about anything at all! He
was the wisest man in Athens because he knew that,
practically speaking, what others counted as knowledge
is most often merely baggage that gets in the way of
doing the right thing, now. The wisdom to recognize this
fact is something truly worth knowing, and this is why
Socrates teachings led to the foundation of the very first
Academy in Athens.
xviii
This is also why Socrates leads the following
story of conscience. Writing a book on conscience isnt
like giving step by step instructions. There is no recipe
for doing the right thing. The right thing to do differs
from moment to moment. Often, the right thing to do
isnt anything anyone has ever done before. The right
thing to do often involves doing something new and
different, because times change, and changing times call
for new and different actions. Socrates example shows
us how to do this best. So, it is very important to
understand Socrates motivations and what Philosophy
is really all about if we are going to gain an adequate
understanding of the conscience along the way. Our
story begins with Socrates story. The most famous part
of Socrates story, however, is the end of his story. Now,
lets look at how Socrates story ends.
Socrates was the victim of a most tragic irony.
The wisest man in Athens was executed on the basis of
bad information.
7
Athens was undergoing a period of
rapid social change. Mismanagement at the highest
levels led Athenians into frivolous and unnecessary wars
and equally poorly conceived building projects. The
wrong people were in charge for political reasons,
because of whom they knew and how popular they were
with the wealthy and powerful elite. Their corruption
resulted in crippling losses both on the battlefield and on
the financial bottom line.
Socrates was an old man by this time. He had
seen Athens, the pride and promise of liberal democracy
in the ancient world, bankrupted by closed-mindedness
and secrecy. A lot of people were doing the wrong
things on the basis of bad information and bad

7
Manufactured by Athenian leadership.
xix
leadership. Needless to say, this gave him a lot to talk
about.
Did Athenian leaders learn a lesson from their
failures? No. They continued to mislead publicly, and
continued to act to retain personal power privately. They
did not act to empower the generations to come with a
secure situation. They acted to keep their own situations
secure for the moment. They lived for their own wealth
and fame, now, at the expense of others, later. The trick
for them was making it look like this was the right way to
live, so that they could get the rest of Athens to follow
suit. The trick was to make it appear as if they had not
failed Athens, at all, but that their way of life was Athens
way of life, and that something else had gone wrong.
How did they do that? They lied.
The leaders of Athenian society lied so that they
could do what they wanted to do, to make themselves
rich, rather than correct themselves and do what would
have been right, to step down from power and follow a
better leader. One of their stumbling blocks was
Socrates and his pesky pursuit of the truth.
Socrates impugned the leadership for misleading
Athens; so, instead of being honest about it, like bitter
children they returned the favor. They impugned
Socrates for misleading Athens. They could not allow
him to keep on at the truth because that would mean
that they would eventually be found out as bad leaders
who did the wrong things. So, they told Athens that he
was full of bad information. Then, through power and
influence, they got Socrates charged for it.
They lied. They made it look as if a life lived in
the open for wisdom like Socrates life was a life lived for
wealth and fame in private like their own.
xx
The leaders of Athens told a story that wasnt
true. The jury, however, acted as if the terms of the
story were true. Why? Again, I think the leaders told the
story the way they did because they wanted to feel as if
a life lived for wealth and fame was the right way to live,
even though, deep down inside, in their hearts, they
knew it wasnt. As for the why the jury believed it; well,
we will get to that in a moment.
All of this, however, is beside the point; Socrates
life story ended, and it ended badly for everyone
concerned.
8
Once those who had followed the leadership in
their prosecution of Socrates death discovered that they
had been duped to live in terms of a story that was false,
the once powerful, selfish and wealthy men who had
been leaders of Athens were finally relieved of their
power and property and either killed or thrown out. By
then, however, it was too late; the one true leader of
Athens was dead, and the hopes of its golden age faded
with his influence. Hopefully, by making all this clear, we
can avoid a similar fate.
2) Breaking the chains
Mistake made, lesson learned, right? We are
now free from such corrupt leaders who coerce their
fellows to serve their own interests by feeding them bad
information. Right?
Tragically, no. Look around. Though we live in
the information age, some of these most famous
mistakes of powerful men are currently made at an
appalling rate. There is a lot of wrong action undertaken

8
Except, oddly enough, on Socrates estimation, for Socrates himself, as
we shall soon discover.
xxi
on the basis of bad information at the behest of current
leadership.
Moreover, with the speed and force by which the
wrong things are being done, there is little time for the
reflection on, let alone the pursuit of, opportunities to do
otherwise.
9
There is, instead, the constant escalation of
the scale of wrong action on the same terms simply
repeated over and over again, no matter how incorrect
these actions and this information and how bad the
leadership on its basis turn out to be. Thus, bad
leadership continues to mislead and those they lead are
misled. Where is Philosophy in all of this? Perhaps this
stands in for an answer: Were Socrates alive, today, he
would be dead by morning.
10
Listen to the current leadership; the message is
essentially that which Socrates contested at the eventual
cost of his life. The message is the incessant repetition
of the same information motivating wrong action in the
first place. This is that war is peace, that property is
liberty, that freedom is subjugation, that there is only one
way of life worth living, only one god worth worshipping,
and only one tradition which tells us the truth about it all.
The crux of this story is that any other story is
false. The crux of this message is that any other way of
life is wrong. The crux of this misinformation is that
there is no reconciling with those who are informed
differently. This is why Socrates was killed; he didnt
think so. This also explains why the Philosophers who

9
Socrates called this opportunity for reflection leisure, a diminishing
aspect of everyday life under an increasingly militarized corporate state, but
we will get to that in a moment.
10
Perhaps book burnings are not far off, either
xxii
were not targeted for execution were not really
Philosophers at all. They were sycophants. Sophists.
11
What does this have to do with us? Few of us
claim to be Philosophers. So what? What are we doing
wrong, anyways? What would Socrates have said?
For one thing, Socrates would have pointed out
that we are acting like children. We are at least complicit
in the ongoing maiming, murdering, and torturing of
others who think differently than we do, around the
world, simply because the leadership says so, and as
fast as we are able. It is as if we are children alive in a
fairy tale world where slaying ogres makes us good
people. All we have to do is find an ogre and kill it to
guarantee a happy ending. So, when the leadership
tells us that there is an ogre, we kill it, maim it, and
torture it no matter where it is in the world and simply
because we were told to do so. Meanwhile, the 800-
pound ogre in the room is us.
Maybe this is too simple. We all know that there
are no such things as ogres.
12
We are not children, after
all. Maybe we are even guiltier than that. Maybe we are
torturing other people because they refuse to live
according to our own way of life, the way of life we have
determined to be the best, and that is what makes them
ogres and deserving of such treatment.
13
That said, this

11
And why Socrates correctly claimed that he was the only one to practice
the true political art, an equally valid criticism of the academy, today.
12
But we wont explicitly come to this until chapters 11, 12, and 13
13
Some may contest with specific examples, like we kill because of the
World Trade Center tragedy. But, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident
beforehand, this is merely a ruse for war. Unlike the Gulf of Tonkin,
however, there is simply too much direct evidence for this fact to be
seriously questioned. It is merely a ruse, a false flag action, and it has
cost countless lives. Sadly, few have the courage, and fewer the time and
xxiii
is not the first time in history people have undertaken
such action.
14
We have all seen this pattern before. We
have simply failed to learn not to repeat it. This is a
mistake we have made more than once. Is it a mistake
we wish to continue making? How can we reconcile this
past with a future worth living in?
The cycle we are stuck in goes like this. The first
party forces greater change in the second party than that
party can tolerate, and the second party responds to this
violence with more violence, and through the escalation
more people die. Party one blames party two and party
two blames party one and so the violence continues
without anyone coming to account. Tragically, the last
persons to accept responsibility are the first persons
responsible; the leaders on either side. While we wait,
good people die. This is our mistake. It is a tragic
mistake, and it is a familiar story. Even though many
see that this is what is going on, that the story we have
been sold is a lie, we continue to live within it. Even
armed with correct information, who, here, is doing the
right thing because of it?
And, whos to say that killing people, maiming and
torturing, isnt the right thing to do? There is a certain
prudence to violence, after all. It is easier to split a skull
than to change the mind within it. This goes especially
when the mind inside the skull getting split isnt thinking
about splitting any skulls, first. Killing other people often
seems to be the right thing to do, if only because the
only accounts of its propriety come from the only people

opportunity, to come to this realization let alone do something about it. So,
we live and act in terms of a lie. Whats new?
14
It is in the nature of every historical imperialism to mistake domination for
lawful rule.
xxiv
left alive, the killers. Anticipating the power to make
history through violence, the first thing a truly bad man
and coward will do, as a leader, before commanding
others to kill, is to make his victim out to be the ogre.
After all, a dead man is essentially unable to
demonstrate otherwise beside lay there and look very
ugly. And we all know that ogres are ugly.
It has been said that history is written by the
winners. It is more accurate to say that history is written
by those willing to escalate to crippling violence. Dead
people have no interest in history, people without arms
and legs have historically had a hard time writing about
it, and the threat of becoming dead or disabled is a great
distraction for those who might otherwise make a
difference. Prudence aside, lets see about getting
better informed.
The story surrounding Socrates execution fits
well with our current situation. He was killed because
the leadership of Athens made him out to be an ogre.
What did Socrates do to warrant execution, exactly?
The death penalty is usually reserved for murderers.
But, Socrates didnt kill anyone. He merely led less
powerful persons to believe that they had been misled
by more powerful persons. He led people to become
good leaders on their own and to do the right things. He
showed everyone that the most powerful leader is the
good person. He did however, through public
Philosophy, threaten certain powerful persons selfish
ways of life. Worst of all for the people in power, he was
good at it.
Socrates did more than challenge a fact here or
an action there. He did talk about these little things, like
who did what, when, how, and why, but this was only to
get to bigger issues. Socrates genius was to use
xxv
obvious little things to build up to bigger questions. He
understood that it wasnt one thing here or there which
made men believe in every little fact and act out every
little action. He understood that people only take things
to be facts because of the way these little things fit into
larger stories and myths, and that they only act on these
facts in similar terms. People dont kill ogres merely
because it is a fact that there is an ogre. This fact, on its
own, doesnt really mean anything. People kill ogres
because, so the story goes, killing ogres is the right thing
to do.
Socrates strategy was to question, beginning with
individual acts and facts, the myths and stories that gave
them meaning. What he was ultimately interested in
was the meaning of life, and he understood that it is in
terms of stories and myths that lives are made
meaningful. It is in asking what is the meaning of life
that he came to question the ways that certain selfish
leaders of society lived their own lives. It is in this way
that he came to question whether or not their lives were
meaningful, and what their lives meant for everyone
else. Again, this is a fitting role for so famous a teacher.
But, how, exactly, did it get him killed?
Powerful men felt threatened that he challenged
their power. His example did challenge their ways of life.
Socrates, however, was not a very powerful man. He
was old, and relatively poor. Why, then, did they feel
their power so threatened? Socrates did not directly vie
for power, himself.
15
Besides that, their official

15
He never ran for office, though once he was appointed by his fellow
citizens to the modern equivalent of a local office and dutifully served his
term, and on another occasion was ordered by corrupt leaders to do the
wrong thing and refused to do it.
xxvi
allegations leading to Socrates execution had nothing to
do with him directly threatening their personal power.
One of their official charges was that he failed to respect
the gods of Athens; but, this was false. Socrates was by
all familiar accounts respectful of traditional Athenian
religious rites. He did stand out as a deviant in regard to
at least one convention; he refused to pressure boys to
trade sex for education and influence. This fact did not
stop his accusers, powerful and influential men, who by
the way suffered no similar compunction to abstinence,
from framing the further official allegation that Socrates
corrupted the youth. But, how?
These men felt threatened because Socrates
questioning compelled them to question themselves.
Socrates example compelled them to look in the mirror.
This was not something they were willing to do. If they
had actually done so, they would have found themselves
hypocrites and bad leaders, examples of bad information
at work. Such a realization would have been difficult to
reconcile with their ongoing interest in wealth and power.
This would also have meant an end to their
leadership, with unpleasant repercussions. A lot of
people suffered, even died, because of their wrong
actions. If their corruption had been made public, a
great many people would have been very upset. These
men must have felt as if Socrates was, at least indirectly,
threatening their very lives, not merely the ways that
they lived them. So, they responded in kind. They
made it look like he was the source of corruption and the
bad leader. Because of the possible repercussions for
Socrates, execution, they threatened his very life. It was
only fair.
To these leaders of Athens, their actions likely
appeared just. Socrates showed that their apparently
xxvii
right ways of life were actually wrong, so they made his
actually right way of life appear wrong. Because they
were powerful, and he not, this got Socrates charged
and convicted. There is a tragic symmetry operative in
this turn of events.
But, there is an even more tragic asymmetry.
They may not have expected he was willing to die for the
truth because, after all, they werent. The asymmetry is
that he was willing to die for the truth. He was a
Philosopher. So am I.
And here is the lasting power of the Socratic
example: he demonstrates the courage to pursue the
truth and live by it. He demonstrates the courage of
wisdom. One does not become wise hiding away in a
comfortable classroom with his nose in someone elses
special information. One becomes wise by suffering to
live for the truth in the full light of day.
As the old saying goes, the truth hurts. The
implication, here, is that Socrates the leader was willing
to suffer so that everyone else could benefit by his
example, and by the resulting understanding maybe
even do the right thing. In essence, the leaders of
Athenian society executed Socrates because he was a
good man, a good leader, and a good teacher, willing to
suffer for the good of others, while they were not.
16
This
is the tragic asymmetry that marks the end of Socrates
life story. It also marks the beginning of ours. Things
did get bad for Athens because of his loss, but maybe
we can benefit by it, now.
Socrates famously maintained that the
unexamined life is not worth living. Now, I must confess

16
The they here were Anytus, his puppet Meletus, and a few others who
ran things.
xxviii
that when presented with so many egregious examples
of vicious ignorance as is the color of the culture, today, I
sometimes wish that his formula amounted to It is ok to
kill people who refuse to question their own wrong
actions. But, this is not what Socrates meant by that;
he meant that the value in life is our capacity to change,
and especially to do so on purpose when presented with
the right information. The value in life is freedom, and
for Socrates true freedom is of a very special kind. This
freedom is only revealed through self-examination,
toward self-understanding. It is the freedom of self-
determination.
17
The freedom of self-determination, to determine
for ones self ones own ends and actions, had been the
prize held out by traditional Western Philosophy at least
until it was bled of this inspiration by the scholastics and
the dark ages of Christendom, but this is beside the
point. Socrates thought that the value in life is the
freedom of self-determination, and that self-
understanding through self-examination, through the
practice of Philosophy, is the key to this empowerment.
It is with this formula, and with the hope for a better
world at its heart, that our story of conscience actually
begins. So, onward!
3) Finding a way out
Lets start with a twist on a familiar phrase from
the American tradition that echoes the Socratic formula.
It is self-evident that each of us is equal, and free. Yet, it

17
Here, I may lose some readers who are especially taken by the new
neurological determinism seemingly substantiated by the famous Libet
experiments, by Daniel Wegners recent book, and others. I would only ask
that they read on, if they are indeed free not to.
xxix
is also self evident that each of us is different, and is
bound to different things in different ways for different
purposes. How are we to reconcile these apparent
contradictions? And, what are we to do once we have
reconciled these apparent contradictions?
Every one of us lives a life story, even as he is
born into a larger story of the world, a history, already
unfolding. Each one of us looks forward to happy
endings, and away from the worst. Each of us does so
in terms of the story into which he is born, is raised, and
takes to be true. The greatest stories of history are
those of the worlds old religions. The religions of world
history set out the highest determinations within which a
persons life story is embedded. They make life
meaningful. These are the sorts of stories Socrates set
out to question. They are also the sorts of stories which
corrupt leadership protects, in Socrates case under
penalty of death, from any questioning. Lets look at
why.
Religious stories are about such things as god,
justice, truth, love, heaven, hell, redemption,
forgiveness, etcetera. The treatments of these terms
may differ in different religious stories, but all do provide
treatments of these highest terms. Even stories which
hold themselves out to be non-religious provide
treatments of this same set of terms, even if it is only to
negate them.
This raises a very interesting point. Though the
stories by which we each live may differ in detail, we all
live under a set of highest terms common to these
stories. Even without Allah one lives for justice, even
without Eros one lives for love, even without Satan one
lives for redemption, etcetera. By way of these common
terms, within or without different religious traditions, we
xxx
all share common aspirations, common horizons,
common oceans, and common ends. These are the
terms common to all that is epic, tragic, ironic, and
comic; these are all terms we share in common
regardless of religious orientation. These are the terms
of revolution, tyranny, bounty and famine, life and death,
war and peace, terms by which we all succeed or suffer
in common. Here, on this planet Earth, we write world
history in common terms together.
What, then, of the different stories in terms of
which we live our separate lives? How are these woven
together into the single yarn of one world history? Each
of our stories is subtly different in its determinations of
the world we share. Each makes sense of the world in
slightly different ways. Even so, one thing is clear.
Beneath all of these different determinations, there is
one world in common. It is not flat. It is getting warmer.
We will all die here. These are all determinations we
share. They describe the common world. There is
nothing artificial or unnatural about this realization.
Clearly, this common basis for all our subtly different
determinations is the natural world however we make
mythological sense of it.
Whether created or designed or evolved or
otherwise, there is one natural world from which all of
humanitys great stories are derived and in terms of
which we all share in one common world history.
Why not simply live in terms of this history of the
natural world, rather than some mythic derivation
thereof? Frankly, because no one has made adequate
sense of it, yet. Let me emphasize yet. That doesnt
mean it isnt going to happen. In fact, once you finish
reading this book, you might think that it already has
happened. Meanwhile, it is up to us to reconcile the
xxxi
contrary determinations of all these stories with the world
we share, if we are to continue sharing this world, its
history, past and future, peacefully and without killing
each other instead.
Recently, there has been increasingly cogent
criticism of humanitys old religious stories in light of an
unfolding natural story determined by natural scientists.
Neurologists, philosophers, psychologists, and others
have feverishly published texts critical of religion, of
religious stories, and of the religious ways of life
undertaken in terms of these stories. The crux of the
criticism is that the old religious stories trap practitioners
into outdated ways of life and prevent the rest of us from
moving forward. The criticism is that, as the natural
world changes, so should our understanding of how to
live within it. As the world changes, so should what is
determined to be a good life story, what is a happy
ending, and what is the right thing to do. The criticism is
that we must reconcile the terms by which we have been
told to live our lives, god, justice, redemption, etcetera,
with the terms of the natural world as revealed by the
natural sciences.
The criticism is that the world is changing, and
has changed, and religious stories have stayed the
same, so we have to change them, too, otherwise we
will continue living as if in terms of another world, an old
storybook world. Cleary, this criticism strikes close to
the heart of many popular religions. The leaders of
these religions explicitly compel their followers to live in
terms of other worlds rather than in terms of this natural
one, whether merely old or other-worldly altogether.
Like I said, recently, these scientists and philosophers
xxxii
have cooked up an especially cogent criticism. But is it
right?
18
Lets look a little more closely.
The criticism is that our way of life should suit our
situation, now, not that situation 2000 years ago and not
that of some alien situation as if on another world. Yet,
this leaves us with a problem. In what terms are we to
live if not in terms of these great stories from history?
This is an especially difficult question to answer, but it is
even more difficult to ask for those people who take the
terms of these old stories to be the very words of God!
For those of us who are able to ask the question,
the fact that others arent isnt going to keep us from
trying to answer it. The world is a much different place
at present than when the various religions of the old
world were codified. We do not now live in terms of that
old world situation, no matter how fondly our old world
stories recall it.
No matter how often we repeat these stories to
ourselves, they simply do not describe the world the way
we understand it, today. We understand our current
situation in different terms because we have a lot of new
ideas about it. Take, for instance, the story of creation.
Nice story. Understates the facts. Not true. Take, for
instance, the story that there are virgins awaiting a
martyr of holy war in heaven. Nice story. Overstates the
facts. Not true.
The story that is adequate to the facts is that we
live in a world which is the product of generations of
human industry undertaken in terms of old stories, and
now we are in a world of trouble because of it. The truth
about this story is that scientific stories are not free from

18
Socrates will show us that there is at least one case in which their
criticism does not hold.
xxxiii
this criticism merely because they are scientific stories.
This puts us in the difficult position of reconciling all
these stories if we are to uncover ourselves from the
trouble we are increasingly in by way of them.
Sure, there are wars over religion, prejudice over
religion, and laws prosecuted from religious grounds.
But we are in even deeper trouble than that. The
contemporary world is the product of human industry at
the guiding hand of old stories and new, at every corner
of the globe, and the resulting ways of life which now suit
this contemporary human world are ill fit to the natural
world in terms of which we all ultimately rest. This goes
for the life of the scientist as well as that undertaken in
terms of old religion.
19
Here is where we have gone wrong. We have
taken stories to be true whose terms under-represent the
complexity of the natural world, and we have lived in
terms of these stories. The problem is that the stories in
terms of which people live are too simple, too
convenient, and, because they are easy, too difficult to
change. They presume an understanding where there is
none, just as those who live within them presume the
same. Industries undertaken on their terms have
consequently underestimated the complexity of the
natural world, and their captains press ahead, anyways.
They presume control where there is none, and enforce
blind obedience when their projects unjust, immoral, are
otherwise simply unintelligible.
Why havent we questioned these stories and
their determinations? Why have we kept doing as we
have done, not learning from our mistakes? We have
taken these stories to be true because we have been

19
Aldous Huxley had something important to say about this.
xxxiv
comforted with them, and we have pursued these
industries because we have become comfortable by
them. Between the preaching and the production, we
have been blinded to the painful consequences. Where
we have not been blind, we have hidden away.
Where the weather is unmanageable, there is air
conditioning. Where the rivers are unmanageable, there
are dams and bridges. Where we grow too fat to climb
stairs, there are people movers. Where the ups and
downs of every aspect of the natural world are too great
for human comfort, human industry flattens it out.
Human life is consequently undertaken in the space of
these flattened terms.
Today, a characteristic mark of the successful
human life is that it proceeds without discomfort, without
consequences, without any contact with the natural
world, whatsoever. Successful people pay less
successful people for that. Successful life, here and
now, hides from the natural world in artificial
environments and where able covers it over with
concrete and thick black tar. On this lifeless surface,
human beings walk in shiny, pointy, high-heeled shoes
from living flat-floored box to traveling flat-floored box to
working flat-floored box and back again. This is the
story of life in the West. It is simple. It is an idle march
at the beat of an old drum. It is ending.
The story is that of human progress, and the story
of this progress is the story of human power. Power is
control, and control is evidenced in the reduction of the
mountainous complexity of the natural world to the flat-
land of todays artificial one. The story is that human
industry makes the world a better place for the human
lives within it. This story, however, is clearly wrong.
Autism, extinction, cancer, poverty, obesity, pollution,
xxxv
militarism, global environmental collapse, radiation,
drug-resistant pathogens, the death of the bees, all are
rising actors in the closing chapters in the unfolding
history of human industry. So far, I have yet to see a
scientific story, let alone a religious one, which corrects
for these mistakes. That is what this book is for; this
work is ahead of us.
The point here is that the story of human
progress, and with it the stories of progressive human
lives therein embedded, is itself embedded within even
bigger stories which appear to bless ongoing industry at
the expense of the natural world. All of these stories
point to tragedy ahead, and advise those within them to
prepare for it. This goes for the life of the scientific critic
of religion as well as for the religious life he criticizes.
The near future is a terrifying proposition.
Historically speaking, the biggest of all these
stories have been religious stories. This is why many
call science the new religion. Industry and religion go
hand in hand, and have led us together as if one happy
family to the current status quo. Look around, here in
the West. What we see now is Wal-Mart recruiting
evangelists to lecture their employees on the Wal-Mart
way of life, evangelists recruiting militants to defend that
way of life,
20
and these militants killing people of other
religions and other industries because they do not
already live this way of life. All the killing, however,
doesnt make any of these stories any more true. It just
makes challenging these stories very expensive.
Holding out for the true story may cost you your life.
21

20
Take Bush employing Blackwater for instance.
21
Take the incredible death rates of independent journalists, or the
assassination of Pat Tillman, whose example returns in section 15.
xxxvi
What is true about these stories is that leaders of
human industry have always colluded with leaders of
historys old religions to get their collective stories
straight. Why? Wealth. Power. Control. Coercion. It
is all very simple.
Take, for instance, one aspect common to all of
these stories, scientific or religious, which does appear
accurate. We are on the global brink of a fiery warring
mess rife with famine and disease and pestilence and
the whole nine yards. Good for business? Yes.
22
Good
for religion? Yes.
23
True story? Apparently, but one
with a very unhappy ending, pursued only on the basis
of very bad information, as the product of even worse
leadership.
Simply put, there is nothing about the natural
world, itself, that makes things this way. We have made
things this way, ourselves. We live in a world of our own
consequences. If the world is going to end, it is because
we have taken it on ourselves to act towards the end of
the world. We have done so industriously and both in
the terms old religions, and the terms of new scientific
stories which, so far, have only aggravated the situation.
It is through realizing this truth that we have a way out.
We must begin to reconcile the dark past with a bright
future else end up in the ditch. That light, ahead, is
conscience.

22
Recall how much duct tape Home Depot sold when the government
warned against religiously motivated bio-terrorism? Just another instance
of false-flag fear for profit? Perhaps
23
Note the rising political influence of religious groups as crisis looms. Self-
fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps
xxxvii
4) The journey out of darkness
Now, I understand that it is increasingly popular
for armchair scholars to cast about over whose religion
is worse than whose science and vice versa, but I have
neither the time nor the patience for such self-indulgent
hogwash. It is not clear that we, as a race, would be
better off now than before no matter which old religious
or new scientific story might have framed our actions to
this point. It is clear, however, that the natural
environment which originally shaped the old religions is
not better off for their continued practice. It is also clear
that the industries undertaken since have not made the
natural world a better place for most of us to live.
24
With
increasing global warming, and with increasing global
warring, it is increasingly time for a change.
The problem remains: what change?
Contemporary critics of the old religions are not
constructive critics in this regard. They do not tell us
how to change. Their aim has been to deny the value in
religious ways of life and the religious stories which
motivate them, pure and simple. Their aim has not been
the adequate replacement thereof. The critics, thus, fall
short of offering any legitimate solutions to world
problems, religiously fueled or otherwise. Being the
leaders of the scientific revolution that they are, they
simply cast stones. And, the leaders of the religiously
minded are fighting back. They are returning fire. Thus,
the critics and the criticized, both sides leaders, merely
throw rocks at each other across an increasingly

24
Especially if, in this most of us, we responsibly include the countless
unborn children of every race and affliction we should yet hope will live in
terms of this natural world.
xxxviii
unbridgeable divide. Meanwhile, there stand you, and
me, and a lot of innocent kids, mostly Asian and African
kids, stuck in the middle.
One very good question is: what are these people
thinking? Can a peaceful future be grounded in such a
divide? No. Can we live in terms of one side at the cost
of the other? No. Of course, that doesnt stop one
group from seeking to expunge evolution from science
texts and the other from seeking to expunge religious
mythologies from everyday life. So, here we are, in real
trouble and in light of which the prudence of violence
shines especially brightly, except perhaps for those of us
caught in the middle of the violence.
For a moment, lets pretend that killing each other
simply isnt what we want to do; a life of desperation and
murder is not a way of life we want to display for our
children. In that case, what we need is a new way of life
built from both the new sciences and the old religions.
We need a foundation made from a bridge and we need
it right away. If you didnt already feel this way, you
wouldnt still be reading, and
Surprise! The following text fills this gap. This
text founds a fresh start without all the murdering and
raping and pillaging and pissing on each others graves.
Now, we are getting somewhere, but it isnt going to be
easy. Reconciliation is hard work, and what we must
reconcile are nothing less than contrary determinations
of the very biggest issues ever brought to the human
mind. We must, from beginning to end, corner to corner,
draw a circle of words around the world if we are going
to save it, and from the beginning to the end is a very
long way. Hold on for one hell of a ride.
The critics of the old religions have gotten at least
one thing right. Old religions do trap practitioners in
xxxix
essentially out-dated ways of life; but taken on their own,
these religious practices, no matter how old, are not
necessarily destructive. There is nothing necessarily
wrong with believing in a God and living accordingly.
Take, for instance, the Amish. Here is an example of a
perfectly sustainable, environmentally responsible, and
relatively old religious way of life. Yes, the terms in
which they live appear outdated, but whats really wrong
with that?
There is another thing the critics of religions have
gotten right. New sciences do update old practices in
light of new information. After all, they provide the new
information. However, taken on their own, they do not
guarantee that what we do in light of this new
information is the right thing to do or even needs to be
done. Take, for instance, thalidomide. Or, television.
Or, phthalate ridden teething toys, or mercury amalgam
fillings, or antibiotics, or processed foods, or factory
farms, or deforestation, or fossil fuel dependency, or
pollution, or radioactive waste, or chemical weapons, or
biological weapons, or the militarization of space, or
antidepressants. Take your pick. Science is very
dangerous stuff and I, frankly, am as tired of the
armchair scientist with his stuffed-shirt superiority who
cant tell when it is time to get off his sterile high horse
as I am tired of the evangelist who lies in order to keep
the truth about the mysteries of his religion from coming
to light. Faith is not a bad thing, unless it keeps you
from doing what is right, and both sides of the issue are
as guilty as the other on this count. This text is here to
patch things up. Time to reconcile. Conscience is the
tool for the job.
Now, I promised a tough ride, and I meant it.
Read slowly.
xl
Deviance from past religious practices and
variable interpretations of new scientific results must be
tolerated if the experiment that is mankind on Earth is to
continue. What the battle between the old religions and
the new sciences demonstrates is that we have reached
a limit to toleration. One side battles the other side in an
increasing dispute over whose story
25
is bigger, when
neither will ever be big enough. This text expands this
limit by examining the tool for their reconciliation: the
conscience.
The problems with any ways of life, scientific,
religious or otherwise, arise when lives lived in their
terms negatively affect shared living conditions. That is,
if you want to do something you think is right and it gets
in the way of my doing what I think is right, there is going
to be a problem. What we see when we look around the
neighborhood today, globally or just down the block, are
a lot of these sorts of problems.
The really big problems arise when the religious
life, or the scientific life, is also a political life. Big
problems arise when the life in question is the life of a
leader. When the religious practitioner is also a political
power, the constraint of religious tradition is imposed on
the scientist under his yoke. When the scientist is also a
political power, the constraint of scientific tradition is
imposed on the religious person under his yoke. Either
party may complain that the others is not life in terms of
his own tradition, and neither party is going to be very
happy about letting go of said tradition and living a
different sort of life. So, what are we going to do?
One leading critic of religion, neuro-scientist Sam
Harris, has proscribed that those still yearning for

25
Carrot
xli
religion in light of the results of the new sciences should
turn to Buddhism as a replacement for their own
inherited religious traditions.
Why Buddhism? Ostensibly, because Buddhism
is a way of life fundamentally committed to the practical
detachment from prior presumptions, religious or
otherwise.
26
Buddhism aims to minimize the suffering
which each person endures as he adapts to life in a
changing world. Buddhism proscribes that each
individual person should unlearn habits perfected
according to prior determinations because these
determinations and any actions undertaken on their
bases, as things change, are certain to fail.
Ostensibly, new scientist Harris advocates
Buddhism as a replacement to other religions for very
old reasons. Religions, of every stripe, are, on the
formula of Marx and Hegel before him, pacifying. These
are the opiates of the masses. Buddhism is an
especially effective opiate in this regard.
Why? Interestingly, one of the literal roots of the
word religion is Latin, religare, to bind fast.
27
Religion, literally, is that to which one is bound.
Buddhism, as a practice, promises to undo these
bindings, and so, consequently, minimize the discomfort
one feels as he changes his way of life to suit the
changing terms of a changing world. It takes the pain
away.

26
Interestingly, yoga, so recently popular in the West, literally means to
yoke habits of body to habits of mind. Buddhism can be understood as a
disciplined un-yoking of said habits from one to the other.
27
See the final section, Conscience and the Constitution, for further
discussion on the meaning of religion and the religious life, especially in the
American democracy.
xlii
Yet, is it the right thing to do, to embrace a way of
life merely in order to minimize ones own suffering as he
endures change, the worlds and his own, as he ages
and the natural environment collapses around him? Is
detachment, now, the right move to make?
If the sole purpose of ones way of life is to
minimize his own suffering as the tenets of his old
religion are first disputed and then nullified, and the rifts
in the natural ecosystem are first occluded and then
cauterized by the increasing heat of the incessant Sun,
then Buddhism is an adequate solution.
If the sole purpose of ones way of life is to get
ones self out of the way of impending ruin, Buddhism is
an adequate solution. On the Buddhist picture, the self
is merely a locus of regularity; it is habit. Exposed to the
same things in the same ways for so long, the body
comes to expect that it will continue to be so exposed, in
such ways, in the future. The resulting bundle of
expectations is what we come to call the self. But, that
is all it is; there is nothing permanent about it, it isnt
going to last forever, even if one simply refuses to alter
his expectations regardless of evidence that he should
do so. This is where holding onto the self leads to
suffering. Thus, on the Buddhist picture, the notion that
the self is a lasting thing is merely an illusion, a source
of suffering, and as such something to be dispelled.
Once one recognizes that ones self is an illusion, the
self is effectively out of the way of impending religious
ruin, scientific ruin, environmental ruin, all sorts of ruin
altogether. Suffering ceases; mission accomplished.
The Buddhists aim is the disillusion of the illusion
of self-hood. The aim of Buddhist practice is the
realization of a state of no-self. No-self names the
state enjoyed upon the realization of this aim. No-self is
xliii
the realization that there is no self to be trapped by ties
to old ways of life in the first place. The sense that there
is a self, bound to things, is merely habit to be
unlearned. Buddhism is the discipline of this unlearning.
It is a religious science of detachment. Buddhism
promises to get the self out of the way of life altogether,
but it is especially motivational when that life promises to
be a painful one!
If the purpose of ones way of life is merely the
minimization of painful consequences for ones self,
then Buddhism is an adequate solution. If the purpose
of ones way of life is the constructive political solution of
global environmental problems so that future
generations can live securely attached to their own
selves and lots of other things, too, Buddhism is not an
adequate solution. Constructive political solutions
demand that we remain attached to the consequences of
our actions; and however you slice it, our selves are
the primary consequences of our actions. That is unless
we count just throwing up our hands and letting go
altogether a constructive political solution. That
means, first of all, having the courage to discover what is
good because, no matter where we end up, someones
self is going to show up there and suffer for it if we dont.
Harris has gotten one thing right in advocating
Buddhism. This is that we must let go of the way things
are in order for them to change for the better, our selves
included. We must let go of our selves if we are to
become otherwise. However we identify, as Theist,
Atheist, or even Buddhist, scientist or religious person,
we must loosen our ties with this identification. The
difficulty isnt in the letting go per se; that part is easy.
The difficulty is in the letting go for what? How do we
xliv
reconcile who we are with what we must become when it
isnt yet clear what that might be?
28
It has been said that no matter where one goes,
he takes himself with him. However, this does not
account for the fact that wherever one goes, he is freed
from his old self and becomes someone new. What
seems closer to the truth is that wherever one goes, he
will not be the same. The movement from one place to
another, changing along the way, is sometimes called
transcendence. Transcendence is a religious term;
scientists havent paid it much attention. That doesnt
mean there isnt a scientific basis for transcendence.
That also doesnt mean that scientists dont experience
transcendence. They do. It simply means that it is up to
us to reconcile this fact. It is in this bridging notion of
transcendence that we will see our freedom to let go of
who we are and to become otherwise for what it is:
freedom to become bound to different terms, again.
Freedom of self-determination.
Think for a moment on transcendence and what it
means. Transcendence is the movement from one state
of being to another, especially going from a lower form of
life to a higher form of life. Often, one pursues this
movement through his education. He becomes informed
as to how to live a better life. Thus, one can say that he
transcended the limitations of his past meaning that he
became a better man by first learning how. William
Dembski characterizes this everyday sense of
transcendence as:
The word transcendence comes from the
Latin and means literally to climb across or
go beyond. To transcend is thus to surpass

28
We will approach this theme explicitly in chapters 8, 9, 10
xlv
or excel or move beyond the reach or
grasp of something.
29
Including, for instance, the limits of ones prior
understanding upon learning something new. That is to
say that simply learning something new is basic, run of
the mill, everyday transcendence. Even scientists do
that, at least open minded ones. This is also to say that
life on the basis of this new understanding is the promise
of transcendence. Even scientists promise that.
Transcendence is the climb from bound ignorance to
freedom. Religious myth or scientific discovery,
transcendence is the same.
Transcendence is freedom. At first glance, this
freedom of transcending prior limitations seems like what
philosophers call radical freedom. Transcendence
appears to allow for the impossible. What is impossible
before transcendence is what becomes actual
afterwards. And, any way of life, lived in these terms,
appears equally to be an impossibility beforehand.
Transcendence seems like radical freedom because
doing the impossible, living life in impossible terms is,
after all, pretty radical.
But, nothing could be farther from the case. For
instance, imagine a specific case of what it is like before
limitations of a prior understanding are transcended.
Imagine that you are an expert mechanic. You are
driving, with a friend, and your car stops. You step out,
look under the hood, and see nothing wrong with the car.

29
William Dembski, entry on transcendence for New Dictionary of
Christian Apologetics available at:
www.designinference.com/documents/2003.10.Transcendence_NDOCApol
.pdf (last accessed February 28, 2007).
xlvi
Imagine that your friend asks Whats wrong with the
car? to which you reply Nothing. In your expert
opinion, it is impossible that this car has quit running.
Still, there you are, on the side of the road, standing
still.
30
Imagine that your friend is an expert driver. He
says I think that you are right, there is nothing wrong
with the car. I think that the problem is your driving! He
then goes on to explain what is wrong with your driving,
and how it caused the car to come to a halt. All of a
sudden, you realize how it is possible that the car has
stopped. In order to come to this understanding, you
had to move past your own prior limitations. You had to
learn to appreciate new ideas, and in turn the
possibilities that these new ideas opened up. The car
hasnt broken down; it is your understanding which has
failed. Impossible? This is an everyday turn of events,
hardly a radical proposition.
Understood in new terms, what had appeared
impossible beforehand is now possible. This goes for
everyday learning. Living in terms of newly acquired
information is a very basic case of transcendence.
Freedom from the limitations of prior knowledge,
breaking the old bonds to what one had thought was
right, makes the impossible into the possible in every
case. There is nothing magical about it. Doing the
impossible is simple. In fact, for the Philosopher, the
impossible is the only thing worth doing.
31
What we

30
I want to recognize Professor Alexander VonSchoenborn. This example
is patterned from his own, often repeated in classrooms to the great benefit
of his students, myself included. Thank you, Alexander VonSchoenborn.
You are a great man.
31
See, Professor Chant, this is how it is done, and this is how We do it.
xlvii
have discovered so far paves the way for realizing how
to do so ourselves.
Doing the impossible is nothing new. The
impossible has been done before. How many people
exclaimed that human flight was Impossible! or that
instantaneous information-sharing was Impossible! or
that a global environmental collapse because of human
industry is Impossible! or that the peaceful
reconciliation of fundamentally different ways of life
without killing each other is Impossible!? How many
still do? At least regarding the final question, too many.
Lets see if we cant make some headway on this front.
5) Getting used to life in the light of the Sun
People like to have information, good information,
so they can get where they want to go and become who
they want to be. That much is clear. From the
evolutionary perspective, survival of any organism,
human being included, depends on that critter being
selectively open to that information which does just that.
Amoeba move toward the light with the help of
photosensitive chemistry, rabbits run from sharp sounds
with the help of big ears, and birds fish from the skies
with the help of a good eye for flashing fins under the
water. Human beings benefit from similar capacities.
But, what exactly counts as good information, and how
does all this add up to doing what couldnt have been
done, before? Frankly, I may have made a big deal out
of doing the impossible, but I have yet to meet a
revolutionary rabbit.
32
The natural environment is a noisy place. There
is a lot to see, and there are a lot of distractions, and

32
Though, I read about one once, in Watership Down.
xlviii
little of this information is valuable so far as an
organisms continued health is concerned. In order to
get by in light of all this noise, organisms filter the
information most important for survival from all that is
available. Thus, living things open to some of their
environment, and close to the rest.
Organisms filter away most of the information to
which they are open. Birds see a lot more than flashing
fins, rabbits hear a lot more than sharp sounds, but they
selectively react to these things by ignoring the rest.
Some of the modes of this filtration are learned during
the lifetime of the organism. With repetition, rabbits will
learn not to run from all sharp sounds, and birds will
learn that not all watery flashes are fins. These are
modifications of capacities embodied purely as the
consequence of adaptation to environmental constraints.
They use the same ears, the same eyes with which they
were born and bred, only differently. Human beings
embody similar limitations. They show up in everyday
ways, and it is these we are here, now, to transcend.
Adaptation to the information available in certain
environments makes any organism the organism that it
is. No amount of learning can undo this fact. Simply
put, information from the environment in-forms the
organism within it. That is, as the environment comes
in-, the organism is -formed. It embodies what it must
to remain healthy in terms of that environmental
information. Thus, we may see evolution as an
informational process. Organisms adapt, in form, to suit
the terms, the information, of the environments in which
they evolve.
This is a chemical process. Every critter is a
sensitive bundle of moving genetic information. Genetic
information is chemical. The environment is chemical.
xlix
The chemical environment influences how genetic
information unfolds, what information the resulting
sensitive critter filters, and lets in. Think of a rabbit in a
field of carrots. His eyes are sensitive bundles of
chemicals. This unfolded genetic information opens to
other information. The rabbit is informed of the presence
of carrots. But, sometimes the information is hidden, or
misleading. He may miss the carrot, or make one out
that is not there. His olfactory apparatus is attuned
similarly. He may smell the carrot, fail to smell the
carrot, or even fail to smell the rottenness of a carrot,
though he is much less likely to miss the smell of
rottenness than to mistake the sight of something else
for that of a carrot. This works out, as sometimes it pays
to chase an illusory carrot, while it never pays to mistake
a rotten one. In either case, this is good information,
information in the form of chemicals which keeps his
own chemical genetic information unfolding, generation
after generation. Rabbits, the great carrot hunters, are
long eared chemical search engines
Organisms are selectively open to certain forms
of information. They openly seek this information, and
close to, even deny, other information. Some of this
selectivity cannot be transcended. Every eye does not
see everything, every ear does not hear everything, and
every mouth does not open for everything. The
organism senses what is necessary for everyday
survival within the environment that is the space of its
evolution, and where it does not, it either dies, or such
sensitivity is not necessary for its everyday survival.
In simpler organisms than you and I, their
capacities to survive in different or in changing
environments are limited strictly by their own embodied
chemistry. To move outside of their native environment
l
is to be exposed to information which is outside their
ranges of sensitivity, their capacities to open or to close
to this information, and inevitably to bio-chemical death.
These organisms are bound to the informational
contexts within which they have evolved. These are
bonds which they are not free to transcend.
The genetic chemistry of an organism may
change to suit an environment but there is a limit on how
the environment informs these changes. The primary
limit is generational.
33
The environment influences the
way the genetic information of the organism is
expressed, and this affects how the organism then
performs in the environment. On the basis of this
performance, the organism creates the next generation.
It is this next generation which is the expression of the
effect of environmental information on the prior
generation. In this way, organisms keep up with
changes to their environments. They do so as groups.
Genetic chemicals do not hunt alone; they flocculate.
34
Through selective openness to environmental
information, groups of organisms update their chemistry
one generation at a time. We can think of these groups
of organisms as collections of chemicals of a certain
family. The chemicals collect together because they
react in special ways with one another. That is, they
react in ways which produce more chemicals similar to
themselves, chemicals which are also similarly informed
by the chemicals in the environment. This is the

33
We will pay a lot of attention to generational limits to change in a
changing environment in the coming Introduction, as well.
34
It is a failure of nearly every interpreter of evolutionary theory to under-
represent environmental and group pressures in processes of natural
selection. It is the generational component which is the key to an
adequate interpretation.
li
chemical basis of natural selection. Put some together
in situ and shake. Thus, at root, the genetics of
evolution are chemical reactions in the test tube niches
of the natural environment.
In more complex organisms like you and I,
capacities to move outside of original environments are
enhanced by more sophisticated capacities to open and
close to available information. Human beings even
make tools to extend their sensitivities, or to insulate
them from overload. It is not the opposable thumb, or
walking upright, that makes the human being so flexible
in this regard. It is his capacity to open or close to
information. If we had to select for one organ within the
entire human organism most responsible for this
enhanced capacity, it is his information processing unit.
It is his brain.
The human brain is the locus classicus of human
freedom. This is the organ that breaks old bonds in
transcendence and forges necessary chains to new
information. There is more going on here than the
evolution of a changing mind. There is the adaptation to
changing environments, and especially in humans this
includes the power to change the environments in which
they evolve.
When we are talking about human freedom, we
are primarily interested in the psychological mechanisms
at work in ordering a noisy natural environment so that
the human being can determine for himself the ends
sought through action. The problem here is, of course,
that there is simply so much information, and so many
possible ends for so many possible actions, where does
one start?
One of the ways humans free themselves from
the unending task of sorting through endless
lii
environmental information is by looking for patterns.
35
Humans are not merely sensitive to bits of information,
like a carrot here and there, but to complex patterns of
information. They see fields of carrots. They discover
order where there may appear to be none, and pattern
their actions in response to these orders, thereby
transcending prior situations to live in the fuller lights of a
world revealed by increased understanding. Thus,
human freedom is routine.
The story is simple. Humans see patterns that
cannot, literally, be seen. Humans cannot hunt by
simply outrunning and overpowering most animals.
Humans must anticipate the movements of these
animals; they must out-think them. Humans cannot
successfully breed animals by merely mixing the males
with the females, but must plot cycles of estrous, the
politics of breeding, and the genetics of inbreeding.
Humans cannot successfully farm merely by tossing
seed on the ground. They must anticipate seasons and
alternate crops. Meanwhile, the patterns around which
they plot their routines are invisible to other critters; a
rabbit cannot hear crops rotating, and a bird cannot see
a farmers plan for next season.
In this way, humans have freed themselves from
the bare terms of their native world. In order to free
themselves from subjugation to seasonal whims, human
beings have plotted weather patterns. In order to free
themselves from subjugation to rising and falling tides,
they have plotted cycles of the moon. Human beings
look for patterns in the world, and they live according to
the terms of these patterns. It is proper to say, thus, that

35
Looking for patterns in information is the active ingredient in otherwise
passive perception.
liii
even more than other critters, the human evolutionary
niche is carved from information he determines for
himself.
Sensitivity to one type of patterned information in
particular is especially important for human survival, and
always has been. Human beings embody the capacity
to see patterns of information in the environment that
look like faces.
36
This capacity shows up in an everyday
way. Simply imagine what it is like to stare at a tree, or
at the ceiling, or at a cloud formation. No matter how
inhuman these surfaces may appear at first, shortly we
find ourselves patterning faces from the information
presented. We see the King of the clouds, or the man of
the woods, fear the god of storms, and the haunted
forest. No amount of learning can undo this fact. It is
part of the human make-up, a curious limitation of
evolved physiology on psychological artifact. There is
nothing magical about it.
Faces convey information crucial for our
continued survival. The capacity to pull faces from the
noisy background of information is especially important
for survival in at least two ways. It helps one to act with
friends, and to react against foes. It is information which
keeps our own information going, from generation to
generation.
First, imagine foraging through a dark and noisy
jungle environment. There are predators out there. The
best way to keep from getting eaten by these predators
is to see them before they get the jump on you. So, as
you forage, you scan the dark canopy, and your brain
pulls from the information at hand any pattern which fits

36
Humans arent alone in this capacity one bit. Take a butterflys wings, for
example, that look like eyes to ward off predators
liv
that of a predatory face staring back. This initial filtering
allows you to attend to these patterns in order that you
might identify a threat before it identifies you. So,
though the moonlight reflecting from two well-placed wet
leaves may appear to be two gleaming hungry predatory
eyes in the dark, and may give a start, so far as the
evolved psychology of the human organism is
concerned, better safe than sorry. The fear alone,
however, makes neither the threat nor the face real. All
that is real are the actions taken on the basis of this
information. People run from imaginary faces, just as
they run toward imaginary friendly ones.
Consider this second example. Focusing on the
information that friendly faces provide is crucial to the
health and survival of the human being. Imagine that
you, along with others of your group, others who share
your situation in the natural environment, your friends,
are foraging in the jungle. Your friends have split up and
have gone ahead of you just a few paces. On one side,
you see your friend and he is grimacing in pain. On the
other side, you see your friend and he is smiling with
pleasure. These facial expressions communicate very
important information. They indicate what should be
your next move. The grimacing face indicates a bad
situation; you should avoid this as an end for your self.
The other face indicates a good situation; you should
follow suit and act to achieve this end for your self.
37

The information gathered from friendly faces
ahead goes a long way toward allaying the anxiety
associated with moving forward into the dark and often

37
Now, if one of them is a liar, or a bad leader, you could either end up in a
painful situation, or be denied a pleasant one, and still end up in a painful
situation. Either way, a liar is the worst thing one can be. Liars mislead.
lv
dangerously unknown, noisy place, which is the natural
world. Simply imagine the anxiety associated with
making moves in a place where the next step could be
your last. To make a sound is to encourage a predator
or to alert your prey. You could be poisoned, bitten,
eaten, or starve. So, you look for guidance, direction,
good information from those ahead of you. This is
natural. Nearly every move in life is a part of an ages
old parade of follow-the-leader. The faces of those
ahead inform those who follow what the situation will be
like when they get there
I say nearly every move in life for an important
reason. Some people become leaders in the true sense
that they follow no one. They go off on their own. There
is such a thing as genuine novelty, someone who
deviates from the established path. There is an upshot
to novelty. Deviance is evolutionarily favorable. It may
be risky for the individual, but it is good for the group.
The natural world changes, old ways of life become
ineffective, and someone has to explore new ways of life
and lay down different patterns of action if others are to
do differently, and adapt to the changing world,
themselves.
38
Some of the oldest stories in history are of a
leader battling the darkness, clearing the way for his
kindred. All of these stories have one thing in common;
they allay fears of the unknown by demonstrating how
darkness can be overcome by heroic action and good
leadership. In every case, the good leader takes

38
As I shall note throughout this text, each generation of human organism
is hardwired to explore, to deviate, and thereby to adapt, and we call this
phase adolescence.
lvi
courage and lights the way to a new situation. But,
some stories take this trend too far.
Some stories, specifically old religious stories,
suggest that there is a good leader who calls followers
forward to a comfortable situation after death. Just
because there is information in other contexts, in living
contexts, about what another situation is like beyond the
limits of ones own experience, and just because this
information is crucial for keeping a human being alive
and adapting to a changing world, does not mean that
there is a face staring back from beyond the limits of the
changing world, altogether. Just because others have
died before us does not imply that they now lead the way
to some promised land of the dead. Even to think that
there is life after death is to think a contradiction, but it is
more than a logical problem. It is only understood when
properly conceived as a trick of the evolved mind. The
fact is that in life, and in death, we are all leaders. Lets
look more closely at why this is the case.
6) Life in the full light of day
Human beings are essentially flock animals.
They group together with others like themselves. They
get along with others whose evaluations mirror their
own. They coordinate by following, and deviate by
leading away. They do not exist alone, did not evolve to
exist alone, and have no capacity to continue existing
alone. Even a leader does not exist without followers.
Without information from other people about how to live
and how not to live, on how to lead and how to follow, a
person is a veritable rabbit in the water. It is simply not
an environment in which he can survive.
People live in an environment overly rich in
information. This is why people like to gossip. What is
lvii
good information for one is good information for another.
It ensures that either has the same information, act in
the same ways, succeed in the same terms, and
coordinate to common ends without friction, and without
confusion. This is also why liars are universally scorned.
Liars mislead by giving bad information, and bad
information invites failure, conflict, and even death. This
is why liars are dangerous, and why giving bad
information is essentially immoral. This is also why
being honest is always the right thing to do. It has
nothing to do with any vacuous principle of reason
dictating that one should not contradict himself because
it is a crime of logic! It has to do with life and death.
39
If love of gossip is any measure, people already
understand that information is crucial; we all already
share it, and we do it all the time. We share information
because we share a common situation, and as we talk
we discover more about that situation than we are
otherwise able to see for ourselves on our own. There is
symmetry in gossip. If you tell me something, I tell you
something. I trade what I have seen for what you have
seen, what I have heard for what you have heard; this is
the ethics of information sharing. It is a morality of being
equally invested in a situation, and of outcomes of
actions taken within it. This is understood.
What people sometimes fail to understand is that,
in sharing information, we also share our lives. Sharing
information has to do with survival; sharing good
information means sharing life. Sharing bad information
means risking death. My eyes are your eyes, my ears
your ears, my life, your life. This is the symmetry of the

39
We will confront this fundamental error in modern Ethics in detail in the
chapter on Kant.
lviii
moral life, life in a group, leading (or misleading) one
another. It all starts with good information.
It is in this spirit that the old adage an eye for an
eye is most meaningful. There are essentially three
ways of understanding the implications of this formula. It
may be understood, personally, inter-subjectively, or
objectively. Only one of these makes sense as a law by
which to live.
This formula is not some petty tit-for-tat between
independent individuals, as if eyes were personal
property to be bought and stolen. It is not up to ones
personal assessment of the value of his eyes should
either of them be in need of replacement. Likewise, it is
not merely objective. If an eye is stolen, just any eye will
not do! Sure, laws could be construed in these terms,
but they would fail to capture the significance of an eye
for an eye.
This formula is universal moral law, and applies to
every member of every group equally. It does not say
that an individual is responsible for collecting another
individuals eye. It says: If you do not look out for one of
us, then we will impose a sanction. We will not look out
for you. Only in this way is it motivational; there is no
advantage in having stolen a third eye, just in case, on
this formulation.
Eyes, and the information they reveal, belong to
everyone in a group. This is why an eye for an eye is a
law by which people live, not merely observe. Eyes, and
the information they reveal, are hidden to the peril of
every member of a group equally. Eyes, and the
information they reveal, are common property, and this
is why the group of subjects has domain over them. It is
because we share a situation, with each other, as a
group, that my eyes are your eyes, my life is your life,
lix
my information your information. Your informational
limits are mine and mine are yours: do not transgress.
Likewise, I see what I see; open your eyes!
This is how we know to survive in the world:
together. Thusly, surviving, people have routinely
transcended the limits of their own individual experience
as a matter of course. They do it together. It is
expected. It is convention. It is law. And, at root, it is all
about the information. Your eyes mirror mine and mine
yours: do not mislead, and be not misled.
We are all leaders. We all lead because others
will mirror our actions to similar ends, or avoid them.
Mirroring anothers situation is grounded in human
physiology. Sufficiently complex animals, humans
included, have brains with systems of neural structures
called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are crucial for
psychological development from earliest infancy
onwards. At this stage, the brain of the baby mirrors
affective expressions of others around him and from this
experience attaches corresponding significance to those
objects which elicit the expressions. This is how we
come to feel at home in the world into which we are
born. We follow our leaders.
Here is how to see it. Picture a baby lying in his
crib. Someone lets call him Uncle Jeff - walks into the
room and smiles. The child mirrors the smile. The infant
smiles because, when human beings are very young,
the mirror neural pathways are connected to the motor
neural pathways, those that potentiate actions.
40
Being
connected from beginning, affective condition, to end,
action, is important; it speeds infant adaptation to the

40
This connection is diminished in adults. Some adults are able to laugh at
another person who is obviously suffering, for example. An infant is not.
lx
informationally complex world by modeling the complex
actions which suit that world as a one-step process. The
infant doesnt have to think about it, look for options,
study consequences, and finally act. The infant simply
follows the lead of those around him, responds in like
manner to the clues given, and acts accordingly.
41
In this case, Uncle Jeff is the leader. Receptive to
Uncle Jeffs presence, the child mirrors Uncle Jeffs
expressed affects; he smiles. Then, when the child
mirrors the smile, his brain delivers chemicals which
create good feelings. Good feelings indicate successful
input/output pathways through the neural and motor
systems of the organism. Good feelings indicate a good
situation. The body begins to seek situations which
prompt smiling states.
42
This is a further byproduct of
the physiology of human beings. Human beings have
this experience in common.
43
Now, here is where the importance of the mirror
neurons in psychological development really shines.
Lets tweak the illustration. Picture that same child in his
crib. Picture someone Uncle Jeff - walking into the
room, sighting a cold beer on the table next to the crib,
and smiling a big smile. The child mirrors the smile, and

41
It is important to point out that this process is not limited to infancy. Even
as this text goes to print, newly revealed research shows that one persons
fears are as effective in moderating another persons fears as are his own.
We mirror not merely actions, and not merely as children, but we mirror the
entire space of value in the world so long as we are open to the influence of
others around us. The research revealing the role of vicarious fear alone
can be found at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070316072634.htm
42
If it doesnt do so beforehand.
43
So far as I know, this is universal. In fact, it is increasingly popular that
therapists instruct their clients to smile, purposefully, even if nothing seems
worth smiling about. Results have indicated that this therapy is effective in
treating mild affective disorders.
lxi
feels good. Right off, however, he does not understand
that it is the beer that does it. He is too busy smiling and
feeling good.
Now, picture this process happening again and
again. After a few iterations, the child begins to attach
good feelings to that part of the world around him,
whatever that may be, which is to the trained eye a cold
beer. Picture Uncle Jeff repeatedly putting that part of
the world to his lips and, at every gulp, smiling ever more
broadly. This is how any given thing in the environment
comes to have any given significance in terms of the
infants budding agency. Just watch Uncle Jeff, and
smile. Feels good.
Developing brains are plastic: they come to terms
with different worldly objects by adapting to those states
corresponding with those objects. For the infant
organism, originally, the world is a continuous stream of
information. Nothing is necessarily distinct from
anything else, no objects per se; there is just open-eyed
being in the world as a baby. There is an impossible
amount to learn, and mirroring others makes figuring out
what is worth learning a whole lot easier.
The stream of information which bombards the
infants open eyes, ears and hands is extremely complex
and difficult to parse. Touching, seeing, smelling and
hearing are all melded together in one feeling of being
new born in the world. With repetition, consistent
experience, and especially with affective clues from
those around him, the infant quickly orients to certain
things and away from others. The result is a being more
or less at home in the world. The result is largely due to
mirroring others who already live there.
Some distinctions between things are native even
to the new-born organism without either direct or indirect
lxii
experience. These distinctions are not dependent on
mirroring those states expressed by others alike ones
self. Fire burns, walking uses more energy than sitting,
and finding order in an otherwise chaotic world feels
good. These facts have even deeper grounds than mere
mirror neurons. I will briefly digress in order to shade the
unseen in the portrait of conscience which is yet to be
painted.
Briefly, human beings are, deep in their guts, like
worms with fancy endoskeletons. Each has an input and
an output, and the Earth in some form or other
passes through. Thus, men from infancy onwards like
worms orient accordingly. What is good goes in front, is
to be sought, and what is not behind. This is the
fundamental affective state of every living organism in
the world.
44
For the worm in us, there is simply no use
for fine-grained distinctions. There is simply the good.
45

44
This is universal to life. This is also the origin of any later bi-valencies,
such as that presumed to be universal law by common bivalent logics of the
sort entertained exclusively by most modern (analytic) philosophy. This
thinking is shallow, rigid, and wrong. The implications of the affective root
on an increasingly vacuous field of study whose proponents presume a
privileged rational view on truth have yet to be adequately inventoried.
What is clear, however, is that logical bivalency in the world is not
fundamental by any stretch, but merely psychologically effective in the sort
of coarse-grained parsing of the relatively stable natural environment which
guides relatively simple engagements as those necessary to maintain
common human lives. Any adequate model of mind cannot rest here, and
anyone who builds fences to hold back the dark is no Philosopher. The
snake of Eden is a worm, and the great lie of the misleader that there are
only two states essential to the world, good and bad, true and false. Sadly,
some contemporary philosophers bully others in this mode (of the worm, in
the Christian sense, from under a Rock). We will bring his mode to light in
chapter 11, and debunk his logic (as that of a bigot) in chapter 14.
45
Men can also orient to what is essentially bad and take it for the good. In
extreme cases, these men are like maggots. Maggots are especially
destructive leaders. Maggots only consume dead flesh. They orient to
death. Death is good for maggots. They create cultures of death, profit on
lxiii
The newly born human organism, as well, is
hardwired with a sense that the good is to be sought.
Unlike the worm, however, there is use for fine-grained
distinctions for the infant as he develops. Newly born,
there is good, just no sense as to what in particular the
good might be. The infant takes its cues as to the fine-
grained particulars from other critters like himself.
Lets go back to the illustration with the infant and
Uncle Jeff. With exposure, the infant quickly associates
that part of the world - (an object which looks like a cold
beer) at which Uncle Jeff smiles (expresses a good
feeling) and repeatedly puts to his smiling front parts
(input) - with his own good feelings. However, Uncle Jeff
doesnt smile all the time. Picture Uncle Jeff walking into
the room and not smiling. That doesnt feel as good. In
fact, it may be painful. It is a let down. If this happens in
the right ways, enough times, the infant will quickly learn
that an absence of that part of the world which looks like
a cold beer is bad. Hereby, the significance of that part
of the world which looks like a cold beer bottle is
emphasized. A lack of cold beer is a bad situation.
There is a difference between a cold beer being
part of the situation and not. The differences between
these situations determine what it feels like to be in one
rather than the other. These differences constitute
experience. The presence of a cold beer makes a smile
and good feelings. The absence does not. Thus, a cold
beer becomes, through experience, a good thing, and

industries of war, and make the situation such that it suits their
determination that death is good. Examples are tragically too common,
especially among current leadership.
lxiv
the situation with cold beer in it a good situation, an end
to be sought. Everybody knows that!
46
Now, the infant, whenever Uncle Jeff walks into
the room and that part of the world which is a cold beer
is present in it, will come to expect a smile. This aspect
of the way the chaotic world works is stable. The
relationship between smiling and cold beer is a reliable
one. The affect produced by a stable environment is
habit. He will come to regularly associate cold beer with
smiling. The infant, thus, is habituated in terms of the
regularity of Uncle Jeffs expressions, and through them
to the very objects of the world around him.
This is an overly simple model, but it does
illustrate how a thing comes to have a given significance
without any direct experience of that thing. This is the
great payoff of the mirror neuron system. People learn
more, more quickly, by mirroring the expressed
evaluations of others than by experiencing everything on
their own as if for the first time. During development, in
mirroring the affective states of others, one affectively
embodies the situations of others around him. One
learns to live as if one were a sort of amalgam of others
experiences and ones own. Thus, there is nothing
essentially individual about being human.
After birth, one is as dependent on others for
information about his situation as if still attached at the
navel. Human beings are essentially flock animals, and
each self, however alone and individuated he may feel,
arises only from a group as an individual. He
individuates himself only in deviation from it.
47


46
That is, with proper training.
47
Picture a flock of birds aloft on the prevailing currents of history...
lxv
This is contrary to contemporary Western
presumptions. The common presumption is that a
person begins and ends life alone. The presumption is
that a person does things, makes decisions, takes risks,
and suffers the consequences alone. On this view,
persons are essentially atomic individuals who only
come together, as a group, for a short time while here
on Earth. Some go so far as to presume that each
person has an individual immaterial soul which
individually lasts after the death of the body in one of a
number of other places depending on the value of his
given individual life. Others go so far as to presume that
anarchy is mans state of nature and that ones situation
rather than anothers is merely a product of some
mysterious force called luck. From either view, ones
actions, and the consequences for these actions, are
ones own to suffer. No one necessarily shares them, or
informs them, and if they do, it is only while here on
Earth, and/or only while one is lucky/unlucky enough to
be at the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time.
This is bad information. A person emerges only
in terms of others, as different from them. Alone, there
is no person. There is merely a human being with a
deficiency. Further, all suffer the consequences of every
others actions. That is, there is no getting away from
each other, at least not in the long run. It is, indeed, one
world shared.
Why do so many credentialed, (very) highly paid,
and (very) highly (self)-esteemed theorists hold to the
conventional view that persons (presumably like
themselves) are essentially atomic individuals?
I think that this (mistaken) condition is a byproduct
of the physiological changes endured through
adolescence. Consider the following tweak on the infant
lxvi
illustration. The infant takes up the evaluations and
engagements with objects in the world as expressed by
others around him. The infant, and then the child, takes
these for his own. He embodies them, tests them in
action, and experiences life on these terms. During
adolescence, however, the organism rejects many of
these prior given evaluations and engagements. New
operations are experimented with and the outcome is
uniquely ones own to embody as ones own self.
For example, no matter what Uncle Jeff shows to
the contrary, some persons come to not like beer.
These are the sorts of things which make one and
another different, no matter how he felt as an infant.
Thus, the person arises as a consequence of deviation
from others more or less alike, but he doesnt start that
way. He starts out part of a family, of a community, of,
with, and for others. Realistically speaking, globally
speaking, he always is part of a family. Even if only to
reject it.
Here is where these theorists go wrong. Thinking
about personhood must wait for a feeling that one is a
person, and this feeling arises as the content of the
difference between living as if one were others and not
living this way. It comes as a consequence of
adolescence. Thinking about personhood must begin
here, with this experience of different from, this is
certain. The problem is that most thinkers about what it
is to be a person stop here, as well. They take it for
granted that personhood leads to difference, when all
that is true is that difference leads to personhood.
This is not to say that thinking about what it is to
be a single, individual, essentially atomic person has
no social utility. Separating ones self from others, ones
ends from others, and the consequences of ones
lxvii
actions from others carries a great benefit to group
success. Felt to be a good thing, it encourages
experimentation. This is what happens in
adolescence.
48
Adolescence is a process whereby the
membership of a group of organisms is able to update its
practices in terms of its changing environment. In a
changing environment, old routines must often be recast
in order to suit the conditions which are the
consequence of environmental change. Moreover, in
such a situation, there is no indication as to what the
best way of living in terms of the changing objects of the
environment might be. Without prior given clues, in the
dark so to speak, only through experimenting with being
in the world can more effective ways of life be
discovered.
During adolescence, new operations are tested
on the basis of the rejection of prior given routines. The
adolescent period is one in which ways of being in the
world different from those given are embodied. Some of
these experiments work out, and some do not. As
individual persons embody the results of individual
experiments, some individual lives work out, and some
do not. This is bad for the individual failure, but it is
good for the group of organisms as a whole. The group
of organisms, thus, updates its practices each
generation as adolescents try new things. The main of
the group membership carries on emulating the
successes and ostracizing the failures, until further
changes open still further opportunities for deviation, and
their own hegemony of habit is again overthrown.

48
See Dr. Aaron Whites new book on adolescence for a review of the
physiological psychology of this process.
lxviii
I think that, in thinking about person and
personhood, people start with the product of their own
adolescent experiences. They start with I am my self,
different, and this is what it is to be a person. This is
natural. To think of a thing is to have some sense of it,
and so far as I understand it - there is no sense of
selfhood as ones own different from anothers in
infancy, and no use for the concept of personhood for
the newborn baby. The sense of self only emerges as a
consequence of adolescence, and deviation from others,
and it is this product which is taken to be essential to
personhood.
The problem, again, is that people tend to both
start with and stop with this experience. This is natural,
but not so unique. This is the product of every bodys
experience, universally, and a very odd place to find a
basis for the essential individuality of the person! This,
the view that one is essentially an individual, alone like
an atom on the billiards table of the world, is nave.
Irresponsible. Adolescent.
Yet, people hold onto their nave view like a
prized carrot, and the nave view leads to mistaken
presumptions, and these lead others, like politicians and
economists and judges and jurists, to make even bigger
mistakes. Given what is now understood about
developmental psychology and its neurological roots, the
view that a man is an island of culpability, to gain or to
lose on his own, heaven or hell, riches or rags, is no
longer tenable.
49
Even in the cases of the most flagrant
deviance, this view is wrong.
Think about how people conventionally blame one
another for individual actions. When someone fails,

49
And even less so Philosophical.
lxix
people often close off from him, and even ridicule him.
This is wrong. We should be grateful. We should love
him. Here is why. The group of organisms - that would
be us - benefits by the failures as well as by the
successes of constituent individuals. Its membership
again, us learns to avoid becoming like some and
learns to emulate others. This is how we get by; we
need these people to try new things, and some of them,
lots of them, are going to fail when they do. No one
wants to fail, but sometimes it is the only way to figure
out what is going to succeed. Being wrong is half of
being right.
This fact carries deep ethical implications.
Failures are models of ways of being in the world which
are not to be mirrored, and this is invaluable information
for the rest of the group membership again, this is us.
We should be grateful for this information. Our success
is the upshot of their failure. The rest of the group - us -
gets the benefit of the understanding, to not to do as
another has done, as a gift. Meanwhile, we benefit, we
live successfully, and our gift may have cost someone
else his life. A life, a loss, and crucial information that is
essentially shared.
It seems difficult with this picture in mind to
condemn (or to reward) each person individually for his
failure (or success) in a life of ongoing discovery. After
all, we all benefit (or suffer) for the experiment that is
anothers only lifetime. We mirror them, or not. A group
filled with failures is a membership with successes to
seek, and rightly so. No one wants to fail in life, in what
they do, after all. That others have, and do, is good
information. The rest of us benefit by it. The future of
the group depends on it.
lxx
Failures are necessary, otherwise we would
merely keep doing as we have always done, and this is
a strategy which is sure to fail on a grand scale in the
face of a changing environment. With this in mind, the
old formula an eye for an eye carries with it a new
inflection. It is not merely a sanction against liars, but
names a positive obligation that we all, every one of us,
owes the others. It is the law that I must seek out new
information and share it, so that you may do better, and
so that we may live happily. Discovery is doing the right
thing. It takes courage; it risks failure. The meaning of
life is the ethics of this inquiry.
50
Yet, that one is alone,
individually to blame for his failure (or his success) is the
common presumption.
Why is this the case? I think that this way of
thinking is also partly a consequence of the mirroring
functions of the human mind. In mirroring states and
seeking situations in which others appear successful in
life, one essentially opens to them.
51
In not mirroring
those who appear to fail, one affectively closes off.
52
Sadly, in closing off from them, one fails to have
compassion, to be sympathetic, to feel as if he were
they, to be humane. It is this natural, though tragic,
byproduct of the human condition which leads to lasting
prejudices of every stripe, from sexism, to racism, and
finally egoism.
53
In these bigoted modes, closed to the
suffering of others, one fails to have a conscience.

50
The Ethics of Inquiry. Nice name for a next book. Look for it.
51
(In other words, people tend to mirror and follow the healthy, wealthy and
famous.)
52
(In other words, people tend not to mirror and follow the materially poor
and powerless, even when rich with wisdom.)
53
These results are contrary to the benefit of experimentation.
lxxi
Conscientious persons mirror the affective states
of others, display the courage to feel for and with others,
even and especially those who fail, and those seemingly
without a conscience simply do not. Conscientiousness
is being with and for others, demonstrated in suffering
through the situation as it is shared, and in seeking the
good for all alike. As we shall see, to have a conscience
requires courage, temperance, and love, virtue;
meanwhile, to close off from others requires only
ignorance. Hardly a life worth living, but all too often
mirrored.
In being with others, persons tend to flock with
those alike themselves just as they seek smiling states.
The conscience as understood by way of the following
text explains this fact. With experience, and intensions
of ones own, a person feels his expectations frustrated
while mirroring another do some familiar thing in different
ways, especially if these deviations appear less
successful in producing good feelings than ones own.
Living with others more alike ones self, these
frustrations are minimized. Everyone does the same
things toward the same ends. This way, tensions in
coordination between agents and actions are reduced.
This minimization is reflected in the tendency for persons
to flock with others alike themselves even as they seek
smiling states.
If this is the case, then why do persons tend to
flock with others unlike themselves, as well? The benefit
of adaptation to a changing world through different
engagements with worldly objects is obvious from the
preceding discussion. When ones way of life is drawn
into question, as in adolescence and with sufficiently
radical changes in the environment, new and different
ways of acting become new and different ways of being
lxxii
successful. New and different becomes a new way of
seeing the world, a perspective sometimes far more
effective than old ways. New and different becomes a
window of opportunity on the world, rather than mere
deviance. These opportunities are pursued, just as
smiling states are pursued, and human life advances
generation after generation.
In the text to follow, I will offer an overview of the
means by way of which opportunities for new ways of life
are identified, evaluated, and pursued. This is the work
of conscience. The overview of conscience to follow
explains how new and different are not merely
revolutionary change, but eventually become
convention, and ritual, and even the rigid tyranny of
dogma. At the heart of this exposition is a model of
conscience called the ACTWith model of conscience.
This model is a tool for self-examination, for the
identification of and evaluation of opportunities to do the
right thing at the right time, and for the self-determination
of ones own way of life and of ones own life story.
Thus, the understanding of conscience to follow offers a
tool for overcoming tyranny, overthrowing dogma, by
providing a tool for freedom, revolution, and change. It
is a key, of sorts, for unlocking the chains to religions,
old and new.
lxxiii
7) Bringing the truth.
How is this model of conscience to follow
supposed to do all this work? It seems impossible,
considering the forces of tyranny and countless stories
from history arrayed against us. There is just so much
information, so many conflicting accounts, so many
opposing ways of life, where are we to begin?
What the ACTWith model offers is a way of
patterning all of this information, of parsing it, of finding
in it what is valuable while filtering out the rest. The
ACTWith model is, essentially, what researchers in the
field of artificial intelligence call a search routine. Let
me explain.
A search routine is a way for a computational
model of intelligence to isolate information necessary to
ensure its continued effectiveness in the face of a
changing, informationally complex environment. The
ACTWith model of conscience stands as a similar
method for everyday human beings motivated to
overcome similar problems.
Artificial intelligence researchers program
computational intelligences on the basis of what they
understand about human intelligence. In order to get a
computation model of intelligence to do things, to solve
problems, as opposed to just sitting there on a desk
making heat and sucking up electricity, the computer
modeling in artificial intelligence research involves
providing a modeled intelligence with a motivation. It is
not a fruitful model of anything close to human if the
agent simply sits there doing nothing.
54

54
Though, this may seem to describe most of the people you know, couch
potatoes and lazy people, though even they are motivated to do something,
lxxiv
Typically, this involves giving the agent a sense of
need for energy. In more human terms, this means
programming into the model a sense of hunger, or
thirst. The model agents are motivated to seek
sources of energy.
55
Agents who fail to secure energy
stop going. Agents who succeed in securing energy
store the information pertinent to their successes in
order to more effectively secure energy in future trials.
For the artificially intelligent agent, it is never the
computation that breaks down, but the mode of its
navigation which causes it to come to a halt. This mode
of navigation, which the agent stores, and employs in the
future, is a search routine.
Artificial intelligence research offers a deep
insight into the human condition. It offers a view into the
mysteries of the human mind in terms of models built
entirely from information which the scientists already
understand. On the other hand, researchers in the
natural sciences have been unable to understand the
natural environment in all of its complexity. This lack of
information consequently puts a limit on how completely
they have been able understand themselves, their world,
and the subject of their study, the human mind. Thus,
lots of mistakes.
Artificial intelligence researchers do not have this
problem. They reduce the complexity of the natural
world to terms which they already understand, and then
make explicit in computer code. They do the same in
modeling the intelligent agents within these

they simply do as little as necessary. We will tackle this trend in rich detail
in chapter 4.
55
Like carrots
lxxv
environments. These methods provide a fantastic mirror
for our own self-examination.
Lets have a look in this mirror. We may think of
any environment in general as a space. An
environment within which an intelligent agent is
motivated to discover something is called a search
space. In modeling intelligence, a researcher models
an agent searching a space for what it is motivated to
secure. Here is where things get really interesting. One
of the fundamental lessons of artificial intelligence
research is that reliably isolating the crucial information
from this broader space of information is not an easy
task. In fact, to take the entire space simply as
information, as a burgeoning set of 1s and 0s, and to
sort through it for what is important at every turn, is
computationally impossible. The agent quickly runs out
of energy as it just sits there doing calculations, sucking
up electricity and making a lot of heat. There is a lesson
in all of this.
The lesson is that any effective agency must act.
In order to speed up processing and thus the process
whereby successful actions are first identified, then
pursued, the agent which reliably survives by securing
what it needs takes up what researchers call search
routines. Search routines are ways of patterning the
otherwise chaotic environment, so that the agent doesnt
waste away sorting through everything in the complex
world bit by bit. After all, most of the environment is not
what the agent is after, noise, and what it is after comes
in packets. Even a rabbit, for example, doesnt try to
collect a carrot together molecule by molecule. He
wants the carrot as a whole, in one tidy, tasty package.
Furthermore, most of the environment is not a carrot, so
lxxvi
the rabbit had better ignore that stuff else the carrot
might rot while he just sits there thinking it through.
Search routines are ways for agents to rapidly
identify that information which is necessary for the timely
discovery of what is important, and not much more. The
search routine allows the agent to focus on certain
patterns, and ignore the rest. An artificial intelligence
model of an effective agent, thus, is essentially a model
of a motivated search routine. This is an intelligence
with a purpose, which is good at getting the right things
done in a timely manner.
The purpose which is usually taken to be the most
important is basic survival. Most of the environment is
merely an obstacle which stands between the agent and
its survival. An effective search routine, thus, takes most
of the information of the environment to be noise. The
intelligence which survives filters out most of the
information with which it is presented at any given time.
Otherwise, in terms of a living organism, it would die
staring in wonder at the complexity of the world around
it, and nothing else would get done.
However, there is an even deeper lesson in all of
this. This is that the agent with an overly rigid search
routine survives no better than the agent with none. As
the environment changes, if the agent doesnt change
what he searches for, and how he does it, he dies off,
doesnt wonder why, and that is not very intelligent after
all. The intelligence which is truly successful is that
which is flexible, keeps learning, and, above all, takes up
search routines for his search routines, so to speak. He
looks for the right ways to find the right things to do and
the right times to do them, he doesnt merely do them,
keep on doing them, and leave it at that. He seeks to
discover how he might discover how to do better, better.
lxxvii
In this text, I am essentially offering a search
routine of search routines, the ACTWith model of
conscience, in order that others may use this information
as a tool to better identify - from all the noise of the
natural and artificial world, from all the given routines,
patterns, contrary ways of life, and stories old and new
that parse in their own rigid terms that noisy natural
world - what is the right thing to do, and when is the right
time to do it. Far from merely giving a recipe for what is
the right thing to do, this is a tool for your own inquiry
into that this might be, and how and when to do it. In
other words, instead of offering a cookbook, with pre-
given recipes for right action, I am offering a cookbook
for cookbooks, so that you might make up your own
recipes.
56
Together, on this Earth, we make history. I am
hoping that with this tool, this ACTWith model of
conscience, our shared future history can be made a
good one.
There are two fundamental aspects to the
ACTWith model. There are the As-if,(A) and the
Coming-to-Terms With (CTWith). The first, the As-
if, is the transcendence of prior limitations. The
second, the Coming-to-Terms With, is the adaptation to
the new set of limits brought on by the situation into
which one transcends. As we have seen through the
discussion thus far, one of the crucial ways in which we
transcend our limitations, each and every day, is through
the sympathetic experience, the affective mirroring, of
what it is like to be in situations other than our own.

56
In still other words, it is like the difference between the science of
chemistry, and the technical knowledge that is chemical engineering. Here,
you learn chemistry. Apply at will.
lxxviii
In mirroring what it feels like to be as if others in
other situations, one comes to understand things of
which he may have no direct experience. This simple
process, encapsulated in the ACTWith model, has deep
implications for theories of learning, as the agent more
rapidly builds a library of experience when he may
affectively pattern multiple others than if he must
experience everything on his own as if for the first time in
human history. Mirroring others, thusly, is most effective
in developing the virtue called wisdom. Through this
process, one learns from anothers mistakes as well as
successes, and even learns to look for things of which
he has not with his own eyes borne witness.
57
This process also has deep implications for moral
theory. Feeling as another feels in his situation implies
feeling that anothers situation, where it is not good,
must be corrected as if it were ones own. This is what
philosophers call moral duty, or moral obligation, and
is the natural grounds of all talk of human rights. Open
to feeling as if in anothers situation, conscientious
agents do not put others in positions which they would
not seek as situations for themselves. This is because
affectively mirroring a bad situation doesnt feel good, so
the conscientious person avoids this end for others.
Persons seemingly without a conscience suffer no such
inconvenience. The ACTWith model encapsulates this
dynamic, as well.
To have a conscience is to feel as if another, in
another place, situated in other terms, and coming to
terms with that situation. To have a conscience is the
essential difference between a being which is by nature

57
Clearly, this last consequence of being open to the situations of others is
both a boon, and a bane.
lxxix
alone, and one which is by nature with others more or
less alike himself. This is what it is like to be human in a
shared living world, rather than a rock, or a psychopath.
Conscience keeps moral agents moral by motivating
them to avoid putting themselves and others in bad
situations. A rock, on the other hand, has no such
capacity, and a psychopath simply does so anyways.
The quality of a position, whether it is good, bad,
better or worse, is the characteristic mark of what people
call progress. One makes progress if the situation gets
better, and regresses if the situation gets worse. The
relative quality of situations is understood on the basis of
the story, or narrative, religious or otherwise, in terms of
which the progressive or the regressive person lives. It
is progress in these terms that qualifies the story of
ones life, as an agent who pushes history ahead or as
an agent who returns the world to the darkness of a prior
situation. It is in terms of these stories that one is a
revolutionary, or a tyrant, a martyr or a murderer. Thus,
it is in terms of the stories of our lives that there is a
measure of what people call historical progress. Good
leaders pull us ahead, to peace and prosperity, while
bad leaders return us to darkness, to war and poverty.
The ACTWith model stands as a tool for the evaluation
of current leadership.
Historical advance or regression begins with what
situation one generation leaves for the next. The
conscientious generation puts no future generation in
situations it would not seek for itself. The
conscientiously led generation makes the world a better
place for others like themselves. The generation without
a conscience suffers no such inconvenience. The
measure of either takes place in terms of the stories in
which persons live their lives. Freedom to do the right
lxxx
thing, to make the world a better place, is freedom to
determine the stories which frame each and every
human action and in terms of which the value of these
actions are eventually determined.
The following text aims to provide the reader the
conceptual tools for the practical realization of this
freedom, to escape the chains of prior generations, to
unlock the chains to this one, and to forge ties to a future
world of his own determination.
It has been said that man is the measure of all
things. Men, however, are notably invested in the
outcome of their measurement. Any mans measure is
thus suspect. On the other hand, all men have a great
and under-appreciated genius, to see and to feel as if
some other, more or less like themselves, in spaces of
life of which they have had no direct experience, and
without consciously directing attention to the task. The
native ease of this conscientious exercise explains why
there are so few who profess to be mathematicians, and
so many who profess to know what is right for
themselves, for now, and for everyone else at every
other time and place. Each man is another mans
measure, and especially his own. What follows is a
portrait of the measurer, the instrument of measure, the
conscience.
lxxxi
Introduction: Why Conscience, Why Now?
Environmental problems are endemic to
the human species, simply as a function of
our ability to choose, the difficulty of
foreseeing and planning for the
consequences of our choices, and our
inability to avoid those consequences once
we have set them in motion.
-- Robert Kirkman
58
Sun is in the sky, oh why oh why, would I
want to be anywhere else?
-- Lily Allen
59
Recently released, a United Nation's Millennium
Project report on the "Environment and human well-
being," dated February 21, 2005, calls for radical
changes in the ways in which we use the earth's
environmental resources.
60
Our alternatives are bleak,
indeed: global flooding, disease, famine, and an
uninhabitable planet are the projected consequences for
today's inaction.
61
In effect, either we will determine what

58
Through the Looking Glass: Environmentalism and the Problem of
Freedom, The Journal of Value Inquiry, volume 36, pages 2741, 2002.
59
Lilly Allen, LDN, Alright, Still, EMI Records, 2006.
60
UN Millennium Project 2005. Environment and Human Well-being: A
Practical Strategy. Summary version of the Report of the Task Force on
Environmental Sustainability. The Earth Institute at Columbia University,
New York. This, and other Millenium Project reports are available for
download at:
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/reports2.htm#09
61
In short, extinction. Current energy practices, mismanagement of toxic
chemicals, and the conversion of natural habitats and related patterns of
overproduction, overconsumption, and mismanagement of ecosystems
have resulted in unsustainable levels of air and water pollutants.(U.N., page
lxxxii
ways of living are best, now; or global, environmental
catastrophe will change our ways of living and dying, no
doubt for the worst, later. In the following paper, I will
suggest just what role philosophy may play so that
changes, of our own determination, in fact take place.
We may be on the cusp of the most important
ethical problem in human history:
Global-scale environmental problems
caused by synthetic toxins, climate
change, the decline of ocean ecosystems,
ozone depletion, extinction, and
groundwater depletion were largely
nonexistent as recently as forty years ago
and have accelerated so rapidly that by
many estimates there is little time to lose if
we are to avert a planetwide catastrophe.
62
What can philosophy do about it? Some
Environmental Ethicists have argued that Philosophy
can do little.
63
Why?
For one thing, few contemporary philosophers are
trained well enough in the natural sciences to even begin
to assess the problems impeding environmental

26) By environmental sustainability we mean meeting current human
needs without undermining the capacity of the environment to provide for
those needs over the long term.(U.N., page 11)
62
Matthew Orr, Environmental Decline and the Rise of Religion, Zygon,
Volume 38, No. 4, December 2003, page 895. Even without this
information, no one needs an ethicist to tell them that selfishness and short-
sightedness, conspicuous consumption and littering, are vices; and, if they
don't already know it, why should they listen?
63
For one thing, these philosophers are for the most part older people, who
have not grown up facing environmental crisis, and so cannot understand
what are the appropriate responses. Rosalind Hursthouse, for instance,
argued from this position at one time.
lxxxiii
sustainability, let alone advise how to manage them.
64
Implementing and designing the mechanisms for an
environmentally sustainable future do indeed seem to be
technical problems whose solutions fall to experts
outside of the field of philosophy. Likewise, there is no
mention of a philosopher king in the recent U.N. report.
We can agree with Aristotle that argument alone might
lead someone to virtue, but how is argument going to
help us to overcome our environmental problems?
It is no secret, after all, that our current practices
are environmentally vicious. Everyone knows that
pollution is bad. Where is the argument? Unless
philosophers start building solar panels, it may look like
philosophy has no place in a solution to global
environmental problems, after all.
But, philosophy isn't just about argument; part of
doing philosophy is pointing out the unpopular thing, the
hidden truth in the shadow play of our everyday puppet
show.
65
Often enough, it is this pointing out of the

64
Typically, contemporary philosophers are trained almost exclusively to
isolate and analyze arguments. From this perspective, environmental
problems are either not recognized (because they don't know what to look
for) as problems or at least not recognized as problems for them (as lying
outside their specialty, it's always someone else's responsibility). I am
arguing that these are problems for everybody, and especially for
Philosophy. I understand that this sentiment runs contrary to that of most of
the powerful people in contemporary philosophy who believe that the
practice of philosophy requires no knowledge of the natural world at any
level of sophistication. A trend, I must note, which is contrary to every
indication about the way the world is going and Philosophys proper role
within it. There are bad leaders in every line of work.
65
"This is because the speeches that I make on each occasion do no aim
at gratification, but at what's best."(521e) Philosophies in both the East and
the West have traditionally been critical of received traditions, and both
have traditionally stressed self-knowledge, and in fact self-knowledge
achieved through critical reflection on language, as the critical component in
order to live and to die right with the world, not simply according to tradition
lxxxiv
unpopular thing which leads to argument, not the other
way around.
So, I began by pointing out a very unpopular
notion: people must change the way they live, now, or
the environment may become uninhabitable for future
generations. There is, of course, a lot of argument about
this, and not just amongst philosophers. We will
confront what I take to be the most fundamental sticking
point in the next section.
The unpopular thing to point out to philosophers,
specifically, though, is that, if it is up to others besides
philosophers to do the hard work necessary to
accommodate the science of global environmental
sustainability, where are they? The specific changes
that the Millennium report recommends are "not new,"
having been under consideration or inconsistently
enforced since the early 1970's.
66
That's two
generations to adapt to a revealed changing
environment; still, things are getting worse, not better.
Why? For one thing, according to the U.N. report,
no tested institutional strategies exist to deal effectively
with the sacrifices this generation must suffer so that
future generations have any future at all.
67

and habit. In this way, I am arguing, philosophers have played a crucial
role as exemplars of a self-critical mode that, in practice, provides a social
resource for change. Sadly, this resource, as the others of this Earth, has
been, especially in the last 40 years, abused.
66
U.N., page 31.
67
U.N., pages 21-22. These "intergenerational tradeoffs" lie at the heart of
the challenge to adopt environmentally responsible ways of life. The
problems with these sorts of issues are that those who suffer by one's own
vices are most often temporally and spatially distant, so the ill-effects of
one's own bad actions are masked by the fact that he does not inherit them.
For one thing, the negative effects of one person's environmentally
destructive way of life are largely hidden from them day to day. Firstly,
those who suffer most because of my environmentally destructive practices
lxxxv
Which brings us to the focus of this Introduction; I
disagree with this assessment. I believe that Philosophy
offers such a strategy.
The problem with the "intergenerational tradeoffs"
with which we are faced is this: if we continue to satiate
our sweet-teeth for luxury at the expense of the
environment, then we are doing injustice to those who
certainly will suffer because of it, those who will inherit
the ill-effects of our own selfish actions, and this is not a
popular message, especially for those who are used to
things the way they are. But, this is the point; the
science tells us that things will not stay the way they are.
The warning in the U.N.'s report is just this; sacrifice
luxuries, now, give up current ways of life, now, or your
children will lose everything, if they live at all, because
current ways of life are changing the world, and for the
worse.
And this just means that giving up your SUV
today doesn't mean that tomorrow the world will appear
to be a better place; evidence of these sacrifices will
take time. Having given up the SUV, one will not look
out on a renewed environment in his own lifetime;
likelier, they will look out on a still crashing environment
through the windshield of a much smaller car.
Intergenerational tradeoffs, then, essentially, are
concerns about what happens with the world after we

are spatially distant from my self. The ill-effects often fall on the other side
of the globe, if not on the other side of the tracks; and, although industrial
countries are primarily responsible, so-called "developing" countries, and
poor people in general, are the most vulnerable to these ill-effects.
Secondarily, those who stand to suffer most from today's environmentally
vicious ways of life are temporally distant, in the future. For instance, an
investment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now imposes a cost on
today's generation, with most of the benefits of a more stable climate
accruing at some future time, and in some other place.
lxxxvi
are dead; which, in turn, appears to be a question, not
for philosophy, but for religion.
Yet, when we look to religion for guidance on
what to do with the world's resources in light of the
warnings from science, what we find is, not surprisingly,
an ongoing argument. For one thing, there is a deep
tradition of religious suspicion of scientific
prognostication. For instance:
The reknowned theologian Karl Barth
warranted against theological conclusions
based on natural data. According to Barth,
God cannot be known by the powers of
human knowledge but is apprehensible
and apprehended solely because of his
own freedom, decision, and action.
68
God doesn't show up in the U.N. report on
environmental sustainability; but, from the religious
perspective, this absence is the root of our problems.
Dee Carter, for instance, argues that science is just one
aspect of secularism, and further blames secularism for
the world's problems in general. In regards to the
environment, she argues that the geno-centric
rationalism of Enlightenment science had, historically,
co-opted a politically naive though environmentally
sensitive Christian religion, and that the resulting,
increasing, secularity is in fact responsible for the
destruction of God's Earth, a secular destruction that we

68
Ilia Delio, Brain Science and the Biology of Belief: A Theological
Response, Zygon, vol. 38, no. 3, September, 2003, page 579. Oddly,
human knowledge apprehends god well enough to say this much about
him!
lxxxvii
are only now understanding scientifically as an emerging
environmental crisis.
69
The ecological crisis, wrought by exploitive
attitudes toward nonhuman life (and, in a
wider sense, to some human life) and by
the careless despoliation of God's world, is
surely a manifestation of the broader
problems of secularism: a loss of the sense
of the sacred and a lack of respect for
divine law.
70
Could it be that Carter has a point, that a history
of science and secularism are responsible for emerging

69
This is essentially Huston Smith's position. Further references will focus
on Huston Smith, "Huston Smith Replies to Barbour, Goodenough, and
Peterson," Zygon, volume 36, number 2, June 2001, pages 223-231.
70
Carter, page 359. By Carter's assessment, the ecological crisis of late
modern times must be seen as an aspect within the broader "secularity"
crisis emerging historically since the enlightenment.(Carter, page 364) She
holds secularism responsible for the objectification of nature, and she
blames modern philosophy for greasing the mechanistic, reductive,
objectifying wheels of secularism. She blames Descartes for raising human
reason above the rest of nature, and other animals. She blames Kant for
finally cementing humanity's opposition to the natural order.(Carter, pages
360 and 364, respectively) She blames modern ethical theory for
maintaining this tradition in the operating myth of the "rationalist calculator
model of the human being."(Carter, page 369) These are all criticisms to
which I am especially inclined to endorse. Furthermore, Christianity, by
Carter's picture, has simply been "unwittingly" duped into legitimizing these
developments, having "acquiesced in the vested interests of particular
power groups."(Carter, page 364) As a result, humanity has set itself
against "God's good creation," embodying "the false ontological status that
raises human beings out of the created order and that both inhibits our self-
understanding as creatures and denies the construal of Christian notions
such as grace and redemption in ways that establish any commonality of
focus within which the goods of the human and the non-human might be
considered together."(Carter, page 369) Accordingly, for our environmental
concerns, it appears to be a simple case of one or the other, a simple, but
irreconcilable, dispute.
lxxxviii
ecological crisis? Could it be that a return to traditional
religions is our best hope for an environmentally
sustainable future? Religion does appear to have a
deep history of confirmation and success, thousands of
years in as many forms, while the upstart secularism
seems to have only modern failures in evidence for its
faithful adherence. Pollution, after all, is not a direct
product of traditional religion, but of science. Yet, what
makes the religious past as the right response to
emerging crisis, now?
The seasoned religious person could
eventually come to have faith in God to
sustain him through future trials, as God
has already demonstrated his real
presence consistently in the past. Thus, to
rely on God in faith is not an irrational act
to the Christian, but a perfectly reasonable
and justified act, based on empirical
evidence.
71
So, what gives religion the edge is the depth of
the religious experience; maybe we should return to
traditional ways of life. A thousand years ago, a lot more
about the world was taken on faith. There was a lot less
ozone depletion in the Dark Ages, that much is an
indisputable fact. Even though it is unlikely that our own
age should be so bright, faithful executors of inherited
religious practices, by their religious experience, do at

71
Christine l. Niles, "Epistemological Nonsense? The Secular/Religious
Distinction," Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy, Volume,
17, 2003, page 569. (Such evidence must be at least partly the source of
Wilson's admirable admission in the late pages of E.O. Wilsons
Consilience, regarding his own scientific world-view in the face of religious
competitors, that "I might be wrong.")
lxxxix
least appear justified in blaming secularism and
scientism for the natural world's emerging ills.
The secularist or socialist has a limited
resource mentality and views the world as
a pie ... that needs to be cut up so
everyone gets a piece ... the Christian
knows that the potential in God is unlimited
and that there is no shortage of resources
in God's earth. ... while many secularists
view the world as overpopulated,
Christians know that God has made the
earth sufficiently large with plenty of
resources to accommodate all of the
people.
72
Now, this statement embodies the polar opposite
of the message that there is an emerging environmental
catastrophe. According to this view, there is no
environmental crisis, at all. Scientists, from this
perspective, are simply taken as advocates of a contrary
religion, a religion with a bad record.
73
Faith in

72
In a now famous, recent, address delivered while accepting the Global
Environmental Citizen Award presented by the Center for Health and the
Global Environment of the Harvard Medical School December 1, 2004, Bill
Moyers, himself a Christian, lamented the fact that religious policy makers,
especially Christians, have been committed to the destruction of the
environment. This address is available for public download at
http://www.med.harvard.edu/chge/april.html#bill. The passage is taken as
quoted from Moyer's address. It is as if God, himself, will replant the forests
and revitalize the rivers; no worries. If we take this passage seriously, it
appears that there is no environmental crisis at all! This doesn't describe
the world in which I live; indeed, they are assertions without even a basis in
publication. For instance, see Roger Lewin's short review appearing in
Science, Vol. 228, No. 4701, May 17, 1985.
73
If this is the case, then, as Huston Smith has maintained, we must return
to so-called "traditional world-views." This implies the wholesale rejection
xc
traditional ways of life, faith in God, appears to have the
evidence on its side. Scientists, lacking faith in religious
experience, instead come to what appear to be, from the
religious perspective, unwarranted conclusions
regarding the condition of our environment.
Together, these two poles work against any
resolution to environmental problems; as long as they
argue, the changes required for global environmental
sustainability cannot be instituted. We appear to be in a
condition much like that in which Socrates finds himself,
with Callicles, at the close of the Gorgias:
For it's a shameful thing for us, being in the
condition we appear to be in at present -
when we never think the same about the
same subjects, the most important ones at
that - to sound off as though we're
somebodies.
74
To get around this and similar disputes, some
religious thinkers have asserted that science needs to be

of contemporary scientific thought. Smith himself believes that, expecting
the scientist to admit that a God-like agency may play a role in science, in
our present case the science of saving the earth from global environmental
collapse, is simply asking too much: "It would be wrong for theologians to
ask scientists to admit supernatural causes into their theories; there they
would abort their scientific project."(Smith, page 224) Smith goes on: "But it
is equally wrong for them to close their eyes to places where proximate,
naturalistic causes are missing. For until satisfactory naturalistic
explanations come along - and they may be never - it is reasonable to
believe that causes from outside nature (to wit, Gods direct inputs) hold the
answer."(Smith, page 224) So, until science can answer all the technical
solutions to environmental problems necessary for sustainable human life
on Earth, all scientific recommendation for changes in traditional ways of life
in light of environmental crisis must be rejected? Apparently, at least, there
can be no resolution between these two poles of science and religion if
Smith is right.
74
527d.
xci
conceived anew, theologically.
75
Maybe if this were to
happen religion could give us guidance in regards to the
science of environmental sustainability. Until then, it
seems that we might be stuck with a choice between
one or the other. How could philosophy ever help us to
choose between a religious and a scientific way of life?
Thankfully, it won't have to; the religious
experience is as universal as is the experience of
growing environmental calamity, though in any case the
understandings of these experiences may differ. As long
as the evidence of a religious experience, or evidence of
environmental collapse, or evidence of God, just is the
experience of a human being with a human brain in a
certain prepared condition, then these experiences are
not unique. If they were, then there truly could be no
communication between the poles of science and
religion, and no way past vicious dispute. Socrates
recognized this fact:
...if human beings didn't share common
experiences, some sharing one, others
sharing another, but one of us had some
unique experience not shared by the
others, it wouldn't be easy to communicate
what he experienced to the other.
76

75
Positive work in the Christian tradition channeling Paul Tillich's influence
to this end, reciprocal and productive co-dependence between science and
religion, comes under the heading of "theonomous science," and is
delicately discussed in Ronald B. MacLennan's excellent "Belief-ful Realism
and Scientific Realism," Zygon, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2001, pages 309-320.
76
481d. Notably, these are not nobodies who are arguing with one another
over what needs to be done about world catastrophe. Our greatest minds
have lined up as champions of opposing traditions against one another.
xcii
According to Socrates, this is the real issue. It is
the common experience which permits communication
across seemingly irreconcilable poles of argument. The
religious, and the scientific, exist as poles in argument
only because they exist as poles of human experience,
in common. There is, in fact, between a life of science
and a life of religion, no choice to be made. They are
both universal to human experience. Of course the
scientist uses his terms, and the religious hers, but
underlying there is common experience, or there is no
communication, and no understanding, and no hope, at
all.
It may be objected, immediately, that Socrates
knew nothing of environmental science, not to mention
cognitive science, and was not concerned with the
malaise from which our modern world suffers; he wasn't
even Christian! Just because it has been said by a
brilliant man, many years ago, before our global
environmental crisis presented itself, doesn't ensure it is
right. Looking to a 2500 year old tradition, especially
one largely out of practice, for answers to contemporary
problems seems like a false start; what about progress,
after all? Hasn't the world changed so much that
whatever his philosophy has to say is really just novelty?
One thing that hasn't changed is change; the
world is changing, and we need guidance as to what is
the best way of life in light of this fact. The best life,
according to Socrates, is that which is "adequate to and
satisfied with its circumstances at any given time."
77
In
fact, it is a resistance to this philosophical way of life
which motivates the dispute between science and
religion over the environment in the first place. People

77
493c.
xciii
simply continue to live the way they are used to living,
according to traditions which, unlike the Socratic
tradition, are not adequate to any given time.
The fundamental point in this present work is the
following: to hold onto any way of life which encourages
and even inflames tragic conditions is vicious. It is
nothing less than hanging the future of life on Earth on
an article of faith. It is as if Pascal's wager were
extended to the whole of the globe, with an expectation
that 70 years is long enough a life-span for not just one's
self, but for anyone and everyone and everything else.
In fact, though, 70 years may be too generous an
estimate if past practices are continued, on faith, in the
face of changing material evidence; we may not have
even that much time.
One's articles of faith might have served for
thousands of years, or since the enlightenment, but that
is no guarantee that they will continue to serve, or even
that they serve us, now.
The fact is that a way of life is not all that we
inherit from the scientific and religious past; we inherit
the effects of these ways of life, as well. These effects
need to be weighed - the point of the environmental
scientists responsible for the Millennium Report is that
for the most part they have been - and our future
practices adjusted accordingly.
78
This fact, needless to
say, is not popular to point out. Especially for
Philosophy.

78
This fact has been recognized by many other influential contemporary
thinkers whose concerns are specifically the possibilities for living well, with
others, in the upcoming millennia. One principle component shared is the
responsible appreciation of the impact that consistently applied, that is
inherited and faithfully maintained, modes of life have had on our resource
environment.
xciv
Why? Consider the inaction at the institutional
level to adjust to new ways of life. It is not a popular
notion for academic philosophers to advise that old ways
are vicious. Those presently faithful to the ways of ivory
tower life that they have inherited are depending on
those inherited ways to remain effective, even in the face
of ill-effects on the changing environment at least in part
due to those same practices.
79
Should they change so
much on the basis of so little information? So far, they
havent.
And, they may be right not to; but, once we do
understand that we are in the midst of a global
environmental crisis, in terms of both the scientific and
the religious experience, themselves simply common
poles of human experience, the question appears
differently. It may be that change in light of new
information is for the Philosopher really no change at all.
This is what Philosophers are supposed to do, and,
when honest about their professions, what they have
always done.
In the face of environmental crisis, new ways of
being must be explored, invented, and these must
become habit, routine, and finally convention as
replacement for those past conventions which have
fallen from virtue to vice. True, experts in all fields do
have to figure their areas out; but, the change itself takes
more than simple reassessment. It takes Philosophy.
Somehow, though, the institution of Philosophy
escaped the notice of the environmental scientists
responsible for the U.N. Millennium Group report. The

79
On faith in the authority of past actors; and this attitude, when influential
on public policy, is, if not dangerous, simply irresponsible. For interesting
discussion in this vein, see Niles, page 567.
xcv
Philosophic solution, the solution I am recommending, is
not in the institution of philosophy, per se. In this regard,
the U.N. report is essentially right to overlook it. The
philosophic solution that I am recommending is the
Philosophic life.
The tested strategy for dealing with
intergenerational tradeoffs, that necessary component
for an environmentally sustainable future, is Philosophy.
It is the demonstration, and willingness, to realize the
uncomfortable truth, to integrate the wisdoms of past
and future in study, and in practice, that is the
Philosophic life, a life adequate to the terms of its times.
Of course, this means pointing out the unpopular; and,
often enough, this leads to argument. But:
For my part, if I engage in anything that's
improper in my own life, please know well
that I do not make this mistake intentionally
but out of my ignorance. So don't leave off
lecturing me the way you began, but show
me clearly what it is I'm to devote myself
to, and in what way I might come by it...
80
Frankly, that is exactly what the rest of this text
will do.

80
488a.
1
1. Conscience, and why we are awake.
While we are tied to this globe, some
knowledge of the beings around us and of
their operations is necessary; because,
without it, we should be utterly at a loss
how to conduct ourselves.
-- Adam Smith.
81
He who possesses virtue in abundance
may be compared to an infant.
-- Lao Tzu
82
So, you want to change the world? Or, maybe
you just want to change your own way of life? In order
to start out on the right foot, in either event, it will pay to
know something about your self. In this section, we will
begin down this road by picking up where contemporary
science leaves off.
The focus of this text is the conscience.
Consciousness, not conscience, has been the focus of
most contemporary philosophical and psychological
research. There has been little attention directed to
understanding conscience, and inadequate progress in
understanding consciousness for all the attention it has
received. In this section we will investigate the
relationship between consciousness and conscience.
This way, we can push ahead inquiry into the former, by
providing for its role in the latter.

81
Knowledge of Future Events, page 193.
82
Lao Tzu, The Book of the Way, passage 55, sentence 1.
2
We will begin with the beginnings of the modern
science of psychology. Contemporary neurological
research confirms previously untested insights into the
human mind. We will look in particular at William James,
whose work continues to be a foundation stone for
psychological modern theorists, and whose untested
insights provide the starting blocks for an understanding
of conscience, and ask why contemporary inquiries into
consciousness have stalled.
By far, this section is the most difficult single
chapter in this book. It is so difficult because it
challenges long held presumptions about what
consciousness is supposed to be. In this section, we will
develop a view of consciousness which is grounded in
feelings of which one may not be aware. This picture
will place consciousness in relation with conscience.
Their relation lies in the terms of ones situation. Thus,
we will move the focus in the study of consciousness
from deep inside the individual person, to well outside of
him, and we will expand the activity of consciousness
from simple awareness, to all those cognitive processes
which bring the world, and a persons situation within it,
to light in the first place.
Consciousness is typically understood to be some
sort of general awareness. All of which one is ever
aware is the feeling of being in a situation. One may be
conscious of being situated, however, and not have a
clue as to what to do about it. For this, there is the
conscience. Conscience has to do with doing the right
thing at the right time in the right situation. On the view
which we will be developing, here, this evaluation
proceeds without any necessary awareness thereof, and
even governs that of which we ever become conscious
in the first place. Thus, consciousness cannot be
3
adequately understood until conscience is understood,
and vice versa.
Let me begin with an analogy. The conscience is
like an envelope in the writing of a letter. Imagine writing
a very important letter, perhaps expressing difficult
feelings to someone who means a lot to you and with
whom there has been a misunderstanding. Every word
matters. In terms of this analogy, consciousness is the
words explicitly arranged on the paper. These words
represent that of which you are aware, and more comes
to light with every pen-stroke. Underneath this explicit
understanding is the paper itself. Even unmarked, as
you stare at the paper wondering how to put what must
be spelled out next, it stews with emotions. In order to
write the letter, this blank slate must be marked up. You
must bring order to the swirling field of emotions. In
order to finish the letter, you must come to terms with
your situation, put these terms to paper, send it out, and
move on.
To finish the letter, it must be folded and formed
to suit its envelope. The envelope is the form which the
letter fills. The envelope is the vehicle for the explicit
awareness of ones situation ordered in ink and marked
on paper. The envelope holds the address. It carries
the intention. It names the place and the time. It keeps
what is revealed in this letter apart from the contents of
other letters. The envelope closes the letter off so that,
to understand what is in the letter, the envelope must be
opened up.
Opening an envelope and reading a letter is like
looking at a snapshot of life at rest. It is one situation
revealed and seen from another resting place. One
situation is the writing, the other the reading. In order for
the letter to have done what it was intended to do, it
4
must be written, and it must be read. The reading of the
letter is as important as is its writing. The envelope is at
either end of the operation, and within the envelope are
the words and the folds of the paper. But, the envelope
is different from one end to the next. It is postmarked,
and worn from transit. At one end is the stew of
emotions that is the struggling writer, and at the other is
the reader looking back, beginning with the date-stamp
of its delivery and the address of its origination. All of
this begins with the envelope.
Imagine that there were no envelope, no address,
and no delivery. Would there still be a letter? There
may be ongoing writing, certainly; but one would always
be in the middle of it. There would be an ongoing
stream of sensations all meshed together in one long
series, certainly; but, each would be indifferent to the
last. There would be no unique situation the
understanding of which is the purpose behind the writing
of the letter in the first place. The purpose behind writing
a letter is the reflection on the situation of its origination,
a situation special enough to bear an explicit note to be
sent off for review from some other situation. Often
enough, as one day bleeds into the next, what makes a
day special is the arrival of a letter uncovering another
more remarkable day as if happened someplace else.
All this begins with an envelope.
Conscience is what makes a place in life special,
and ones distance from it remarkable. Conscience is
what makes being in one situation better than another
rather than an endless series of empty sensation.
Conscience is what makes consciousness tangible. It
gives us a feeling of something rather than some sort of
feeling. It is what makes now better than then, or then
like a letter we reread in our minds when we are lonely.
5
It is what makes another place a position worth seeing,
seeing again, or worth leaving behind. All of this begins
with the conscience.
Conscience, like an envelope for a letter, captures
the sense of being in a situation relative to others. This
is how we know where we are, instead of merely how we
are, and can come to understand why we are, instead of
merely that we are, at any given moment in space and
time. The letter captures the sense of being situated in a
single dynamic, but it is the envelope which does the
work of tying these situations together. Once folded and
closed away in the envelope, there can be distance
between this situation and the next. Once opened and
unfolded, the content of the letter can be held up for
examination. Thus, we can look back on other places in
our lives and feel as if it were someone else who used to
live there, as if it were not our own selves at all.
As situations change, the contents of letters
change. Addresses change. Date-stamps on envelopes
change. The reasons for writing letters remain the
same. One must come to terms with his situation, and
move on. A letter is the product of a rested reflection on
one place of life. The envelope is the way to close the
door on a situation, and leave what was good for what is
better.
Sometimes, others will advise that one write a
letter simply to come to terms with how he feels about a
situation without any intention of sending it to anyone
else. The envelope is still operative, here. One writes
the letter as-if it would be put in an envelope and sent
away. It is a way of coming to terms with ones situation.
It is a way of putting a situation behind ones self, of
getting distance from it. It is also a way of spelling out
anticipations of an uncertain future, against which what
6
comes to pass can be measured once that future
arrives. It is a way of reflecting, and of planning, of
having done and of doing otherwise. Coming to terms
with a situation means moving on. It all begins with the
conscience.
Without conscience, one may be conscious of
things without ever understanding how they all hang
together as objects within one situation amongst others.
Without conscience, one may see things without
understanding which are to be sought and which are to
be avoided. On this view, consciousness is not
significant without conscience to contain it. With
conscience, objects of our awareness are meaningfully
arranged around a single theme, coming to terms with a
situation. It is their places in terms of this order which
determines their weight, their value, their good and bad.
On this view, conscience and consciousness are
necessarily related. We are conscious of objects which
determine our situation, but we only come to terms with
these situations through the exercise of conscience.
On this view, consciousness is an extension of
other homeostatic mechanisms of the body, and the
conscience is a more or less complex regulator.
83
Just
as basic homeostatic functions maintain the integrity of
the organism in terms of its environment, the things of
the conscious world become additional terms for
homeostasis, things in terms of which we must learn to
live, with which we must come to terms. On this view,
conscience is what motivates the organism to situations
whose terms are comfortably met; it regulates that of

83
The brain is the regulating mechanism which has received the greatest
attention in this regard, but on the present view is inseparable from the rest
of the body. Conscience is the placeholder for this complex.
7
which we become conscious. On this view, conscience
is what motivates the organism to environments in terms
of which integrity of the living body is maintained.
We are conscious of very little of the everyday
world. Most of life proceeds unaware. Though
experienced, most of what we know we only know by
acquaintance, not by conscious reflection. The pores of
our skin open to aid respiration, cooling the body when it
is warm, and none of us are conscious of the dilation of
every opening. Every one of us, though, is well
acquainted with, and sometimes even aware of, the
effects.
On the picture to follow, conscience is the
controller of the homeostatic system. Conscience is a
record of stable system states in terms of environment,
the library of which guides the organism by holding the
situation and associated state ahead for the organisms
motivation. Conscience also controls the addition of new
system states by either opening or closing the organism
to the chaos of the external environment. New
experiences yield new states attuned to different
situations. Thus, conscience controls the development
of practical wisdom. It is also in the capacity to open to
the unknown that we find the loci of human freedom. All
of this requires explanation. If you do not see it yet,
follow on in good faith. There are many pages to follow.
Conscience is often understood to be a
mysterious voice which only every once in a while arises
to consciousness; yet, consciousness is an aspect of
conscience. This seems contrary to the everyday
characterization of conscience as a protesting voice, but
it is not. The voice of conscience may be that aspect of
conscience of which we are most aware, but it is merely
one aspect of conscience. Conscience has to do with
8
coming to terms with situations generally speaking, and
the voice of conscience appears to consciousness only
in some specific incidents. Conscience has to do with
doing the right thing at the right time in every instance,
not only those in which its startling voice presents
itself.
84
Therefore, there is more to conscience than we
are aware. Analogies, letter writing and mysterious
voices aside, all of this still requires explanation.
So, lets start with the basics. What is
consciousness and what does that have to do with
conscience? To begin with, a focus on consciousness
as the fundamental object in cognitive sciences may be
a bit arbitrary. Even the word, consciousness is a
conjugate, con- and -sciousness. So, the question
should be: what is sciousness?
This is not the first time that this question has
arisen to philosophy. For William James, for just a
moment, in his Principles of Psychology, 1890,
consciousness appeared to be con-sciousness, where -
sciousness, a stream of feeling and sensation, seemed
to be the fundamental component of experience. James
discounted this view, but that has not compromised its
strange attraction to current investigators.
85
Thomas Natsoulas describes James sciousness
hypothesis as implying that all cognitive processes
proceed within a black box. By definition, we know
what goes on inside a black box from its outputs, from
the external effects that the processes within the black
box produce, and no more directly than that.
86

84
Most letters are written without incident, to continue with the analogy.
85
For instance, the article by this name: Andrew R. Bailey, The Strange
Attraction of Sciousness: William James on Consciousness, Transactions
of the Charles S. Peirce Society 34, no. 2 (1998): 414-434.
86
Natsoulas, page 53, 1996.
9
Now, one may object that he experiences his own
feelings directly. This is correct; he does know his
feelings and sensations directly. However, he does not
know everything which goes on in his body, as blood
chemistry and metabolism change slowly, and regularly,
day to day. He is not aware of every sensation. Those
that he is aware of, well, he is aware of; this is true. On
Natsoulas analysis, sciousness names those processes
deep inside the box, and no one, not even the individual
whose conscious confines are this or that box, has an
unimpeded view of these internal goings-on.
87
Thus,
sciousness is not easy to talk about, as it is, essentially,
those cognitive processes of which we are not aware.
James dropped his so-called sciousness
hypothesis. One reason for this may be that the
tradition into which he was born supported the view that
every individual does, in fact, have conscious read
complete, transparent, unimpeded - access to all the
internal goings-on which matter. The sciousness
hypothesis contradicts this presumption, directly. If
sciousness were taken to be the fundamental term, and
consciousness only a modification thereof, then what
comes to matter is not necessarily that of which we are
consciously aware. If this were the theory, than it would
have clashed with the presumption of most of the
thinkers of James era, and of our own, that the
phenomena of consciousness is the most important
focus in theories of ethics, in psychology or in living the
good life in general. All that glitters is not all there is.
This is important because, in James day, there
was no instrumentation available for the investigation of
what processes are at work in the body besides

87
An envelope is much like a box, albeit a flat one.
10
consciousness. What was available was introspection,
and this method has some limitations. Unable to have
the sciousness hypothesis confirmed, and with no
access to investigate its operation, there would have
seemed to be little sense in focusing on it directly as a
basis for the emerging science of psychology.
According to a rough conception of sciousness,
the mental cogs and wheels which turn as we turn are
hidden from immediate awareness. Think of sciousness
as a continuous stream of feeling more so than a stream
of determinate, discrete thoughts. Sciousness is the felt
ground from which any thinking both begins and to which
it returns. It is a silent ground, of which only certain
aspects ever rise to awareness. Sciousness, thus, is the
fundamental mode of being in the world, with con-
sciousness only arising later, as a sense of sensing, a
feeling of feeling, a con-jugation of sensed moments,
occurrences, sciousnesses, which, upon their reflective
integration, become, a moment of consciousness.
88
What is the con- doing here? Take sciousness to
be the continuity of changing bodily states, much of
which at any given time we are unaware.
89
Think of this
stream of sciousness like the line drawn on an EKG
machine, except that instead of regular punctuations of
heartbeats and relaxations, the line of sciousness is not
necessarily regular, and not usually so dramatically

88
One can think of this as a process of repetition whereby the stream of
sciousness repeats itself and in so doing these regularities become present
to awareness with the rest cancelled as noise. Review the Forward for
clues as to the significance of this distinction.
89
This is a whole body state, and includes in my view even the growth of
toenails, but with a minimal weight attached to such an incidental indication
of system stability.
11
punctuated.
90
Moods rise and fall, blood sugar rises and
falls, hormone levels rise and fall, peripheral sensations
flow in without demanding attention, yet have effects on
bodily states nonetheless. Everyday, the stream of
sciousness, for persons not living through crisis, may
hardly rise and fall at all.
Next, take this graph of sciousness as indicative
of what it is like to be in a certain place. Say, going to
the department of motor vehicles. Waiting in line, ones
moods shift, it is boring, ones metabolism slows, and all
without any necessary consciousness of this fact. Take
this graph as a readout of this experience. Now, pretend
that the same person returns to the department of motor
vehicles, and a similar readout is produced. Here, we
have two pictures of what it feels like being in the same
place, even if one is not aware of everything he is
feeling.
91
What we see here are two pictures of the state
of the bodily system in terms of the same situation.
92
What the con- is doing, here, is overlaying these
two graphs.
93
What the con- is doing here is comparing
these two situations as system states. The overlay of
the two amplifies the ups and downs which the two
pictures have in common. What the con- is doing here is
bringing to attention regularities. These regularities,
through the con- operation, rise to the level of

90
This picture is intended to align with that developed by Ron Sun. For an
unimpeded view of what is really going on here, read his Duality of Mind.
91
This describes what later in the text is called the feeling of being in a
situation. Situation is fundamental.
92
See Professor Suns work for a direct application of the picture I am
presenting, here.
93
Think of this as a wave-addition problem wherein amplitudes which reach
a certain threshold rise to consciousness, while those below remain sensed
but of which there is not conscious awareness.
12
awareness and are those things of which one may be at
any given time conscious.
This occurs as a matter of course, through
repetition; recurring senses are consciously confirmed in
their regularity.
94
And, hereby, something seemingly
magical happens. As one finds oneself in terms of the
regularities of his place in the world, the sense of self
emerges. As a self built upon a continuous stream of
sensations, consciousness of ones self is the
awareness of what it feels like to be in a given position,
this locus of regularity, mine. The self emerges as those
regular ways of being in the world which suit ones
situation.
95
This sense of our selves as situated is
originary; beforehand, there is simply nothing which
answers to our notion of the self as an individuated
being in the world, nothing of which we are conscious.
96
The consciousness of ones situation constituted on the
basis of regularity yields what it feels like to be in a
given place. The feeling of what it is like to be so
situated only comes into question when ones situation
changes, or a difference between one situation and
another presents itself. In short, then, this sense of the
I can be characterized as the sense that this moment,
this awareness, this relationship with the world, this
position is mine, while that space over there, or back
then, is not.

94
The following picture suits early child development. Regular
engagements lead to habits in which recurring senses are not necessarily
consciously confirmed.
95
This is what comes to be called a persons character, of which we have
a great deal to say later.
96
This I marks the emergence of conscience. With a pattern established,
there is a -science as that scene understood from that point, and this scenic
understanding is compared with others, and this comparison yields the
difference which is the felt content of the self in the moment.
13
Ones self, so understood, is essentially
positional.
97
There is always place in the time of life. It is
this positionality which is the building block of
conscience. Conscience and consciousness are related
in this way. Consciousness fleshes out the objects and
is the substance for evaluation. We become aware of
things and take them in terms of how we feel as we
engage with them. Regular affects lead to an
understanding of being in the world in terms of these
engagements. Regular engagements lead to an
understanding of various orders of things, and ones
place relative them. This understanding sets ones self
in relation with all the objects of his world, physical or
conceptual. This is the scene, the view, as one looks
out over the space of ones life. It is ones situation.
Physical things stand out, but not merely as physical
things. Physical things stand out for their repeated
significance, and this often has little to do with that
material they are made of. There are crosses, and
pyres, and to be far from one has sometimes meant to
be close to another. Neither is significant for their
material constitution. This relationship is not purely
between ones self and some physical object. There is

97
There is direct correlation to be drawn, pertinent in this context, with the
logic of our own memory. I would point the readers attention to the central
role of the hippocampus in the processing of memory from short to long
term, and its fundamental function that is its function even in critters
without the sort of long-term memory humans are famous for in
recognizing place as position. Thus, when an animal approaches a space
which has some implication for its present individual purposes, say, the
space signifies food is nearby, the significance of the position is thought to
be encoded and retrieved through the functions of the hippocampus. This
is consistent with the phenomenal evidence that places are sentimental. I
am simply pointing to the essentially spatial nature of all thought, present or
recovered, as qualified by an organisms capacities and requirements.
14
simply more to the space of life than that. It is a space
weighted with metaphysical significance. I wish to be
close to neither crosses nor pyres. These are not
positions I wish to be in, and it has nothing to do with
their material constitution. Once understood, however,
this understanding is not necessarily one of which there
is any explicit awareness at any given time.
98
I
understand that I dont go to church, but I am not
necessarily conscious of it at any given time.
Much of life is lived in this mode. Consider the
following brief illustration. One must walk through a dark
room to get to bed. If the order hasnt changed, and the
furniture is in the same array, then one may walk
through the room without being directly aware of where
the furniture is, but by merely walking between the
determinations revealed in a prior journey. Conscience
holds the bedroom up and serves as a guiding light in
the darkness. The comparison of the two situations,
before and after navigating the dark room, reveals the
path taken before in the difference. This path, laid down
in past consciousness, becomes the space of navigation
through an exercise of conscience. It is as-if one were in
a lit room. One need not be aware of this activity at all,
but the understanding of the lay-out of the room is
effective nonetheless.
On the other hand, we are acutely aware of what
it is like to be far from the leg of a table, for instance,
when that table-leg may be all that helps us to stand
upright. Otherwise, the leg of the table is not an object

98
Though, we can take it for granted that the terms of these engagements
did at one time arise to consciousness, these determinations may become
habitual, and so fall out of consciousness.
15
of attention, and there is no necessary consciousness of
the space between ones self and that leg, at all.
99
This goes as well for objects whose significance
is not physical in the common sense. Consider the
following personal example. I imagine that what it
describes is familiar to many readers. I can remember
struggling with the metaphysical weight of the cross, and
the feeling of being increasingly distant in one sense,
and increasingly close in another. Comparing these two,
the distance of life between then and now, is what the
conscience does, and it does so every moment of
everyday. I am happy for the distance.
The feeling of what it is to be in a position extends
to all aspects of being in the world. Consider the
following example in light of the preceding. One can
have a sense that a crisis is approaching along with the
anxiety which one might consciously attach to the
phenomenon, and not be consciously aware of the
anxiety or of the crisis. Perhaps there is a pattern in the
present periphery which was part of a past situation.
Conscience holds these together, and the feeling of the
difference causes a tension. The difference is that
presently there is not pain, yet. The painful situation is
anticipated. This is dread.
Now, I will embellish this bare form with a familiar
story. Imagine that this is your own situation. Consider

99
This note gets ahead of our discussion, but I will comment. It is the
difference between what it feels like to stand and what it feels like not to
stand which describes the intensional space, the space which must be
bridged for the opportunity (to stand). The comparisons between a table
leg near or far, in terms of an intension which includes standing, gives a
good view of the landscape for the infants infant conscience. Here the
relation between consciousness of objects and space and conscience is
explicit. One is the sense of being in a position, of having a sense of place
relative objects, the other is a motivating comparison of this material.
16
that you have a girlfriend and she is becoming very dear.
The girlfriend has a boy who dislikes you move in as her
roommate. She then plans to leave with this boy on a
month-long musical tour in which they will sleep in a van
with another boy and his girlfriend. As these moves are
made, your position relative to a most significant part of
your life changes. You have an increasing sinking
feeling.
Meanwhile, you are trapped alone, working at
Philosophy, battling sophistry and trying to make the
world a better place. It is imperative that your work is
finished on time. You feel crisis coming without looking
at it directly, as if a hole opened under your desk, and
you are falling into your own stomach. This is dreadful
anxiety. You slog onward, working as well as you are
able, but each step is harder than the last, as if you are
working to climb an increasingly steep slope and all that
you held dearest is behind you.
This fanciful example describes the feeling of a
movement through an affective landscape. Much of life
is crawling out of holes like the one described above, not
just physical holes but meta-physical holes. Falling into
such a depression is not a journey one asks to make.
This is not how one would wish his life story to go. Most
of us try to avoid tragedy. This is not an end one seeks.
This is not a situation one wants to come to terms with.
The view of conscience I am developing here parses this
movement.
What we have are two situations, separated by
change. What hurts is the difference between the two
situations, before and after. After is where one finds
ones self as he reflects on the transition. All in the
middle is a blur. Consider the illustration, above. She
loved you. That past situation was good. The present
17
situation is painful. The difference is falling into
depression. What comes next is lots of hard work called
getting over it. Getting over it captures the sense that
what comes next is crawling out of the depression. The
depression is where one begins to get over it and in
which many remain if they are unable to get over it.
Conscience sets out these highs and lows of life.
100
Most of the rest comes in between. Life is slogging up
and down the hills and valleys of everyday love and loss.
That one has this feeling is possible on the basis
of conscience as I have described it. Conscience holds
the feeling of what it is to be in one situation against the
other. It is up to the experiencing self to reconcile these
two positions, and to come to terms with his new
situation. This situation is not that situation. The
difference is pain.
The self-constitutive relation between ones
capacities to feel relative to engagements with objects of
the world is critical to an understanding of what I mean
by conscience. Position is the affective space of
embodiment. Where one is, and is going, in terms of
various objects determines how it feels to be in the
world. For instance, as a birthday approaches, the
distance is felt as anxiety, or anticipation. A cold beer on
the other side of a hot day pulls one toward happy hour.
One can be far from the one he loves and still be in the
same room. These engagements are not necessarily
unique. Still, this is what it feels like to be me.
Situations are shared. A person is essentially
situated and understands himself in terms of his position

100
I neglect to develop herein an account for purely physiological influences
on this affective ground, say for one who is prone to depression, or to
mania. It is implicit, however, in the model of conscience to follow.
18
relative to objects. Persons who share situations
understand themselves through similar engagements
with similar objects. The more significant the object, the
more important the relationship. Coming to terms with
ones situation is limited by ones capacities to engage
with the objects of his environment. It is a bad situation
if the object one wants to manipulate is in a van with
another man 800 miles away. The physical distance
between these two situations, let alone the emotional
distance, is simply too great, and it feels that way.
101
Ones position is the unique location that is mine, or
yours just as one calls his lover mine or yours. The
totality of ones place in the world is ones situation.
Think of coming to terms with ones situation as a
process of determination, as the literal de-termination of
the space of life. As we feel our places out, we come to
terms with the limitations of these spaces; we feel the
terms of space at the limits of our own sensitivities to it.
Where we find no limit, there is an opening, a space
which may be further explored, a capacity yet to be fully
exercised. So, as we determine the space of life, we
find and set our own limits. The limits of ones own
realized capacities, thus, is ones situation whose
terms are more or less easily come to.
102
Understanding is limited by, as well as limits,
ones capacities to engage with the environment. Some
come to terms not so well, and these are the same who

101
The one you love is not an object, this is not what this language is meant
to express. It means that you share her situation as-if it were yours. It is
shared in totality. Love is not simply sharing a bed. The loss of love is
likewise more than the loss of a bed partner. The loss of love calls into
question the totality of ones place in the world. See Angst, chapter 10.
102
And are thus more or less ideal. This has a special importance in the
section on Diogenes and the bathtub experiment, chapter 9.
19
understand not so well. Thus, in engaging with the
objects of the word, one delimits the space where his
capacities begin and end, where things begin and end,
and so determines where objects are aims and where
they are obstacles. This is ones situation.
In the phenomenology of the embodied self,
position is central. In the phenomenological tradition, a
situation involves the inseparability of the psychological
agent reflexively engaged with his environment. Being
situated means coming to terms with the environment,
and these terms are then taken up as the starting point
in further engagements with the environment. As these
terms are acted upon, their salience is tested in the
success or failure of the action. This process generates
new determinations of the environment, which are then
fed forward into the next series of actions. This reflexive
engagement over the course of ones life describes the
space of life in terms of ones own limitations. One pays
attention to, and so values what meets the terms of his
needs, and discounts or ignores what does not. In being
in the world, organisms (agents) do not interact with the
objective world in itself, but with their subjective
perception of it.
103
In so exhausting our capacities for
discovery, we delimit the space of life, and so form
expectations of life lived in these terms. In being in the
world, thus, the world is made. This is the world of our
understanding, inseparable from the sense of being
situated within it.
Think again of walking through the living room in
the dark. Ones situation is understood. This space has
been traversed before. It need not be the case that this

103
Page 169, The Construction of Reality in the Robot. This is a running
theme in this text.
20
path works again, however. In reconfiguring the
furniture, new paths are opened up, and old
opportunities for unobstructed travel are closed. This
requires looking at the room from a different perspective,
and recasting the relationships between the objects in
the space. In this way, spaces of opportunity
104
are
revealed. Thus, trapped, we look not for walls, but for a
way past them.
Let us review. As awareness dawns, the self is
realized essentially in its relationship with the world
determined by its own limitations. Consciousness is that
which makes what is otherwise merely sensed into
objects.
105
This sense of location accompanies every
conscious moment, and corresponds with the
positionality of the I in the sense of the lived body
within the fields of all things so determined. It may then
be said that all life is positional, all feeling is the feeling
of a space, and the situated self is the first, and only
thing, of which we are ever consciously aware.
106
IT IS
THE ESSENCE OF THE SELF TO BE SITUATED, IN A
POSITION, COMING TO TERMS WITH ITS
ENVIRONMENT. IT IS SIMPLY THIS COMING TO
TERMS WITH ONES SITUATION OF WHICH ONE IS
EVER CONSCIOUSLY AWARE.

104
New modes of being, new routes for travel, new horizons to explore, etc.
105
The focus of which is, appropriately enough, called "attention" in the
psychological sciences, pointing to the directedness, or intensionality, of
consciousness, and to the relative freedom to redirect consciousness to
attend to different objects. This freedom is opposed to the more passive
sensibility which serves as substrate for consciousness. A similar
distinction will be made between -science and con-science in passages to
follow.
106
In fact, our awarenesses just are the felt differences between these
positions, so given as self-reflection.
21
So given, consciousness is not the limit of the
self; it is only the ripples on top of the water in the
bucket. Conscience is the bucket; it is the space of
feeling of which one becomes conscious. Conscience
frames the situation. The self emerges on the basis of
regular fluctuations in ones situation. These fluctuations
arise at the level of sense, with or without awareness.
On this picture, consciousness is the critical biological
function that allows us to know sorrow or know joy, to
know suffering or know pleasure, to sense
embarrassment or pride, to grieve for lost love or lost
life.
107
It is the sense of a sense. Underlying all
consciousness is the felt ground of experience, the
landscape of sadness and glee, our position in terms of
which we may, or may not, at any given time be aware:
-sciousness. Consciousness is merely a part of the
whole.
Though conscious is how we find our selves,
consciousness seems not to be so directly related to
whats really going on in the world after all. There is a
more basic sense of our integration with the world, one
on which consciousness floats along, bouncing off
objects jarring its attention like a raft for one filled with
hot air on a sometimes choppy stream of sciousness.
Modern neurology confirms this picture: consciousness
is turning out to be a bit player in the movement of
human experience. This understanding is so well
grounded, in fact, that one contemporary neuroscientist
opens his latest text stating that: Your conscious life, in

107
Antonio Damasio, 1999, page 5.
22
short, is nothing but an elaborate post-hoc rationalization
of things you really do for other reasons.
108
The con- in James picture of con-sciousness is
what pulls objects out of the background of our
experience and brings them to awareness. In their
conjunction, moments of sciousness become in
consciousness the awareness of objects with which one
is related in a unique way. Consciousness is the
awareness of ones own position equally with that of the
objects in terms of which one is related. James
explains that the prefix con serves to describe the
stream of consciousness as being reflexive, in addition
to being directed outward, beyond itself. The con- is
what makes mere sensing the sensing of being in
relation with other things in the world. The con- is what
makes what it feels like to be into what it feels like to be
relative something else. (Say, between a letter writer and
his reader.)
We may, through the lens of consciousness thus
presented, look at conscience as con- and science.
Consciousness has to do with different objects of
which we become aware. Consciousness built on the
base of con- and -sciousness signifies the comparison of
fundamental sensings which presents objects to
awareness through the operation of con-sciousness.
Con- plays a similar role in the analyses of conscience.
Conscience signifies the comparison of fields of these
objects in terms of ones place therein. Conscience has
to do with situations understood in terms of objects,
some of which we become conscious, and some of
which we do not.

108
V.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, Pearson
Education, Inc., NY, NY, 2004, 192 pages, page 1.
23
Each field of objects compared is a certain
situation. What one feels is the difference between
situations. What one understands is the difference
between ones relationships with objects which
determine each situation. Understanding is essentially
positional. Sometimes situations change, and we do not
understand the change. Sometimes, we cannot
determine which relationships and which objects have
caused the change. But, the felt difference between
situations gives clues. The felt difference between
situations is full of information that is useful in searching
for these relationships and these objects. In this way,
what it feels like to be in a place on a field helps one to
come to terms with that situation. Each field thus comes
to be understood by way of a corresponding situation in
the array of objects in the field.
109

Each place in the field, furthermore, finds different
objects in different relations. Each persons perspective,
even on objects nearby, is unique. Each person is
uniquely situated, and conscience compares these
unique situations. This comparison brings things to
consciousness. What I am conscious of is some aspect
of my changing situation; so, consciousness is an aspect
of conscience, not the other way around. We may be
conscious of the presence of the same object, but each
persons conscience is uniquely his own. As this is a
universal situation, unchanging, constant, it is not
something of which most are likely aware.
Consciousness is that of which we are aware.
Conscience is the source of its evaluation, the logic

109
The "as-if" of the as-if model of conscience is best understood as an as-
if where, and what it shows is what it is to be in some position, related in a
certain way with a certain world of objects.
24
explaining why there appear these things and not others,
and why any of it matters at all. Its content is the feeling
that is the difference between two positions, for instance
before and after a break-up and before and after
stubbing a toe on a rocker.
These differences cause strain, tension. The
difference between here and there, good and better, is
what makes this better place than that, and becomes the
reason to leave here and go there. We avoid situations
which require painful engagements with hard things, and
seek comfortable arrangements, instead. All of this will
become clearer as I develop this preliminary notion of
conscience in the pages to follow.
We will change speeds in the next section.
Where in this last section, the issue has been the role of
conscience relative to consciousness. The issue in the
next is the role of conscience in bringing things to
consciousness. We will look at the example of Martin
Luther King, Jr. for some insight into what motivates the
conscientious man, and how it is he could bring to light
the darkest parts of the world we ostensibly share and
yet miss. In Kings life, we will find conscience at work in
the world.
We will see a man who did the right thing at the
right time, even though others found his efforts
untimely. This man was our greatest hero. He is still
our greatest leader. By looking at King for an example
of conscience at work in the world, we will see a
conscience for us to mirror in our own lives. The power
of conscientious examples will remain important for the
same reasons throughout the rest of the text.
25
2. Conscience, and why we live at all.
Nothing dismayed, Gilgamesh set out on
the road through the mountains, and the
darkness increased in density every hour,
but he struggled on, and at the end of the
twelfth hour he arrived at a region where
there was bright daylight, and he entered a
lovely garden, filled with trees loaded with
luscious fruits, and he saw the "tree of the
gods."
-- Epic of Gilgamesh, 9
th
tablet
It has been written about Martin Luther King Jr.
that one of Kings great achievements as a leader was
to give the nation a vocabulary to express what was
happening in the civil rights revolution.
110
In his work,
King not only had a vision of a better world, he
developed a set of terms which characterized that view.
He expressed his view in these terms, and the use of the
language helped others to come to share his
perspective. I think that this is the work of conscience.
King brought to light that to which others were blind, as if
his very way of life were poetry.
King took the established terms of his times and
bent them to fit within the space of a new time, an
unrealized future, where the past promise of the United
States is realized, and all men are created equal.
111
The vocabulary of segregation does not name the same
things as does the vocabulary of equality, just as the
vocabulary of war does not name the same things as

110
Berry, 112.
111
Point made in Berry, 123. In this text, men, man, and mankind are
intended neutrally.
26
does the vocabulary of peace. One speaks of violent
ends and oppression, the other of peaceful ends and
tolerance. Men grow up learning these vocabularies, and
come to understand their positions in life according to
the use of these terms. Men grow up speaking of violent
ends and oppression, and live accordingly, making the
world a violent and oppressive place, like that in which
we find ourselves, today. King wanted to change that. I
want to change that.
In Kings times, as is the case today, world affairs
were punctuated by war and inequality, oppression and
anxiety. This is and was a world in crisis. Crisis is hard
to come to terms with. This is and was a world which
needs the vocabulary for change. It was, in fact,
looming crisis which originally spurred Kings efforts, 8
years before his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail:
As early as the initial mass meeting of the
Montgomery Improvement Association, on
December 5,1955, King had expressed his
anxiety that the times were in crisis, and
that local and national catastrophe were
just around the corner.
112
King was far ahead of the curve on this count.
This explains his role as a leader. He saw ahead, felt
what was coming up, and expended much of his life in
understanding the terms of those critical times from the
perspectives of those most oppressed by them. He
expended the rest of his life recasting these terms to fit
times yet to be. King understood that the world had to
be seen differently, had to be determined as a different
world, in order for its opportunities to be realized.

112
Berry, 111.
27
What King does is to see around the conventional
order of things. He then takes the vocabulary which
represents the conventional order and molds it to fit his
vision of a new world. He does so in a way in which the
recast determinations open a space of opportunity to see
the world in a positive light. He takes conventionally
negative terms, like crisis, tension, and extremism,
and invests them with creative potential.
113
Lets look at one passage, in particular. The
following is an excerpt from the charges brought against
King by the clergymen, and which prompted his
response, the Letter from the Birmingham Jail. This
excerpt gives an indication of the tension King was
saddled with reconciling, all alone in a jail cell:
Just as we formerly pointed out that
hatred and violence have no sanction in
our religious and political traditions, we
also point out that such actions as incite to
hatred and violence, however technically
peaceful those actions may be, have not
contributed to the resolution of our local
problems. We do not believe that these
days of new hope are days when extreme
measures are justified in Birmingham.
114
Notice the tension between the terms, here.
Terms like hatred and violence are coupled with
technically peaceful to describe the same activities of
the same man. These terms are polar opposites,
etremes, and Dr. King was to have been responsible for
both prongs of their complaint. He would have to

113
Berry, 113.
114
Statement by Alabama Clergymen, April, 12, 1963.
28
answer from both positions, however incommensurate.
It was up to him to reconcile these poles within
himself.
115

This is one of the most compelling images in all of
history. Dr. King, champion of global freedom, jailed in
Alabama, crafting a new world on the side margin of a
local newspaper, the same paper at once reporting his
sitting, there, in his jail cell. Even as he sat writing his
response, the public read his indictment. This is a cruel
irony. He came to free all men, and instead sat confined
and isolated. Though his actions were peaceful, he still
sat accused of incitement to hatred and violence.
This is a source of tension. He had not come to incite
violence, but because Injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere and to Birmingham because
injustice is here.
116
Meanwhile, the injustice remained
in Birmingham, and everywhere, and the just man sat in
jail, alone. This was a cruel irony, and a source of great
tension. King does not write about that; but, he does tell
us how his Philosophy of non-violence makes use of
such tensions to force change. Reconciliation.
King opens his Letter by recalling the recent
statement calling [his] present activities unwise and
untimely. He then questions whether there ever really
is a good time to call for change. Answering the
clergys charges of taking extreme measures, King
writes: Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged
groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. The
implication here is that anything like involuntary change

115
From circa 1300, from Latin reconcilare "to bring together again." From
re- "again" + concilare "make friendly". From circa 1565, meaning "to make
(discordant facts or statements) consistent."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=reconcile&searchmode=none
116
M.L. King, Jr., Letter, page 2.
29
must come, if not by violence, then at least by way of
force. Any change is clearly forced for those who wish
the situation remain the same, and so extreme. It is by
this logic that King is jailed. It is by this logic that we find
King trapped in a bare situation doing time.
King escapes. He frees himself through the
margin of the very newspaper determining his captivity.
He forces change. He forces change by circling both
poles of the attack, reconciling the rock and the hard
place between which he has been thrust. He skirts
these bounds by finding the common grounds for so
many conflicted terms. He recreates the situation in
terms of these common grounds. In his Letter, it is in the
word tension that he reconciles his nonviolent activities
with the clergys charges of inciting violence. Through a
grounding analysis of tension, he reconciles two
contrary positions at once, and even jailed does the work
he had set out to do, bridging divisions, not inciting them.
In tension, he comes to terms with two contrary
positions at once. Hereby, we find a defense of his
method, his Philosophy. Non-violence does not mean
without force. It means without violence:
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create
such a crisis and foster such a tension that
a community which has constantly refused
to negotiate is forced to confront the
issue Just as Socrates felt that it was
necessary to create the tension in the mind
so that individuals could rise from the
bondage of myths and half-truths to the
unfettered realm of creative analyses and
objective appraisal, so must we see the
need for nonviolent gadflies to create a
kind of tension in society that will help men
30
rise from the dark depths of prejudice and
racism to the majestic heights of
understanding and brotherhood.
117
When we see Martin Luther King, Jr. in jail, forced
to reconcile the tensions between contradictory
determinations of himself, we see him dealing with the
same sorts of tensions through which he himself forces
change in others. Kings method is consistent. He
believes that through this work, men can reach their
highest potentials. For King, this is peace and wisdom.
We will look more deeply at the role of tension in the
conscience in the sections to come. We will end the text
with a look at the role of conscience in reconciling
tensions between the individual (you) and his objective
world (yours). We will see the role of conscience in
generating wisdom, and in providing for peace, or
equally for ignorance and war. For the moment,
however, I wish to focus on the fact that King changes
the world by changing the words which determine it.
That King takes words to represent the way the
world is, is not unusual. Everyone does this. It is called
language. It is what he does with his language that
makes the difference between this hero of conscience
and the everyday man on the street. King developed a
language which opened a new perspective on the world.
Anyone can take any term to mean anything, and in
terms of his life this is its role. But, that doesnt mean
that these invented terms permit another to see his place
in the world in a different light. Some invented terms do
the same work as do already established terms. They

117
King, Letter, page 3.
31
dont determine a different situation; they describe the
same one, differently. Ruth Chang has written that:
If you stipulate that glog means less than
a millimeter in length, there is a sense in
which this is what glog means. By sheer
stipulation, you can create a normative
standard for the use of the word so that if
you say Pencils are glog, you will have
made a mistake.
118
What is of interest now is that King does what he
does with a higher purpose in mind. He had a calling, a
dream of a better place, and it lay beyond the vocabulary
of the given world. The determinations of racist America
and the American war machine did not characterize this
space. The inherited expressions were not useful tools,
these expressions no longer named useful things.
These old determinations were obstacles to Kings
dream of peaceful coexistence. They had to be
overcome for a new situation to be determined.
119
King did not stick to the conventional uses of
terms. He saw a different situation, and recast old terms
in order to capture the order of things in that space. We
now live in a space of opportunity championed by King.

118
Ruth Chang, Personal and Impersonal Reasons, delivered at the
University of Missouri Kline Conference on practical reason Spring 2006,
unpublished, page 3.
119
In approaching this text, I took a similar tack. I have taken terms given
and have recast them in light of a great deal of new information. I think that
in doing so, what results is a view of conscience which is useful in terms of
a changing world. What results is a view of conscience consistent with
todays neurological inspection and the philosophical introspection of ages
past. I ask the reader to take my redefinitions in this light. If he sticks to the
conventional uses of these terms, the view I am describing will not line up.
Our objects will not be the same: a better world, up ahead, in new terms.
32
Our world was the work of his life. We still reside in the
space of his determinations. Our current situation is a
product of Kings new vocabulary for equality.
We may ask, preliminarily: how did King come to
this understanding? Conscience. Picture King, again,
the locus of such contrary accusations as violent and
peaceful, working to free others from oppression while
sitting jailed, indicted by the clergy while doing what he
took to be the work of Christ. King had to reconcile
these opposites; he had to come to terms with two
contrary positions at once. This is conscientiousness.
What does it mean to be conscientious? It means
taking up contrary positions and living in the space of
their difference. Conscientiousness is opening ones self
to reconcile these differences, to risk being torn apart by
them. Often, contraries to one another evidence
themselves in logical contradiction. In Kings case, he
must come to terms both with the situation seeing him as
violent, and that of his own demonstrated non-
violence.
120
How is it that he is both violent and non-
violent at the same time? He had to reconcile these
poles. This is an exercise of conscience.
If the difference between two contrary positions
can be commonly grounded in the understanding of one
life, then there is the opportunity for the conscientious
man to express this understanding. Conscientiousness
means coming to terms with what appears contrary in a
way in which is not. Conscientiousness signifies a
putting back together, a putting together of things which
had come apart, aspects of ones self.

120
The particular form of his reconciliation, ones subjective understanding
met with the (mistaken) objective understanding of himself, is the subject of
the concluding movements in chapter 13.
33
Conscientiousness means recasting the order of things
through the determination of a new situation, a situation
which makes sense of opposites, and grounds a new
way of life to suit this new world in the uncovered space
in between. Conscientiousness means providing for
opportunities for the good life, the just life, for others, for
their futures if not for ones own. Conscientiousness
means doing the right thing, being revered, being a great
leader, being like Martin Luther King, Jr.
Conscientiousness is a special mode of
conscience. I think that this is the mode in which
Philosophy is done. I have in life tried to emulate a
similar mode. I hope in this work to open a similar
opportunity for others by detailing the modes of
conscience which provide for reconciliation, as well as
those which do not. The conscientious way of life is, in
my mind, the only life worth living. But, it will take some
work to see this clearly, as there are other options, other
ways to live which may seem better, may be easier, yet
which do not lead to the sorts of ends to which a man
like King would have led us. To a better world, up
ahead.
34
3. Conscience, and the different faces of the right
thing to do.
Every faculty in one man is the measure by
which he judges of the like faculty in
another. I judge of your sight by my sight,
of your ear by my ear, of your reason by
my reason, of your resentment by my
resentment, of your love by my love. I
neither have, nor can have, any other way
of judging about them.
-- Adam Smith
121
And so, as we said, men are called
courageous for enduring painful things.
-- Aristotle
122
Sometimes, doing the right thing at the right time
involves disturbing an otherwise quiet situation.
Sometimes, doing the right thing at the right time
involves causing or responding to crisis. In this section,
we will begin to clarify the role of conscience in doing the
right thing whatever the consequences.
It is the consistency with which the terms of ones
situation are maintained which points to the apparent
continuity of his conscious life. It is the regularity of
ones situation which invites habitual modes of
engagement with the objects of the world. Habit, the
regularity of being in the world, itself depends on a world

121
Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.I.29.
122
Nichomachean Ethics, 9-2.
35
whose appearances are also regular. In times of crisis,
for example, habits tend to fail to deliver their regular
results. Persons tend to avoid crisis. Why? It is the
smooth play of habit which protects us from terminal
distraction, from anxious uncertainty, and from existing
as selves not constant enough to constitute that sense of
I with which we are more or less familiar. Of all the
things in the world, it is ones self, his I, which is the
hardest to let go, and the first he must let go in a crisis.
Crisis also calls into question what we call
virtue. Depending on the situation, different virtues
seem to fit. Bravery in battle, temperance in daily affairs,
honesty in discourse. But, when these fields are torn in
crisis, things look differently. What is brave in a route?
What is temperate in a drought? What is honest in
uncertainty? Once the order to which a virtue is suited
crumbles, it is not a virtue. Virtues are the right things
but only in the right contexts. Persons tend to construct
and to stick in those contexts which suit whatever it is
they take to be their virtues. This is a sort of bondage,
being habitually stuck in a given situation. This slavery
to habit also often precludes doing the right thing at the
right time, as the contexts are forced to meet the terms
of habit, rather than be freely determined.
One mode of conscience, however, gives insight
into a virtue which suits every situation. This virtue is
practical wisdom, and the mode of conscience which
generates practical wisdom is that in which one is open
to meet the terms of any given situation.
123
One does
not become wise by simply doing the same things in the
same situations. One becomes wise by doing different

123
See Socrates formulation as the life adequate to its circumstances as
covered in the Introduction.
36
things in different situations. As conscience has to do
with doing the right in any given situation, conscience
depends on wisdom to see its way through to the right
thing to do.
Our discussion on these two meets in the
universal structure of every situation. There is a
universal structure to each and every moment, every
beginning and end of every unique action. It is in this
universal structure that the search for the virtue which
suits every unique situation begins.
There is a long tradition of qualifying an action,
good or bad, right or wrong, according to a principle,
kairos. Kairos may be translated as time, place and
circumstance.
124
Kairos names the ancient Greek
daimon of opportunity.
125
The term is also translated as
opportune moment.
126
I understand it to mean,
generally, the situation which calls for action, and in
terms of which an action is evaluated as either good or
bad. For example, if it is raining, and the situation calls
for action, the right thing to do is to wear a raincoat.
127
If
it is not raining, however, wearing a raincoat simply
doesnt fit. If one holds open the door, that is the
opportunity to pass. If she closes it, then that action no
longer fits. Every moment, raining or not, big or small
shares this kairological constraint. The situations which
call for action range from epic to instant, with the actions
which suit them ranging accordingly. Opportunities are
present to do the right thing in each, however, and
universally seek to meet the terms of the moment.

124
Definition from Lanham, 1991.
125
http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Kairos.html
126
http://english.ecu.edu/~wpbanks/rhetoric/ra4_kairos.html
127
Another translation of kairos is weather.
37
Kairos describes that at which all actions aim.
The understanding required to meet the terms of any
given situation that calls for action is called practical
wisdom.
128
If there is a house fire, and a kitten needs
rescuing, the practically wise man understands how to
save the kitten and in the right way depending on this
unique situation. Practical wisdom is the capacity to
arrive each time at something new, namely, the correct
logos for the current situation.
129
By logos, what is
meant here is the form of the practice which fits the
situation requiring action. The logos is not the action,
but the terms which define the action which fits the
moment. The practically wise man does not have to do
the saving. He must only have the understanding to
determine which action is the right action at the right
time so that anyone with the opportunity could do it.
130
Stanley Rosen characterizes logos in this context
as the product of a decision. On Rosens view, one
chooses to do the right thing at the right time. To be
able to make this choice, however, one must recognize
the opportunity to do so: this decision is itself
dependent upon the general knowledge of human
nature, and so of human affairs.
131
This simply means
that doing the right thing is dependent on practical
wisdom. Practical wisdom, thus, is what informs
deliberate action, and that which makes doing the right
thing at the right time a possibility, in the first place.

128
See Brickhouse and Smith for a compelling argument to the effect that
wisdom is the single highest virtue, of which all others are some
modification depending on context of application.
129
Rosen, 252.
130
If the practically wise man finds a solution to a problem that has yet to
arise, and dies before his solution is utilized, he is still practically wise.
131
Rosen, 252.
38
Kairos indicates, and for some persons primarily
indicates, a situation whose appropriate action is
required by god(s). In these persons minds, god(s)
is(are) the objective constraint on right action, and the
source of the motivation of conscience to meet these
constraints. Kairos, thus, denotes an intersection
between the instantaneous and the eternal. Kairos is
where a man meets his destiny, and life becomes
meaningful. Kairos is the space of the Moment with a
capital M.
Conscience, on this view, is a seat of judgment
that is divinely inspired to meet the terms of these
Moments. Some situations are so special as to call for
acts whose purposes remain hidden from the agent,
though which remain presumably clear to the mind of his
god(s). Practical wisdom would appear to have limited
benefit in such instances, as there is only the divine
command to be pursued.
The commands of a higher power are expressed
in religious systems. Religion, on this view, takes the
place of practical wisdom in providing the grounds for
doing the right thing at the right time. Common religious
rituals are intended to represent the conditions of such a
situation and take the place of practical wisdom as the
capacity to arrive each time at something new, namely,
the correct logos for the current situation. Indoctrinated
accordingly, the agent is prepared to seize the
opportune moment, impose the terms of ritual, and
through him his god(s)s will is done.
132
For the

132
As Andrew Newberg writes: In this case, the transcendent experience is
more than just space-time oriented; it is related to a creative and immanent
force to which one can respond through religion and religious experience.
Newberg, page 506. Though, not necessarily through religion. The
39
ecclesiarch, thus, kairos refers to that moment of
fulfillment which is an instantiation of the will of god. The
rituals of prayer and congregation simply prepare the
individual conscience to be the site for gods agency.
There is a kairological structure in little m
moments, too! Even the most mundane moments have
a similar shape as do the mystical, and are similarly
prepared. Simply recall the cases of a penny found on
the chance of a late bus, or a dog lost on the chance of a
speeding truck, or a pizza hot or cold on the chance of
light or heavy traffic. There is no need to recruit a deity
to account for the temporal structure of objective
requirements of right action in these cases. The pizza
delivery driver does both that of which he is able and all
that is required. As the light changes, and the traffic
swells and slows, he moves toward his end, your hungry
house. Good or bad is merely late or early. There is
always the right thing to do and the right time to do it.
Sometimes, a missed light is a lost opportunity. Some
pizzas seem destined to arrive cold.
This aspect of the temporal structure of kairos,
where man and pizza meet hot melted destiny, is
preserved in every moment from answering the call of
god(s) to the most mundane, from saving the world to
reading a map well enough to ring a doorbell. There is a
culmination, a moment when everything adds up. In the
little m instance, it is the guy who ordered the pizza
who evaluates whether the terms of the moment are met
or not. In the capital M instance, if it is god, then it is
time to meet the terms of the great thin-crust orderer in

ACTWith model of conscience captures the essence of this force without
recourse to supernatural or mystical devices.
40
the sky.
133
In either case, kairos names an essential
feature of every moment. It simply doesnt seem so
significant with its everyday face on.
What is most significant about everyday moments
is that each becomes another and another and another.
Each has a predecessor, a presence, and a progenitor.
Because of their everydayness, however, this series is
often neglected. The most significant moments of a
persons life arise less often. It is in these that time itself
appears to stop. It is these which punctuate the rolling
drama of ones life story. When caught in reflection,
recounting the story of life, persons tend to remember
being at weddings, and at funerals, and not at the
coffeepot. Furthermore, it is the big moments, the
moments with the capital Ms which persons dread, or
become anxious about. Here, there is climax, and
catharsis. Amongst these are the moment of death, the
moment of birth, and the moment a loved one will be
leaving forever. All of this happens in the space of a
moment, and then it is gone. The powers to avert it, or
to avoid it, or aver it, are beyond that of ones mortal coil.
One can merely answer the call. It is no wonder, thus,
that these moments leave many calling after a god. This
is the character of kairos.
Kairos has traditionally been understood both in
epistemic and in rhetorical terms. The temporal
structure of every moment in either case is retained.
Epistemically, kairos points to the context dependency of
what epistemologists call knowledge and moral theorists
call the right thing to do. These implications are implicit
in our discussion above. I repeat them here in these
terms because they lead to a further epistemic

133
And we, we are just delivery drivers.
41
implication. It is in terms of ones situation that one
comes to know the world, at all. Knowledge, itself, is
context dependent, and only comes by way of coming to
terms with ones situation. Knowing what and knowing
how both depend on coming to terms.
For instance, in a world of honest persons, it
might be counted as knowledge that lying is a bad thing
to do. In a different context, say, one more like todays
society of profit-at-all-costs latter-day capitalism, lying is
a good thing, and one is more knowledgeable if one lies
well, and less knowledgeable if one lies poorly, not to
mention much better paid.
134
All together, epistemically
speaking, meeting the terms of the moments of ones life
shapes the person one becomes, by shaping what he
calls valuable knowledge. All in all, this not a surprising
result. Hard times lead to hard men with heavy hearts
and broad shoulders who value an honest days work.
Hard times lead to men who have known hard times.
Rhetorically, the temporal structure of kairos
offers three different perspectives, and three different
modes of delivery, to suit the past present and future.
The mode corresponding to the past delivers a
judgment, or a report of information. The future oriented
delivery seeks to persuade an audience that some thing
is upcoming, or that some practice or action will meet the

134
In these terms, we can easily invent the following exchange:
Real-Estate Rookie- I figured if I tell the truth about the homes I
represent, then I will build better relationships with customers, and this will
help business.
Real-Estate Veteran- Youll learn your lesson.
Sadly, this sort of exchange is so common as to be expected. Here, what
one knows prescribes what is counted good or bad. After a few
experiences, the rookie will have to come to terms with the situation;
everyone else is a liar. And, to succeed, even in the short term, he may
learn the lesson that it is good to lie, too.
42
terms of approaching times better or less well than
others. The third mode captures each of these temporal
aspects implicitly. This is the mode of demonstration.
This mode takes place in real-time, live so to speak.
Now.
A very simple example of a demonstration
displaying temporal structure of every moment is that of
a chemical demonstration. I am thinking of that common
demonstration in elementary chemistry, an iodine clock.
With starch and iodine, a color change can be
demonstrated to occur at a specifiable time all within the
scope of the demonstration. In such a demonstration,
there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. The
beginning state is clear liquid swirling in a flask. The
middle is a transition from an ionic to a molecular form of
iodine in solution signaled by a swirling cloud of purple
color first forming and then filling the flask. The end is
this saturated color, with the reactive ingredients spent,
and the swirling slowing to a stop. The demonstration is
over, and as a whole shows one long moment in motion.
The entirety of a life can be seen in terms of this
structure, as well as every moment along its way. Lifes
details are not as tidy as are those of the iodine clock.
However, we can imagine a persons life story beginning
in the beaker of the womb. In the middle, out of the
womb and then out into the world, he changes. The
beaker changes. He mirrors others, and their reactions,
and their reaction vessels, change. He changes to suit
the beaker or changes the beaker to suit himself. Others
follow suit. The reaction takes off, and slows, spurting
along in the swirling course of life. This is ones self, a
living demonstration of enduring change in situ. As
change slows, the reaction comes to a stop, and life
ends. This is the time of ones life. All together, now.
43
Understanding that this describes a necessary
structure is critical to understanding the conscience. As
a fundamental structure of demonstration, this structure
holds for any demonstration of any process including
that of a human life. There is an endpoint to the
reaction. Persons are motivated to find a comfortable
situation, to die well, and live well along the way, a
swirling mass of color until time runs out.
It is in terms of ones end that life in the middle
has any meaning. Conscience motivates to seek ones
suitable terms by holding out situations as ends. In the
case of the entire lifetime, conscience holds out the best
situation, a happy ending to a long life story, as that
toward which one is drawn. This situation orients the
person, when he is in the middle of his life. It draws him
on to his own end. Conscience thus holds out the
situation at the end of lifes long series of action and
reaction. This is a life with a purpose, unless and until
something gets in the way.
Lets look further into the relation between kairos
and conscience. Where kairos seems to indicate
objective constraints, conscience appears to differ in that
it is most familiar from the first person perspective. A
conscience is always some unique persons conscience.
A persons conscience is what motivates an individual
person to do the right thing. Kairos points to the fact that
although right action is contextually dependent, every
context shares a temporal structure. In terms of
conscience, kairos indicates contextually dependent
objective constraints on right action, the right time. For
every instant there is a right thing to do, no matter how
minimal and no matter how distant. The trick is getting
ones self in a position to do it. This we do next section.
44
4. Conscience, and how to do the right thing at the
right time.
if one truly wants to succeed in leading
a person to a certain place, one should first
and foremost take care to find him where
he is, and start there.
-- Kierkegaard
135
We have just seen that every opportunity for
action has a common temporal structure. Every
opportunity for action shares this structure. For an
action to count as the right thing, it must meet the terms
of the situation at which it aims. These terms are both
spatial and temporal. The common object of every
action is to meet the terms of the situation calling for
action in the first place, and this means doing the right
thing at the right time. But there is more to doing the
right thing than doing time, waiting to do what one is
already ready to do. In this section, we will investigate
the role of conscience in finding the space in which the
right thing can be done.
Lets review. All ends and all beginnings of
actions are situations, which provide opportunities to
move to further ends. Every situation is a position within
a world of objects. Conscience holds these situations in
comparison, opening the space of difference between
them. It is of the content of this difference which we may
or may not be conscious. It is the difference between
situations which provides the motivational force of the
conscience. Persons with particular virtues are

135
Quoted in Lovlie, page 339.
45
motivated to seek those situations in which their virtues
are, well, virtuous. This is habit.
Being motivated by habit is nothing special to
human beings. Conscience is a basic operation of any
organism in the world with the motivating capacity to
compare what it feels like to be in a given situation
relative to another, whether these be fairy-tale happy
endings, last years nesting site, or simply that part of the
pond that feels right. All organisms are essentially
evaluative; each has a sense of the good place and the
bad.
136
Some fish stay in warm waters, some in cold,
some bacteria in reductive environments, some in
oxidative. Some persons stay safely sunbaked even
within failing traditions, while others set foundation
stones for new philosophies in the rain.
Conscience motivates according to ones
capacities to meet the terms of the situations held up for
comparison. This is because, if one attains some end,
he will have to live there. He will embody the experience
of having come to terms with that situation. When ends
are uncertain, or unselfish, only some modes of
conscience are open to the risk. These, also, are
embodied.
Consistent with this view of conscience as
embodied source of motivation, I will now analyze
motivation in terms of intension. The idea is to
capitalize on the motivational force of conscience, first in
order to get clear on the anatomy of actions, and second
to set the stage for later sections. Therein, we will meet
the minds of Kant and Heidegger and again Socrates.
To make the most of their wisdom, then, we must make
the most of conscientious motivation in general, now.

136
See Rolston, page 97.
46
First, lets consider an easy case; the case of an
individual intension. By intension, I mean in- -tension,
an internal feeling of unrest, like a spring stretched out
from one point to another.
137
Consider this. When we
are satisfied, say like Socrates sitting, we are at rest.
138
Satisfied with where we are, we are without tension.
Now, when we feel some need, and its source of
satisfaction is not here with us, we have to get up and
get it. A gap appears between the thing we need and
the position at which we were at rest. To get there, to
this better place, we must expend energy.
On my view of conscience as spring, the spring
must stretch to an end and pull oneself up to it. The end
to which it must stretch is that which it reveals as a
situation up ahead to be reached. Ends which are
distant, or difficult, are themselves a source of strain,
especially when energy is scarce. It is not a comfortable
feeling when one must be in some situation, and feel at
once unable to get there. So, persons tend to move to
ends which alleviate tension with the least effort and felt
strain for themselves. Often enough, this leads to
habitual modes of being in convention and routine.
139
For example, there is no sense walking out of ones way
to turn the lights on if one navigates the dark room well
enough to satisfy his needs. The extra effort, from this

137
Kant uses the notion of a spring to describe conscience much as I intend
it, herein, as we will see in greater depth later on.
138
Rest is classically illustrated as Socrates sitting, and for later Plato in the
form of a chair. Both of these indicate low-energy resting states; the chair
is merely the form in which sitting occurs. Anything sittable is a chair,
though not the ideal chair properly speaking. The ideal chair is the most
comfortable place to rest. To my understanding, I am the first to make
adequate sense of these forms, and you the first to see it happen.
139
Slavery can be explained in this way: it may be easier to make someone
less powerful suffer than to suffer ones self to do something ones self.
47
perspective, seems senseless. Wasted energy. We will
have more to say about this in the following pages.
Picture Socrates walking, talking, and setting the
course for the ideal Republic, for example. Unsatisfied
with where hes at, with the situation at the beginning, he
moves toward rest, towards a place in which he is
satisfied and may again find rest. This basic picture
works for every case. The hungry man wants a bologna
sandwich. A tension develops. He walks to the fridge
and builds one. He does the necessary work. Then he
eats it, moving in this series from dissatisfaction to
satisfaction, over the hurdle of bread slicing, from empty
to full. The feeling, internal, of the tension between
dissatisfaction and satisfaction, I call intension.
140141
This gap of intension is both spatial and temporal.
It takes time to close the distance between a here and a
there, and, together with the mass moved across this
space, these are the measure of the energy required to
do this work. Again, picture a spring, first at rest at point
A, then stretched from points A to B, then at rest again at
point B. In other words, there is a certain energetic
expenditure involved in the closure of the gap; this is the

140
So, a space of intension which will not stay closed is addiction, or
incontinence, or obsession, in every case directional, to some end.
141
This view is Socratic. Ones body feels empty while his memory of
past satisfactions motivates him to find something to fill his emptiness. I am
reminded of the following passages from the Philebus:
Socrates: Do we mean anything when we say "a man thirsts"?
Protarchus: Yes.
Soc: We mean to say that he "is empty"?
Pro: Of course.
Soc: And is not thirst desire?
Pro: Yes, of drink.
Soc: Would you say of drink, or of replenishment with drink?
Pro: I should say, of replenishment with drink.
48
tension in an intension, to my thinking.
142
Tension is the
difference between unrest and rest. Generally, in
plotting the course across such spaces, people take the
easiest road their little minds can imagine; nobody wants
their spring over-sprung. What persons and springs
both seek is rest. The more tension, the more forceful
the movement, and the more difficult to motivate.
Consider this. It takes energy, metabolically
measured in calories, to do anything from getting up to
change the television channel to pushing a button to
reach that same end. In either case, we intend to close
a gap between this programming and some other.
Considering the on-the-spot energetic expenditure of
getting up to change the channel after all, couch
potatoes are heavy! - it is not surprising that most people
use a clicker to eliminate the tension. In any event, this
gap, and the feeling of needing to close it, I call in-
tension, or, intension, and the feeling of tension is
proportional to the energetic requirement of getting from
here to there. All that is left is figuring the path to
closure, and this has to do with practical reason, not
conscience per se. Conscience simply provides the
grounds for the motivation to have the channel changed
by comparing the present situation, in which the show is
a rerun, and another situation, in which something new
and exciting is playing.
143
The felt difference between

142
In other contexts, I call this what it is, a work function.
143
Even practical reason depends on the experience of being in different
situations to figure how best to meet the terms of any end of action; this
experience in meeting the terms of different situations is practical wisdom.
Smart critters may bridge gaps with minimal energy, but practically wise
critters open gaps between a greater number of more fully determined
ends.
49
these two situations motivates the man to change the
channel. A man, after all, must be entertained!
What I am describing here is the way in which
spaces between situations open up. I have described
how this happens on the basis of a feeling of need. The
feeling of being in need is the internal tension that is the
felt ground of intension. This is not a feeling of which
one must be conscious. As gaps between situations
open in terms of need, persons move to close them as
efficiently as they are able, or perhaps not at all. Of
course, some gaps are more difficult to close than
others, and it feels this way. It is harder to ride 20 miles
than it is 10 for a cup of coffee than a pot of gold.
Whether it is 10 uphill and 20 down, or the 10 is ridden
standing up and the 20 lying down, or the 10 at greater
velocity, and the 20 lower, some may forgo the coffee
altogether without a thought, and never forget the gold.
Closing gaps takes work, and people measure
their own value in terms of the work they are able to do.
In the Tour de France, each rider rides the same
distance and the same hills for the same reward. Each
rider intends to finish the race, to cross the distance, to
close the gap between beginning and end. The winner
rides fastest of all; he closes the gap between start and
finish in the least time. He pays the energetic cost of
closing the gap before any other rider because he can.
It is good to win.
Even this aspect of action is not special to human
beings. All organisms are essentially evaluative of both
situations and the critters in them. They move from
places of need to places of satisfaction, or move
satisfaction into them, where this satisfaction is the good
while avoiding the bad and doing both reliably and well.
The good motivates, unless it is already realized. For a
50
professional cyclist, it is good to win, until he has won
and then it is good to rest. One may even refer to some
especially consistent cyclists as pedaling machines.
Yet, there is a potential difference between a
cyclist and a machine. A machine, an automaton, is
one for whom the good, and so motivation, is already
given. The end is where a machine will stop. Persons,
have a capacity to do otherwise. A man may pedal well
past this line, onto other ends. This is what philosophers
call freedom, or free-will. I believe that conscience is the
source of this freedom. Let me explain.
Freedom is evidenced by a sense that things
could be otherwise. In human beings, this capacity is
pronounced. Persons routinely imagine what it is like to
be in a better place, or a worse one, to be another
person, a winning cyclist or a supermodel or a
superhero.
144
Persons routinely imagine what it is like to
be other persons, and even emulate them. All of this
begins with a comparison of places, positions, or
perspectives, views, or scenes, here and there, ones
own and anothers. All of these are situations. They are
those spaces in which lives are lived and lost, spaces in
which beings of all sorts come to rest, to sit, at the
beginning and end of every action in life.
If ends are fully determined by needs, then there
is no freedom, no way that things could be otherwise.
Necessary ends are simply that: necessary.
There are instances in life, however, when the
needs which require action are met. Imagine what it
must be like to have a dissertation finished. Imagine this
from the perspective whereby for as long as can be

144
This capacity extends beyond ones own race, and includes putting
oneself in the place of any other being, a bug, bat or a stone.
51
remembered there has been only necessarily incessant
writing and editing. The work needed to be done. There
was simply no getting around it. In this case, when what
needs to be done is finally finished, there may be an
opportunity to deliberate over ends which are not
necessary. One may think about jumping from a bridge,
for example.
145
With needs met, there is an opportunity
to deliberate over ends unattached to any given object of
need. One may make it an end to simply stand and
wonder at the way that butterflies fly, for example. For
Socrates, this opportunity is where philosophy comes in,
and where practical wisdom is so important. With a
moments reflection comes opportunity.
Socrates stresses the need for a certain leisure in
Philosophic thought, and by this he means being
unbound, free to think of any thing because he is not tied
by need to any particular end. In free deliberation, in
leisurely thought, no action is required. Socratic leisure
is where freedom happens. Without any need requiring
action, whatever ends appear in deliberation are not
necessary. A man is free to deliberate insofar as he is at
leisure, and insofar as he is able. That is, insofar as he
is not tied to some end of necessity he is through
Philosophy able to consider others, limited by practical
wisdom.
The determinations of other ends are constrained
by ones own understanding. This is where it pays to
have wise friends. In opening to other situations, one
comes to have more practical wisdom about what ends
are possible, and what ends are good. If one has a
great deal of practical wisdom, he is able to deliberate
over more ends, and demonstrate the value in others.

145
With a bungy cord, of course. Clearly not a necessary action.
52
The capacity for Socratic Philosophy is practical wisdom.
Thus, should someone wish to be a Socratic
Philosopher, opportunities for practical wisdom must be
sought out. We shall return to this theme often.
Lets review this picture for a moment. Picture
Socrates walking to get a drink because he feels a need
for water. The tension between one situation, thirsty,
and another, satiated, motivates him to bridge the gap
between these two positions. Having had his drink,
Socrates is now standing. He has no pressing need. He
is, so to speak, free from need, liberated. Here, in the
space of this moment, he has an opportunity to
deliberate. Beginning with where he had been, he thinks
of where he is, and wonders what to do next. Hereby,
he opens himself to the opportunities of the moment.
Practical wisdom thus bears on kairos. Not
everyone recognizes the same opportunities in the same
space of time. It is as if persons live in different
situations, altogether. They take different perspectives
depending on the terms to which they have come. It is
the practically wise man who sees the opportunities in
the situation when others do not. This is a valuable skill,
a genuine virtue, as opportunities tend to rush all too
quickly by, and this alone is universal to every moment.
For the Greeks, Kairos was signified in human
form. The daimon Kairos, minor deity of opportunity, is
depicted as a sprinter. He has no hair and no clothes
but for a single lock hanging forward over his face. This
figure is intended to capture the elusive nature of the
opportune moment. If he is seen coming, at all, he may
be grabbed by his forward lock and the opportunity
seized. He is only there for a moment, and then he is
past. From behind, there is nothing to hold onto, nothing
to grab. This signifies the fact that, once an opportunity
53
passes, the moment is gone, and there is no way of
bringing it back. The trick is to see him for what he is.
It is the practically wise man who sees the
opportunities coming when others do not. It is practical
wisdom which is the capacity to arrive each time at
something new, namely, the correct logos for the current
situation. Practical wisdom is understanding that can
be brought to bear in coming to terms with onrushing
situations, and in helping others to do the same. This is
especially important in critical times, changing times, fast
moving times when the terms of ones own limited
understanding are in question and ones own future is
uncertain. This is when practical wisdom is most
valuable, and when conscience is the guide. Thus, to
discover opportunity in the world to do the right thing at
the right time for ones self and others alike requires both
an open heart and an open mind.
In the following section, I will present a game
which demonstrates this relationship. Through this
illustration, I will present the basics of the ACTWith
model of conscience. This model will be enriched
through the sections to follow. We will rejoin the
following game in the 15th section of this text.
54
5. Conscience, and the limits of experience.
Why, havent you learned anything in your
time with me?
No sir. I have learned that a man will do
anything for a potato.
-- The Empire of the Sun
146
Have you ever wondered how it is that two
persons who have lived at the same address for many
years can be in the same room and not really be
together, as if they were on different planets let alone on
the same floor of the house? Have you ever been in a
relationship with someone who falls in love at the drop of
a hat, or another who couldnt seem to care less if her
lover lived or died? Have you ever known someone in a
position of authority who bullies his peers as if he had a
privileged view on the universal truth, or likewise have
you ever known someone who always caves in? In this
section, we will begin to understand how it is that these
come to be characteristic modes of different persons.
Each character is arrived at through habitual modes of
conscience.
In this section, I will introduce the ACTWith model
of conscience in detail. I will demonstrate why different
modes of conscience are necessary, and to what these
differences amount. I will introduce the model through
the use of a simple game, The Potato Game. This
game will demonstrate the different modes of
conscience at work. The rest of the text will expand on
this basic model until, by the conclusion, we will

146
From the movie, from the novel, of the same name, written by J.G.
Ballard, distributed by Warner Bros.
55
understand to what these different modes add up after a
lifetime of habitually engaging in one or another.
Even though, in this section, we will examine just
4 basic modes of conscience with the help of a simple
game, the ACTWith model is scientifically sound. The
ACTWith model integrates the contemporary
neurological research with artificial intelligence research
and synthesizes these with the traditional philosophical
understanding of the conscience. The goal is to clarify
the role of conscience in such things as freedom, love,
and responsibility, by accounting for the human capacity
to go where one wishes, emulate who one wishes, and
maintain personal integrity in terms consistent with what
these cognitive sciences reveal about the human
condition.
For example, the ACTWith model makes explicit
the essential positionality of experience (the function of
the hippocampus, generally speaking), and makes
explicit the fundamental roles played by the faces and
actions of other human beings in experience (thought to
be recognized by the region of the fusiform gyrus, and
modeled after by the distributed mirror neural structures,
generally speaking) and of the special human capacity to
mediate the values of these experiences (the role of the
prefrontal cortex, generally speaking). All of these and
other complex functions are integrated within one simple
model of conscience. Interpreted through the rich lens
of traditional philosophy, the ACTWith model helps to
clarify the role of conscience in overcoming the prejudice
leading to racism, in understanding what it is like to have
different religious orientations, and in living in peaceful
tolerance rather than in warring intolerance, for example.
The ACTWith model is a scientific advance
because, to this point, no one has integrated all of the
56
neurological research with the A.I. with the philosophical
tradition, and on this basis delivered a unified account of
what it feels like to live up to ones fullest human
potentials in light of everyday tensions. The ACTWith
model of conscience does this work. It is a model for
being in the world which opens the possibility for
engineering machines who feel and who fall victim to
irony. It is a model for being in the world which serves
as a mirror by which a man can measure himself as a
moral person. It is a tool for introspectively developing
the individual conscience, in order to do the right thing at
the right time when the opportunity presents itself.
Starting with the following simple game we will, by
the conclusion of this text, be in the best possible
position to answer the most difficult question to affect
any thinking person since the dawn of time. I am not
talking merely about the hypothetical question: what is
the meaning of life? I am talking about the one we each
care about even more than that: what is the meaning of
my life, now, on this Earth, here, today?
First, lets review. The basic idea is a simple one.
Persons live in situations. To be situated is to be in a
position. The determinations of a position are those in
terms of which a person lives and dies. There are good
and there are bad positions. Conscience, roughly,
compares positions as if one might live or die within
them.
The ACTWith model operates through two
essential movements. ACTWith stands for as-if and
coming to terms with a situation. The as-if is a taking
up of a situation for ones own. It is the feeling of being
in a position. The coming to terms with is the
determination of that situation. It is understanding what
being in that position means. Roughly, the as-if is an
57
affective operation. It has to do with what it feels like to
be in a given situation. The coming to terms with is a
rational operation. It has to do with parsing the
situation by ordering regularities in the way being in a
situation feels. The ACTWith model integrates these two
aspects, one of feeling and one of reason, into one
unified model of conscientious being in the world.
The picture of the human mind as consisting of
two aspects, one affective and one rational, is not new.
Philosophers have struggled to reconcile these two
seemingly exclusive poles of human experience for
thousands of years. As we shall see in chapters to
come, some philosophers have made good sense of
how these two aspects of human experience work
together. We will take advantage of their insights as we
enrich the bare model introduced in this section. We will
look at Kants moral philosophy, Heideggers
phenomenology, Diogenes Cynicism, contemporary
feminist critiques of personal identity, and more deeply
at Socrates Philosophic life as we proceed.
First, the basics of the ACTWith model. The as-
if involves affectively putting ones self into a situation.
It involves feeling as if a situation were ones own. It has
two basic modes. One is either open to feeling as if one
were in another situation, or one is closed to it.
147
Openness is often called sympathy, or compassion,
and closedness the lack thereof, but there is more to the
process than these simple terms convey. Adam Smith
tried to account for the complexity underlying openness
to anothers situation in the following passage:

147
Think of openness as love and closure as disgust and you will have a
sense of their most extreme forms.
58
By the imagination we place ourselves in
his situation, we conceive ourselves
enduring all the same torments, we enter
as it were into his body, and become in
some measure the same person with him,
and thence form some idea of his
sensations, and even feel something
which, though weaker in degree, is not
altogether unlike them.
148
Smith is describing something universal to human
beings in the terms of his times, those he had available
for his introspection. His description captures the sense
that in compassion one transcends his own boundaries.
One not only feels for another person; one feels as if one
were that other person.
In terms of the ACTWith model, this is exactly
what Smith is describing: the feeling of being as-if in
another situation. This is a feeling first and foremost.
One does not come to this feeling by imposing ones
own experiences on what it is to be in anothers
situation. One opens himself to experience what it is to
be in another place besides the one in which he rests.
One does not substitute his own understanding of the
discrete aspects of the world and their relations, of what
objects cause what feelings and why, for those of
another persons situation.
149
One feels as-if another
simply by mirroring that others affective state, insodoing

148
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, page I.I.2. One must
be careful how he cashes out Smiths term degree, let alone imagination.
149
This describes the closed mode of the as-if operation.
59
taking clues of this state by way of that others facial
expressions, body language, and more.
150

The as-if is the felt starting grounds of the
ACTWith model of conscience.
151
The coming to terms
with builds on these grounds. It is the coming to an
understanding of what it is to be in a position. It is
determining what it is like to be in a certain situation.
This has to with determining objects, their relations, and
their implications for the feeling of being in that situation
as opposed to others. Coming to terms with a situation
takes more than a bleeding heart; it takes an open mind.
In coming to terms with what it is to be in a situation, one
realizes the constraints and appreciates the
opportunities that go with being in a given place.
In coming to terms with a situation, one, literally,
de-termines the situation. He plots its terminations.
He notes the whys and wherefores of its ends and
openings. It is through coming to terms with a situation
that one is able to explain what it is to be in that position.
In merely feeling as-if being in a situation, one is not
able to explain why being there feels the way it does. It
simply feels that way. It is in coming to terms with
these feelings that any possible explanation proceeds.
When one is both open to feel what it is to be in a
situation, and is coming to terms with a situation as-if

150
We covered this operation in some detail in the Forward, especially.
Also therein was introduced the notion that this psychology grounds the
benefit of freedom of expression in a group, that there is no barrier to
information sharing from position to position within the group structure.
Thusly, granted that group members remain open to group members, the
group is best able to respond to environmental changes, thereby ensuring
group integrity and individual success. That is, openness is, functionally, a
good thing.
151
It is what is called a bottom-up model, meaning that it is affective first
and rational second.
60
one lives there, it is as-if ones survival depends on
understanding what is going on in a situation that is not
even, necessarily, his own. In this mode, one feels he
must deal with the situation, not merely pass through like
a tourist looking for familiar restaurants. Adam Smith
captures this aspect of the operation of conscience, true
compassion, in the following lines:
His agonies, when they are thus brought
home to ourselves, when we have thus
adopted and made them our own, begin at
last to affect us, and we then tremble and
shudder at the thought of what he feels.
152
The as-if and the coming to terms with are
essentially related. In the human being, there is never
one without the other, though different persons have
different capacities for feelings and their determinations.
One only comes to terms with a situation by affectively
opening to it. One does not come to terms with a
situation by merely imposing the terms of a prior
understanding on that situation.
153
The relationship between these two operations
has deep implications for theories of learning. However
one proceeds through a situation, the terms to which one
comes are those which he then brings to his next
situation. If one remains closed to affective indications
of what it is to be in any given situation, he effectively
limits the terms to which he comes, the understanding
he produces, and thus the terms which he brings to any

152
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, I.I.2.
153
Though, it seems as we age that there is more and more to impose, just
as in infancy there is little or none.
61
given situation the next time around.
154
A closed mind is
surely the greatest enemy of truth, as a hard heart is
surely the greatest enemy of wisdom. Neither learn very
well.
The conscience is at work both in opening and
closing to situations, and also in the ongoing
assessment of which situations are worth opening or
closing to. The terms to which one has come in his life
effectively limits his conscientious comparison of
different situations, ones own, or others, past or
upcoming. Here, we begin to see the fundamental
relation between wisdom, Philosophy, and conscience.
We noted this relationship early in the text, and will have
much more to say about it later. It is through the
exercise of conscience that history is made.
In order to secure the opportunities which present
themselves in each new moment, one must meet the
terms which the emerging situation presents. To come
to terms with any given situation, one must relax his prior
understanding in order to take the new situation as it
presents itself. This basic movement opens what is the
opportunity universal to every different situation:
understanding. Each new moment presents an
opportunity to understand. There can be no new
understanding if a prior understanding is merely imposed
on the moment. The greatest enemy of both truth and
wisdom is, indeed, prejudice.
The more terms to which one has come, the more
terms can be brought to bear in understanding other

154
He, literally, de-termines the extent off opportunity in any given
situation. Much will be made of this fact as the text continues to its climax
when we take on globalization and the natural environment, but much must
be explained beforehand.
62
positions. It is in having these terms at hand that one
can identify opportunities in given situations. This is
equally important when the situation involves ones own
or anothers upcoming opportunity. Experiencing the
benefit that a broad range of determinations has in
finding the good in situations leads one to value those
modes that are productive of these determinations. It is
through this experience that one comes to value
understanding, Philosophy, and the modes of
conscience which are productive of the former and
conducive to the latter. This is why older people are
thought to be wiser. It is also why older people are most
likely to be vicious bigots. The fewer terms to which one
has come, the greater danger there is in discounting the
value of understanding, and imposing prior
determinations on any new situation. All prejudice is
rooted in ignorance.
The open and closed modulations of the two
aspects of the ACTWith model, as-if and coming to
terms with, produce four fundamental modes of
conscience:
As-if (closed) = ones feeling of being in a
situation is closed to others and centered on his own.
As-if (open) = one is open to feeling what it is to
be in another situation: we enter, as it were, into his
body.
155

155
In most basic physiological terms, this mechanism is disgust/love. One
can train himself to not feel disgust at another situation, and to open to it
instead, as is the case with prejudice. This plasticity is presumed by all
persons who hope for a peaceful human world, but may be to some degree
generationally constrained. See remarks on adolescence scattered
throughout this text.
63
Coming to terms with (closed) = the terms of
ones own prior understanding is imposed in evaluation
of the situation.
Coming to terms with (open) = one is open for
clues to another understanding to be adopted in
evaluation of the situation: and we then tremble and
shudder at the thought of what he feels. By the
thought of what he feels, I see Smith noting coming to
terms with the situation in discrete thought.
156
One is
open to the determination of anothers situation, new
situations for himself, or even to new determinations of
old ones.
In terms of traditional ways of talking about the
human mind, the as-if is felt, the coming to terms with
is rational. The ACTWith model synthesizes the two. In
todays artificial intelligence applications, engineers call
the sort of model a hybrid because it consists of both
the affective and the rational.
157
For the engineer in A.I.,
these two represent two different modes of computation.
The rational mode is discrete. It involves definite things
in definite relation with other definite things. This mode
of computation is what people typically think of when
they think of mathematics. 1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2
Apples. This is discrete mathematics. This also
represents the traditional presumption of what counts as
intelligence: discrete computational intelligence. The
affective mode is not discrete. Instead of adding
separate individual things, non-discrete computation
sums fields wherein no one part stands out as a
separate entity from the rest. This is what some persons
have begun to call emotional intelligence, for example.

156
This has to do with taking situation modeling offline from bodily updates.
157
For example, in Ron Suns work he builds these sorts of agents.
64
We implicitly discovered these two modes of
computation as they enter into a basic human
psychology in both the Forward and the first chapters of
this text. In the Forward, we worked through a basic
developmental psychology which implicitly employed this
dynamic. The first chapters discussion of what it is like
to be in the DMV also implicitly employed this dynamic.
In that discussion, we began with what it feels like to be
in a situation and, with repetition, added these feelings
together. In that discussion, I advised that you think of
the feeling of being in the situation as a readout from an
EKG machine. It is a curve, itself characterized by
peaks and valleys but without any thing standing out as
essentially separate from any other. Through this
discussion, we saw how aspects of the situation come to
stand out as things in themselves, discretely. We began
to see how the world comes to seem in conscious
thought as if composed of discrete individual things.
This is the psychological grounds of what
philosophers have called ontology the study of what
is and of metaphysics the stuff that goes on behind
the physical things which we take to constitute the stuff
going on. We will make a great deal of these results as
the text continues, as we are all everyday armchair
ontologists whether we like it or not. It is through the
ontologies that we build that we will approach the
answer to that oldest of questions, what is the meaning
of life? from a more compelling angle, what is the
meaning of my life? First, however, there is a great
deal of ground to cover.
Taken altogether, the four modes of the ACTWith
model of conscience account for both the rational and
the felt aspects of being in the world, and also how it is
that persons come to learn about the things of the world
65
by feeling their way around in it. The model is complete.
Now, we must work at coming to terms with it.
Here are the four possible permutations of the
ACTWith model of conscience:
As-if (closed) coming to terms with (closed)
As-if (open) coming to terms with (closed)
As-if (closed) coming to terms with (open)
As-if (open) coming to terms with (open)
The best way to understand what these modes
entail is to understand what common attitudes they
represent. I will often employ a shorthand to make
things easier. As-if (closed) coming to terms with
(closed) is c/c, the next is o/c, the third c/o, and the last
o/o.
In the briefest of terms, c/c being in ones own
situation and understanding that situation only in terms
of prior experience. o/c is being open to another
situation, but understanding that situation only in terms
of prior experience. c/o is being in ones situation and
being open to new determinations of that situation. o/o
is being open to new situations and being open to new
determinations of these situations. o/o is the mode
Socrates demonstrates when he runs around Athens
saying he doesnt know anything about anything. o/o is
the mode that makes him the wisest man in Athens.
It is important to understand how each of these
modes operates in everyday situations. It is also
important to highlight the moral implications that these
different modes bring to everyday situations. There is
something that most moral issues have in common, and
this is that they deal with scarce resources. Famine,
poverty, health-care, War in the Gulf, education,
genocide, abortion, all of these deep moral problems
66
deal with scarce resources, whether these are food,
money, medicine, energy, land, or life. Thus, in order to
illustrate the moral implications of the 4 basic modes of
the ACTWith model, I have invented a simple game
involving scarce resources which makes these
implications explicit. Granted, the game is a little overly
simple as it is presented, but it should help us to begin to
recognize the four basic modes of conscience at work in
our own everyday lives, modes which we shall expand in
the 15
th
chapter.
Think of the following simple case. Two hungry
persons are in a bare room and one of them has a
potato. The potato is freshly baked and salted, ready for
eating. The potato will completely satisfy one of them,
and in this game can be split. However, only one of
these persons, call him 0, has to this point in his life ever
missed a meal. He understands what it is like to be
empty, and to stay that way. The other person, call him
1, has not to this point in his entire life ever missed a
meal. He does not know what it is like to go hungry. He
has always been filled up. Not only has he never had to
come to terms with unsatisfied hunger, on his own, but
he hasnt ever seen anyone else go through it, either.
What this game is intended to do is to illustrate
the role that prior understanding plays in limiting or
revealing opportunities in different situations. Even
though the two agents share the situation they are
both hungry, in the same room, and confronted with a
single potato - each agent begins the game with
distinctly different understandings of the situation. 1,
when hungry, always has had a potato fresh and ready
to eat so as to satisfy his hunger; he stays filled up. 0,
however, knows what it is like to stay empty. However,
he also knows what it is to eat. He has come to terms
67
with either situation, and brings this understanding into
the game. 1 only understands the one.
The game as described is what philosophers and
game theorists call a one-off game. What happens in a
one-off game only happens once, so the understanding
generated in this run does not affect what the agents do
with any given potato later on in life. Likewise, the one-
off game player has no anticipation of any later on in life
to begin with. He is stuck in this one-off game. A one-
off game involves players who are not interested in
learning anything, or in teaching each other any lessons.
There is no future in a one-off game. The agents
themselves have no expectations that the game will
continue, or even that they will ever see each other
again. It happens only once. The focus on a single
transaction will bring into focus the difference that prior
understanding brings to human interactions through the
4 basic modes of conscience.
Now, consider what happens if 1 begins with the
potato. 0 is present and they are both hungry. According
to the ACTWith model, 1 has four basic modes available:
1) c/c. Closed to what it feels like to be in another
situation, closed to new determinations of the situation
one is in. Having never come to terms with hunger, and
having no experience what it is like to have hunger
unsatisfied, 1 eats the potato blissfully ignorant of what it
is like to be affected by the terms which he imposes on
the other: unabated hunger. In terms of mirroring the
others affect, he does not. In terms of being
compassionate, he is not. In terms of expanding his
prior understanding on the basis of a new situation, he
does not. He goes with what he knows, and what he
knows is to eat the potato.
68
2) o/c. Open to what it feels like to be in another
situation, closed to new determinations of that situation.
Having never come to terms with hunger, having no prior
experience of hunger, 1 eats the potato. Though he may
wonder why the other is getting so upset, he has no
terms to begin understanding that condition, and is
closed to determining what these might be. Open to the
others situation, however, he feels the difference
between his own and the others respective situations
with the help of the others expressions. In terms of
mirroring anothers affect, he does, but he does not
determine this space. He feels unsettled by their
differences, a feeling which, if the game were not a one-
off game, may lead him to do differently next time, but
for the moment he merely eats his potato at a loss for an
explanation as to why the other is grimacing so.
3) c/o. Closed to what it feels like to be in another
situation, open to the new determinations of the situation
one is in. Having never come to terms with hunger, he
eats the potato while witnessing the other come to terms
with his situation, which is unsatisfied hunger. 1 thus
comes to terms with hunger, but he is only brought
home to it in a limited way, his own. Hunger is still a
situation he has not felt, but now realizes as a discrete
relation between the other, himself, and the potato, that
being that the other person continues to complain about
being hungry and doesnt have one, while he himself
offers no such complaint, and does. By the expression
on 0s hungry face, he begins to see that the potato is
more valuable than he had otherwise thought, but he
doesnt feel any need to share it. He simply comes to
appreciate his own situation a little more than he used
to.
69
4) o/o. Open to what it feels like to be in another
situation, open to new determinations of that situation.
Though having never come to terms with hunger, and
with no idea of what it is like to have hunger unsatisfied,
he gives the potato to the other. Coming to terms with
unabated hunger generates an understanding of what it
is like to have no potato, and he is open to this feeling.
Open to the others situation he takes it for his own. He
was used to having a potato, so he gives it away, and
thereby determines the limits and opportunities available
to one who begins in that position, without a potato. He
becomes wiser. Were this game to continue, he would
take this new understanding into the next moment, and
probably be a nicer guy.
What this game is intended to illustrate is the role
which prior experience plays in the determination of the
right thing to do. On the basis of his prior experience, 1
had no understanding going into the game of the real
value of the potato, for he had never gone without one.
On the basis of the terms available to his evaluation, he
only shares the potato in the open/open mode. This is
the mode which invites doing the work of enduring
changing situations, and then of coming to terms with
them, even if these situations are anothers and not
ones own. This is the mode of the conscientious person
who genuinely shares in the situations of others. I have
represented 1 as simply giving the entire potato away in
this situation because I figure he has had no experience
of sharing half-potatoes in the past. If he had had some
experience with sharing other things, like toys, or books,
he may have applied this experience to this situation.
But, in this simple illustration, such concerns dont
surface.
70
The fruit of the o/o mode is an understanding of a
different situation in the fullest possible light. The fruit of
this mode is practical wisdom. This fruit only ripens with
repetition, however. There is little use for wisdom in a
one-off game; one either eats or he does not. But, what
if this was not a one-off game? What if life were to go on
after 1 does what he does with this potato? In going
hungry, learning from his experience, open to the
experience of the other, 1 becomes wiser. He
understands the difference between having a potato and
not, and can bring this to bear in evaluating the others
situation in the future. This prepares him for future
moments by enriching the terms of his understanding of
what it is to be in the world. Conscientious, he comes to
understand what it feels like to be in other positions. In
the other modes, the result is variable.
Let us consider this same set of options from the
perspective of agent 0. 0 has the same four basic
modes from the model given, above:
1) c/c. Closed to what it feels like to be in another
situation, closed to new determinations of the situation.
Though having come to terms with hunger, and with a
good idea of what it is like to have hunger unsatisfied, he
eats the potato closed to the others suffering intent only
on filling the nagging hole in his own empty belly.
2) o/c. Open to what it feels like to be in another
situation, closed to new determinations of the situation.
Having come to terms with hunger, himself, and with the
prior understanding of what it is like to have hunger
unsatisfied, he shares the potato because he already
understands what it feels like to be the others position,
without a potato to eat. 0 acts solely on the basis of his
own prior determinations of what it is to go hungry upon
being open to the others situation, hunger. He may not
71
come to terms with the others situation, but practically
speaking, in this one-off game, he doesnt need to. He
feels for him, and shares the potato anyways.
3) c/o. Closed to what it feels like to be in another
situation, open to new determinations of the situation. 0
is in an unusual position. Closed to feeling as-if in the
others position, and open to new determinations of his
own, 0 eats the potato and discovers what it is like to
have a potato and not share it. He comes to terms with
the consequences of his own selfishness in light of
scarce resources.
If this were not a one-off game, the situation is
more complex. Withholding the potato may lead to
feelings of guilt. Granted that the consumption of the
potato takes a little time, 0 may go either way,
depending on the sorts of affective indications which 1
generates while he is eating. If 1 is dying of hunger,
because 0 understands that he may partly be the cause
of 1s death, 0 may share as these are not terms to
which he may want to come. If 1 is whining simply
because he has never gone hungry, 0 eats the potato
himself thinking that 1 coming to terms with hunger will
be a good thing in case 1 starts out with the potato next
time. 0 may try to teach 1 a moral lesson: maybe, in
going hungry for once, 1 will appreciate the value of the
potato, and share with needy others in the future. Some
simply have to learn the hard way. Or, 0 may share the
potato, even as 1 comes to terms with hunger, making a
special point that it is his charity which saves 1 from a
painful end, expecting that it will be better for himself in
the future if 1 has this information. We will have more to
say about these options in when we return to the potato
game in chapter 15.
72
4) o/o. Open to the perspective of the other, and
open to the terms of the others situation, 0 shares the
potato if he does not give it away completely.
158

Again, if it was not a one-off game, things are
more complicated. 0 may withhold the potato
purposefully, even though it hurts him to do so, so that 1
can become a wiser, better person and behave
differently in future trials. 0 may even go so far as to eat
half the potato, and hide the rest, until 1 begins to
appreciate the hungry persons situation. Then, he may
reveal the half-potato, and share it, having helped 1
learn a valuable lesson for 1s own benefit, and for the
good of the rest of the world. Again, we will return to
these options in chapter 15.
What this description is intended to illustrate is the
role which prior experience plays in the determination of
the right thing to do. On the basis of his prior
experience, 0 had understanding going into the game of
the real value of the potato, for he had gone without one
before. On the basis of the terms available to his
evaluation, then, he only fails to share the potato in the
affectively closed modes, with a hard heart, so to speak.
The agents in the preceding illustration are what
is called ideal. That is, they are not very realistic.
Realistically, agents learn. They suffer the
consequences of their actions. The agents in the game
as given above do not. What if these were more realistic
agents? What if these agents learned from prior
experience that there would be other experiences
ahead? If we can picture the consequences of acting in
certain modes of conscience rather than others, then we
will have a picture of a more realistic conscientious

158
This is the mode of the martyr, of selflessness, charity, and love.
73
agent. Realistic agents have character. They do things
in characteristic ways. In terms of the ACTWith model,
these characteristics are generated through
conscientious exercise. In terms of everyday life, the
consequences of this exercise are very complex. It will
take a lot of work to come to terms with the everyday
implications of the ACTWith model.
Lets begin by enriching our basic understanding.
We can make a bit more of the four basic modes to more
realistically represent the dynamic whereby an agent
comes to terms with any given situation. The idea is to
couch the ACTWith model in the middle of an ongoing
life.
So, think of the 4 basic modes as if they were
types of personalities and grounded propensities to act
in certain ways day to day rather than merely in a certain
way for one action. The first two permutations c/c and
c/o - represent modes which are affectively closed to
others, and the latter two modes which are affectively
open to others. The */o modes represent being open to
the objective terms of situations, and the o/* modes
represent being open to the subjective conditions within
these situations.
Characteristically open persons are experimental,
caring, flexible, anticipate the needs of their fellows,
etcetera.
Closedness, on the other hand, implies going on
as if ones own determinations of the values of relative
objects are adequate on their own (*/c), and going on as
if ones subjective condition is the only situation to matter
(c/*). Closedness (*/c) is the mode whereby one man
takes his own experience as a measure of another
mans, whereby prejudice exists, and one person is able
find joy in the suffering of another. This is the space of
74
habit, routine, and dogma. This is the space of egoism,
and the necessary attitude of anyone who endorses
torture (c/c) and the punitive rule of law over the painful
needs of another sensitive creature (o/c).
Openness is generative of wisdom. It is through
being open to the world that one comes to new
determinations of different situations (*/o). This
openness leads to increased understanding, and this is
brought with that person into his next situation. But
there is a price to pay for understanding; remaining open
to the changing terms of other situations, and not closing
off to the world, instead of proceeding simply on the
basis of ones own prior understanding, the person open
to other situations and new determinations is also open
to suffering (o/*). Thus, the open modes are stressful
modes, and the closed more controlled.
There is a callow comfort in bigotry, and this
explains the casual cold aloofness of the closed-minded
(*/c). Contrarily, there is warmth in openness, and this
explains the sensitive and even suffering posture of the
open-minded (*/o).
For one thing, the open modes of conscience
imply that one takes his prior experience to not be
exhaustive of the current situation. The open minded
person may appear to have no understanding of the
situation at all when, properly speaking, he has merely
relaxed the terms of the understanding he does have in
order to see what the current situation presents on its
own. The consequences are that the person is open to
determinations which do not initially fit with his prior
determinations. This causes an apparent confusion,
stress, and anxiety. In being open, one invites revisions
to his prior understanding. The price of being open is
constant attention to changes in the world and of ones
75
own situation within it. Characteristically open to new
situations and determinations, one adopts an attitude of
not knowing (*/o).
Famously, this was Socrates attitude. We are
now in a position to make better sense of Socrates old
Philosophical habit, beginning with the presumption that
he knew nothing. He was courageous, and will look
more deeply at his example in the chapters to follow.
The price of being open to the world comes in the
form of turbulence. These modes of conscience are
open to the terms of the situation even if these appear,
on the basis of past experience, chaotic. Making sense
of chaos is risky business; it doesnt always work out
and it is often very hard to do. It takes a long time, and a
lot of dedication, to find the patterns in seemingly
unpatterned aspects of the world to which one opens.
The price of being open lies in exposing ones self to
crisis (o/*), and in the anxiety that comes with
uncertainty(*/o), especially when that uncertainty
attaches to where one is and where one will end up next!
Staying open to the world is hard work.
Understanding this fact generates the understanding that
wisdom, itself, is valuable. Otherwise, there appears to
be no sense in finding order in a chaotic environment by
experiencing uncertainty, through confessing that one
doesnt know everything he needs to know to get by.
There is merely what has obvious value and what does
not. For the closed minded and hard-hearted person,
valuing wisdom is stupid, because all it does is make
things harder for ones self. We will see Socrates
making this same point in the chapters to come.
The relationship between the open modes of
conscience and wisdom helps us to understand the
relationship between feeling what it is to be in a situation
76
and the sort of person one becomes in life. In the
development of a persons character, the ACTWith
model presents a crucial asymmetry in the relationship
between the as-if and the coming to terms with
aspects of conscience. This is that terms to which one
has come through prior openness to feeling out different
situations (o/*, i.e. bottom-up) become definitive of the
self as one proceeds to other situations later on (c/o).
159
In terms of AI, this is a top-down process (*/o),
whereby what it will feel like to be in any given situation
is shaped by new determinations of the one felt, now.
One understands himself in terms to which he has
already come. However, in being open to the world,
prior experience does not necessarily determine the new
situation, or necessarily ones self within it. For instance,
in the mode of o/c, one feels as-if another only insofar as
his prior understanding allows an insight into that
situation. This is characterized as caring about some
one without actually caring for them. We all know
people who live habitually in this mode. For instance, I
once had a friend offer that I paint her house. She was
open to my situation insofar as the terms allowed it. She
loves money, and she felt my need for an income. She
then offered that my tensions be alleviated by working
for her, on her terms. She offered to help by imposing a
substandard wage and an impossible schedule in terms
of my own situation (as I required time each day to make
progress on my dissertation manuscript). In terms of her
own situation, her impositions likely seemed appropriate,
and she understood her offer as one of genuine concern.

159
This is the step to which Adam Smith refers:when they are thus
brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them
our own, begin at last to affect us
77
After all, what she cared about was the money, and the
time, her own. When I appealed to her to take into
consideration the other terms determinative of my
situation (that is, to enjoin in the o/o mode), she refused
to budge from her own characteristic mode (*/c).
Though I felt her anxiety over a cheap and easy
completion to her project, I was inflexible in at least one
determination of my own situation, that of the daily work
on the dissertation which the terms of her schedule
made impossible (here, we were both */c). Unable to
come to common determinations of our shared situation
(neither */o), the work fell through. Now, we are mutually
closed (c/c).
In the o/o mode, the employer/employee
asymmetry appears differently. One can remain open to
the other situation and mirror what it is to be in that
situation, waiting for clues to present themselves as to
what it is to be in that position when there is no prior
understanding of that situation to begin with. It is as-if
one were in that position experiencing what it is to be so
situated. This is conscientiousness, to have a
conscience. But, this mode is easier said than done. It
requires that one have the leisure to relax the anxieties
associated with the control over determinations of the
situation. Thus, in terms of the above example, I
expected the relatively wealthy and established friend
and would-be employer to enjoin in the o/o mode before
expecting the cash-strapped and over-worked graduate
student to do so. Not surprisingly, this did not happen.
It is of this would-be employers subjective character to
expect that her terms be met (*/c), even when any
objective evaluation of her situation would reveal this
need not be the case.
78
For the most part, I suppose that her
characteristic mode has worked for her. She has
attained a professional position wherein others typically
meet her on her own terms (she is a professor at a
university), and in this situation the paternal o/c mode is
effective. She seeks similar engagements with others
outside of her professional position as well. In these
situations, the characteristic o/c mode is typically
understood as condescension and elitist dis-
ingenuousness. In the classroom, it passes for an airy
superiority.
In the end, the mode itself is not important. What
is important is that different modes are more or less
effective in different situations. For instance, in teaching,
I myself have found that the c/o mode is the most
crucial: one must meet the student on his own terms,
understand them, in order to lead him on to others.
Of the four, it is the o/o mode which is the most
important to the mechanism of morality. It is being open
to others and open to the terms of other situations which,
as we shall see, characterize conscientiousness,
goodwill, and sensitivity to the necessity of the moment.
Though it appears that the closed modes are best at
making things better for ones self, alone, if actions on
their basis can be leveraged,
160
it is this mode, the open
mode, which is necessary if any of us are to go very far
in making the world a better place for the generations to
come. It is the o/o mode which works to make the
situation, in common, better for everyone, in common.
We must become wise persons to meet the terms of

160
This is why closed modes are characteristic of power-over and selfish
personalities and why characteristically closed personalities seek high
status, self-aggrandizing empowerment.
79
changing times, and this means getting used to the
turbulence of crisis and the associated anxieties. The
ACTWith model shows us how to do it.
Habitual adoption of any mode of conscience in
any given sort of situation becomes a characteristic mark
of ones personality. One becomes used to being in
given contexts in certain habitual ways, and shows the
stability of these expectations as marks of his character.
They indicate expectations of the situation one takes
with himself even as he comes into that situation. They
describe different types of people, and different types of
people make different sorts of things happen and seek
different sort of situations in which to make them happy.
Out of habit, these persons bring their characteristic
modes of being in the world with them, wherever they
go, and in so doing bring their world with them, too.
Different modes of conscience are effective in different
situations, and consequently different characteristic
modes of conscience work at making the world a place
in which their own characteristic modes are most
effective.
For example, think of a tyrant (c/c) who runs an
academic department. Lets call him Professor ManPig.
ManPig sets up departmental meetings. In these
meetings, he forces his determinations of academic
value on department guidelines (o/c). He pushes for an
environment which suits the success of his own
characteristic modes of conscience (closed). He
determines that the successful faculty member will
employ shameless self-aggrandizement (c/*) to receive
raises in pay and preferred scheduling. He stresses
strict adherence to rules and regulations (*/c), and
argues against flexibility for others because, for him,
80
other situations and their determinations do not matter
(c/c).
161
Compare this academic tyrant with a chairman
who served before him. Lets call him Professor
GoodMan. That man demonstrates daily flexibility and
care (o/o) both in his own work (c/o) and with others
(o/o). He works at finding consensus (*/o) whereby the
best efforts of each diverse member (o/*) of the
department can be encouraged (o/o).
162
Frankly, if freedom of inquiry (*/o) is any measure
of the quality of an industry committed to scientific
discovery, GoodMans mode is productive of a far better
environment for everyone involved. ManPig only stifles
free inquiry by imposing arbitrary constraints (*/c). The
resulting context is good only for those who already
share his exclusive agenda. Not so for GoodMans
department. This context is open. We may assume that
either acted toward what he took to be the good. Either
way, habitual modes of conscience lead to differences in
character and to differences in characteristic ends.
Of the four characteristic modes of conscience, it
is the first and fourth, c/c and o/o, which stand out in
experience. Consider the person habitually in the first
mode, c/c. This person is tuned to his own needs, and
cares to understand nothing past his own situation. This
person is not happy unless he has it all because, after
all, he already knows everything he needs to know to
rationalize its appropriation: it is already his. Dealing
with this mode of conscience is like looking for a soft-

161
We see current political leadership oscillating between these modes,
imposing terms (o/c) and withholding information when its determinations
are questionable (c/c). In either case, bad leaders with cold hearts.
162
Professor Paul Weirich is the model, here. He is a great guy.
81
spot in the proverbial brick wall. This mode of
conscience is dogmatic, selfish, and takes the world on
his own terms. He is closed to the world and to the
persons in it. He imposes the terms of his own
understanding on others as standards, and he
represents these very subjective terms as-if they were
objective. This describes the academic tyrant in the
above illustration. The bullying know-it-all ManPig.
This is the first sort of personality to claim some
privileged insight into objective truth. He will see things
no other way. This is the conscience of a sociopath, a
sadist, and a bigot. This person without a conscience,
so to speak, bases evaluations of other situations on his
own terms (*/c), forces his understanding on the moment
(c/*), claiming dominion through broad, self-serving
platitudes (c/c). These rigid generalizations are likely
constructed in order to overcome an essentially selfish
sense of locality in the face of diversity (c/*).
163
Inflexible
(*/c), forcing his own issues (c/*), he is interested in
universals and in rigid absolutes, as these stand in for a
certain contract with the world. His determinations of the
objective world are static, forced, and selfish (c/c). This
is his situation.
The fourth is the opposite. It is the conscience of
a saint or an angel, of mercy and grace. This is the
positive mode of morality, when one is willing to come to
new determinations (*/o). This mode of conscience is
open to the world and to the others in it (o/*).
164
Dealing
with this mode of conscience is like finding a soft-spot in

163
We will see much more of this in the later sections dedicated to bias,
prejudice, partiality, tribalism, and the bigotry of bivalency.
164
Universally, this is the conscience of an infant. It is pure subject,
absolutely impressionable. It is also the aim of many eastern religions to
return to this state in age.
82
a proverbial brick wall. This person is tuned to the
needs of others (o/*), and is sensitive to the terms of
their evaluation (*/o). This person is happy with less if
things are fair for others (c/o). He bases evaluations of
goodness in terms of how things turn out for others (o/*)
as much or more than how they do for himself (*/o).
Flexible, at the right place at the right time, he is ready to
meet the terms of the moment (o/o). He is interested in
universals and absolutes as well, but for other reasons,
as these constitute a contract binding on him to which he
must always adapt (o/o). These are the terms to which
he must come, not the terms to which he holds the world
to account. This habitual mode of conscience is tolerant,
selfless, and takes the changing world on its own terms
rather than impose his own.
The other two modes of conscience are hybrid
modes. In one, conscience is as-if another, in terms of
ones own prior understanding (o/c). For example, think
of when one cares about another without really caring for
him. This sense is captured by the phrase If you were
like me (o/c). This person, perhaps, cant understand
why the poor spend so much time outside in the summer
because he cannot understand life without air
conditioning (o/c). He may be heard saying If you were
like me, you wouldnt sit outside so much in the summer
or you sure would love air conditioning! (o/c)
The other hybrid is the mode of conscience as-if
in ones own situation, coming to new terms with the
situation. This sense is captured in the phrase If I were
like you (c/o) This person understands why the poor
spend so much time outside in the summer, he just cant
understand why they dont get an air conditioner (c/o)
He may be heard to say If I were like you, I couldnt live
83
without an air conditioner or arent you hot? Its too hot
out here, lets go inside. (c/o)
One thing to bear in mind is that these are all
modes in which human beings regularly engage. To
encapsulate any character in terms of any one of these
modes is a stretch, and this is why the illustrations above
may seem a little strained, and over-simple. There may
be some truly psychopathic or saintly persons who are
more or less incapable of their opposite modes in life,
but these are exceptions. The ACTWith model is
inclusive of all of these modes, and presumes that most
agents move from mode to mode as a fact of the
dynamic of everyday discourse with self, world and
other. During a day, one may say why dont you do
what I did? as well as say I should do what you did,
even though, by the ACTWith model, these are two
disparate modes of conscience. The fact is simply that
through experience and as persons age, certain modes
become characteristic of certain persons. One becomes
more or less apt to adopt different attitudes as life
becomes routine and engagements with the world mere
matters of habit or office.
Certainly, the reader has noticed in the space of
his or her own life that different persons characteristically
engage the world and hold themselves up to account for
their actions in different ways. Philosophers call
theoretical accounts of these modes of operation the
study of ethics, and in this field persons who hold to
certain attitudes are said to be x-ists or y-ists or to act
under the rubric of x or y-ism. Thusly, the closed
modes are reflected in views such as Egoism, Fascism,
Evangelism, Imperialism and Political Tyranny. The
open modes are found in Christian charity, Pacifism,
Communitarianism, and is the mode which might permit
84
the sort of anarchy which is only possible when
everyone is a saint, and the healthy democracy which,
as hinted at early in The Republic, is only possible when
each of its citizens is a natural Philosopher.
All are modes of conscience and are explained in
terms of the ACTWith model, though, the proof is in the
pudding, and the final course, hungry reader, is still a
long way off. What we are confronted with now is the
possibility that we may have some power over who we
become, and what we make of the world to suit us.
Shall I be a tyrant, or a martyr? What world shall I make
to suit me either way? These are the questions which
we shall pursue through the rest of the text.
I have mentioned that conscience works to
reconcile conflict through finding common grounds for
contradictory determinations. I have indicated that this
happens at least in part through the medium of
language. The meanings of words must be changed in
order to represent the new situation, that being the one
without contradiction. This happens in the space of the
open conscience. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.
seeks common grounds for his own and conflicting
positions (o/*). He then casts this understanding in
terms of a revised vocabulary (*/o). In this way,
conscience does what otherwise may have seemed
impossible (o/o). What gets in the way of this work?
When authorities take their own grounds as exhaustive
(c/*), and will not allow for new determinations (*/c),
Kings work of conscience is impossible, a thing to be
denied (c/c).
Kings conscience shows us how to bridge the
gap between different persons positions and their
mutually contradictory determinations.
85
What we see in Kings example is a cycle, a
process of conscientiousness. The cycle is opening to a
new situation understood on the basis of prior
determinations (o/c), then opening to the new situation
and new determinations of that situation (o/o), then
taking these new terms as determinative of the situation
as the situation one is in (and not a new one, or another
one, at all) (c/o), then closing to new situations and new
determinations (c/c). This is the process underlying
conscientiousness. This cycle is the beating heart of
conscience.
The beating heart of conscience is described in
the passage from Adam Smith, given at the beginning of
this section in two pieces, and reproduced here in its
original form:
By the imagination we place ourselves in
his situation [o/c], we conceive ourselves
enduring all the same torments [o/c], we
enter as it were into his body [o/c], and
become in some measure the same
person with him [o/o], and thence form
some idea of his sensations [o/o], and
even feel something which, though weaker
in degree, is not altogether unlike
them[o/o]. His agonies, when they are thus
brought home to ourselves [c/o], when we
have thus adopted and made them our
own [c/o], begin at last to affect us [c/o],
and we then tremble and shudder at the
thought of what he feels[c/c].
165

165
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, page I.I.2. I have
added the ACTWith shorthand in brackets [ ] for emphasis. We are c/c as
the passage opens
86
This cycle is that normal process undertaken as
anyone comes to understand himself increasingly in
terms of the objects of the world. Uninterrupted, it is a
process of experimentation, of inquiry, and of
compassion. It is productive of a huge library of
experience, both ones one in different situations, and
others vicariously through sympathetic experience
thereof. It is through this cycle that one comes to terms
with the objective conditions of the natural world, and not
merely with those determinative of his own situation and
those much like it. It is through this cycle that one
becomes wise.
Conscience also bridges the gap between
another very special sort of contradiction. Conscience
opens the possibility of a special relationship within
ones self. This relationship holds between who ones
self is (c/-) and who ones self always already is not, that
person one will be (-/o). This is a difficult issue. I wish
to focus on this movement as the movement from the
subjective (*/-) to the objective (-/*) perspective. This
may not appear immediately clear to the reader, but I will
briefly sketch the issue for further enrichment as we
proceed.
Let me introduce the issue of the subject coming
to an objective perspective of himself. The following
points will be developed in the sections to follow. I
introduce them here to give the reader a heads up.
As-if has to do with subjectivity (*/-). It is the
feeling of being a self in a situation, generally. This self
is constituted by having come to terms with situations
prior (-/* -> */-). The terms to which one has come,
subjectively, are those of the objective situations given
through experience. This is ones understanding both of
87
himself, and of the world in which he is situated, which
he brings to every new moment (*/-). It is having already
come to these terms (*/-). They do not need to be come
to, again. This is the virtue of practical wisdom.
Practical wisdom limits the as-if movement.
Coming to terms with has to do with objectivity (-
/*). It is dependent on being open to a situation in order
to meet its terms (*/- -> -/*). Meeting the terms of the
situation generates new determinations in understanding
(-/*). These new determinations are constitutive of the
subjective sense of being in the world (-/* -> */-). Again,
this becomes practical wisdom.
Together, the as-if and coming to terms with
aspects of the ACTWith model represent the role of
conscience in Philosophical transcendence, or the
freedom from ones subjectivity by an adoption of the
objective perspective. I will only venture a short
comment on this here. More will be said in later
chapters, after this movement from subjective to
objective is laid out in the sections to follow.
One begins life as an infant subject (o/o). One
ends life as a corpse object (c/c). The infant is purely
subject to the world (o/*), and as he comes to terms with
it (*/o) he comes to understand himself (*/c), determined
by his unique situation (c/*). As one comes to terms with
his situation, he experiences himself in terms of the
objects of his world (c/o). It is the self enriched by this
experience of objects which enters the next situation
(o/c). He comes to terms with this situation through its
objects, then the next, and so on [(o/c) -> (o/o) -> (c/o) -
> (c/c)...]
This movement from subjective to objective
determination of ones situation I call stitching ones self
into the world. Think of the common zigzag stitch which
88
joins two parallel surfaces across a gap. This stitch is
used in fastening two sheets of material together. In this
case, what we are joining is the subject with the
objective world.
166
This image carries with it the sense that learning
is meeting the world on the worlds terms. Coming to
terms with ones situation (c/o) in the world essentially
fixes ones understanding of his situation in the terms of
that space (c/c). The cycle begins by opening to a new
situation, (o/c) and proceeds by opening to new
determinations thereof (o/o) which are then backfed to
the self. As we learn more about the world, we continue
in this enterprise. Thus, what we have is a picture of a
basic stitch.
The modes o/o and c/c are the bridging modes in
terms of stitching ones self into the world. These are
where the gap between the self and the world are
bridged, while the o/c (fixed determinations, only) and
c/o (fixed situation, only) modes are where the materials
on either side of the gap are punctured. O/o opens the
situation from prior fixed determinations (o/c) to new
determinations by making these new determinations
determinative of his own situation(c/o), and c/c closes
the stitch back to the self again, joining the two surfaces
together. Thus, what we have is a picture of a basic
zigzag pattern of stitch.

166
Far from being sheets of material, either joined surface is extremely
complex, with the self surface at least one dimension less so than the world
surface. With this in mind, one can imagine that the world-surface into
which he stitches his self-surface is above ones self in complexity. Thus
the stitching is itself from a below to an above, in terms of complexity, and
captures the sense that enlightenment is ascension. What we do is try to
come to terms with all the complexity of the natural world, and those who
have, or who have done so best, we call wise. We look up to them.
89
This cycle, stitching ones self into the world,
illustrates how it is that certain characteristic modes of
conscience keep the beating heart of conscience going.
When one is characteristically open, he is ready to do
the work of joining across divisions. He is ready to
bridge gaps, and tie disparate determinations in
reconciliation. The open person, in folk terms, has a
heart or is warm hearted.
This cycle, stitching ones self into the world, also
illustrates how it is that characteristic modes of
conscience get in the way of the beating heart of
conscience. When one is characteristically closed, he is
gripped tightly to a certain determination of that world
and to his place within it, and refuses to open to new
situations and even to new determinations of his own.
The rigid person, in this way, has no heart or is cold
hearted.
In stitching ones self into the world, one creates
himself. This is a synthetic process. As synthetic, the
self is the shape of the space of life into which he is
sewn into the world. Thus, it is sensible to say that one
is a big person, selfless or has a big heart, while
others are small, or petty, or selfish.
There is another phenomenon to be considered,
here. That is the voice of conscience. In the process of
stitching ones self into the world, we can see the voice
of conscience arising between the o/c and the c/o
modes. Here, the voice says do not make that situation
mine.
We will begin the next section by looking at this
seeming anomaly in conscientious self synthesis.
Conscience opens the space between ones self (c/c)
and the self up ahead (c/o). This is growth,
development, leads to wisdom, and is a good thing.
90
Sometimes, however, conscience refuses to close that
space (o/* -> c/*). Conscience forbids one from moving
to certain situations, from becoming a certain person (o/*
-> c/*). In these anomalous cases, this is also a good
thing. Refusing to become someone, to sew ones self
into some situation, is also an expression of freedom.
This is called conscientious objection.
91
6. Conscience, and the everyday.
Only he who understands is able to listen.
-- Martin Heidegger.
167
All our regrets are just lessons we havent
learned yet.
-- Beth Orton
168
In this section, we will confront another
universality of every situation. This is that, wherever one
goes, he takes himself with him. In this section, we will
begin to see what it takes to make sure that the person
one ends up being is the one he set out to become.
Conscience, in its most recognized form, is a
voice which forbids moving to certain ends.
Consequently, if certain ends are forbidden, it motivates
to others. In this section, we will review the common
understanding of conscience in these terms, and then
look at the sorts of situations which persons of
conscience have gotten themselves into. Hereby, we
shall begin to realize that acting according to ones
conscience is often difficult, even risky. Keeping a clean
conscience is not an easy road to hoe.
It has been said that life is a journey. If it is a
journey, it is a journey whose end is always ones self. It
has also been said that life is a story, a story written and
rewritten as it jerks along. Whatever lies ahead is

167
Being and Time, page 154(165)
168
Beth Orton, The Sweetest Decline, Central Reservation, Arista
Records, 1999.
92
always met by ones own mortal coil. Early in life, older
persons asked "What do you want to be when you grow
up?" Impulsive, a child latches onto whatever image
springs to mind. As a child, I remember simply saying
what was conventional, and believing that I meant it.
The instances are characterized by a feeling that I had
not the conceptual resources to fill in all the blanks which
an answer for such a question required. Yet, the
question gets the mind moving in the habit of generating
such an account; it will come up again, that much was
understood.
Though I had answered often enough "fireman,"
or "doctor," or "lawyer," I had no determinate notion of
just what ways of life these occupations required. Even
though my father was a doctor, I had no idea what it
feels like to live a day in the life of a doctor. I had no
idea what a Doctors situation demands. This
knowledge might not have beeen necessary. People
make decisions based on incomplete information often
enough, if not all of the time. Perfect information is the
sort of thing attributed to omniscient things, like gods,
not persons.
169
Incomplete information is simply ones
own complete understanding, brought to the moment.
So, I would say fireman. That person, up ahead, that
what do you want to be when you grow up asks one to
envision is often difficult to see clearly.
170
The point is that conscience sets up a most
important view with which a present position is
compared. It is the substance of this comparison which
constitutes what it feels like to have a conscience. This

169
We see this same point arise regarding Kant's ethics in another section.
170
Never more so than in Angst, to be explored under Heidegger in another
section.
93
is the comparison between ones self, here and now,
and ones self ahead in life.
Where do we go, however, when what lies ahead
is ones self, and one simply cannot go there? What is
the next chapter in life when the story cannot go on in
the same terms as it has? The feeling of being trapped
between a past and a future, with no way to reconcile
the two, is the phenomenon known as conscientious
objection.
We often describe a good conscience as
quiet, clean, and easy and refer to this
state of affairs as one of peace,
wholeness, and integrity...
171
Things feel radically different when conscience throws
itself in the way:
Agents who appeal to their consciences to
explain and justify their conduct often
indicate that they would suffer a severe
sanction--the loss of integrity or
wholeness--if they violated their moral
limits. They frequently express this fear in
dramatic ways: "I couldn't live with myself if
I did that." "I have to answer to myself
first." "I must protect my sense of myself."
"I could not look at myself in the mirror." "I
would hate myself in the morning." "I
couldn't sleep at night."
172
The way that conscience works, according to
Childress, is as a counterfactual; if I were to commit

171
Childress, 1997, page 403.
172
Ibid, page 404.
94
some act in question, I would violate my conscience,
impugn my personal integrity, and not be able to live
with myself. This violation would result not only in such
unpleasant feelings of guilt and/or shame but also in a
fundamental loss of integrity, wholeness, and harmony in
the self.
173
The conscientious agent, thus acts upon having
made a prediction about what would happen to him if he
were to commit such an act,"
174
a prediction based on
past experience. Conscience is personal and
subjective; it is a persons consciousness and reflection
on his own acts in relation to his standards of
judgment.
175
Not surprisingly, conscience objects in critical
times, when the value of ones past experience is called
into question. During the Vietnam War, for instance,
there were many conscientious objectors, as there have
been at all times during crisis. In the winter of 1972, one
pilot captain refused to fly further bombing missions over
Vietnam because a man has to answer to himself,
first.
176
This was simply not a journey this man could
again take.
Conscience does not merely object during war,
and against violence. Conscience says "no, do not do
this" in discursive contexts, as well. The following
illustration involves Arthur Miller, play-write and
suspected "un-American" agent under the pressures of
McCarthyism to violate his conscience.

173
Childress, 1979, page 318.
174
Ibid.
175
Ibid.
176
Ibid, page 317.
95
Arthur Miller was called before a panel
investigating communist activities in the United States
during the so-called "red scare" post World War II. He
was a very famous man, and some of the people under
anti-communist attack were his friends. He was
commanded by the authorities to name his friends,
thereby exposing them to the same hostility under which
he was suffering. His cooperation in this regard would
have guaranteed him kinder treatment. He refused to
incriminate his friends on the grounds that his
conscience would not allow it. Mr. Miller cited his
conscience as protective of his sense of personal
integrity.
Interestingly, the convention of law recognizes the
right of persons to not testify when their testimony would
incriminate themselves; one has a right to maintain
personal integrity. This is captured in the language of
the Fifth Amendment: No person shall be compelled
in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.
To testify against one's self would be to
represent two opposite views at once, defendant and
prosecutor, as if one person were really two, one acting
against the other.
177
Acting against one's self represents
a violation of personal integrity, and one should not
testify where testimony violates one's personal integrity.
The law, through the Fifth Amendment, is forbidden to
impose on any citizen a crisis of conscience.
Even though he was called to incriminate others,
these others were his friends. Bringing them the same
trouble as had befallen himself, or worse, would have
violated his own sense of personal integrity. It is as if he

177
Imagine ones self, looking ahead to ones self, indicting ones self, and
carrying these warring selves into the future as-if they were one.
96
were acting against himself in incriminating these others,
as if he would have suffered in their stead, and so
avoided that end as if it were his own.
178
We have come
to understand this feeling as-if another as the open
mode of conscience. So, Miller refused to testify against
these other persons, as if he was being commanded to
testify against himself. Millers refusal was not well
received.
179
Miller's actions, in the interest of his own personal
integrity, make sense if the interests of the others were
somehow his own, part of his own self. How though, is
this possible?
180
The ends to which they all would have
been brought had he testified against them, just as the
ends to which they were brought as he did not testify
against them, were shared. No matter his decision, he
was to be responsible for their ends. In his estimation,
these others situations were as important as was his
own. Had he sent them to suffer the indignities and
possible imprisonment which he himself faced, he would
have been responsible. Had he not, he also would have
been responsible. Each of these paths of action lead to
ends, ends from which either Miller himself would in
good conscience be able to respond, or not.
Conscience reveals an end as if it were ones own. It
shows what it would feel like to be in that situation. The

178
In ACTWith terms, o/o. As-if others, open to the terms of their situations.
179
Childress, 1979, page 316.
180
Neurology makes this very clear. In witnessing some other experiencing
some feeling, say pain, much of the observers brain mirrors the suffering
persons brain in just the patterns which indicate a pained state. That is,
unless that other is an object of disgust, or the observer is autistic. The first
thing that people do when they want to hurt someone else is to cast their
status as somehow less than human, or otherwise different from ones self
in ways relevant to a lack of sensitivity. These two conditions represent the
difference between closed and the open modes of the ACTWith model.
97
voice of his conscience, then, is a voice from the
future, asserting that, should personal integrity be
maintained, some futures are impossible. For Miller,
others unhappy ending was simply not a lifes story he
could write for himself, because he loved them.
An even more poignant American story of
conscience is that of Thoreau. Thoreau was famous for
his civil disobedience and became a singular figure in
our American history, even though his old teacher,
Emerson, predicted that his objection to convention and
his minimalist isolation was a waste of his talents.
Arrested, and in jail, Emerson visited, reportedly asking
"What are you doing in here?" To this, Thoreau replied
"What are you doing out there." In trouble with the law,
conscience was on Thoreau's side.
His communion with nature, and rejection of the
corruptions of 'civil' society, drew attention in his day.
His example has served as a model for conscientious
Americans, and hippies, ever since. Regardless of the
age, Thoreau embodied the intellectual free spirit of the
Country. The spirit of the American law was always on
Thoreau's side. Since Jefferson and Madison,
conscience has been everyman's private purview; its
freedoms were to have been guaranteed. Conscience
is the most sacred of all property.
181
Sadly, in the
contemporary age, this property has no market value.

181
Madison continues: other property depending in part on positive law, the
exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's
house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most
exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more
sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for
which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions
of the social pact. See chapter 16 for more. 1792: http://press-
pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html.
98
Recently, the death of Rosa Parks drew a great
deal of popular attention. Parks famously disobeyed
convention. Unlike Thoreau who was able to go out and
find a world that suited his terms, a natural rather than a
conventional situation, Rosa Parks was unable to
escape oppression so easily. She had to face it.
She openly refused to live in terms of the world as
given, even though she was sure to suffer for her
disobedience to conventional determinations of her
position in it. Only weeks before, a black man died from
police abuse after arrest from the same bus line whose
rules she disobeyed. She understood that this was her
situation, her place in the world, and acted anyways.
She was courageous, as people of conscience often
must be. She determined to no longer be oppressed,
unequal, but determined to become otherwise, as if in
terms of a just situation, as if also free, and equal. She
broke her chains, and showed others to do the same.
By ignoring institutional discrimination on the
basis of her race, she still shows other people how to
live in the face of injustice. She made herself into an
object for persecution, the absurdity of which forced a
reappraisal of those same unjust institutions. This is her
role as a leader. She showed that it could be done,
indeed should be done. Parks is a hero of conscience,
and her example is a singular one. She became a hero
at home, in terms of her own, everyday, situation.
The West doesn't have a lock on the hero of
conscience. Contemporary conscientious objectors pull
forward the unfolding histories of other nations as well.
Consider the lasting effects of the uprising in Tiananmen
Square. Picture the famous photo of the young student
standing before the line of tanks, stopping its progress.
This anonymous man stepped up onto the lead tank of
99
the column, and appealed to the conscience of the
driver: "Why are you here? My city is in chaos because
of you." His world's order disrupted, a space opened up,
and conscience filled this space with an heroic appeal to
close the gap: give us back to order. He crossed the
line. Give us back our world. Remove your violence.
The conscientious example is in many ways odd.
Most often, in standing out over convention, the
conscientious objector distinguishes himself in his
deviance, and thus appears to the conventional world as
an enemy of that conventional order. In terms of the
conventional way of life, it is the conscientious objector
who represents the breakdown of order. His deviance is
seen as error, if not responsibility for the breakdown of
the order altogether. In standing apart, these persons
are an easy target for the guardians of the status quo.
Why are they targeted? Conscientious objectors
are clues to one thing in particular. Injustice. The living
conscientious objector is singular evidence that justice,
or peace, or equality, is a real possibility, here and now.
They not only point to injustice; they have the courage to
demonstrate the necessary response. They exemplify
the freedom, universal to persons, but silenced in
shrouds of routine: the freedom to do the right thing. So,
they are targeted by those few who become powerful
through the enslavement of the masses to unjust
conventions.
182
They have the courage to stand out.
With this in mind, it makes no sense to call the
conscientious objector they at all. Individuated, they

182
In the case of the students resolve demonstrated at Tiananmen Square,
we hope that this is not the case. This hero was recognized by the crowd,
by his City, who took him into itself where he blended, faceless again, and
was spirited away.
100
are no longer part of the crowd, but stand resolutely
apart from it. Deviant, he is not-them. He is free.
In ones self-standing, he becomes a target, a
person who is often destroyed for his example, for his
self-determination, for obeying the voice of conscience,
for denying injustice and living instead in terms of a just
world. The conscientious man is evidence of another
world, altogether, a world of determined difference, as
far away as an open mind, an open heart, and, often
enough, a revolution. The conscientious objector
represents a world in which conventional powers, and
their proclamations and determinations, no longer hold.
The conscientious objector to war, for example,
represents a world at peace. In objecting to war, rather
than joining in the determination that violence suits the
situation, the conscientious man demonstrates a way of
life which suits a peaceful world. It is this world which is
denied by the war-mongers who persecute the
conscientious man. In this world, after all, they have no
power. The same goes for conscientious objection to
any other injustice. Thus, the conscience is what the
tyrant fears most. So, for his example, the conscientious
objector becomes the great enemy of the state.
This language suits the powerful. This is how
conscientious persons become a they. They are over
there, just, equal, at peace. We are over here, at
war. This is our world. If they do not want to live in
our world, then they must find another, in a prison, in
a hospital, or in a hole. It is this reasoning which leads
to the following result. They are traitors for not
committing violence. We are at war. They must
leave this world of our determination. They must die.
Martin Luther King Jr. suffered such a fate.
Socrates did, too, and, perhaps most famously, Christ
101
himself was crucified for exercising the just authority of
his conscience. Their persecutions stand as paradigm
cases of institutionalized, even legal, injustice. These
men struggled, from the margins, to open the opportunity
for others, for us, to live in another world, different from
the one in which they lived, a just world.
For these heroes, and others like them, their work
means suffering and death. The powerful depend on the
polarization, the divisions, and the violence for their own
power, as their power is itself unjust, an inequity. They
can always promise peace, and will never deliver. Yet,
King, Socrates, Christ; these men delivered. These
men, from the outside, came to powerful positions
because they were open to the world and to the needs of
others in it. Their power was authentic, as they
empowered others rather than further enslave them.
Their examples still provide us grounds from which the
conventional, the imperial, the legal, appears in need of
revision. Their examples still provide us the method for
this revision. In reconciling opposing forces, in binding
the poles in tension, the space of life is opened up, and
peace, and justice, and equality, become possibilities.
Champions of the conventional order will not find
the value in these possibilities. Their power always
depends on the world staying the same: torn, tense,
unjust. So, King, Christ, Socrates, and others like them,
all were, and are, destroyed. Marginalized and then
executed as public pariahs, their conscientious life
stories end tragically. But, not before shaking the pillars
of the world and the powers who persecute them,
thereby passing forward the torchlight of change, the
sword of justice and ploughshare of peace, conscience.
102
7. Conscience, and the way of the world.
Do the things external which fall upon thee
distract thee? Give thyself time to learn
something new and good, and cease to be
whirled around. But then thou must also
avoid being carried about the other way.
For those too are triflers who have wearied
themselves in life by their activity, and yet
have no object to which to direct every
movement, and, in a word, all their
thoughts.
-- Marcus Aurelius
183
So, a life story is a travelogue, often punctuated
by conscience warning against tragic stops along the
way. And, it pays to have good examples to follow after.
What we need now are examples for our own
examination, if not our own emulation. Walk this way.
In other fieldwork, the convention is to take a
specimen, and dissect it, analyze it, and carve it at the
joints. This is how anatomy is done: with dead animals.
Now, I disagree with this approach. Although we are not
here to do anatomy, per se, I have always figured that
the best way to study an animal is to study one in action.
For instance, to study a philosopher at work, find a good
one, and watch.
184
However, in the case of philosophy this is
especially hard to do. Philosophers think. Thinking
takes place in the mind. Anyones body and brain are

183
The Mediations, Book 2.
184
Although, I have tripped over some philosophers who have tested my
perseverance over this paradigm.
103
observable to third parties; the mind, though, is
observable only to its owner.
185
Arguably, delivering
pictures of what is in ones mind is what philosophy is
good for: this is the fruit of Philosophic thought,
introspection which makes all the pictures of brains and
bodies significant in the first place.
186
But, philosophers
take no pictures or use instruments directly, besides
stylus and card, voice and box. Philosophers talk. So,
maybe it is better to listen, for now. What does
philosophy sound like?
Luckily, Socrates had something to say about
what he was up to when he was philosophizing. In
Platos dialogue, Philebus, Socrates tells us that
philosophy is important because truth is important, and
truth is important because taking the wrong thing for
right often leads to bad ends. In other words,
Philosophy is not some ivory tower mental manipulation,
but it matters in a practical sense; thought matters

185
Antonio Damasio, How the Brain Creates the Mind Scientific American,
December, 1999, volume 281, number 6, page 112.
186
However, philosophy has an equally significant lesson to learn. Consider
the following from Kevin Ochsner: Brains have limited processing
capacities because they are part of a biological system. Therefore, there
can be no optimal or logically correct solution to a computational
problem without reference to available hardware and resources; each
computational step requires metabolic energy and must interact with the
resource requirements of other processes. In addition, the brain was not
engineered to perform optimally all computations; rather it is the product of
thousands years of selection pressures that have added particular functions
to those already present if such functions enhanced the reproductive
capability of the organism (but also sometimes even if they did not).
Thus any theory of the computation, algorithm, or implementation that does
not take into account these limitations may make unfounded assumptions
about what is possible, and therefore risks biological implausibility.
Ochsner and Kosslyn:
www.columbia.edu/~ko2132/pdf/Ochsner_CNS_App.pdf, page 3.
104
because life matters, because we matter.
187
And the
truth sometimes means life, or death.
To ease into the demonstration, Socrates takes
up a deceptively simple question: is that a man standing,
say, is it Socrates, up ahead, or is it a scarecrow, put up
by farmers to keep the blackbirds from stealing his crop?
Well, the answer to that is easy, right? That cant
be you, Socrates; you are here with me!
Nope. Not so easy. Socrates question is, itself,
only a faade. Underneath these particular facts, there
is a certain form of question that concerns the
Philosopher, a form which fits our needs, now, as we
search for the conscience: An object may be often seen
at a distance not very clearly, and the seer may want to
determine what it is which he sees.
188
The objects in
sight most important up ahead is ones self, and those
he loves. What does one do when he does not see
clearly his self ahead? Which end shall I seek? This is
a difficult way of asking: What is he meaning of my life,
and who shall I become?
Feel familiar? So, lets follow in Socrates
footsteps for a bit. Lets follow his example. Here, I will
point ahead the way I remember his story:
How are we to ascertain better the object of our
inquiry, Socrates?
Through a process of interrogation.
189

187
Matter matters and personal matters matter most. Props to Ruth Chang.
188
Philebus, 1892, page 38. Distance is temporal (past or future) as well as
spatial (back or forward).
189
Heidegger calls this process of seeing better according to a
metaphorical getting closer de-distancing, bringing the appearance to
understanding through inner discourse, only later testing the product, an
assertion, against the new-found practical familiarity.
105
How does this work?
Well, in short, one part of us has the sensitivities
of a writer of a book, setting out plots and burying
intensions, though doing so determinately, pointing out
this and that thing and its relations, and the other has the
sensitivities of a painter, open to the movements and
colors of the world, and instead of working to contain this
dynamic field between periods and flattened to pages
and pressed in the binding of a book, the painter works
to capture the world in all its dynamic and fluid totality.
190
This one, the sensitive painter, feels out the situation
and is sensitive to its curves and colors, the other, the
scribe, determines it and sets these in figure and fugue.
And these two interrogate each other, until either
accounts cohere, and this is inner discourse whereby a
philosopher interrogates himself about his situation.
He interrogates himself? What if the philosopher
is with friends?
Then, his voice expresses what is disclosed in his
inner discourse, articulating the situation from his
position in terms which carry both affect and conviction,
painter and writer, and we call this expression a
proposition. When someone holds his position as the
right one, we say that his proposition is taken as true.
His situation reveals his discoveries to others through
the medium of his voice. And this expression is held to
account in terms of the inner determinations others have
come to in their situations. If these others share his
determinations, these others call his expression also

190
That this parallel specialization holds physiological water to this day is
simply an amazing fact and testament to the power of Philosophic
introspection
106
true. In determining alike, it is as-if they share situations,
as all men should see the same way from the same
position in the same world. The trick is getting there.
So, what is proposed is truest if it remains the
same for now, and for everyone else at every other
place?
Yes, but even this doesnt guarantee that we will
not name real what is only illusion, thereby giving voice
to untruth. After all, we all agree that voice is infinite in
that its tones take forms to fit any situation, and that it is
also finite in that it expresses only my own
determinations, with my own experience and sensitivity
limiting all that may be in the space of life. So, to find
truth in words, we must seek to express the sense in
which these aspects meet, and that means taking up as
our own the ends in which they are together realized, to
test in life the spaces wherein the truth is disclosed.
But, what ends are those?
Not necessarily pleasant ones, surely, for the
objects of pleasure are seen from unpleasant spaces,
without which they are not objects of pleasure at all.
Yes, the thirsty man seeks water as the good,
until his thirst is quenched, and thirst is unpleasant.
Exactly.
What then?
The good as determined through an
understanding of the nature of all things in general, and
of ones self most of all.
But, again, in every situation, for every person,
there appears to be different goods which fit?
107
Yes; and in discourse with others, terms will be
met and then discarded until all find truth expressed in
terms of the common good, this is the nature of
discourse and its end is consensus.
Couldnt this go on forever?
It does. That is our condition.
Socrates, you speak as if we had all the time in
the universe!
No, in all places and at all times, what is true is
that which fits the situation. Some things are true of
every situation. In our case, are there not some aspects
of every situation which stand out in our minds, some
ends to which we always move?
Yes, Socrates. I for one am most concerned for
my own future, and those of my friends, and family, and
my City. I wish to move to the ends in which all of these
are taken care of.
What about them concerns you most?
In fact, I am most concerned about the signs of
pleasure on the persons faces, for I feel pleasure when
they have pleasure, health when they have health, and
wealth when they have wealth. I am also concerned that
they should hold me in high esteem as if I had been
some great benefit to them.
Yet, you must agree that these signs can be
deceptive? Just as the figure in the distance, can it not
appear that a man feels pleasure even when what he
enjoys is killing him? A man sick on wine may often be
grinning.
Yes.
108
Then, what you must mean to be concerned
about is that your self, and others, be able to discern
what is truly pleasant and good, and what is not?
Otherwise, we may move to tragic and not to happy
ends, alone, with close friends, or altogether.
Why, yes.
And what is this condition called, this capacity for
discernment?
Why, that is what we call practical wisdom
And how would you suppose we are able to come
to such a situation?
Why, by interrogation of self and others with
discourse toward the truth!
Exactly, through Philosophy
Lets review: according to this third-hand
recounting of one small portion of one Socratic
discourse, one aspect of mind feels out the world, the
other determines it, and these two aspects carry on in an
inner discourse.
191
As the one reflects on the other, the
writers determinations come to capture the details of the
space insofar as the painter reveals it. If we have
friends, we express the content of this inner discourse in
language, and others like ourselves see if our view
checks out with their account. In this way we come
closer to seeing the figure for what it is, philosopher or
stand-in, without moving our bodies closer, but only

191
Language is an aurally adapted translation of this discourse, and works
because human beings have similar physical constitutions, tuned to a
similar dynamic natural world, voicing their attunements.
109
through the expression of this essential character of
thought, inner discourse.
This is the form of every philosophical question,
and presents us immediately with the form of a gap, the
space between what appears and its reality. This is the
form of the space which philosophy explores, and
philosophers express. This is also the space which
conscience opens within ones self, between ones
present situation and another up ahead.
This space is felt in two ways, spatially and
temporally. A figure can be spatially distant, or
temporally distant. Likewise, some gaps are more
compelling than others: those which are spatially near
and temporally pressing demand attention before those
more distant in either dimension. Opportunities
approach, they meet us, and if not seized depart forever.
What is clear is that every situation has this structure in
common. They differ only in their determinations.
Left to free thought, what seems to grip me most
at any given time are those aspects of the past which
bear on the immediate future: is it too late to do this or
that, to find him or her, where did I put my keys, will it
rain? These are the sorts of questions which come to
the front of my mind at any given time upon a moments
notice. With these concerns taken care of I am free to
open up to more distant possibilities. For instance, I
may recount what Hegel means by pure intuition, or
wonder what could compel anyone to think that truth is
intrinsically valuable. With such distractions past,
however, I tend to think on Socrates famous slogan, that
Philosophy is learning to die well, in terms of my own life
so that I might live accordingly, right now.
In coming to terms with such a question, I initially
take the terms of my current understanding as a
110
measure. I try to make sense of the Philosophic life in
terms with which I am already familiar.
192
The painter
goes back to old paintings, checking the writers books
on method and recollections of poetry. Where I cannot
account for all that the space presents, I can either hold
myself open to future determinations, and live in some
anxiety, or I can pass judgment in terms of my own prior
understanding, and so close myself off to any further
determination and testing of limits. Thus, again, I can
adopt one of two modes; hold the future open to be felt
out, interrogated, and taken on its own terms, or close
off from uncertainty according to prior understanding.
193
The latter case, clearly, is neither conscientious in the
common sense, nor Philosophical. So, I keep asking
questions.
But, this may not be for everyone. Philosophy
and all its introspection seem to go on and on and on.
Oftentimes the situation calls on one to act, without time
to reflect on the question: WHAT AM I TO DO? There
is no freedom for Philosophy, here. When there is, to
what end is all this self-examination pointing, after all?
To the truth! seems too empty a proclamation.
What is the benefit of self-determination if we have no
resolution of the proper terms for action past empty
slogans? That figure up ahead is ones self, and ones
self deserves better than mere mantras.
194

192
In such reflection, I only uncover what I already expect from prior
experience.
193
The first is charity, the second prejudice.
194
This question is especially weighty in adolescence. Short on
experience, yet fully capable, this place in life is especially precarious. As
the organism reaches adolescence, the operations which it has taken up
from convention and prior example are challenged, tested to see if they are
still viable. In taking up a different mode, and then embodying the results,
the adolescent is essentially differentiating himself from the others.
111
Here we find the real treasure in the right
example. Each of us only has one opportunity, one life,
to determine for himself who he shall become. It is in
such uniquely irreversible processes that anothers
example is so valuable. If Socrates went that way, and
that way can still be gone, then his way is an opportunity
for others alike to follow. When presented with such an
example, a just man, in answer to the question What
am I to do? one may answer for himself: as he did.
Still, examples come with a lot of baggage. Ones
situation is ones own, and no others determines
completely the space of ones own life. Socrates,
himself, was no blind follower. In defending his own way
of life, Socrates is famous for saying The unexamined
life is not worth living.
195
He didnt mean that constant
reflection is good all on its own, either; that would be
sophistry, and he wasnt such a big fan of that activity.
He meant think for your self on important things and
often because what you come up with determines that
for which you live our life, and who you will become by
way of it. Even with his example, however, his wasnt a
way of life that many fellow Athenians followed after.
Living a life of self-examination is hard work.
Following someone elses lead is much easier.
This is why it often pays to appear wise, even if one isnt
committed to actually becoming so. For Socrates
Athens, this is where sophistry came in. One of the
more famous sophists of Socrates day was Gorgias.
Gorgias thought that the best thing about self-
examination was the power it added to persuasion. The

195
Apology, 38a.
112
more one appears to know, the more convincing he can
be. The idea is to get what one wants, after all.
196
Sophists were primarily interested in selling their
services to wealthy families so that they could teach their
children to be compelling political agents. The wealthy
were interested to know just enough to be persuasive
enough to become even wealthier. If they could
convince other people that they deserved what they
wanted, and didnt deserve what they didnt want, then
they could get these other people to give it to them.
Thus, sophists promised to show others how they could
become happy. All too often, of course, this wasnt the
case. Their students became tyrants, or squandered
their wealth, but that is beside the point. Increased
powers of persuasion were what made knowledge
valuable for the sophists like Gorgias, and the selfish
students who paid them for their services.
Sophists already knew the way of life they
wanted, and it had nothing to do with anything good or
anything true. It had to do with power over others. The
men they trained wanted to be powerful, a motivation
student and master shared. Thus, the sophistical
strategy was to manipulate others into thinking that they
knew what they were talking about even when they
didnt.
Sophists appeal to the terms with which the
audience was most comfortable, as if they had been led
there in genuine pursuit of what was good and right.
Sophistical discourse was not directed at coming to
terms with the universally good situation, but only at
meeting the terms of the situation the audience already
endorsed. Sophists won arguments and gained power

196
And no one knows the value of truth better than a good liar.
113
by saying what others wanted to hear in ways which
made the sophist appear wise. Socrates was opposite,
both in method and, often enough, in effect.
In the dialogue named after the pretender to
philosophy, Gorgias, Socrates meets an impasse with a
young man named Callicles. Their discourse circles
around the following question, given in two forms: What
ought the character of a man to be, and what are his
pursuits, and how far is he to go, both in maturer years
and in youth?
197
Which is to ask: how a man may
become best himself, and best govern his family and
state...?
198
These are various ways of asking what is
the meaning of life, and who shall I become?
Callicles is a product of entitlement and
sophistical education, and is certain that he will get what
he wants by doing what is popular and convenient.
What he wants is power and influence in his life. This is
most telling in that he holds up a certain sort of man as
the exemplar of the good man, as the example to follow
after. He praises the men who feasted the citizens and
satisfied their desires Popular, wealthy men.
199

Against this opinion, Socrates warns that:
people say that they have made the City
great, not seeing that the swollen and
ulcerated condition of the State is to be
attributed to these elder statesmen; for
they have filled the city full of harbors and
docks and walls and revenues and all that,

197
Gorgias, 487d.
198
Ibid, 520d.
199
Ibid, 518d.
114
and have left no room for justice and
temperance.
200
Socrates challenges Callicles to account for the
fact that the man he takes as an example of the good
man in fact brings others to bad ends. Callicles cannot,
yet still wishes to be this man because he is powerful,
influential, and does what he wants. He isnt interested
in bringing anyone else to good ends unless this means
he himself becomes more influential by way of it. This is
no problem for Callicles, whose only concern is himself.
Socrates argues that this is not the man one
should become. He argues that the good man helps
others to become just. He tells Callicles that there is a
single art which is like a combination of two others which
does this work. This art is a combination of medicine
and gymnastics, representing deliberating over and
attaining the good, respectively.
201
Philosophy.
Socrates argues further that all of the Citys
industries besides making good men better are at best
unnecessary and at worst wasteful luxury. A healthy
society is measured by the goodness and justice of its
members. When a states health is measured by its
wealth, and not its justice, then its leaders objects are
not a healthy society, at all. A good leader helps others
do the right thing, not become fat and rich. He does so
not for his own good, but for the common good. The
men whom Callicles had held up as great men had
misled Athens to bad ends for their own influence and
enrichment. They sought their own good at the Citys

200
Gorgias, 518d.
201
The exercised conscience is the physician, understanding healthy states
and recommending exercise (of practical reason) to attain them.
115
expense. Socrates has a better man in view. A
Philosopher.
Callicles is unimpressed. He just wants to take it
easy. The quickest way to that end is to gain favor with
others through politics, and the quickest way to lose it is
to offend the politicians. Callicles warns Socrates that
he shall be punished if he continues to speak the way
that he does about the powerful men in government of
Athens. Callicles warns him that his pursuit of what is
true and good will put him in a bad position, as if
Socrates too is only concerned with his own comfort.
Finally frustrated, after trying for a good while to
meet the boy in honest discourse about what is really
good and just and not simply about what is expedient
and pleasant for himself no matter the cost, Socrates
admonishes the boy: no man who is not an utter fool
and coward is afraid of death itself, but he is afraid of
doing wrong.
202
For Socrates, it would have been
wrong not to do all he could to help a man be the best
man he could be, Callicles included. To this end,
Socrates has one more thing to say.
Let the painter in your mind loose to picture this.
Head down, exhausted, demoralized, distraught for the
future of Athens, Socrates, aging, throws down his
gloves, sits heavily, sighs, and simply tells Callicles why
he lives the way he does.
203
Socrates frames his life in
terms of a certain myth, a myth that he will be better
judged on the planes of the dead than in mans corrupt
halls and porticos. Living in terms of this ultimate end,

202
Gorgias, 522d.
203
He didnt wear gloves, likely, but I add this for dramatic effect. What a
tragic picture!
116
his every action aims to meet its terms. In this way, he
is the best man he can be, and does what is right.
Socrates holds that he will be brought before
three judges, Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus.
These three were known for ruling justly and for having
laid the legal grounds which became the model for
Athens own laws, laws since corrupted by lesser
men.
204
He is to be judged naked, free from the vestiges
of social life. He shall not be judged by fame and
wealth. He will be judged for having been just or unjust
throughout his life. Socrates confesses:
Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth
of these things, and I consider how I shall
present my soul whole and undefiled
before the judges on that day. Renouncing
the honors at which the world aims, I
desire only to know the truth, and to live as
well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well
as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I
exhort all other men to do the same. And,
in return for your exhortation of me, I
exhort you also to take part in the great
combat, which is the combat of life, and
greater than every other earthly conflict.
205
Renouncing the honors at which the world aims,
Socrates takes satisfying universal terms to be his
object. That is, he lives only for the universal good. He

204
It also takes three points to make a plane. Thus, the poets of old paint
the picture that justice arranges all things on a single surface together, in
common terms. Socrates, in his story, places himself on this plane, then
testifies that it is on these terms that he evaluates his everyday actions. He
is the most just man in Athens.
205
Gorgias, 526d.
117
takes no special privilege for himself. He lives as if he
were any other, and as if that other were at once himself.
He takes the terms of this myth for true, and this means
that he takes them to express what is real. He takes the
terms of the story as definitive of his own situation. This
situation is shared. He exhorts others to take these
terms as definitive of their own situations, as well, so that
all may live and die as best as they are able. Why would
he do that?
In order to understand Socrates story, we must
take a perspective from beyond the end of life. This is a
perspective the capacity for which all men share. All
men can look back on themselves, even imagining a
view from beyond their own Earthly existence.
206
Living
conscientiously in terms of Socrates myth means
holding each moment and its opportunities to a timeless
standard.
207
Socrates lives as if his situation is
determined by the universal good. He holds himself
resolutely to the standards of historys just men and
great rulers, beyond the threats and promises of the
wealthy and powerful who are nearby in time and space.
Socrates lives as-if he were in a different world, a just
world, where doing the right thing is popular and truth
the only value. This is one world shared, and nothing is
merely ones own.
208
This is why he would suffer before
an Earthly jury. He speaks in terms of a just world order,
and does not simply mouth what the audience wishes to

206
Typically, this begins by imagining an embodied situation without the
embodiment.
207
All things appear in the plane of justice at once.
208
Earlier in the dialogue, in fact, Callicles says to Socrates you seem to
think that you are living in another country, and can never be brought into a
court of justice. What he has in mind for justice, here, is mistaken. 521a.
118
hear. He wishes to satisfy a universal audience, not the
momentary whims of some power-mad crowd.
In taking this final field of justice to be his ultimate
aim, Socrates merely commits himself to do the right
thing, the just thing, every day along the way to that end.
In fact, he acts along the way as if he were already
there. Actions which do not meet the terms of this
situation are to be avoided. They do not fit. Socrates,
living this way, provides all persons alike with a striking
example of the power of Philosophical self-
determination. He is free to do the right thing.
What we have stumbled on in our seemingly
drunken rumble into this new dawn is a basic movement,
which I will characterize here in review.
Socrates chooses to do the right thing, but he
does not have to do so at every instance. It would be
asking too much to have him decide at every moment
what the right thing to do may be. Any moments
opportunity may not permit the luxury to deliberate over
the options.
209
And he isnt simply bound to some given
pre-determined path of action or habit; he is free to meet
the moment on its own terms, universal terms.
Moreover, he is not the first the live this way. He
confesses that the story is not original to himself.
Someone else came up with it. He has not chosen the
terms, but he has chosen to take them for his own. He
takes this story to be true, and acts accordingly. In so
doing, he takes his freedom with him, moment to
moment, deliberately. His is a self-determined freedom
to do the right thing even before the opportunity to do so
presents itself, an end to which he prepares through the

209
The student of Philosophy will see the implications for Mills utilitarianism
immediately.
119
pursuit of wisdom. He could give up on this story, and
live otherwise. He is free to unbind himself from its
terms, and determine otherwise, but he des not.
210

Socrates lived as a just man in an unjust world.
This is the only way we can make sense of his
character; his situation was different than was everyone
elses because he made it that way. He held himself to
a different set of terms, as we have just seen. He was
the best man he could be by being open to exposing
opportunities in terms of others situations so they could
become the best men they could be. So far as he was
concerned, this was the only truly necessary industry for
any healthy city, and the proper role of a good leader.
Socrates always began with the others situation.
He opened to them. He always met others on their own
terms and proceeded from there to come to common
determinations of what is just and good, making them his
own.
211
He lived this way towards THE eventual good, if
not for HIS eventual good. His life is the political life of a
Philosopher, and demonstrates that Philosophy belongs
in the streets, not hidden away in some ivory tower! This
is why he could claim to be the only Athenian living who
practices the true art of politics.
212
His object is the
healthy city. His art is helping men to become just, not
fat on wine and drunk on power. It is Philosophy:
learning to live and die well. Lets look more closely at
Socrates example.
Those others whom Callicles named as good
leaders were self-proclaimed benefactors of Athens

210
He is presented with that opportunity as he nears his execution, as we
shall see in the 13
th
chapter, but he refuses.
211
And he is the model for the beating heart of conscience: o/c -> o/o -> c/o
-> c/c -> o/c ->
212
Gorgias, 521d.
120
under whose influence works were undertaken which
most effectively reinforced their power influence. The
people were fed, and order was kept at home, for a while
at least, but they benefited themselves most. Two men
in particular, Pericles and Cimon, were rivals whose
contests for power caused the people of Athens
problems. They each sought power and influence, and
so formed policies and enacted public projects to
promote their own reputations and to cement their
influence. Yet, what was good for their power to fatten
the public for the moment was not good for the people
of Athens in the long run. They became wealthy at
everyone elses eventual expense, and distracted the
public with grand gestures and empty proclamations.
213
Socrates contested the value Pericles and
Cimons examples. He argued that, having led the City
to bad ends implies that these men should not be taken
as examples of good men, at all. For one thing, they
took what was good for themselves to be what was good
for the City, and used their influence to direct others to
ends which served only themselves. For another thing,
they provided examples that others should live similarly,
for ones own power and influence. In emulating these
men, others do not become just and good, and the City
does not become healthy. They do not become the best
the can be, they become worse, and the City pays with
its future as its situation degrades along with them:
Callicles: Well, but how does that prove Pericles'
badness?

213
We have a similar problem with contemporary leadership.
121
Socrates: Why, surely you would say that he was
a bad manager of asses or horses or oxen, who
had received them originally neither kicking nor
butting nor biting him, and implanted in them all
these savage tricks? Would he not be a bad
manager of any animals who received them
gentle, and made them fiercer than they were
when he received them? What do you say?
Callicles: I will do you the favor of saying "yes."
Socrates: And will you also do me the favor of
saying whether man is an animal?
Callicles: Certainly he is.
Socrates: And was not Pericles a shepherd of
men?
Callicles: Yes.
Socrates: And if he was a good political shepherd,
ought not the animals who were his subjects, as
we were just now acknowledging, to have
become more just, and not more unjust?
Callicles: Quite true.
Socrates: And are not just men gentle, as Homer
says? -- or are you of another mind?
Callicles: I agree.
Socrates: And yet he really did make them more
savage than he received them, and their
122
savageness was shown towards himself; which
he must have been very far from desiring.
Callicles: Do you want me to agree with you?
Socrates: Yes, if I seem to you to speak the truth.
Callicles: Granted then.
Socrates: And if they were more savage, must
they not have been more unjust and inferior?
Callicles: Granted again.
Socrates: Then upon this view, Pericles was not a
good statesman?
Callicles: That is, upon your view.
Socrates: Nay, the view is yours, after what you
have admitted.
214
How is Socratic Philosophy the genuine political
art, succeeding where these other men fail? In the same
ways that they fail, he succeeds. He holds all mens
ends equally on a single plane for universal evaluation,
including his own. They hold themselves above this
plane, and separate from the ends to which the City is
led beneath them. For them, the end in sight is their
own well-being and the good is what secures it. For
Socrates, the end in sight is justice for all in whose terms
all men are equally invested. He remains oriented to this
end, and not to his own fame and reputation, everyday

214
Gorgias, 516a-d
123
along the way of his life. In this way, he succeeds as a
leader where these others fail. He leads to the common
good, where they lead only to their own.
In living with this end in mind, Socrates does
more than remain open to revision. He is the model of
the conscientious man. He seeks out new and varied
determinations of the world, and begins in professed
ignorance by coming to terms with the others situation
insofar as it is by them understood. He is actively open
to the terms of others, instead of imposing his own terms
on the discourse from the start. Socrates provides an
example of the conscience at work. He sets up the
common good as his own ultimate end, and starts
walking, one moment and one man at a time. He
remains open to the terms of others in order to help
them orient their lives similarly, reconciling their own
good with the good for all alike.
215
Socrates was able to begin with the terms of
others because he had some sense of the universal
significance of the terms of their situations in the first
place. This wisdom was a product of his open heart and
mind. His was the Philosophic, conscientious exercise
over a life-time which results in what the Greeks called
phronesis and what philosophers since have called
practical wisdom. Socrates becomes practically wise
by remaining open to other situations along the walk of
his long life. Without the resulting understanding of what
it is to be in other terms, he would have nothing of other
situations to share, and conversation could not begin.
His aim was justice, and conscience was his guide.
Socrates exemplified this virtue, practical wisdom.
He began by listening. He began by taking up the terms

215
Move. Make history together. Make it a good one.
124
of the situation before him. Only in this way could he
ever have come to see himself on that plane of all time
as if he were any other man, dead or alive. He would do
nothing which he would not have another do, cause
suffering nothing he would not suffer himself, seek no
end he would not take for his own. He would do nothing
in this world that he would not do in a just world. This
was his situation the way he felt it, the terms of the
situation he took to be true. And, he was right.
In many ways, this entire text is built on the
Socratic example. Socrates is Philosophys greatest
hero. Some said he was the most just man they had
ever known. He did irritate people, maybe on purpose,
and he didnt always do as the legal authorities
commanded; but, he was a sentimental man, and
certainly a conscientious man.
In Socrates example, we see the ACTWith model
in action. It is operative in inner discourse, discourse
with others, and the discourse which leads one to his
objective self. In inner discourse, the feeling of being as-
if in a space is that function of the painter. The coming
to terms with that space is the function of the writer.
Together, one comes to terms with the situation in
understanding. Others proceed in the same process. In
discourse with others, one interprets the expressed
determinations of the other by taking up his position as-if
[o/c -> o/o], and checking to see if these determinations
hold at his own position [o/o -> c/o].
In reaching for an ideal situation which was
Socrates object, conscience opens a perspective as-if
from that ultimate end. All action along the way can be
held to the determinations of that situation. Holding
himself on a common field with all others means that he
holds them in equal esteem with himself, and that as he
125
comes to terms with his own situation, he comes to
terms with theirs. The space of his life is shared with
others universally. This is a just man.
In his example, Socrates shows how he comes to
terms with his situation in a way which guarantees that
he will act justly. In doing as he does, Socrates stitches
himself into a just world instead of into the world of
corrupt men. He would have tailored the world to suit,
and was destroyed, instead.
Socrates demonstrates the beating heart of
conscience. He begins discourse from the others
situation, as-if the other (o/c). He comes to terms with
this situation as if it were his own (c/o). It is the o/o
mode which is the bridging mode, here. This is how he
can claim to be a mid-wife of sorts, helping others to
birth understanding. He is open to others, and seeks
their own ends as-if these were his own. He loves his
fellows as if himself. He puts himself in, and so comes
to terms with, no situation which is not determined by
this equality. Thereby, he does nothing unjust. He acts
as-if all others were himself, Philosophizing toward the
common realization of the good life even more so than
he does his own.
Lets quickly contrast this situation with that of
Socrates old foil, the musician.
216
The musician does
not begin with the situation of the other, but with her own
(c/o). She is able to express what appear to be the
terms of the other, but she does so merely by confessing
her own (o/c). c/c is the bridging mode, here. Her
expression is of her own subjective experience. She
may appeal to the universal human condition i.e.
broken hearts hurt, being on the road is lonely, that sort

216
Equally the politician, as we shall see, and have been seeing.
126
of thing but almost by accident. She intends only at
having subjective determinations reinforced through the
applause of the persons present and hearing her plea.
The musician does not strive for an understanding
of the universal, per se. She seeks inter-subjective
recognition of a subjective expression and takes this,
instead, to be an objective determination of her own
value. This has nothing to do with objectivity; it has to
do with ego. She places herself above others, on a
stage. She drowns the voices of the others, forcing
them to meet her terms. The musician does not seek to
meet the objective terms of her situation, but seeks to
have her own terms met instead.
217
The musician, as a
political way of life, is a fraud. Insofar as she has
political influence, the health of the City is threatened.
The musicians fame does not a better world make, lest
the world stops at the edge of her stage, and end with
her show.
This is the real issue. The musician does not
provide an example of a life lived in terms of just ends
shared by all. She does, however, provide a powerful
example. This goes with the territory. To be a good
performer is to appeal to others. She must be sensitive
enough to influence the other. But if the other cannot
come to her terms, he is free to see another show. If the
musician is politically empowered, then the City is in real
trouble. There may be lots of loud parties, but the
musician is not going to stick around to help clean things
up. The City still needs the Philosopher to see where

217
This does not draw into question musicality as a virtue, or music as a
thing to do. Suspicious, for instance, is the character who does not find
reinforcement from musical audiences, and turns instead to seeking
reinforcement in the halls of philosophy. Not common ends, these.
127
the whole things headed, especially after the dust
settles and the wine has gone stale. The Philosopher
leads a city to virtue. The musician, to a city of vice.
To be clear, though the musician is the object of
this criticism, other apparently good ways of life are
equally insufficient to ensure that the right thing is done
at the right time in the interest of all persons universally.
It should be apparent that the musician has a great deal
in common with sophistry, for instance. Both are
motivated by the subjective reinforcement of others and
mistake this for an objective realization of their own
situation and self-worth. The situation the terms of
which both must meet is determined by the subjectivity
of the audience members.
218
In this mode of life there is
no significance attached to the objective point of view.
There is no view from the outside in. There is only the
view from the inside upon others also on the inside.
There is only the view of others nearby, and the weight
and influence of their happy or unhappy faces.
The sophistically trained leader is equally guilty of
doing things in order to please the populace, and to
maintain power and influence, and these things have
little to do with what is good for the society as a whole.
Leaders in this mode judge their leadership by the fat
and happy faces of those nearby. This is the mode of
the philosopher, the politician, the leader, who pretends
to practice the true art of politics while seeking his own
enrichment. He is not concerned with citizens to come,
and even less with citizens past. He is concerned with
what gets the present audience to applaud his efforts
and with what gets the present jury to endorse his
contentions. This is what separates the politician from

218
The motivation of the failed guitar player cum philosopher, for example.
128
Socrates political art, and philosopher from
Philosophy. Self-aggrandizement from being great.
What goes for bad leaders does not necessarily
apply to musicians, however. Musicians are not
necessarily bad. They make for a good party. It is
simply that they do no good in healing the sick society.
This they share with politicians. The difference is that
politicians will ruin a good party.
In fact, either example, when popularly emulated,
makes things worse. The real trouble comes when
persons aspire to be leaders and do so in the mode of
the politician, or the musician, and not of Philosopher.
This is a crucial issue in Socratic Philosophy. Musicians
do not train good leaders anymore than do sophists. I
will have more to say on this particular point later.
First, I want to clear up the role of conscience in
moral theory since Socrates. In so doing, we will shed
some more light on the mechanisms at work in its
operations. We will stick with the theme that is Socrates
most important question throughout the rest of this text:
what is the meaning of life and who will I become? We
will eventuate to asking in terms of what objective
situation does anyone become that person? We shall
find this question lain out, instead of in terms of Greek
mythology, full of gods and daimons, in terms of more
modern fables, wars and Constitutions.
The next section will find limits to
conscientiousness in the late writings of Immanuel Kant.
The section after that will apply these limits to the
universal human situation through a thought experiment.
The section following that will confront further pressures
universal to the human situation, angst over death. In
this way, our thinking about the role of conscience in
living life will be enriched and will become more realistic.
129
8. Conscience, and the way we live.
But look ye, the only real owner of anything
is its commander; and hark ye, my
conscience is in this ships keel. - On deck!
-- Captain Ahab
219
As soon as Iraq is dealt with, I will push for
Iran to be at the top of the to do list.
-- Ariel Sharon
220
Nothing fills me with greater awe than the natural
order, and nothing troubles me more than mans
practical abstinence from it. Even as Kant looked to the
perfect movements of the newly relativized heavens for
a guiding moral principle, his time was not ready to
receive a truly relativized ethic.
Kant famously claimed his moral theory to be a
Copernican revolution of sorts. Copernicus, rejecting the
Aristotelian model wherein our imperfect planet is circled
by increasingly perfect things, maintained that Earth is
not the center of the universe. Kant, rejecting the
imperfect model that man is the measure of all things,
manufactured a moral theory wherein man is not the
center of the universe. Pure reason is.
Kant assumed that all men live together in an
absolute space, a rational universe. Kants ethical

219
Moby Dick, Section 109. At this point the ship is leaking the whale oil
which is what the fishing trip is ostensibly after, and Ahab is intent on
traveling on instead of salvaging what can be salvaged. To this command
the mate Starbuck protested. Ahab threatens him with a rifle. Starbuck
exits saying let Ahab beware of Ahab.
220
This statement can be found many places. Here are two:
http://www.counterpunch.org/lobe08142003.html
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/11/7/154220.shtml
130
theory rests in mans rationality. A person has a moral
rational will which must administer the moral law over
the empirical will. The crux of the relationship rests in
autonomy. All animals have an empirical will. They are
driven by their senses and desires to do certain things,
and there is no sense blaming them for it. Lions kill
Christians, snakes kill rats, and squid kill krill. We do not
call this murder. These are simply animals following the
laws of their natures. People are different, however.
They have a rational will which may rule over their
sensual drives. Kant presumes that man not only
follows universal laws, just like rocks and squirrels do,
but he also makes them. When he makes rules for
himself, he governs himself. This is how Kant accounts
for mans autonomy.
The trouble is that, in so doing, he still takes man
to be the measure of all things. This is still an
Aristotelian universe. Man is the rational animal.
Reason makes rules. All men have rules. All rules have
contradictions. This much is universal but the rules
themselves are not. This is a problem for Kants ethics
in at least two ways.
For example, consider the rule do not kill. This
is a universal law which appears given by a rational man
to himself. Its application is evidenced while restraining
ones impulse to kill someone. This involves a rational
will overcoming a bodily desire to end someones life.
So far, Kants system seems to fly.
But, what if this other is himself a murderer,
certain to kill again? What if this other is a brilliant but
clumsy scientist certain to end the world with a killer
virus? What if it is Hitler, while he is only a painter in
jail? How does the rational will rule, now?
131
The other problem is that the rules of some men
conflict with those of others. For example, there is
nothing necessarily irrational about eating the dead.
Though most have a rule against it, healthy, un-diseased
meats are perfectly nutritious. Likewise, there is nothing
necessarily irrational about a convention which requires
that some segments of a population wear certain
uniforms. In the west, women must wear shirts. If a
woman were to walk the streets topless, in most of the
United States, she would be arrested and jailed. If a
woman were to walk the streets of some Muslim nations
without their traditional garb, they too are subject to
sanction. Rationality alone cannot dictate which rule
should hold. Who, after all, is to judge?
Even Einsteins relativity does not imply the sort
of radical relativity of the oft caricaturized cultural
relativist. Planets and stars do not careen willy-nilly on
the relativized Einsteinian vision of the dynamic
universe. In fact, it all revolves much as it always
appeared to, perfectly, only we have come to realize the
terms of the trajectories in ever finer significance. There
is no contradiction in the movements of the stars. But
stars have been known to collide, and while standing on
one it is sometimes difficult telling up from down.
Consider this example. For many years, the Boy
Scouts have taught their students that a compass can be
constructed in an emergency with a dry leaf, and a light,
thin piece of metal like the minute-hand of a watch. The
leaf is placed in a very still pool of water. The metal
sliver is rubbed against clothing, and the static charge
taken up by the metal causes the crystalline matrix of the
substance to orient in a polar alignment, thereby creating
a (rather weak) magnet. This sliver is then placed on the
132
leaf floating in the still water, and the result is supposed
to be a working compass.
That this is in fact possible, and within the reach
of any literate person exposed to this account, is
fascinating. But, what is more fascinating is that we are
coming to a point where this mechanism will no longer
work. The polarity of the Earth, itself, is changing, and
thus so is the attraction between the sliver of metal and
north. Where, at one moment in history any literate man
with a watch could find his way, this era is quickly fading.
In fact, there may be a time when no compass, no
matter how strong the magnet, will work. Increasingly,
the capacity of traditional methods to direct our way
through the so-called objective world is in doubt.
Even more primitive than the magnetic compass
in finding ones way, however, is the conscience. And,
much as the poles of the material globe are diffusing, so
are the poles of the ethical globe. Neither represents
judgments most men had ever figured to have to make
twice. Right is right; north is north. Once such rules are
established, there is no provision for their revision.
North is north; there can be no contradiction in that! Few
anticipated a day when a compass does not work, and
when what is right is not what it seems. In fact,
however, the reasoning behind the Boy Scouts compass
will simply stop working, altogether, and many
reasonable men with a bad recipe for direction
increasingly pursue very bad ends.
Reasoning is important but it fails. Rules are
important, but they fail. Their original purpose is to
express ways of being which lead reliably to certain
ends. When situations change, however, so will the
rules need to be changed. It is the conscience which
133
directs such change, as it is the conscientious man who
recasts rules once they are broken.
Lets look at this result through the Kantian lens.
The compass point of Kantian ethics is Kants
categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is the
form of the voice of conscience for Kant. The most
commonly discussed form of the categorical imperative
is: Act according to that maxim which thou couldst at
the same time will a universal law.
221
Kant specifies
that maxims are formulated by rational agents. Maxims
are rules for action which should, if moral, as universal,
motivate all rational beings in all situations. The maxim
of any moral action is an imperative, or a command,
which is subjectively created, and is categorically
applicable to all rational agents. Kant specifies that the
agent is rational in order to guarantee that the maxim is
rational. It is the rationality of the maxim which makes
the maxim universally binding on every member of the
category of rational agents. Thus, rationality is a
prerequisite for morality, according to the categorical
imperative.
It is important to note that Kant places the locus of
the moral act not in the action, but in the agent. It is the
agent who considers the action, and the agent who then
must consider the morality of the action. Without this
aspect of agency, there is no moral action. The morality
of the action consists in its universal applicability, but it
begins from the standpoint of the subject. Kants
categorical imperative is framed in the first person, and
so it - the maxim itself - can hold as a universal law only
if first-personal thoughts can somehow be universal.
222


221
Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, page 43.
222
Velleman, page 68.
134
The categorical imperative is commonly
represented as a rational test for logical contradiction.
When ones subjective wish, when made universal,
contradicts the objective results of the realization of this
wish, then action toward this end is denied by the
imperative. The action fails the test, and is not morally
permissible by the standards of the categorical
imperative. This is because any contradiction is
essentially irrational. Thus, the categorical imperative is
a method for coming to terms with the objective
implications of ones actions. There are subjective and
objective constraints on right action, and both must be
met in order for the action to be a moral one. This is
because all agents, rational or not, are bound by the
terms of same objective world, and a maxim cannot be
universalized if it ignores this fact.
For example, my subjective wish is to be seen in
a grand chariot, so I buy a HUMMER. Thinking in terms
of the categorical imperative, however, means that this
opportunity must extend to every rational being. This
means envisioning a world in which buying a HUMMER
is the right thing to do and everyone who is doing the
right thing is also buying a HUMMER. But, this objective
result contradicts my original subjective wish to be seen
in a grand chariot. Universalized, everyone has a
HUMMER. All of a sudden, my grand chariot is not so
grand! My wish has contradicted itself. By the
categorical imperative, buying a HUMMER in order to be
seen in a grand chariot is not rational, and thus immoral.
Kants own illustrations also appear to emphasize
the role of reason in the formation of maxims which
permit or deny action. For instance, in looking at a
subjective wish to break a promise, Kant points out that
breaking a promise works against the institution of
135
promise keeping on which the persuasive weight of any
given promise depends. To break a promise is to act on
the maxim that it is ok to break a promise. If everyone
acted on this maxim, by this reasoning, there would no
longer be an institution of promise keeping from which to
make a promise in the first place! Thus, breaking a
promise leads to a contradiction. How can you
(subjectively) make a promise if you cant (objectively)
make a promise?
Most reviews of the demands of the categorical
imperative tend to stop here, if they get this far at all.
These interpretations rest in an assay of rationality and
its demands, as ours has to this point. I think that
stopping here is a mistake. Lets see where they go
wrong.
A moral agent for Kant is a rational agent.
Rationality is the source of freedom, for Kant. A moral
agent must have a capacity to realize the immorality of
an action to be free to do otherwise. Rationality gives
him that power. Without a capacity to reason, to do
otherwise, there is nothing right or wrong about any
given action undertaken. It is just the way it is done.
The categorical imperative directs this moral
freedom. As the compass point of Kantian ethics, the
categorical imperative directs rational agents to ends of
actions which are moral, and away from those which are
not. It directs to ends the attainment of which can be
universally prescribed. It directs away from those which
can not. This is where any adequate analysis of the
categorical imperative must become an analysis of
conscience, as well. In denying actions and ends, the
categorical imperative is the voice of conscience in
Kantian ethics.
136
Consider David Vellemans interpretation of
Kantian ethics on this point. Velleman reads Kant as
asserting that conscience does the work of forbidding
actions which arise to consciousness insofar as they
lead to a contradiction according to the categorical
imperative: conscience tells us that the reasons we
thought we had for doing something couldnt be reasons
for doing it...
223
Wanting to be seen in a grand chariot is
not a moral reason to buy a HUMMER. If everyone
acted on the same rationale, that reasoning fails: no
more grand chariot! Thereby, on this account, the voice
of conscience arises as a consequence of rationality by
way of reasons a rational agent is conscious of before
he does what he is going to do.
But, this cant be the case! Herein lies the rub.
Consider the following example. At position A, a rational
subject looks at end B and rationally determines that B is
moral, universalizable. However, the only terms which
can be brought to bear in the evaluation of B are those
present, as reasons, to the consciousness of that
rational subject while still situated at A. It is on the basis
of these reasons that the rational person moves to B,
believing he is morally entitled to do so. After all, his
conscience has not denied his action. His conscience is
merely an aspect of discrete reason, on this picture.
But, this cant be right, and here is why.
Lets say that upon arriving at B, something
unforeseen happens. Our rational subject learns
something. Some aspect of B which was not determined

223
Velleman, page 74. Interestingly, here is one possible form of the
imperative so read: man is free to choose rationalizable ends, rationally.
See Velleman, page 75, especially. Conscience is only a punctuating
voice, a sub-component, of reason, on this picture.
137
prior to his situation at B is revealed upon his arrival at
B, and this aspect would have forbidden B as a moral
end if he only had known about it, as a reason not to got
to B, while still at A. Oops!
Now, this sort of thing happens all the time. And
in these common situations, Vellemans formula for
conscience no longer makes sense. It cannot be that
conscience tells us that the reasons we thought we had
for doing something couldnt be reasons for doing it
unless conscience does so only after the fact! If this is
all that conscience does, then it no longer resembles the
common sense picture of conscience with which we, and
presumably Velleman, have all begun. The voice of
conscience is supposed to keep us from doing the wrong
thing before we do it, not merely tell us we did the wrong
thing after the fact! Conscience must work from the
perspective of situation A. Otherwise, what use is it?
For that matter, what use is the categorical imperative?
Who has the time for such nonsense?
These results seem to ignore a fundamental
aspect of moral agents, conscientious human beings.
Agents of conscience are not simply moral agents, and
they are not perfectly rational agents; they are learning
agents, as well. There is no correction without error, and
the question of what is the right thing to do never arises
when someone already has perfect information. The
categorical imperative as commonly understood does
not capture this fact of the matter.
For the common view to work, it must assume a
perfectly rational, unrealistically informed, moral agent.
It must assume an agent with perfect information about
any desired end before any action toward that end is
undertaken. In other words, by this common
understanding, the categorical imperative is a moral
138
principle not fit for a man, but for (a) god(s). Thus, for
clarity, I would amend Vellemans formula: conscience
tells us that the reasons we thought we had for doing
something couldnt be reasons for doing it... from the
position of the perfectly rational agent who has already
come to terms with every possible end! And, this cant
be right.
What this view of the categorical imperative
demands is nothing less than a explanation for an action
prior to undertaking that action, and prior to coming to
terms with the results of that action.
224
It demands that
whatever terms by which an end is to be morally
evaluated must be present as reasons to the agent
before he undertakes the action to achieve it. This is a
very conservative demand. Typically, when deliberating
over the right thing to do, that some end or other is ever
realized, or even realizable, is yet a question. Yet, the
categorical imperative appears to take it as certain, and
exhaustively determined, from the point of view of the
agent before the action. This is unrealistic.
225
It appears that any action whose ends are not
exhaustively pre-determined is to be denied by this
principle.
226
This could be all that conscience does,

224
By explanation here I mean exhaustively rational account.
225
Or, it is merely routine. For the most part, the ways things have been
done are presumed to be the right ways to do things, now, and these ends
are already well-known. John Stuart Mill takes explicit recourse to this fact
of life, quite famously, in meeting objections to his Utilitarianism, for
instance. Arguing, in essence, that the wealthy are best off giving to the
poor, as there is more utility in a healthy happy educated society, than in a
divided and co-dependent one, Mill reminds us that, though we have no
time to calculate utility at every action, we begin with what practices we are
given. And, even at that, conscience is the final judge to continue with
routine, or not. And conscience demands we give to the poor.
226
Here, I am reminded of the Kant who, in Religion Within the Bounds of
Reason, Alone, asserts that one should not do any thing of whose ends he
139
consistent with Vellemans interpretation. One acts
morally when one acts rationally, and this is a matter of
seeking only reasoned, fully determined ends. When
reasons fail, conscience speaks up. Yet, persons do not
act rationally, and if the present analyses is correct, this
is a very good thing. Otherwise, no one would do
anything new, or novel, or creative, or for that matter
would ever learn anything, ever. This cant be right.
I think that Kant was smarter than that. He should
have understood this problem. I think that the focus
should lie in the universal terms of the maxim-maker,
and less on the logic of the categorical imperative itself.
If an end is evaluated in terms universal to any given
maxim maker, then the maxim which results will also
hold universally. This means more than rationality; it
means everything universal to any potentially moral
agent. Such an interpretation permits new and novel
actions whose ends are not completely certain, and so
actions for which one can give no discrete reasons per
se. A person should seek ends which are universally
worthy, and not merely act on the basis of reasons or
rules no matter how apparently exhaustive or well
construed.
What terms are these which should enter into the
moral evaluation of actions before they are undertaken?
To my mind, these are natural terms. These are terms
of natural necessity. These are needs universal to all
human beings at every place and time whose
satisfactions are universally good. Every other will

is not certain. There is one possible interpretation of this assertion, one
which denies realistically speaking any action at all, and that is: only act
towards ends reasons for which are grounded in terms whose values are
themselves certain even as the action is undertaken. This appears to make
moral action impossible in any changing world.
140
always be constrained by these terms. Every other will
always be bound by these terms. Every other will
always aspire to meet these terms. Every other will
always need these terms to be met in order to live and to
secure the leisure for genuine deliberative autonomy.
227
These are universal terms and those essential to the
balance that is Kants conscience, even if it is
understood to rest on a rational fulcrum. If these are
taken as the terms of moral sensibility, there is a role for
conscience both before and after action. Is this what
Kant could have had in mind, after all?
To address this question we must, conveniently,
get clear on Kants mature view of the conscience. For
the Kant of his later years, conscience has to do with
doing, with acting, and clearly less with evaluating. By
his account, conscience is the spring of practical
reason. A spring is a source of tension, of motivation.
Practical reason is ones capacity to figure a way to an
end, past obstacles, to be at the right place at the right
time.
228
Conscience, as a spring, thus motivates
practical reason to get from A to B.
Conscience is a motivational spring in at least two
senses. Conscience is ones self ahead and ones self
here, tied together at both ends by a spring (A -> B). In
this sense, conscience is the best of all possible selves,
under whose lights each step along the way is
evaluated. In this sense, the spring attaches to an oasis
(B) in a desert of despair (A), in whose realization one
feels at peace with ones self. Conscience is a positive
force in this way. It directs toward ends, rather than

227
For democracy and the American way of life!
228
Practical wisdom, on the other hand, is the capacity to see these ends in
the first place.
141
limiting ends to be sought. Conscience, thus, motivates;
but, it also prohibits. Conscience is also felt as a
negative force. Conscience restrains from ends whose
realization is a loss of worth as a person.
229
Tied to
ones self at one end (A), it forbids attachment to some
others (B).
Kant details in various places throughout the
Metaphysics of Ethics this mechanism which disqualifies
given actions on the basis of the ends to which they are
attached. In every case, at either end of the spring of
practical reason is ones self. Kant asserts that the
motivation for any action whatsoever depends on
feelings about the way of life which will result from the
action. The feelings which motivate for or against
actions appear, everyday, as reverence or disgust. For
these, there is no necessary rationale. In fact, in these
are the very grounds of reason. It is rational to
subjectively wish to be an object of reverence, and
irrational to wish to be on object of disgust. This is
conscience caught cold.
For Kant, as the preceding discussion revealed,
the moral law is represented by the categorical
imperative: Act according to that maxim which thou
couldst at the same time will a universal law.
230
Most
interpretations take this to be a rational exercise. But,
we have seen where these interpretations are lacking.
There is much more to it than that. There is an affective,
emotive, ground to this exercise.
Willingness to submit to this imperative, in the first
place, Kant calls good will. Now, good will, in our
everyday contemporary talk, equates to something like

229
Metaphysics of Ethics, page 92.
230
Ibid, page 43.
142
being nice. Good will, for Kant however, goes much
deeper than that. Good will is wishing for universally
good ends. Good will is wanting everything to work out
for everyone, everywhere, always. It is only wanting to
endorse the terms of those ends which, when realized in
action, are good for all others alike. Thus, the sentiment
underwriting I wish you well is, in terms of Kants good
will, I actively seek only universally good ends, yourself
included. This is more than being nice. This is a way of
life. This way of life only wishing for moral ends -
holds up to affective scrutiny. A good will is to be
revered; selfishness, falsity, dishonor, these are sources
of disgust. Let me clarify.
Doing the right thing doesnt feel like a rule,
though it is nice to remember how it was done in case
the opportunity arises again. Likewise, doing the wrong
thing doesnt feel like a contradiction, though upon this
determination it makes sense to figure where one went
wrong. Thus, the reason for doing or not doing any
given thing has little to do with reason, at all.
Kants fully developed moral theory is sensitive to
this fact. For the categorical imperative to be realistic, it
must test more than reasons. In fact, properly
understood, the imperative evaluates at a fundamentally
affective level. Good will is a feeling:
THAT, we now know, IS A GOOD WILL
WHOSE MAXIM, IF MADE LAW
UNIVERSAL, WOULD NOT BE
REPUGNANT TO ITSELF.
231
Though the test of the categorical imperative is
commonly represented merely as a test for logical

231
Metaphysics of Ethics, page 43. Kants emphasis.
143
contradiction, this is not the flavor of the formula richly
understood. The contradiction to be avoided is not to be
encountered in the vacuity of a purely logical space; it is
to be encountered in the space of our own hearts. The
test is not merely a rational one, as it has to do with self-
esteem. It is because disgust doesnt feel good that a
rational agent doesnt seek disgusting ends, and not the
other way around. No rational agent wants to be an
object of disgust! Similarly, anyone seeking to become
an object of reverence is behaving rationally. It is not
that perfect rationality alone is worthy of reverence. In
fact, it is cold, disgusting.
Recall that, for Kant, conscience is the spring of
practical reason. It directs positively toward a morally
ideal situation, one to be revered, and prohibits those to
be disgusted: selfishness and solipsism,
232
self-conceit
and self-love.
233
Conscience pulls ones self to the
peaceful reward of a worthy life which comes with feeling
at one with ones self. In deliberating on this end, one
must discount immediate sufferings, attractions and
distractions. This is where the categorical imperative
comes in. It helps to clear away all this clutter between
ones self and doing the right thing. Conscientious
exercise of the categorical imperative allows the free
person to act instead of according to the solicitations
of the sensory
234
out of reverence for what Kant calls
the moral law, good will.
Let me restate Kants imperative in more direct
terms: Do not become, through action, a person in whom

232
Metaphysics of Ethics, page 81.
233
Ibid, page 82.
234
Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, page 35.
144
you are disgusted. To which I will add: by leading your
self or others to bad ends.
235
The basis for this universal moral evaluation is the
shared constitution of individual persons, and is not
limited to rationality, but rests in a desire to be loved:
The constitution of my nature forces me to
desire and will every other persons
benevolence; wherefore, conversely, I am
beholden to entertain goodwill towards
others...
236
Good will has the deepest significance in Kants
ethics. It is good will for others equally with ones self
which grounds good feelings about ones self, in the first
place. In the passage below, Kant equates benevolence
with good will, asserts that these ground moral duties to
one another. Most importantly, it is this affect which he
then gives as the sole arbiter of the right thing to do, only
endorsed by reason after the fact:
Benevolence or goodwill is the pleasure we
take in the prosperity and happiness of our
neighbour: beneficence, again, would be
the maxim to make that happiness our end;
and the duty to do so is necessitation by
the subjects own reason, to adopt this
maxim as his universal law.
237

235
The physiological grounds for the moral test which the categorical
imperative represents as contradiction is disgust. See wickers, et. al.,
2003, for starters.
236
Metaphysics of Morals, pages 178-179.
237
Metaphysics of Morals, page 180. Recalling Smiths introductory
quotation to chapter 3 of this text.
145
This is, in my opinion, the most complete
exposition of Kants moral philosophy distilled into one
florid passage. The universal moral law is good will.
Good will is like a mirror; one looks in it, and sees
everyone else everywhere else as if living in terms of the
same situation.
238
I mean here phenomenally - what it
is like to be as if another in terms of the same place -
his pain is my pain. His pleasure is my pleasure. These
shared phenomena are themselves dependent on a
shared constitution. The terms of this shared nature are
those universal terms which are the focus of the
categorical imperative properly understood. These are
not limited to rationality or to reasons. The fundamental
moral term, the most constitutionally universal aspect of
our shared condition, is the conscience. Conscience is
not a mere aspect of reason, but the other way around:
The compunction a man feels from the
stings of conscience is, although of ethical
origin, yet physical in its results, just like
grief, fear, and every other sickly habitude
of mind. To take heed, that no one fall
under his own contempt, cannot indeed be
my duty, for that exclusively is his concern.
However, I ought to do nothing which I

238
The depth of the identity between ones self and others in Kants ethics
is evasive. The emotive/constitutive foundation of the categorical
imperative had evaded my attention until I turned directly to the study of this
less popular late text. In fact, it seems that in all of my coursework on this
issue, Kants ethics was presented as a rationalist counterpoint to other
systems of ethics whose authors explicitly relied on emotive aspects of
selves, like sympathy and compassion. But, as suggested at the beginning
of this section, it is impossible to make consistent sense of Kants view on
this reading, alone. I can only understand that Kant was so presented as
rationalism is the prevailing mode of todays academy, which has no
capacity to understand his full method.
146
know may, from the constitution of our
nature, become a temptation, seducing
others to deeds which conscience may
afterwards condemn them for.
239
One oak tree is not identical to another by leaf
and limb alone. It has roots, and turns to the Sun. In
acting, one evidences a certain way of life that is
directed to characteristic ends. One turns to the Sun, so
to speak. As all persons have the same embodied
nature, and are led to the satisfaction of similar needs,
one must do nothing to satisfy his own needs when that
embodiment cannot be conscientiously endorsed for all
others alike. Good will, thus, is like a mirror. My own
willful actions signify to others this way to the good. If I
turn only towards what benefits me, then I provide an
example for others to do the same. This is against
Kants moral law, which presumes that others will follow
suit. In reverence for the moral law, the ends which are
universally good for all persons in common are
deliberated over, identified, and are only those to which
the moral agent will tie himself if he, indeed, is to be
moral. To tie ones self to universally good ends is to be
motivated by goodwill. It is the moral law.
To be motivated by goodwill feels like a tension
between what is subjectively and objectively good. This
is morality conceived as a spring. Springs seek rest as
thirsty persons seek wells. With this in mind, I will again
restate the categorical imperative, this time with even
greater clarity: do what you must to be at rest, but do so
as if ones self were all others, alike. Do, subjectively,
only what will result in objectively good ends. Act in

239
Metaphysics of Morals, page 141.
147
good will. To do so is to become an object of reverence.
With this view on ones self from these ends, alone,
ones esteem, no matter his success or failure in action,
is guaranteed:
Reverence, even when felt for a person,
results from the law whereof that person
gives us the example (Cato, of integrity). If
to cultivate talents be a duty, then we
figure to ourselves a learned man, as if he
presented to our view the image of law,
enjoining us to be conformed to his
example; and thus our reverence for him
arises. What is called a moral interest, is
based solely on this emotion.
240
It is an embodied moral exemplar which is the
object of reverence, and the form of his life itself inspires
any further interest in what is moral, right or wrong, in
the first place. He exemplifies the terms to which one
holds ones self in comparison. His example becomes
the law. He shows the way. To be alike with this
person, situated similarly, is an end to be sought, and
likewise embodied. Further, this person is as much
ones self as he is any other; the logic is the same.
Thus, the moral law is universal. Everyone always
wants to be an object of reverence, else he is irrational.
Taken altogether, these passages and our
previous discussion lead to the following conclusion:
reverence or disgust for self and others and the power to

240
Metaphysics of Morals, page 60. In a further note, Kant adds: The
dependency of the will on sense is called appetite, and it always indicates a
want or need; but the dependency of the will on principles of reason is
called an interest.
148
be an example for self and others is all there is to
morality, at all. Once we set out rules, beyond doing
what is right, we have missed the point.
241
To act out of reverence for the moral law is to
become someone wed like to see when we look in the
mirror. This is perfectly rational. It is a special sense,
more than admiration, more than mere recognition. It is
the love for ones self, and for others, which pulls us
along the difficult road that marks the right thing to do.
But, it is the deepest love, the deepest respect, the
motivation of the most sacred of all properties,
conscience, which both opens this road, and compels us
to follow it to its moral ends:
A man may be an object of my love, my
fear, or my admiration, up to the highest
grade of wonder, and still he may be no
object of reverence. His jocose humor, his
strength and courage, his power and
authority, from the rank he has, may give
me such emotions, but they all fall short of
reverence.
242
Reverence is to want to take ends as ones own
and to embody that way of life which gets us there,
everyone. Reverence is no ordinary attitude. It attaches
only to a way of life, to a way of being in the world, which
we are compelled by affect to open, to mirror.
REVERENCE is bestowed on Persons only, never on

241
To the objection that am neglecting the privileged status of rules, laws,
or conventions, I must respond thusly. There is no use in a rule past its
revision. Anyone who thinks otherwise has missed the point of the rule.
242
Metaphysics of Morals, pages 83-84.
149
Things.
243
Hereby, Kants ethical theory provides that
bridging notion between subjective and objective,
between personal reasons and the universal good,
which its more common interpretations fail to deliver in a
robust and realistic way. Kants fully developed moral
theory is grounded in the shared human constitution,
and in the ways of being in the world which suit it. To
seek moral ends is perfectly rational, and is after all
grounded in the human capacity for reflection on his
situation, his world, shared.
These are grounds which will suffer the plow of
every Philosopher with a genuine interest in morality
since Kants time, present share included. Far from
being an ivory tower exercise in vacuous rationality, as it
is too often painted in the academy, today, his
Philosophy belongs in the streets. Kant gives us more
than moral theory. He shows us how to live. No amount
of rational reflection alone can uncover the sanctity of
the conscience, or reveal the weight of the moral life.
These must be felt, and are the burden of the moral
man. It is his cross to bear, as much as it is in our
nature to revere him for it.
After all, with Kant, our interest in what is right
and wrong is only inspired by the moral example, so that
we may, someday, become so good:
I may add, that to any plain man in whom I
may discover probity of manners in a grade
superior to my own, my mind must bow
whether I will or not. To what is this owing?
His example presents to me a law which
casts down my self-conceit when it is

243
Metaphysics of Morals, page 83. Echoing this distinction is Heideggers
caring for and caring about, coming soon to a chapter near you.
150
compared with my own deportment; the
execution of which lawthat is, its
practicabilityI see proved to me by real
fact and event. Nay, even if I were
conscious of like honesty to his, my
reverence for him would continue; the
reason whereof is, that all good in man
being defective, the law, made exhibitive
by an example, prostrates my conceit,
which exemplar is furnished by a person
whose imperfectionswhich must still
attach to himI do not know as I do my
own, and who therefore appears to me in a
better light. REVERENCE is a tribute which
cannot be refused to merit, whether we
choose or not. We may decline outwardly
to express it, but we cannot avoid inwardly
to feel it.
244
We mirror others in reverence. We close to them
in disgust. We all want to become worthy of reverence,
and avoid the other end. Conscience, the spring of
practical reason, may take others for models, but is at
both ends bound to ones self. That end in the distance,
that is not just some end, that is not just some man, that
is my end, my self, me. This aspect of the moral
mechanism is clear on Kants mature view, and lost in its
common interpretations. The imperative is: How
would/should/could/do I feel about my self, reverence or
disgust, upon realizing the end of some action?
Conscience opens the space between this end and that,
A and B, and however I get there, wherever I end up, I

244
Metaphysics of Morals, page 84.
151
take myself with me. Practical reason may make an end
possible, But so long as man lives, he cannot endure to
be in his own eyes unworthy of life.
245
This is universal,
and where our analysis of Kants ethics will stop.
In this section, we have seen how certain
emotions ground moral thinking. The feelings of disgust
and reverence motivate persons to seek or to avoid
certain situations. We have also seen how conscience
motivates to ends by disclosing them, as ends to be
sought or avoided, altogether. Conscience is the
universal mechanism in determining what is moral and
immoral and in motivating one way or the other. Thus,
the category over which the categorical imperative
governs is less the rational than the conscientious. To
follow conscience, this is the moral law, its utterances
the substance of moral command. To deny this fact is,
simply put, irrational.
In the following section, we will look more closely
at our universally embodied conditions, being in the
world. In the following section, I will introduce a thought
experiment which illustrates the universality of our
condition as situated beings seeking rest, even inner
peace. This experiment will clarify the critical role of
conscience in opening up the space of the future, and
what this means for how we will live the rest of our lives.
This is the bathtub experiment: Diogenes, who was in
fact not so famous for being an avid bather, will take a
bath, and we, out of reverence for his example, will
follow suit. We will, thus, put the mechanism of morality
in the spotlight. A spring, after all, is more then a metal,
or even a mortal, coil. It is a source of life, itself.

245
Metaphysics of Morals, page 83.
152
9. Conscience, and the good.
It would seem to be a sort of accident, if it
turned out that a situation would fit a thing
that could already exist entirely on its own.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein
246
In this section I will introduce a thought
experiment, the bathtub experiment. The basic idea is to
exercise conscience by feeling as-if in some other
situation, and then to come to terms with it. I use the
bathtub because it is a space of relaxation and
reflection, a place to start without so many tensions, as
well as for other reasons to come clear momentarily.
In the everyday way, conscience brings one from
the space of need to a space of rest by first presenting
the perspective of that space ahead with needs met. It
is this view from the place ahead which provides the
conscience its motivational infallibility. One never fails to
find some end for which to reach, one only fails to reach
it.
247
Remember, the spring of conscience both ties
ones self to ends and motivates to their realization. A
spring has a work function, and we can see the
conscientious agent sort of like an inchworm, at either
end himself. Persons stretch out and pull up to ends,
coming to terms with those ends and deliberating over
new ones, inching along in life, situation to situation. At
both ends of the spring is always and already ones own
self. One end of the self is there before the rest arrives,
but the whole of the worm is at that place, at that time.

246
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, 2.0121
247
Lost is an especially unpleasant end, and misled by men of bad
conscience an especially unpleasant way of getting there.
153
He is simply ahead of most of himself most of the time
he is on his way. Even at rest, he reaches out for this or
that, whatever it is he needs, at least in mind or as a
matter of fact.
Earlier, we saw that conscience opens the space
between a thirsty man and a needed drink. Some men
have taken this to mean that the good life is lived with
drink in hand. I tend to agree. It pays to have what one
needs, to have more is to have too much, to have less
too little. This is true in every moment, at all times, and
is a situation to which all must confess being bound.
The good life is everywhere adequate to the situation.
There is nothing new about this realization.
Consider this report on the ancient philosophers called
the Cynics:
Their fundamental Maxim was to live in
conformity to virtue, which they said was
sufficient to make men happy. They sought
Liberty and Independency as the greatest
Good. The Gods, said they, stand in need
of nothing and those that stand in need of
few things do most resemble them. To
procure this happy independency they
pretended to look upon honor and Riches
with perfect indifferency, and to renounce
all the inconveniencies of Life. Diogenes
would have no other habitation than a Tub,
and when he found that he could drink out
of the hollow of his hand, he threw away
his wooden cup as a superfluity. Alexander
the Great, coming to visit Diogenes in his
Tub, asked him what he desired of him.
Nothing, said the philosopher, but that
154
you would not stand between me and the
Sun.
248
Diogenes example makes explicit a universal
condition. Everyone will thirst, and not simply for fluids.
Limiting that for which one thirsts is to limit those ends to
which one is compelled to move. Life is better when it is
not permeated by unmet needs. Diogenes exemplified
this condition by living in his tub. In renouncing worldly
attachments, Diogenes had few unmet needs. With so
few needs, he could live happily in his tub. No unmet
need means no need to go anywhere else. He needs
nothing, so he can refuse Alexanders offer of help.
What could Alexander do for him, anyways, besides get
out of his light? Diogenes would not live in Alexanders
shadow and, lucky for us, this gives us the best view on
Diogenes situation.
Imagine that Diogenes tub is filled with water. He
is lying in the Sun, bathing.
249
His situation is a good
one because, though he will still thirst, his thirst shall
with the least effort be reliably satisfied. When he does
get thirsty, again, all that Diogenes must do is to dip his
hand in his bathwater, and drink. He has thrown away
his cup, because he doesnt even need that! Keeping
track of an unnecessary cup is merely unnecessary
trouble. It is this aspect of his situation which permits
him to refuse any offer from Alexander. He needs
nothing done for him. He lives in the space of his own

248
Fordyce, A Brief Account pages 177-178, remarking on the Cynics,
for whom morality was the only true science, causing them to renounce
worldly attachments.
249
Though Diogenes may have not been an avid bather in reality, I am
hoping the reader can overlook this and enjoy the illustration.
155
necessity, already. He is comfortably situated in his tub,
wherein all his own needs can already be met.
To have thirst satiated, once, does not mean he
will not become thirsty again. Diogenes answered
Alexander as he did because the space in which his
needs arose was that very same space through which
his needs were filled. Nothing external needed to be
brought into the picture. He felt no anxiety about how
and where his needs might or might not be filled. He
had no uncertainty about his capacities to satisfy his
thirst. He had come to terms with his situation. He
didnt even have to lift a cup to his mouth, and every little
thirst was quenched one handful at a time. Just what he
needed, in the light of the Sun.
This is an ideally comfortable situation. He put
himself in this situation deliberately. It is a situation with
very little tension. He minimized the tension between
where he was and where he needed to be to have his
needs met. He was already there, nowhere to go.
This was something Diogenes deliberately did,
but it is much more than that. It is something that all
people do.
250
For example, when I know that I will need
lots of printer ink, I try to have an extra ink cartridge on
hand. Why? Because then I do not have to get up from
my chair, bike to the shop, and return. I feel good
reflecting on the fact that there is an extra printer
cartridge there, right next to me. I can relax in the space
of my work knowing my coming needs are met.
A similar dynamic is at work in the space of every
situation. Persons feel good when their needs are met.
They also feel good when their present situation is such

250
The Truth is that all things in nature do the same thing: all things in
nature move to rest in terms of their environment.
156
that any upcoming needs will be met. Thats why I have
an extra cartridge of printer ink. It is as-if I was bathing
in it. Such is the power of Diogenes example, the
timeless power of a Philosophic life. The image of this
man in his tub, at rest in his space of need, will never fail
to express The Truth of every situation.
It is in this spirit that the Cynics understood
morality to be the highest science, and it is in this spirit
that Diogenes refused any other need. He had come to
terms with his own situation well enough to be able to
demonstrate our own universal condition, as well.
Most of us are unwilling to follow Diogenes
example. We have put ourselves in positions in which
we cannot spend our days in a tub. Other people rely on
us not to forsake every need. Diogenes, however, lived
in his tub alone. This doesnt mean that to follow
Diogenes example we too have to live alone. We will
get other people in the tub with us in the next section,
and make even more of the following illustration in the
final sections. For now, however, imagine what it is like
to rest in such a space alone in order to better
understand what Diogenes may have been up to. It is in
this light that I offer the following illustration.
Imagine that you are, like Diogenes, reflecting in
the space of your own needs. Imagine that all of the
things you think you need in your everyday life are in the
tub with you. Imagine that all of your daily needs are
met. The kids are cared for, the clothes are clean, and
the work is done. Imagining this situation is the work of
conscience. Conscience holds out another situation as-
if one were so situated. The difference between the
situation you are in and the situation held out before you
157
is motivational.
251
In this case, we are imagining that
anything that may have been a motivation to seek a
different situation is not.
252
Imagine that you are in
Diogenes bathtub, but with everything you need in it,
not just water from the cup of your hand.
This is where the thought experiment begins.
Imagine that you are in a bathtub which describes the
space of the perfect situation.
253
It is the perfect bathtub.
There is no tension, no unmet need in the space of the
perfect bath. The perfect bath involves letting ones self
drift away in peaceful reflection because there is no felt
weight of need compelling distraction. Your every need
is met. There are no external constraints, no kids to pick

251
Like a carrot
252
Hegel has written that conscience is this deepest inward solitude with
ones self where everything external and every restriction has disappeared.
Cited in Paul Ricoeur, 1992, page 344, fn.51, from Hegels Philosophy of
Right page 254. What I think Hegel means by this in simple terms is that
conscience represents what it would be like if the world perfectly aligned
with ones own personal wishes. Ricoeur recalls from Hegel that this is a
lonely situation until and unless made actual through ethical life. This
causes Ricoeur to reflect on Hegel as follows. It is the absence of
contents, which ethical life alone can bring, that condemns conscience to
this solitude and this arbitrariness: Here at the abstract standpoint of
morality, conscience lacks this objective content and so its explicit character
is that of infinite abstract self-certainty [Gewissheit], which at the same time
is for this very reason the self-certainty of this subject Ricouer here
cites page 91. I take this aspect of Hegels thought abstract self-certainty
and put it to work in the illustration to follow. I work to make this aspect of
conscience clear in order to make way for the ethical life.
253
I like to start with the bath because the feeling of being in the bath is of
the loss of external restrictions and this is what I want to emphasize. Also,
not simply coincidently, bathtubs look like gravity wells, or potential wells
more generally, and represent low energy states wherein external demands
are relaxed and internal demands take over. That is, their very shape
describes the space of rest sought by all things in nature, from molecule to
mankind to solar system.
158
up, no dinner to cook, no bills to pay, no love to miss.
Take this to be true. Put your self in this place.
If you are having trouble, begin by taking
advantage of the everyday feeling of what it is to take a
bath. Put your self in this situation. Let your self sink
into the tub, close your eyes, and relax. It is like being
without tension. This is the feeling we are after. We will
modify this feeling in a moment. The idea, here, is to
remove all sources of tension, to strip down to the bare
situation, and then to become aware of the feelings of
tension as corresponding objects are reintroduced.
254
To begin with, imagine being in a bathtub, with
tensions wholly relaxed. This is the space of an ideal
situation. It is yours. Your deepest inward wishes and
grandest lifes dreams are all met right down to the fabric
and the color. This represents the space of ideal
determination, where everything significant in your life is
exactly where and how it is supposed to be. This is the
space of the world as one would have it, the space
where one feels his own highest potentials realized.
This is the space of reflection which answers to life
would be perfect if This is the perfect bath.
What is conscience doing here? Recall the
characterization of conscience as con-science. Con-
science holds two sciences in comparison. Sciences
were characterized as ordered arrays of objects which
are significant in terms of ones engagements with them.
When the order of the array is less an issue, think of
them as scenes rather than sciences. Conscience
holds two scenes out for comparison. That is what
conscience is doing here.

254
Instead of beginning by rationally disbelieving all beliefs, as Descartes
did, I am offering an affective method. We begin by feeling.
159
In the first scene to be compared, that of being in
the world before the bath, all of the determinations of the
situation are loaded with everyday tensions. One has to
come to terms with having kids, or with living alone, or
with finding a drink on a moment-to-moment basis. This
first scene is the space of need: things need done, terms
need met, places need gone toward. In the second
scene, all of these same everyday tensions are met.
This is the space of rest. The kids are cared for, a pretty
girl moves in next door, the bartender buys the next
round. In this second situation, all the strained terms of
ones everyday situation are relaxed. The conscience
holds these two scenes up for comparison.
The difference between these two scenes is the
quantified tension between being in need and being at
rest. This tension is motivational. Conscience is like a
spring. Conscience motivates us to reach that second
situation, that situation where everything external and
every restriction has disappeared.
255
This is a space of
rest, a space in which our needs are met. This is good.
Conscience motivates us to seek the good.
The best situation of all is the perfect bath. In
the perfect bath, there is no tension. In the perfect bath,
there is no space between need and satisfaction, no
distance to travel to get there. There is no second
situation toward which to move because any necessary
terms are already met in this one. This is the space of
perfect and complete rest. This is a low energy state,
one of utter relaxation. Life in such a situation, when all
that one already wishes for is realized, is good.
256

255
Review footnotes 252 254, this section.
256
It is universally good, in fact: THE good. THE Truth.
160
Lets modify this illustration. Lets reintroduce
some of the tensions of everyday life. In my case, there
is a great deal of tension attached to finishing this
manuscript, which is also my Doctoral dissertation. This
is a great deal of tension. Writing a dissertation is what
is called a weighty situation. My entire life hangs in the
balance; if the book is not good, then my life promises to
be likewise. I will start by reintroducing this single
source of tension, and it is a big one.
I will next imagine myself in a second situation, a
situation in which this dissertation is done. This is
ACTWith c/o: as-if my self coming to new determinations
of my own situation up ahead. The situation is imagined,
as intended, to be one in which this dissertation is done,
and done well. The felt difference between these two
scenes is the tension releasing as I let myself come to
terms with the second, imagined, situation: a job well
done. I become aware of how much tension attaches to
this end only as I let the tension release. Otherwise, it is
all mixed up with every other source of anxiety in my
situation as a whole. Once this aspect of my situation is
isolated, I can, in a rough and ready way, quantify how
much tension in my everyday life this single thing, this
dissertation, is responsible for. Wow, this dissertation
really has me tensed up, I think to myself. Man, I really
need to get it done Of course, that will take work.
Lets return again to our starting place. We will
introduce a basic tension. Imagine now that you are in
the perfect bath with all needs met. Let the tensions slip
away. Now, imagine that you begin getting thirsty. You
need a drink. Unlike Diogenes situation, imagine that
you are not resting in the space whereby this new need
can be filled. Drinking the bathwater is not an option,
because bathwater is not that for which you thirst.
161
Recollect the discussion on thirst and the
orientation to the good. Recall what thirst requires. To
be thirsty is to have an end in need of being reached.
Now, this end is not that in which you are presently
situated. Your space of rest is outside of this current
situation. Hereby, a difference opens up between where
you are, and where you need to be. You feel this
difference as a tension. You are thirsty, motivated to get
a drink. Now, imagine a space ahead with a drink in it.
It is a well fed by a cool mountain spring. Perfect.
To be thirsty is to need a drink. To get a drink, in
this case, requires walking to the well. Imagine walking
to the well. Pull up the water, and lift the cup to your
mouth for satisfaction. The energy necessary to
complete this operation is the minimum expenditure of
energy necessary for you to get that drink of water. This
is the energetic barrier between the situation in which
you thirst, and the space of satisfaction. You have to
overcome this barrier in order to satisfy your need. This
is where the conscience is motivational, like a (metal
coil) spring: it does work. In this case, you have to get
out of the tub and walk to the well and pull up the water.
The spring of conscience motivates you to get over this
hump.
Things could have been worse. If there were
other obstacles, things would have been more difficult. If
you had to cross a minefield, you would have felt more
tension, for example. If you had to clear the way through
the jungle and dig the well from scratch, things could
have been more difficult still. This would have presented
quite an energetic barrier to overcome. Lots of work for
a drink of water! Luckily, in most cases, the walk to the
well has been cleared by prior generations, and the wells
have been dug. Others have gotten thirsty, needed a
162
drink, and had opened the restful space of satisfaction
before us. Prior generations, in fact, have done better
than merely show the way to the well. Now, we have
sinks, and pipes, and sewer lines. Walking to the well
had required a lot more energy compared to what most
people must do now. Getting a drink had been a source
of great tension. Now, we simply walk to the tap. It is
the energy expended by others in digging wells and
laying pipes which saves us so much work, today. Their
efforts have put us in a better situation. How good of
them!
Even our situation is more energetically
expensive than was Diogenes when it comes to getting
a drink, however. The present process - getting up,
walking to the sink, pulling a clean glass of water - still
requires a great deal of energy, comparatively. For
Diogenes, the energy necessary to satiate his thirst was
a bare minimum. It is difficult to imagine an easier
situation for the thirsty bather than comfortably drinking
his own bath water from the cupped palm of his own
hand. This is an ideal space of rest. There is simply no
place to go because he is already there. Now, that is
taking it easy!
Lets return to a more common scenario. Imagine
standing over the well after having taken a drink,
satisfied, as-if without a need. In this second situation,
the first situation punctuated with thirst is safely behind.
Momentary thirst now past, standing over the well is no
longer necessarily the right place to be. Drinking is no
longer the right thing at the right time. A drink is no
longer necessary. The future is open; no need ties us to
any end not of our own determination. This is an
opportunity for de-liberation, for tying ones self to some
end of ones choosing, even some end which answers to
163
no need, at all. It is a moment of leisure. It is at a
moment like this that a man is free.
257
At this point, there is an option. For one thing,
one may continue on in ones old practices, slaking thirst
at the same old wells to live out a life of utter routine.
One may merely look around the well for distractions,
and busy himself with trivial aspects of the world until
growing thirsty again, keeping the same old wells nearby
to satiate the same old thirsts. Conscience is at work
here in these mundane instances, keeping track of
changing situations and opening to some things but
closing to most. In this routine life, however, there is a
greater capacity untapped. With needs met, one has an
opportunity to deliberate and to do otherwise.
Recall the theme of the last few sections: what is
the meaning of life and who shall I become? Am I to be
a man who hovers around the old watering hole, or am I
to be a man who does new and different, or even great,
things? In order to demonstrate what I am getting to,
lets recall Socrates question: is that Socrates ahead or
some scarecrow? We will now imagine each situation in
turn, and see what the freedom that is an option to do
otherwise than to live a meaningless life of mere
repetition and routine adds up to.
Lets return to the starting place of the bathtub
experiment. Relax in the bath. Feel tensions slip away.
Next, attend to some aspect or other of the everyday
world maybe you need a drink? - and induce this
external restriction on your perfect bath. Where the
external restriction is not met, this difference causes
strain. Tension. It is the difference between the two
situations which is the motivational force of conscience.

257
For Philosophy! See section 6.
164
In the perfect bath, there is no difference between where
you are and where you need to be. It is the perfect
situation, as if the world were a bathtub molded to meet
your every need. With unmet need, this is not the case.
Lets see what happens when what one needs is not just
a sip at the old watering hole. Lets see what happens
when what is missing from the space of ones life is self-
respect, self-esteem, self-worth, reverence.
Recall Kants stipulation that what is called a
moral interest, is based solely on this emotion
reverence. Let us return to the perfect bath for a
moment. The perfect bath certainly involves being
revered. After all, there is nothing perfect about being
an object of self-disgust! What I want you to do is to
imagine that your perfect bathing situation is an object of
reverence. Imagine that all the tensions are released,
but pay attention this tension in particular, being revered,
being released. Begin by imagining how you your self
regard those whom you revere, because in this case you
are the object of reverence. Reflect on the space of
reverence, and let the tensions slip away.
Imagine that to be revered is be in a situation
exactly like your own with others seeking to be exactly
like you. This is the significance of reverence. It is more
than admiration, or simple respect. Others wish they
were you, and actively seek to become just like you.
They adopt your practices, they mirror your actions, and
seek your ends. This is more than fame or passing
fancy. You are setting the standard for excellence. You
ARE the good.
In prior discussions, we had focused on particular
aspects of given situations. Where is the furniture?
Where is the one I love? Where can I get a drink?
Here, we are focusing on ones entire situation.
165
Reverence is about ones entire way of life, beginning
middle and end. It is not some mere aspect of ones self
which is the object of reverence, it is the entire self.
Reverence does not mean admiration for some
trait or quality. Reverence is for persons only, whole
persons. Reverence is for life, a life, in this case your
life. But, it does not come easily. To my mind, for
example, that Diogenes could capture what is universal
to everything in nature simply by living in a tub is to be
revered. Everyone wishes to be in a situation with
needs met and turned toward the Sun. Everyone.
258
Of course, every tub is different in detail. Each
person has unique needs. Selves essentially differ from
one another. And this points to the actual object of
reverence. One is revered for his difference, his
embodied difference which is the right difference at the
right time. It is this difference which displays that
situation to which others are drawn in reverence. Others
are motivated to seek the revered situation because they
differ from it. In being different from the object of
reverence, one is conscientiously motivated to become
otherwise than he is. He, too, wants to be revered.
I have often said that conscience is about doing
the right thing at the right time. I have stressed the value
of examples. Here, these two aspects come together.
Conscience is about doing the right thing at the right
time and serving as a model for others to do the same.
Conscience works at providing ones own situation as
the ruler as in measure for others. Wanting to be
revered is wanting to have a conscience, is wanting to
be responsible for doing the right thing at the right time

258
Perhaps this explains the revered Alexanders remark, that if he could
not have been Alexander, he would have been Diogenes.
166
in ones own eyes and in the eyes of others. Imagine
that you have done the same.
Reverence is different from mere popularity.
People dont revere you because they want to, or
because it feels good. If one is revered, unlike the men
named by Callicles in the earlier section, this sentiment
continues long after the party is over. Reverence is
more than a fat belly and a happy face for the moment.
Like Diogenes, to be revered is to be situated with no
place to go because one is already there. In fact, to be
revered is to be the there to which others are
conscientiously drawn in the first place.
Imagine that you are revered. That man, up
ahead, is already you. In the perfect bath, it is as if one
had come to terms with the world as shared and all
needs are met. This includes coming needs. Imagine
that you have lived such a worthy life that all needs are
met, ones own and all others as well. You already are
that man ahead, the good leader, the just ruler, the
model for others to live the just life. Imagine, for
instance, that you have provided for the security for your
City through hard work and dedication. You are in the
situation of having this work behind you. They are safe
and happy, free to set out the good for themselves. You
are successful. That feels good. No tension.
Real life is seldom this way, however. How far
are you from this ideal situation? Is who you are, now,
the person you wish to be? We will look at how far you
might be in more realistic terms in the discussion to
follow. Here: lets take the perfect bath and invert it.
Lets turn your tub upside down. You are cast out on the
muddy floor covered in filth and soot. Imagine that you
are the object of disgust, rather than reverence. Imagine
that everything has gone horribly wrong. In life, for your
167
self, and for everyone everywhere else, you have failed.
You have misled them, and all suffer for it.
This is a terrifying difference. First, in the space
of the perfect bath, all felt needs were met. These
include fame, fortune, and other worldly things, health,
hope, and happiness. You were revered! Now, none of
these needs are met. In fact, these are lacking. You are
sick, infamous, miserable, despised, avoided, alone.
This situation is not a place to which anyone is
motivated. You are the NOT good. It is the opposite of
being revered. Others no longer seek you out; they fear
you. You are disgusting. No one wants to be you.
Especially, you dont want to be you. Bound by the
greatest of tensions. Strain tears you apart. Hell.
Hard to imagine? Begin by imagining particular
things. In the perfect bath, you are clean and healthy.
In this inversion, you are slimy, sick, even contagious. In
the perfect bath, you are respected by others. In this
inversion, you are despised. It is in the mirroring eyes of
those whom you love that your despised situation is
most clearly revealed. After all, the love expressed by
those others to whom you are most open is, most of all,
what makes the bath perfect. In this case, there is none
of that. In the perfect bath, the one you love comes to
you in your time of need. She brings you a drink when
you are thirsty. In the inverted bath, she goes off instead
to drink beer with a hippy and to live in a van on the
road. Not a comfortable situation.
To open to another in love, only to have her lie,
and reject you in disgust, is the opposite of a perfect
situation. Imagine that. In the inverted bath, the one
you love abandons you in your time of need. In the
mirror of her eyes, you see the disgust behind the
rejection. Yours is not a place I wish to be. I wish
168
instead to be away from you. In self-disgust, this
evaluation is internalized. You mirror the rejection, and it
is complete, the whole of your self. It is not merely that
some aspect of the situation went wrong. It is that
everything about the situation went wrong. What is
wrong is your entire self. In the inversion, ones self is
the situation one cannot be.
259
Imagine the tension.
Becoming an object of self-disgust is a very real
possibility in life. Without good examples to follow, and
the good-will of others, and with an opportunity to do
otherwise here and there, it is even likely. This is life as-
if one were already the scarecrow, without potential to
become Socrates up ahead. This is a most terrifying
situation. This is why Socrates question is, as he
maintains, the most important question of all. The option
to do otherwise than we have done, to do what is right
instead of merely what is routine, to put ourselves and
others in the best possible situation, to bathe in the best
possible light, is lifes most valuable opportunity. This
means a meaningful life, a life worth living, or not. This
is a big difference, the biggest.
The bathtub thought experiment is meant to
capture this scope of conscience in opening spaces
which respond to need and correspond to satisfaction.
Conscience presents us with a gap which must be
bridged in order to find satisfaction, and it is the greatest
gap imaginable. Conscience motivates us to bridge this
gap by holding out that situation as that in which we
may, all together, be happy. We have just seen the
potential range of these possible realizations, and what
is at risk if we fail, and things dont work out.

259
See Angst, next section.
169
The bathtub experiment captures the significance
of an opportunity for reflection on how and for what one
lives his life. In sitting in the bath, oscillating from
reverence to disgust as we just have, we catch a
glimpse of two poles which bind the whole of life. We
aim for doing the right thing at the right time. If we
succeed, we are revered. We avoid doing the wrong
thing at the wrong time. If we fail, we become objects of
disgust. Conscience motivates us to the former, and
away from the latter. It is like a spring tied at both ends
to ones self. This spring motivates the search for the
meaning of life. When we wonder which ends are
worthy, and which are not, we wonder about what it is
that makes the right thing to do the right thing to do and
the right time to do it. We wonder about the life worth
living, and how to live it. This is the meaning of life,
becoming the good. This is the work of the conscience.
The sections to follow mark a change of pace. I
will leave the talk for the ACTWith model, and of
bathtubs and potato games until the final sections, when
we will take what we have learned and apply it to a
pressing situation requiring immediate conscientious
attention. I do this for two reasons. Primarily, I leave
this language behind in order to meet the thinkers to
come on their own terms. The relationships between
their ideas and past material are obvious enough.
Secondarily, I leave this language behind so that the
reader may begin applying what we have learned,
thusfar. Call it practice. We are here to draw a circle of
words around the world. Hard work? Yes, but no
complaints. This way to the good.
170
10. Conscience, and the appearance of the good.
In a receptive, attentive observer, intuitive
images of the characteristic aspects of the
things that interest him come to exist;
afterward he knows no more about how
these images arose than a child knows
about the examples from which he learned
the meanings of words. That an artist has
beheld the truth follows from the fact that
we too are seized with the conviction of
truth when he leads us away from currents
of accidentally related qualities. An artist is
superior to us in that he knows how to find
the truth amid all the confusion and chance
events of daily experience.
--H. Helmholtz
260
We saw Diogenes take a bath last section. The
lesson that we derived from his example involves the
universality of the human condition as situated in a world
of need. In the end, we discovered something about the
conscience. It is what motivates us to realize our
highest dreams and aspirations. It also reveals our
frailty, and the horror of being cast out. In this section,
we will approach the theme of alienation in general. We
will find in Martin Heideggers thought a basis for some
things revealed in the prior sections. One of these is the

260
The Facts of Perception. Anticipating dynamic systems, and the agent
on the edge of chaos, frantically ordering the turbulence simply to ensure
that the plane of his existence remains continuous in all its critical
dimensions. This is the picture of conscience at work, artistry, the
workhorse of Philosophy.
171
significance of others in how we come to see ourselves.
Another is the role of conscience in motivating one to
realize his highest potentials. Together, these
constraints will give insight into what is universal about
mans condition, trying to make the most of his mortality.
There is a danger in working with Heideggers
philosophy directly. Everything is connected with
everything else. To begin talking on one point inevitably
leads to a web of critical associations with supporting
notions. Herein, we are asking: what is the relationship
between conscience, death, and other people? Even
this simple question unlocks a floodgate. We may as
well ask, what is the meaning of life? So, lets tread
lightly and skip on through to more solid ground.
We begin on familiar ground. For Heidegger,
conscience is universal among human beings.
Conscience is a universally established and
ascertainable fact.
261
Conscience shows up as a call.
It summons ones self away from everyday
entanglements and forward to ones highest
potentials.
262
Consistent with its characterization as a
call, it gives us something to understand, it
discloses.
263
What it discloses, and what it calls one
toward, is ones self.

261
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 1996, page 249(270). Where
possible, notes to Heideggers Being and Time are from the same edition
and will follow this format: B&T, page xxx(xxx), with English pagination first,
and German pagination in parentheses.
262
I use the word highest to describe what Heidegger is translated to refer
to as ones ownmost potential. Though ownmost captures the sense in
which ones understanding is unique, and so the possibilities stemming
from this potential are always ones own highest possibilities, I simply use
the term highest as it captures this sense for all persons equally.
263
B&T, page 249(270)
172
In some traditional phenomenological terms, the
movement of disclosure, clearing in the sense of a
verb, is one of exstasis. Ex-stasis comes from root
words: -sta, meaning staying in place, and ex-, out of,
implying moving from, standing up, no longer staying in
place.
264
Only living things are ex-static. As their situations
in the world change, they experience new things, or old
things in different ways; they disclose the world in their
ex-static movement from a resting place, as the
phenomenological tradition has maintained since the
Greeks.
265
Heidegger is of this tradition. Heideggers focus
in Being and Time is not living with clocks, as the title
in English suggests, although he has something to say
about that too. Heideggers focus in Being and Time is
die Lichtung, or the clearing of being. And by the
clearing of being, we are really talking about the
meaning of life: the essence of a human being is to
be already that place where things show up as what,
that, and how they are.
266
Let me clarify. Clearing is both a noun, as in
already that place where things show up and as in the

264
This movement need not be understood spatially, though this picture is
easiest to grasp. Consider this example. Whats the difference between a
Socrates sitting and a Socrates standing? Ex-stasy! To think of ex-static in
this way, as the English word appears, ex-, meaning having been, and
static, meaning at rest, is not far off, but must not be confused with especial
glee. It may be understood as excitability resulting in embodied difference
though experience, and this requires no spatial movement per se.
265
The locus classicus for Western Philosophys role in disclosure resides
in Platos Myth of the Cave.
266
Sheehan, page 276. The astute reader will realize the parallel with the
three aspects of temporality in kairos; the what is the past, what is judged,
the present is that which is on display, and the future is how these become
new, again. Interesting!
173
cleared space of a dark forest wherein one dwells. It is
also a verb, as in clearing up the darkness for the
building of a dwelling. Heidegger means both, as in
being in the clear.
These two together lead to the possibility for
another sense of clearing. A clearing is a space in which
things arise. A clearing is an open space in which things
can be constructed, ordered, arranged. A clearing is a
place where work is done. A clearing is a space of
inquiry. A clearing is a site of synthesis.
267
The word that Heidegger uses to indicate beings
like human beings is Dasein. Dasein is German, and
literally signifies being there.
268
Being there is not
quite complete, though; what Heidegger has in mind is
more like the being of the there than simply being in a
spot at a time, like other things, like rocks and sticks.
Dasein is where any there happens. Dasein is where
things come to matter.
Da-sein is a being which is concerned in its being
about that being.
269
That explains why we surround
ourselves with the things we do and the objects in terms
of which we do them. Clearing mirrors caring. It is
only in terms of this clearing that things matter at all.
One is, after all, what one takes care of.
270
Ones
situation is defined in terms of the objects which occupy
his attention. This aspect of ones self, that it always is

267
It is not that the self is conceivable by some sort of reduction. It is not a
thing out there, to be arrived at by purely logical means. Rather, the I is
the subject of logical behavior, of binding together. The I think means I
bind together. B&T, page 294(319)
268
For Heideggers own clarification, in terms which suit the following
discussion, see B&T, page 125(132-133). We will return to these passages
later on, in the next sub-section, in any event.
269
B&T, 179(192)
270
Ibid, 296(322)
174
understood as situated in terms of objects, Heidegger
calls existential spatiality. Whenever one says that I
am here, one is remarking on the existential spatiality
of ones self. Thus, one can feel spread thin when the
objects which demand his attention are far removed and
still important.
Here is always understood in terms of the
things at hand which [one] initially takes care of in the
surrounding world.
271
Here is thus understood in terms
of the things one cares about. If these things are not
here, this is a source of anxiety, tension. Dasein cares,
and in caring things come to matter. Here matters.
Mattering, Dasein brings its here with it. Dasein is
bound to its here. This view carries important
consequences.
In a later essay, Heidegger explains that: Being
there names that which should first of all be
experienced, and subsequently thought of, as a place
namely, the location of the truth of Being.
272
Being
there is being the place where things are found to
matter, to still matter, to matter no longer, or not at all.
Being there is being the place where things are found to
matter in this way, or that, or otherwise true or false.
By truth, Heidegger means alethea: disclosure,
discovery. The truth is real. Its actuality lies in the
experience of the being whose function is disclosure,
whose function is truth as such, Dasein. Heidegger
points out that, for the Greeks, as for him, the essence
of truth is a privative expression, a-letheia, and signifies
a robbery, or a taking for ones own. This is not some

271
B&T, 114(121). I have substituted one for it for readability.
272
Heidegger, The Way Back to the Grounds of Metaphysics, appearing in
Kaufmann, page 213.
175
passive waiting for the world to present itself. This is a
sequestering away on ones own turf. This is pushing
back the darkness to see for ones self. This is what
Heidegger calls making space for things. In disclosing,
our worlds, ourselves, are opened up. This is how one
comes to the truth. He makes space for it.
For instance, imagine clearing a field for farming.
In this mode, rich clean soil is good and rocks are
revealed as obstacles. Now, imagine clearing a field for
geology, in order to study rocks; in this mode, it is the
soil which is the obstacle. In either case, it is the
purposeful making space for ones self which evaluates
rocks as good or bad. The rock itself suffers either
determination without complaint. It will find rest where it
is let lay, obstacle or object.
The mode of discovery influences what Dasein
takes to be true. The way in which things come to
matter is an aspect of what that thing is understood to
be. If farmer Dasein says to Geologist Dasein There
are a bunch of obstacles in that field. Get rid of them, I
am going to lunch. He may return to a field with all the
dirt taken out of it. This was not his object.
After all, the work in clearing [verb] is for the sake
of a clearing [noun] for the purposes which opened the
space, in the first place. So, again, clearing farmland
means taking out rocks, which, in the end, means
clearing a space suitable for farming. Geology means
taking out the dirt and studying the rocks. If the farmer
points to a rock and says obstacle, the geologist will
say false.
This returns us to the expansive sense of
clearing. A clearing can be pushed outward. The
clearing, the ordered and ordering space in which orders
are ordered, can be made bigger. Disorder is pushed
176
back, and Dasein makes the unknown known. But you
always have to begin at your own boundaries, and the
shovel only turns the soil in the shape of its own blade.
As the understanding discovery of what is unintelligible,
all explanation is rooted in the primary understanding of
Dasein.
273
Let me clarify.
One way in which the clearing of being is always
expanding is in time. Dasein is temporal. In discovering
the objects of the world he clears the way for himself.
He doesnt clear the way just anyway, he clears the way
ahead.
274
This is the meaning of being as clearing in the
sense of both noun and verb taken all at once. The
future is what the clearing that is Dasein is all about. Its
primary meaning is the future.
275
In ones ecstatic discovery of the world, one
comes to understand it. It is on this basis that one looks
ahead for possibilities. What one sees ahead is
dependent on ones present understanding.
Understanding constitutes the being of the
there in such a way that, on the basis of
such understanding, a Da-sein in existing
can develop the various possibilities of
sight, of looking around, and of just
looking.
276
After all, the farmer does not clear rocks in order
to have a good last season, but for the next. Whatever
came of this years harvest, the possibilities for the next

273
B&T, 309(336)
274
As we shall see in more detail as we proceed, conscience does special
work in this enterprise. Conscience calls back from ahead of us, disclosing
whether that situation is clear or not.
275
B&T, 301(328).
276
Ibid, 309(336)
177
can at least come with fewer obstacles. Dasein has
always already compared itself, in its being, with a
possibility of itself.
277
Dasein comes toward itself in
terms of what is taken care of.
278
Heidegger calls this a
project.
279
Understanding is unique to individual Dasein.
Everyone has their own projection. The unique
understanding which is projected is based in the
understanding one has of ones own situation. Ones
self is always situated, whether explicitly or not. Thus,
Dasein in discovery comes to understand its situation.
And, as ones self is the situation, this is where one finds
ones self. Saying I means the being that I always am
as I-am-in-a-world.
280
Utterance is not necessary. With the I
this being means itself. The content of this
expression is taken to be absolutely
simple. It always means only me, and
nothing further.
281
For the most part, people live in a world already
cleared. Lets face it; we always find ourselves in terms
of which we are not the authors. Ones own clearing of
being is essentially a shared one. More strongly than
that, being with others is an essential aspect of our
constitutions. Heidegger finds proof for this in that
persons get lonely. The other can be lacking only in

277
B&T, 179(192)
278
Ibid, 310(337)
279
Again in two senses...
280
B&T, 295(321)
281
There is a note to this phrase: Clarifying more precisely: saying-I and
being a self. B&T, 293(318)
178
and for a being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of
being-with, its possibility is a proof for the latter.
282
This is proof that Mitdasein being with others -
is a structural aspect of Dasein. Heidegger does not
start with an isolated I from which must be construed
moral bridges post hoc.
283
He starts with a being for
whom being essentially is being-with-others:
In order to avoid this misunderstanding, we
must observe in what sense we are talking
about the others. The others does not
mean everybody else but me those from
whom the I distinguishes itself. They are,
rather, those from whom one mostly does
not distinguish oneself, those among whom
one is, too.
284
We are with other people, fundamentally, before
there is ever the possibility of being alone. Heidegger is
explicit in the passage below that Dasein is simply that
sort of animal, social:
285
Thus, in being-with and toward others,
there is a relation of being from Dasein to
Dasein. But, one would like to say, this
relation is after all, already constitutive for
ones own Dasein, which has an
understanding of its own being and is thus

282
B&T, 113(120). Not limited to people.
283
As is the case with deficient modern moral philosophies of the Cartesian
stripe.
284
B&T, 111(118). See appendices for insight into how this position differs
from that of the modern tradition.
285
Mohanty is correct to criticize other approaches which seek to bridge
isolated selves though some force or other, like empathy, and he notes that
Heideggers great gift is this insight.
179
related to Dasein. The relation of being to
others then becomes a projection of ones
own being toward oneself into an other.
The other is a double of the self.
286
This mirroring carries consequences. Already
being with others, persons come to understand
themselves insofar as they deviate from the norm, from
the average everydayness that is the public
understanding. A mirror of others from the beginning,
one sees ones self and others in terms of differences.
Existentially expressed, being-with-one-another has the
character of distantiality.
287
This deviance is constantly
discouraged as the average understanding prescribes
the nearest interpretation of the world and being-in-the-
world.
288
Thus, persons understand themselves in
terms of how they differ from others, and there is
pressure to conform:
In taking care of the things in which one
has taken hold of, for, and against others,
there is constant care as to the way one
differs from them, whether, this difference
is to be equalized, whether ones own
Dasein has lagged behind others and
wants to catch up in relation to them,
whether Dasein in its priority over others is
intent on suppressing them.
289

286
B&T, 117(124). This picture gels nicely with that of contemporary
neurology. See the bibliography.
287
B&T, 118(126)
288
Ibid, 121(129)
289
Ibid, 118(126)
180
The anonymous others from whom one is
distanced and with whom this difference is to be
equalized Heidegger calls the they. They have
already done it, it has met their standards, and so must
we to be one of them.
290
Yet it can be said that no one
did it, for no one is this standard, and the standard for
ones self becomes doing nothing at all.
291
To deviate is
to risk deviance, to no longer belong to the average and
to do as expected. Anonymously, the they exerts a
positive pressure on us all to remain safely within the
body of the group.
Thus the they maintains itself factically in
the averageness of what is proper, what is
allowed, and what is not. Of what is
granted success and what is not. This
averageness, which prescribes what can
and cannot be ventured, watches over
every exception which thrusts itself to the
fore. Every priority is noiselessly
squashed.
292
On Heideggers assay, because of a natural
inclination to taking things easily, there is an attraction
to giving ones self over to the they, to
averageness...
293
Being in the norm is comforting.
Being in with the group carries with it a sense that one is
where he should be. Being one of them feels like home.
This sleepy existence where things are anonymously

290
Every one of them is an us.
291
Who do we hold to account if the standard goes wrong? We shall see in
a moment.
292
B&T, 119(127)
293
Ibid, 121(130)
181
taken care of may feel like a boon, but it comes with a
steep cost.
In holding ones self to the examples of others
nearby, the they disburdens the self of responsibility.
294
Taking the public understanding as the standard for
truth, the they presents every judgment and decision as
its own. We begin with this public understanding as the
benchmark for our own, and we are held to account
when we become other than. So, it is not surprising that
many remain in this understanding, and in fact seek to
close their own gap with its average ideal. There is a lot
of anxiety involved in taking responsibility for ones self.
When understood primarily as that indifferent
system of anonymous others which surrounds and
judges every action and activity, the they is
deconstructed as countless numbers from countless
generations who all cannot at once be wrong. It is
simply the way things are done. It is this faceless
collective which, taken for granted, can most easily be
responsible for everything because no one has to vouch

294
This criticism of public life is not new to Heidegger. Aristotle asserts that
wicked people seek the company of others in order to run from themselves.
There is nothing to love within them. They have instilled no virtue in
themselves and have perhaps done worse, have become vicious. As a
consequence, according to this account, wicked people dont like to be
alone. For Aristotle, vicious people themselves, by having to be in a group
which reinforces their vices, in fact serve as an example against
vice.(1166b27-8) Socrates, in fact, holds a similar position; the virtuous
philosopher maintains the truth, even when this truth is unpopular. The
Philosopher must be able to resist the temptation to hide from his
responsibility to represent the truth. It is the motivation of the sophist to
bake pastries as if for children, to act and to speak in flattering,
comfortable terms. Socrates, with Aristotle, both hold that one may be led
into better ways of living and talking(13a23-4) while at once one who is in
the most wretched condition of life seeks the company of others in order to
distract themselves from taking the steps to actively end their vicious
condition.(1166b11-13)
182
for anything.
295
This is critical to understanding the role
of others in Heideggers philosophy. Most critical to
understanding the role of the they in Heideggers
account of conscience is the way in which they take the
responsibility of Dasein away from it.
296
Most persons stay within the fenced range of
everyday expectations, living as they always have,
letting them do it and doing their own part to meet the
average expectation. This way of being is essentially
closed off from the world.
297
Closedness is that condition
to which Heraclitus points in the following fragment: The
waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn
aside each into a world of his own.
298
Just imagine the
sense of relaxation in the phrase they will take care of
it. This is taking it easy, like taking a life-long nap. No
need to get up
Awake, there is another option. One can feel,
even become agitated, anxious, tense. Through moods,
one may keep himself open to the world. The
moodedness of attunement constitutes existentially the
openness to the world of Dasein.
299
To be open is to let
things come to matter, as in making room for them in the
clearing of ones life. There is anxiety in letting things
come to matter, because this means that one cares
about them because one cares about ones self. It is
this anxiety which lifts when one lets the average

295
B&T, 119(127)
296
Ibid.
297
Thanks to Professor Alexander VonSchoenborn. World, here, means
the how of the world and its order, or kosmos which is the term of the
original.
298
Fragment 95:
http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/burnet/egp.htm?chapter=3#65
299
B&T,129(137)
183
understanding of what matters stand in for his own. If it
doesnt matter to them, then it doesnt matter. Enough
said. This is a great release of tension, as if some
burden were removed by them. This is the attraction of
residing in the clearing of the they. It is easy.
In this attraction lies the implicit opportunity for
escape; but, it wont come easily. It is not as if there is
some magic key. If there is escape, it is more like
climbing out of a well than dashing through a hole in the
wall. After all, ones self is the wall! In order to
overcome the barrier of anxiety that comes with letting
things come to matter, like crawling out of a depression,
Dasein can, should, and must master its mood with
knowledge and will.
300
It may be easier to go with what
they said, but it may not be right, much less get the
right things done.
301
Only by keeping open to the world
is Dasein free to become himself.
302
Different.
Heidegger calls all the things in the world which
matter to Dasein the referential context of significance.
Ones self is not to be found in this context. Instead,
ones self makes all the things of the world relevant. It is
the grounds of significance. It does so in terms of its
highest aspirations, in terms of the man one wishes
himself to become:

300
B&T, 128(136)
301
Although inter-subjectively confirmed, they may prescribe actions
indifferent to the objective world, for example. They sell SUVs. They
say that SUVs are the best vehicle to buy. They may not be right, but
everyone is doing it.
302
Long, page 381. Long puts it thusly: In the early Heidegger, at least,
Verstehen [understanding] remains tied to Nietzschean self-assertion:
having gotten myself back from everybodys standard, everyday (mis)-
interpretations of things and owned my very own authentic self, I now open
up, erschlieBe [would open], significance for myself.
184
The referential context of significance is
anchored in the being of Dasein toward its
ownmost being a being which cannot be
in a relation of relevance, but which is
rather the being for the sake of which
Dasein is as it is.
303
Here is where Angst becomes so important.
Angst is the fundamental mood of being in the world for
Heidegger.
304
When someone says they are struggling
under the weight of the world, this is angst. Angst is
about life itself; if it is about something in particular, it is
not angst. Being-in-the-world is both what Angst is
anxious in the face of and what it is anxious about.
305
Angst is characterized by a feeling of
uncanniness; uncanniness means not being at
home in the world.
306
Uncanniness is the feeling that
something doesnt fit, like something isnt right about the
situation. It is uncanny that ones girlfriend should utter
some particular phrase at some particular instance, for
example, or that ones own garden gnome shows up in a
flea market in Florence. What is uncanny is ones
situation relative some particular thing. In the case of
Angst, however, what doesnt fit the situation is not some
thing in particular, but everything, altogether:
In particular, that in the face of which one
has angst is not encountered as something
definite to be taken care of; the threat does
not come from something at hand or

303
B&T, 115(122-123)
304
Recall the potential for Kantian self-disgust from the last sections, and
you will get close to the feeling of Angst.
305
B&T, 315(343)
306
Ibid, 176(189)
185
objectively present, but rather from the fact
that everything at hand and objectively
present absolutely has nothing more to
say to us. Beings in the surrounding
world are no longer relevant.
307
The uncanniness with which Angst confronts
Dasein is the possibility that what does not fit in the
world is ones self. As ones self anchors the total
context in which things appear, when all things are no
longer relevant, ones self is equally no longer relevant.
If nothing is relevant, and what is relevant is relevant
only in terms of my own life, then how is my life
relevant? Angst confronts us with the fact that given
what weve got, there is nothing ahead. With nothing
ahead, and nothing relevant, it is a feeling that ones
own life does not matter. It is meaningless.
The feeling of having nothing ahead is the feeling
of being confronted with nothingness, with death.
Through angst, Dasein is thus essentially individualized
down to its ownmost potentiality of death as the
nonrelational possibility.
308
It clears away every covering over of the
fact that Dasein is left to itself. The
nothingness before which angst brings us
reveals the nullity that determines Dasein
in its ground, which itself is thrownness into
death.
309

307
B&T, 315(344)
308
Ibid, 283-284(307)
309
Ibid, 285(308)
186
Death is that situation in which there is no
situation. One cannot imagine being dead, this is why
persons speak so often about life after death. When
one tries to imagine what death is like, the situation has
the indefinite sense of the nothing and nowhere.
310
It
feels as-if being in a non-place, a netherworld. Because
ones self as the clearing of being is that place of life,
death confronts Dasein with non-being, and with the fact
that non-being is its certain end. Everyone dies. When
and how are the only real questions, but there is no
getting around it. Angst confronts us with death, with
not-being, and with the fact that there is no escaping it.
This is scary, but also an opportunity:
The insignificance of the world disclosed in
Angst reveals the nullity of what can be
taken care of, that is, the impossibility of
projecting oneself upon a potentiality-of-
being primarily based upon what is taken
care of. But the revelation of this
impossibility means to let the possibility of
an authentic potentiality of being shine
forth.
311
Angst reveals in Dasein its being toward its
ownmost potentiality of being, that is being free for the
freedom of choosing and grasping itself.
312
Angst strips
away all worldly objects and so calls into question the
very meaning of existence. All that is left is to answer:
live or die, wake or sleep. Yet, without anything
relevant, what constitutes the possibility of an authentic

310
B&T, 176(189)
311
Ibid, 315(343)
312
Ibid, 176(189)
187
potentiality of being which Heidegger paints as the
upshot of answering Angst in the affirmative?
It is freedom! Without significance
predetermined, Dasein is free to determine what is
significant for itself. This potentiality is disclosed to
Dasein by the conscience, even though in Angst the
world and life itself has lost all relevance. The beacon of
freedom is the call of conscience. The call of
conscience passes over all worldly status and abilities
of Dasein in its summons.
313
In getting ones self back
from everybodys standard one opens oneself to the
possibility of self-determination
314
in the face of angst.
Dasein understands uniquely, and he can choose to test
his understanding or rest in that of others who have
understood for and before him. In choosing to make
this choice, Da-sein makes possible, first and foremost,
its authentic potentiality-of-being.*
315
The conscience offers an opportunity to keep
ones highest potentials open and not to close off into a
given way of life. This potentiality is that for the sake of
which any Dasein is as it is.
316
This makes a person
different from the others. Keeping ones self open to
possibilities, which are not those of the average
understanding, is the mode in which a person is most
himself. But, it isnt easy: Dasein is authentically itself

313
B&T, 283-284(307) he continues: Disregarding those, it individualizes
Dasein down to is potentiality for being guilty which it expects to be
authentically.
314
Discovery.
315
To which there is a note: *a taking place of being philosophy,
freedom. B&T, 248(269) Mans highest potential, discovery.
316
B&T, 179(192)
188
in the mode of primordial individuation of reticent
resoluteness that expects Angst* of itself.
317
Keeping ones self open to possibilities invites
angst. Reticent resoluteness means confronting death
by taking responsibility for ones life, past present and
future. When confronted with a situation in which
something doesnt fit, it is ones responsibility to figure
out what it is and only then to fix it. Think of Martin
Luther King Jr. Inequality does not fit in a free society,
and he worked to understand that. It was part of the
situation shared by himself and others alike, so he took
the responsibility to work at fixing it. When we do that,
we may be said to want to have a conscience in the
sense of being prepared to supply, out of ones own
resources, what is not in any case forthcoming from any
other source.
318
Conscience discloses something for us to
understand. It discloses something about ourselves.
Though we begin with others and live according to a
public standard, conscience shows us that our lives are
our own. Conscience discloses by calling Dasein forth
to its own unique possibilities.
319
This has two
dimensions. His life is his object and his project, his limit
and his aim. Death is his limit, and understanding is his
limit, but his object is to make the most of his
understanding in the space of life before he dies. In
doing so, he keeps the clearing open for others to come.
This is not easy, for to spend ones life-time in study;
answering the call of conscience, is not going to the
library. It takes courage.

317
*That is, the clearing of being as being. B&T, 297(323)
318
Olafson, page 47.
319
B&T, 252(273)
189
The mood through which one masters angst and
the anxieties of loneliness and deviance is
resoluteness. Resoluteness means letting ones self
be summoned out of ones lostness in the they.
320
In
resolve, one holds ones self open, authentically there
for the disclosed situation in the Moment.
321
Instead
of doing as has always been done, or as expected, or
according to convention, Dasein has the potential to
discover otherwise. Dasein has the potential to live
otherwise.
In being called to his own-most
322
possibilities,
Dasein is not called away from the world and from
others. For instance, renouncing the material world of
man and going off into a cave may seem enlightened,
but it is a way of closing off from the world. After all,
being with others is part of ones own constitution. We
mirror one another. Resoluteness pushes ones self
toward concerned being-with with others.
323
Recall the talk of Dasein as the clearing of
being. A clearing is an open space. A clearing is
shared.
324
In resolve Dasein is openly clearing in
anticipating discovery for himself and others. In resolve
Dasein is open to the future as an aspect of the clearing
in the first place, ones own and others. Instead of
bowing to fears and to angst in the face of individuation
and death, Dasein is open to the opportunities which
living together and dying together present. His discovery
is tomorrows understanding. He doesnt have to go

320
B&T, 275(300)
321
Ibid, 301-2(328)
322
Highest and unique.
323
B&T, 274(299)
324
Always shared. When apparently not shared, one is lonely, which
indicates a deficient mode of sharing.
190
search somewhere out there for this or that opportunity
to be a hero. Real opportunities happen here at home:
Resolution does not escape from reality,
but first discovers what is factically
possible in such a way that it grasps it as it
is possible as ones ownmost potentiality
for being in the they.
325
Once one has recovered himself from others and
become his own unique project of discovery, he still
must go home. What one in resoluteness discovers and
takes home with him is the truth. Though one treks out
and robs the world of some discovery alone, its value is
for everyone. It is in resoluteness that conscience is
related to being with others.
Resoluteness is the openness to discovery which
is embodied in the mode of wanting to have a
conscience. Resolute, Dasein is brought to the
existence of his situation.
326
Resolute, Dasein is open to
discovery of the situation as it presents itself.
But this means that it simply cannot
become rigid about the situation, but must
understand that the resolution must be
kept free and open for the actual factical
possibility in accordance with its own
meaning as disclosure.
327

325
B&T, 275(300). Here, Heidegger is sounding like reverence is ones
highest potential, and I think that this is right. He does flesh out what this
amounts to, the life worthy of reverence, in giving cash value for a mans
highest potential in understanding.
326
B&T, 276(301)
327
Ibid, 284(308)
191
This is what Heidegger means by Dasein must
master its moods in order to reach its highest potential.
Resolute, Da-sein is all the more authentically there
for the disclosed situation in the Moment.
328
Daseins
highest potential is discovery, being the being whereby
things come to matter. The Moment brings existence to
the situation and discloses the authentic There.
329330
As mitdasein is a foundational aspect of being,
the situation is being with and for other persons. Many
of these others will outlive ones self; yet they share the
situation. It is authentic as it is ones own, and not
simply the product of an anonymous others
understanding. It is there because one is already and
always with others.
Moreover, this is not a one-time thing.
The holding-for-true that belongs to
resoluteness tends, in accordance with its
meaning, toward constantly keeping itself
free, that is, to keep itself free for the whole
potentiality of being Dasein.
331
Wanting to have a conscience is a way of life.
The character of being open to potential is called
resolve and involves being open to angst and so to the
voice of conscience. The mood which qualifies this
openness is anticipatory resoluteness. This is

328
B&T, 301-2(328)
329
Ibid, 319(347)
330
For insight into what Heidegger means by Moment see the discussion
on kairos this text. Though I do not make this tie any more explicit,
Heideggers notion of moment is kairological. In fact, this earlier discussion
on kairos is in this text in order to prepare for an understanding of
Heideggers thought.
331
My interpretation of the discussion at B&T, 284(308)
192
preparedness for the opportunities of the moment
understood in terms of self and others. This means
actively discovering every moment of every day for
everyone.
Anticipatory resoluteness discloses the
actual situation of the there in such a way
that existence circumspectly takes care of
the factical things at hand in the
surrounding world in action. Resolute
being together with what is at hand in the
situation, that is, letting what presences in
the surrounding world be encountered in
action, is possible only in a making that
being present. Only as the present, in the
sense of making present, can resoluteness
be what it is, namely, the undistorted letting
what it grasps in action be encountered.
332
In resoluteness, one is open to come to terms
with his situation however that situation comes to be
determined. This is how one comes to understand ones
situation. In fact, it is only through resoluteness that the
situation is understood at all. Situation is the there
disclosed in resoluteness situation is only through and
in resoluteness.
333
If not coming to terms with the
world, Dasein is closed off from it.
334
Where the latter
maintains some prior truth to hold, the former is open to
other determinations and further discovery.

332
B&T, 299-300(326)
333
B&T, 276(301)
334
Living the life of the they is not a way of coming to terms with the world
as it is taken on terms whose significance is already given, and not
discovered in light of the authentic situation.
193
For the they, however, situation is essentially
closed off.
335
Instead of coming to terms with the
situation, staying open for the opportunities which each
moment presents, they know only the general situation.
In this way, they take themselves as given, and fail to
take responsibility for themselves. The they finds
meaning in life by calculating the accidents which it fails
to recognize, deems its own achievement and passes off
as such.
336
Lets review. We can understand being in the
world as a clearing. It is a clearing in a number of ways.
In one very important way, being in the world is clearing
the way of obstacles which lie between ones self and
ones object. The most important obstacles arise from
the future, because the most important object is ones
self up ahead. If we stick with what everyone else is
doing, and remain in the common clearing of the they,
then we dont need to worry about these things. But,
that doesnt mean that these things do not matter.
Leisure isnt everything, after all; you have to do
something with it.
The call of conscience is the voice of angst.
Angst individuates ones self and provides the
opportunity to act, and to become ones self, according
to ones own unique understanding. This is ones

335
B&T, 276(301)
336
B&T, 276(301) For example, consider the assistant who gets all the
posh side jobs. He discovers the opportunities and succeeds in winning
them only because of the office in which he serves. If the man is resolute,
he will understand that his success is not of his own doing but is an
extension of the position he occupies. He may open his opportunities to
others. If the man is irresolute, he will see nothing unfair in his winning
these opportunities. By Heideggers analyses, he will make sense of things
by asserting both that his success was a happy accident and that he is the
best man for the job because he has them both, after all.
194
highest potential. Angst also confronts one with the
worst possibility, a possibility which cannot be avoided:
the certainty that is death.
337
Being open to angst and to
the possibilities that understanding brings is called
resolve. Through the openness that is resolve, new
things arise with previously unthought significance.
They are significant in terms of the life lived in the
authentic situation. For Heidegger, this is mans highest
calling. In answering the call of conscience a man
answers not only to his highest potential, but to that of
humankind altogether.
With that in mind, one might ask: to what end,
exactly? What is a self-discovering project of self-
discovery, in love with others, in terms of others, alive
with others and dying with others, what is Dasein to do
with this life?
Thus, Dasein must explicitly and
essentially appropriate what has also
already been discovered, defend it against
illusion and distortion, and ensure itself of
its discoveredness again and again. All
new discovery takes place not on the basis
of complete concealment, but takes its
point of departure from discoveredness in
the mode of illusion. Beings look like
that is, they were already discovered, and
yet they are still distorted.
338
Heidegger tells us that our highest potential is to
understand, to discover, and to make sure that others

337
Heidegger calls death the possibility not to be bypassed; there is simply
no getting around it. It is certain but for its time and mode.
338
B&T, 204(222)
195
always have the opportunity to seek the same. What
more can we do, what other freedom do we have, than
to hold out for the truth? As this text draws to a close,
we will see that this is always the right thing to do and
that it is always the right time to do it. What we must
provide for, along the way, is a better understanding of
our own limited freedom to do so. This is where we will
turn in the next sections.
The material which led up to this section
presumed Heideggers Philosophy. Much of what we
see in this section, thus, is familiar. It is simply given
herein in Heideggerian language. What has been
reinforced is the sense that staying open to meet the
terms of the situation is not easy business. There is
angst. Conscience motivates a person to make the most
out of life in the face of angst by confronting him with a
call to his highest potential. One stays available to the
call of conscience only in the mode of resolve.
Anticipating death, one who is open to the situation
works to ensure that the terms of the situation are
disclosed, and not that some prior understanding stands
in for the way things are. This means not doing what is
routine simply because it is expected. This leads to
ostracism, loneliness, and alienation. Tension.
Against this strain, the conscientious man
discovers for others who are, and who shall be, born into
the situation even as it comes to be determined through
his own life-time of discovery. He is responsible for
keeping the clearing of being clear and free of obstacles
like rigid conventions which stymie open discovery.
Heidegger, hereby, shows us that the
conscientious man is a powerful force in culture. Open
to the turmoil surrounding the seeming quiet of
conventional life, the conscientious man plays a crucial
196
role in maintaining the conventional orders viability. He
reaches the fringes of chaos and orders it, coming to
terms with it, and expresses that order to others so that
they are aware of the changing world around them.
Ironically, however, this defender of the clearing of being
suffers by way of the very persons for whom he cares.
Bittersweet as it may be, we are starting to see
more clearly the shape of a life worth living. It turns out
that doing the right thing at the right time has little to do
with what appears to be the right thing at the right time
for ones self, alone. Living to do the right thing is a life
lived for the sake of the only thing worth dying for, the
best possible situation, universally. And, as one may not
live to see it, himself, doing the right thing means doing
so for others. Tragically, as others may not recognize
the value in such sacrifice, the conscientious man is
often ignored, dismissed, lampooned, or worse:
targeted, and his life made more difficult for caring in the
first place. But, what is a good man to do?
In the next section, we will continue our push to
understand consciences role in doing the right thing at
the right time. We will focus on discovering the terms of
ones situation within the great stories of history already
shaping the world and laying out its ends. We will focus
on discovering our freedom to rewrite these stories, and
recast the ends of the world. The distinctions between
subjective, inter-subjective and objective constraints on
right action will re-emerge. This will return us to our
discussions of kairos, King, and practical wisdom as the
limiting factor in doing the right thing at the right time.
We will begin by investigating contemporary
phenomenological methods for finding common ground
between seemingly incommensurate inter-subjective
perspectives on the objective world. These perspectives
197
are natural to diverse cultures. The common ground will
be found in the objects of the world. We will find that the
objects of the world mediate differences between
competing perspectives. We will also re-discover the
silent player in this process, ones own body.
In every case, there is the body as the subject
and object of change. The human body is both subject
to difference and object of change when that difference
is annulled. This result opens the potential to see ones
self in objective terms, and not merely in terms of others
alike or different from ones self. In the end, we will see
that it is the body which provides the grounds for radical
change in persons, and that the objects of the world gain
their significance in terms of these changes.
There is only so much time for discovery. One
can only open to the world so long as he is alive.
Heidegger reminds us of our mortality. Heidegger
reminds us of the urgency with which life is lived, and
points to the relevance of things to which ones livelihood
is attached. He reminds us why we run from the truth.
Life is not primarily an exercise of rationality. Life is an
exercise of bone and blood, birth and rebirth. Ones
mortal body is the locus of all of his experience, and
death often the source of his greatest concern. Life is
not simply an exercise of some higher over some lower
aspect thereof, or vice versa. Life is an ongoing
discourse between ones self and his world. No matter
how the world changes, how the body changes from
birth to death, life is the ongoing exercise of ones own
mortal coil. The trick is to reach out for the right ends.
On the view that I am presenting, human freedom
is grounded in the capacity to open ones self to the
world and to others. In opening to the world, one
experiences what otherwise he would not. These
198
experiences have an effect. A person becomes different
because of them. His unique experiences alter the
structure of his unique body. It is on the basis of this
body that he then moves into his next situation. And the
cycle repeats itself.
339
So the story goes.
This is self-determination though of a limited sort.
Habitually applied, one quickly builds a burgeoning store
of practical experience which, when applied to moments
as they arise, is wisdom in action. One may not have
perfect control over that to which he opens, but he can
open and try to come to terms with whatever presents
itself. Though it is equally self-determining to remain
closed to the world, closing off invites no such diversity
of experience. This mode of being eventuates in a
dearth of understanding, a condition known as
ignorance. In either case, one becomes the person he
becomes by way of his way of being in the world. In
both cases, ones self is the embodied result of
experience. In either case, one comes to terms with the
world, and in these terms contributes to its ongoing
history. Thus, the world ends with our own limitations, in
either case our own to understand.

339
This asymmetry is reflected in the ACTWith model: as-if represents
embodied experience, coming to terms with represents being open to new
determinations thereby generating new understanding which is in process
embodied, and taken into the next situation represented by the as-if. And
repeat. This cycle in ACTWith terms appears in chapter 5, and returns in
chapter 15.
199
11. Conscience, and the fact of matter.
Then what is the meaning of that which is
written: "The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone? Everyone who
falls on that stone will be broken to pieces,
but he on whom it falls will be crushed."
-- Jesus Christ
340
I know the pieces fit, because I watched
them tumble down.
-- Tool
341
Life is a local countercurrent to entropy.
-- Rolston
342
There is an essential difference between persons
and non-living things like rocks and stools. The
difference has to do with the types of changes they
undergo. Consider the distinction as laid out by Edward
Ballard:
The contrast between the kind of change
which objects undergo and the more
radical change to which a self is subject is
often expressed by noting that human self-
change consists in acts which are self-
determined, whereas the changes
undergone by objects are determined by
something external to them.
343

340
Luke 20:17-18 (New International)
341
Tool, Schism, Lateralus, Volcano Records, 2001.
342
Rolston, page 97.
343
Ballard, 1976, page 111.
200
Ballard is claiming that the subject can change
himself, while things like rocks cannot. A person is
something more than a rock in this way. Ballard is
pointing out that persons are objects of change, as well
as subjects of change. Persons are able to experience
change, as well as to change themselves through acts
which are self-determined. In the sections to follow, I
will try to clarify how freedom of change through self-
determination is possible. Next section, I will focus on
which sorts of acts within our power to determine are
most effective in self-determined self-change.
As we begin life, and aim for the person we want
to be, the body is there at every step along the way.
344
Ones body is there before and after one opens himself
to the opportunity of a basketball game, for example. In
pursuing this opportunity, one subjects himself to
change. There appear to be two different types of
change we may undergo, however. In one case it is that
of a subject opening to change through a basketball
game. In the other, it is that of an object getting crushed
by a bus. Even as the body is there before and after the
bus crushes it, the body is there before and after the
basketball game. The difference between the two is that
the subject opened himself to the latter, and was merely
overcome by the former.
We have seen how conscience works at opening
the spaces between ones self and his ends. We can
see how conscience works at presenting the situation
post basketball game, and how it motivates a man to
seek this end for fitness and health. In the case of

344
Properly speaking, the -science of con-science is a total system state of
situated being. Conscience holds system states against one another.
201
getting hit by a bus, the victims conscience did not do
that work. This was not the situation he thought he was
going to find himself in. He may have been motivated to
move toward a hot dog cart. He stepped from a curb
and found himself in no situation at all. Not a happy
ending. In both cases, however, we see the conscience
in action.
Conscience has to do with self-change in two
ways. In one, wanting to have a conscience means
being open to the situation. In being open, things arise
which had otherwise not appeared to be significant, for
example when someone says that book changed my
world. In such cases, conscience calls one to come to
terms with the world, and not to close off from it into
ones own understanding. In the second case,
conscience discloses definite possibilities in light of
ones highest potentials. In disclosure, conscience
presents the space of future situations in the world. We
have seen that discovery, coming to terms with the world
in understanding, is mans highest potential.
Conscience calls on one to become himself, to become
the best he can be, through the exercise of his own
unique understanding. Conscience calls ones self to his
own unique future situation. Thus, being open to the
world is being open to ones own future self.
As we proceed, we shall examine how one may
exercise conscience to fulfill this promise. In order to
explicitly and essentially appropriate what has also
already been discovered, defend it against illusion and
distortion, and ensure itself of its discoveredness again
and again one must understand himself and others and
this depends on one understanding the objects of their
shared situation.
202
In a recent article, William McKenna offers an
analysis of inter-cultural objectivity to this end. His
discussion begins with the notion that members of
diverse cultures have an accordingly diverse
understanding of the world. He notes that when an
understanding is naively appropriated by individuals the
differences lead to bias. In order to overcome such
biases, McKenna offers a notion, situated objectivity,
which requires the participation in different cultures in
order to be achieved.
345
Lets see what this adds up to.
People in different cultures have different ways of
understanding and experiencing the world that are due
to cultural differences.
346
According to McKennas
analyses, this is because the experience of members of
different cultures is partial. Partial is a loaded term; it
means both a part of a whole and biased. Partial, in
other words, can be employed both as adjective and as
adverb. This implies both that they have experience of
baseball and apple pie rather than other things, like
cricket and baklava, and that they favor these aspects of
the world coincident with their experience over other
things. Thus, persons raised in the 20
th
century United
States are partial to baseball and apple pie.
It is natural to adopt these attitudes.
347
Ones
culture prescribes what is the right thing to do and the
right times to do it. This is the starting point from which
all members of all cultures begin their waking lives. This
is the world seen subjectively.

345
McKenna, page 117.
346
Ibid, page 115.
347
McKenna, page 112. You do not question your perspective This
uncritical attitude over ones inherited way of life which in translations of
Husserl is called the natural attitude.
203
The subject begins in the clearing of his culture.
One begins hopeful about a future understood in terms
of his relations with those nearby, those he loves and
who care for him. One naturally wants to become
successful in the terms set by his parochial way of life, to
find esteem in the eyes of others most like himself.
Raised in a given culture and measuring personal
success in terms of its practices, a person naturally
comes to value his partial understanding of the world.
Partiality is not necessarily bigotry. Partiality is what one
needs to know to get ahead.
348
One does what his
partial understanding dictates to be the right thing to do
at the right time to do it. McKenna calls this attitude
nave.
Just because one is partial to apple pie doesnt
mean that either partiality or apple pie are good things.
Partiality may not be good at all, and some apple pie is
bad. He must begin with what is given, and may live his
entire life without discovering more. However naively
taken up, McKenna calls originally given ways of being
in the world cultural natural attitudes.
349
Partiality, so constituted, contributes to bias, the
second, stronger sense of partiality pointed to above.
McKenna reminds us that, naively, members of cultures
take theirs not as one way of doing things, but as the
way of doing things:
When a member of one culture comes into
contact with another culture the strength of
his cultural natural attitude leads him to

348
Likewise, one often looks to his leaders in order to see success in the
flesh. I shirk from speculating further on this point.
349
Raised in a given culture, one comes down with a case of his culture
before ones culture comes down with a case of him.
204
experience the other culture not simply as
different or strange, but as wrong
350
It is toward reconciling the bias between
perspectives which see each other not merely as
different but as wrong that McKenna develops his
notion of situated objectivity. However, McKennas
object, bridging biased positions through philosophy, is
not new. Writing in 1919 for the veteran French of the
First World War on the conflicts between men, Emile
Boutroux notes that resolution is insoluble so long as
each of the two parties nourishes a secret scorn for the
other, and that the problem becomes simplified if
every man is able to find the substratum of truth in the
beliefs he does not share.
351
This substratum of beliefs
is that clearing which must be discovered and defended.
It is also the grounds through which contrary positions
can be reconciled. How, though, is this substratum to be
discovered?
In McKennas terms, bias, taking anothers way of
life to be wrong, is tantamount to scorn. On this
basis, let me restate the problem. If the nave natural
attitude is the attitude through which everyone
approaches difference, then there is no hope for the
peaceful reconciliation between ostensibly contrary ways
of life. Scorn does not breed peaceful coexistence.
Scorn, as Boutroux understands, leads to war. To
demonstrate that there are objective read non-biased -

350
McKennas line continues (you can think here of the value
dimension of the life world and the kind of experience that some people
have of it when in a foreign land that motivates them to reject what they
experience). McKenna, page 117.
351
Boutroux, page 67.
205
means by way of which such natural differences can be
overcome is McKennas ultimate purpose.
352
McKennas effort stands as a clear advance on
Boutrouxs in the following regard. Where Boutroux
asserts that all real and lasting peace is impossible,
unless, amid all differences in principle and point of view,
human beings have mutual understanding and
esteem,
353
McKenna offers a method for overcoming
the partiality and bias that make this impossible.
354
This
is a phenomenological method.
Reconciling seemingly contrary perspectives is a
basic problem in phenomenology. To reconcile
differences requires that a single person take on two
perspectives at once. But, where does this other
perspective come from? What is there besides a nave,
natural attitude? No matter the phenomenon under my
purview, the view is from where if not from here? How
can anyone take another perspective than the one he
has come to? What avenue of access is there to reach
such a state? Do we just make it up? J.N. Mohanty
writes: Accordingly, a phenomenological philosopher
has to face a paradox, a paradox that is involved in his

352
Boutroux, page 67. I will make a good deal of this sentiment as this
section concludes, holding forth that the tradition is mistaken to presume
subjectivity prior to objectivity, as if atoms to be bridged, instead of reading
conscience as objective, with subjectivity a deviance from right, and so
secondary to objectivity. I will lead us through some recent neurological
research in order to cement this conviction, and so to provide a stable
platform from which to launch the final sections of this text.
353
Boutroux, page 65.
354
A similar point is pressed in Mann, 1999. For Mann, tolerance of
competing or even contrary ways of life is affected through structural
expansion [read introduction of new and significant determinations] of
narrative identity. We will attend to this view in great detail in the next
section.
206
very method.
355
The phenomenologist has to take up
one attitude, the natural attitude, only to transcend it, to
suspend belief in order to describe. The goal is to see
things from an objective stance in order to deliver a
science of phenomenon, a science of subjectivity, a
science of shadows so to speak. The goal is to take an
objective perspective on a situation which is
fundamentally subjectively understood.
For Mohanty, the answer seems simple:
This paradox cannot be resolved, and has
to be accepted: this simultaneous
participation and transcendence which in
fact provides the key to phenomenological
philosophy. The philosopher therefore
need not accept the beliefs of unreflective
attitude just as he need not also reject
them. Achieving the needed
transcendence, his job is to tell the tale.
356
Mohanty sets out the role for the
phenomenologist. His job is to report on the situation for
an inside perspective as-if from the outside. He need
not endorse any given situation in order to put himself in
it, but he must communicate what it is to be in a situation
to those who are not so situated. He need only put
himself in any given situation, and report objectively on
it. What are its terms? His job is to objectively tell the
tale that is being subject to that situation. This is the
phenomenological science of subjectivity.
The idea here is that one phenomenological tale
hooks up with all the others. In fact, we can state this

355
Mohanty, 1970, page 102.
356
Ibid.
207
even more strongly: the idea is that it is phenomenology
which binds the stories together in the first place. All
situations have objects in common. All objects have the
fact of their appearances in common. The trick is in
showing that there is no contradiction in seemingly
contrary appearances.
357
So, it is back to the presences
themselves in order to discover the basis for reconciling
conflicts between non-reflective attitudes. The job is to
make this journey, again and again, and in every
situation to tell the tale. McKenna develops this
fundamental task of phenomenological philosophy into a
method which anyone, philosopher or not, can engage.
This is important because, though everyone is
partial, most persons are not phenomenological
philosophers. Mohantys suspension of the nave
attitude is impossible with the presumption that ones
partial understanding constitutes the only way of doing
things. From this nave starting point, it may seem that
there is nothing more to know about the world at all:
The problem can be that the bias motivates
you to take what is in fact a partial
knowledge as the whole knowledge (we
can think here of the fable of several blind
people having experience with different
parts of an elephant and each claiming that
the elephant is entirely what their
experience gives them of it. One, who
holds the tail, says that an elephant [is] like
a snake, and others say similar things on

357
And that means being open to the present and to the opportunities of the
moment, as we saw in Heidegger.
208
the basis of other parts of the elephant that
they experience.)
358
Here, McKenna makes obvious the limit
experience imposes on what one takes to be the
objective world. Note that the focus here is not culture.
It is personal experience which hardens partiality into
bias, whether this is reinforced in cultural terms or in
terms of some other experience. The power of
experience in shaping bias is most evident when ones
experiences are extreme.
Extreme experiences have a polarizing effect on a
person. It need not be an entire culture of prejudice
which leads persons to bias on the basis of partial
experience. Personal experience alone can bring ones
self to a similar rigidity. Though cultural attitudes are
reinforced because others in the culture subscribe to
them as well, ones own experience reinforces certain
attitudes when this experience is especially significant.
Consider the following illustration from another author,
Lewis Feuer, in 1959:
For instance, let us suppose that a man
has lived through some years of
concentration camp experience, or
relentless political strife, or the
embitterment of racial discrimination. He
may then, like Freud, tend to regard the
worlds history as the resultant of a
dualistic conflict between love and
hatred His experience and its standpoint
were not the outcome of childhood
anxieties or fixations. They came to him in

358
McKenna, page 112.
209
the fullness of his powers and
observations. His world is one which he
cannot negate as fantasy. It is obstinate
and unyielding to analyses.
359
It resists analyses because this world is the
product of his experience. What else does he know?
Partiality is simply that part of the world one has come to
understand. This understanding may be of a world
drastically different than that in which one grows up. It is
not a fantasy world. It is the world to which one has
come to terms, the world in which one has come to live.
Everyone has a partial understanding, but Feuer
is pointing to the force of extreme experience in forming
the attitude that ones own partiality is all there is worth
knowing about the world, at all. There is little hope in
coming to terms with another in this frame of mind. This
attitude excludes the possibility of any substratum of
truth. This attitude is one which resists change and
scorns its opposite. Where there is no such opposite,
this attitude will find one. For instance, in every
situation, whether or not there is good or evil present,
the concentrationary understanding will look for it, and
find it. It is the bipolarity of his experience which puts
good and evil into a situation, first off. Here is a perfect
example of the active bias of a partial understanding.
What we see here is bias taken to be determinative of
the objective world.
360
It ends with our own limitations.
The concentrationary man did not have to be
raised in a polarized situation. He simply had to come to
terms with one, and this attunement can have a lasting

359
Feuer, page 389.
360
We will look at life stories in the next section, wherein this polarizing
attitude is especially destructive.
210
effect. Although being raised in a concentrationary
situation leads to a nave cultural attitude, Feuer points
to the fact that bigotry can arise through polarizing
experiences alone. It is anything but nave. It is
learned. The fruit of this education is that there is no
space for the reconciliation of the poles of experience.
Good and evil, love and hate, these opposites are taken
to be basic constituents of the objective world. This
attitude presents a special challenge for the
phenomenologist interested in overcoming bias. If it can
be learned, however, perhaps it can be unlearned. Lets
find out how we may go about doing this.
Lets begin by imagining what it is like to come to
terms with a concentrationary culture. A
concentrationary culture is one in which all things are
polarized. In a concentrationary universe, there is us
and them, good and evil, free and enslaved, on
and off. The leaders of a concentrationary world say
things like Youre either with us or against us, and
Death to America.
361
Each party of the world is the
obstacle to each other partys aims. Each party thinks
he is right, and the other wrong. Naively taking ones

361
And two from Ariel Sharon, first in 1956: I dont know something called
International Principles. I vow that Ill burn every Palestinian child (that) will
be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous
than the man, because the Palestinian childs existence infers that
generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I
was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I
would make him suffer before killing him. With one strike Ive killed 750
Palestinians... I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as
the Palestinian woman is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to
her - and nobody tells us what we shall do - but we tell others what they
shall do. Posted April 26, 2006, at http://planetmove.blogspot.com/ Then
in 2002: As soon as Iraq is dealt with, I will push for Iran to be at the top of
the to do list.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/11/7/154220.shtml
211
given way of life as the right way of life is to take ones
given way as objectively basic. As true. Our life world
is the objective world; theirs is some subjective
interpretation of it.
362
Theirs is false.
The nave attitude takes the world from its partial
perspective to be the objective standard. In the
concentrationary universe, this leads directly to bias and
scorn. Because ones way is the right way, others must
be just that: others, and mistaken others at that. This is
the attitude of an enforcer of rigid laws, for example, in
whose bullying paternal wisdom others are better
objectively dead than subjectively wrong.
363

McKennas method in overcoming bias is
situated objectivity. Situated objectivity is a method of
overcoming subjective bias by requiring the
participation in different perspectives in order to be
achieved.
364
It discloses to an individual the partiality of
his own perspective by revealing otherwise hidden
aspects of the world around him. Ones partiality is
revealed as he discovers another way to engage the
world. This disclosure takes place on the basis of a
common participation with objects.
Consider the following brief example. Imagine
that you are in a passenger plane and it crashes. You
find your self on an island with natives whose practices
are a mystery in every way. The flora and fauna are

362
McKenna, page 117.
363
Granted, this is an extreme attitude, but it begins as a natural byproduct
of the partiality of ones own unique experiences. Ones experiences begin
in the clearing of his culture. One naturally wants to be successful in terms
of this way of life. It is what one needs to know to get ahead. Likewise, one
often looks to the appointed leaders of his culture in order to see success in
the flesh.
364
McKenna, page 117.
212
seemingly alien. You are getting hungry, and thirsty,
and tired. In order to begin to understand how to live in
such a strange world, you follow the natives around and
reproduce their actions. In this way, you reproduce the
engagements with the objects of the strange land, and
come to understand their significance. In a short while,
you will have begun to understand the native situation by
participating with the objects in common.
By participation, McKenna does not mean the
participant observation of the tourist. In the case of the
tourist, the foreign point of view is merely held to be
interesting in terms of ones pre-existing standard. In
this case, one may see how the other does what he
does, but he will not understand the significance of these
acts in terms of the others life. It is merely observation
from the outside, without an understanding of what it is
to be engaged with the objective world in that way. The
significance of the engagement is merely curious.
Instead, what McKenna has in mind by situated
is just that. One must take up the situation of the other
for himself, and not merely look on in curiosity. This
means that one must engage with the objects of the
others world in the ways in which the significance which
the other attaches to these objects is revealed. This
requires that an object is not seen to be either this way,
true or not, but that it may be many things and changing.
By way of this openness, through discourse, ones own
experience is compared with that of others. In this way,
one can check with the other to see that one is indeed
seeing things from the others point of view. Thereby,
otherwise hidden aspects of the world are revealed.
Whatever you are experiencing in common
is experienced differently by both, and is
different in the ways experienced These
213
objects have two sides, and, up to the
point of the encounter with the other, you
were unaware of the other side. To learn
about it through dialogue with the other can
never give you the first person experience
of it that is primary evidence, but it can
help and clarify your own experience of
that alien something that resided within the
negativity and disturbance.
365
What situated objectivity amounts to is putting
ones self in the others position, and then engaging the
world as-if one were that other. The experience of this
engagement leads to an understanding of the others
situation. In opening to the others perspective, one is
then able to come to terms with this situation as if it were
ones own. In this way, what is revealed is what the
other sees in the objects of the world that oneself
otherwise does not. This is more than just a field trip of
the mind. This is not the mode of the tourist. It is a
mode of discovery. This practice reveals the others
situation directly. It is no longer a question of what
would it be like to live in China? It is now a matter of
so, this is what its like to live in China.
The aspect of this method I wish to stress is the
role of the object in providing the grounds for the
understanding. It is as if there are two sides to the
object as the object reveals two sides to ones situation.
One comes to see the world as-if the other through the
medium of the object. This is possible because either
party is situated in terms of the objective world. Thus,
McKenna calls it situated objectivity.

365
McKenna, page 118.
214
The object allows one to move from a perspective
outside into a perspective inside the others situation.
One goes inside and discovers the significance of the
object which corresponds with the others way of life. In
this way, one comes to terms with the others situation.
He also comes to terms with the difference between his
own situation and that of the other. It is this insight
which is most valuable.
In opening ones self to the world, one learns
something about ones self. The object mediates an
objective view of ones self, a view of ones self from
the outside, from the inside position of the other. The
understanding that such an exercise generates clearly
works toward overcoming bias by permitting discovery of
the substratum of truth underlying differences. This
substratum is found in common engagements with the
objective world. With this in mind, McKennas situated
objectivity can be equally labeled situated subjectivity.
What is explicitly shared in McKennas method is
the situation relative to some object. Something is left
out of this account. Implicitly, McKennas view requires
that each individual have a similar capacity to engage
with objects before they ever come to see this or that
engagement as the right thing to do and the right time to
do it. This requires that a subject experience his
engagement with the objects in the situation as the right
one, not simply as a different one, or as a strange one.
The value in the experience is that a subject comes to
understand that his old way of doing things is not
necessarily the right way. From this point of view, it is
equally subjective. Because human beings are
essentially objectively the same, sharing a situation is
essentially being, subjectively, as-if another person.
215
What McKenna has shown us is a method for
reconciling differences between persons of different,
often conflicted nave perspectives. Different persons
come to different terms with objects, like rocks, from one
another, and this reveals their, subjective, differences.
One person may say that a rock is an obstacle, and
another that the same rock is an aim. These are
contradictions. McKennas method allows for the
reconciliation of these contradictory determinations
through the mediation of the very object whose
qualification is in dispute. What had appeared to be a
contradiction is revealed to be merely a biased result of
ones own partiality.
366
Rocks simply stay the same.
Through the sameness of the rock, what had appeared
contradictory is now two sides of the same stone. One
side up, one side down, one side mine, one side yours,
one side discovered, one side covered over.
This brings us to a further question. We have
seen how situated objectivity is a method for
understanding differences between two ways of being in
the world when these are exhibited by different persons
relative the same objects. Will this method work in
reconciling conflicted nave perspectives within the same
person? Can this method do the same work when the
differences are within the span of a self-same
individuals life, the contrary terms of the same life story?
Persons come to terms with another situation
through the mediation of objects. What changes in this
process is not the object, however, it is the subject. The
capacity to invite change through openness to others is
one way in which persons appear to differ from rocks.

366
Conscience holds one system state of engagement against the other,
and the difference is what it feels like to be in another culture.
216
Stones do not fall in love or take new jobs in Korea, for
example. The living body is both the subject and object
of change. It is subject to the experiences of which it is
the object of change. It can only then tell the tale.
People appear to be different than rocks. With
enough pressure, some people will crack, and some will
rise to the occasion, and some will do both. With
enough pressure, all carbon becomes diamond. In the
right situation, some men change purposefully. In order
to be a good fullback, with leisure and opportunity a man
will train himself to be a good fullback. Rocks do not
change purposefully. A rock never does sit-ups to be a
better engagement ring. Lets rejoin Ed Ballard on this
subject:
The same kind of regularity [exhibited by
objects] does not determine the changes of
the self, for the self who intends and
experiences, can engage in radical change
so that, upon occasion, the continuity of
personal identity becomes problematic.
(How complete was the change from Saul
to Paul?)
367
How complete was the change from Saul and
Paul? Let us review the story of Sauls conversion. Saul
was a tentmaker and a thug employed by the Jewish
authorities to round up or murder Jews who were
converting to the nascent Christian movement. He was
on his way to Damascus So that if he found any there
who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he
might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
368

367
Ballard, page 111.
368
Acts, 9.1 (New International).
217
Here, Saul was affected. The Bible reports that
he was blinded by a flash and was confronted by the
voice of Christ. The voice asked Saul, Saul, why do
you persecute me?" His companions reported
experiencing a sound, but none were struck blind. It is
through this incident, confronted by his victims through a
religious experience, that Saul converted. Thereafter in
Damascus, instead of arresting converts, he preached
fearlessly in the name of Jesus.
369
Just prior to his
departure, he had been a major proponent in the death
of a Christian sympathizer named Stephen. This is a
radical change. Was it self-determined self-change?
Recent information suggests that Saul may have
been different than others. By this view, Saul didnt
change so much as demonstrate a difference which
others did not. Saul may have been born sensitive to
the effects of magnetic fields which are known to induce
symptoms similar to those Saul reported. Saul was likely
affected by a magnetic wave which propagated along
the fault-line of an earthquake. In this case, his change
is not an example of freedom through self-determination.
He had this sensitivity long before he was caught by one
on his road to Damascus.
370
In fact, the best evidence
for this is that his companions were also affected, just
not so much. Let me explain.
Religious experience is something that we human
beings share. Commenting on the ubiquity of the
experience, William James writes that Religion shall

369
Acts, 9.3 (New International).
370
This issue has received a great deal of popular attention. The transcript
including the cited conversation with neurologist V.S. Ramachandran can
be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/features/stpaul/st_paul_s
cript.html
218
mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of
individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend
themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may
consider the divine.
371
Neuroscientists have before and
since worked towards understanding the universal
physiological grounds for the human experience of
God.
372
Recently, researchers have made
breakthroughs in discovering physiological processes
common to religious experience. The physiology
underlying the religious experience has a lot in common
with one's sense of place in the world, wherein the
personal identification with the totality of world, or a
sensed presence of God, is just one extreme.
373
One team of Canadian researchers championed
by the now deceased Eugene D'Aguili has provided a
universal interpretation of research data on this affect.
On their account, what they call "Absolute Unitary
Being," a "sudden, vivid consciousness of everything as
an undifferentiated whole" is predictably and reliably
reached through prepared mental exercise, such as
meditation and prayer.
374
The data includes brain
imaging corroborated with self-reports from seasoned
religious devotees including both Buddhist monks and

371
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, page 42.
372
Descartes speculated that the pineal gland was structurally significant to
the experience of God; and, although everyone has a pineal gland, he was
wrong. Although, his speculation carries interesting implications, as pineal
glands in lower animals bind fundamental physiological processes,
especially those elated to sexual reproduction and metabolism, to the
cycles of the Sun. There is now a branch of work dedicated to looking
deeper into the neurology of religious belief, specifically, called
"Neurotheology." Much of what follows is this fields fruit.
373
It is a feeling of sharing ones situation with everything else. I am here
intending to develop it as a standard objective perspective opposed to
subjectivity.
374
Newberg, 2001, page 147
219
Christian nuns. These self-reports cite the
undifferentiated blissful one-ness with God and world,
experiences which the subjects share, that they have in
common.
375
The research reveals that the experience is
not all that they share; the brain images of the subjects
have a lot in common, too. The activation patterns of the
subjects who reach this state are similar, and these
patterns can be reproduced in laboratory.
Most importantly, the activation patterns of
religious experience can be reliably induced through the
controlled application of powerful magnetic fields.
376
The
results when applied to different persons vary, however.
Persons who are physiologically predisposed to religious
experience have religious experiences induced via
magnetic fields in the laboratory. This means that
persons who have religious experiences in the everyday
life have religious experiences in the laboratory. Others,
less so.
Saul appears to have been physiologically prone
to religious experience. Though there is no brain
imaging data on Sauls experiences, there is other
information which confirms this picture. V.S.
Ramachandran explains that there is a certain
personality which is consistent with a sensitivity to
magnetic stimulus of religious experience:
...generally there is a pattern a tendency
towards being a little bit egocentric, feeling
of self-importance, a feeling of

375
The self-reports, understandably, come in the forms of linguistic
expression native to either sort of religious commitment - i.e. the Buddhists
explain their experiences in Buddhist terms, citing feelings of selflessness
and universality, while Christians report sensing the presence of God.
376
An interesting starting place with much research:
http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/
220
righteousness, righteous indignation,
they're often argumentative, often
completely convinced that they're
absolutely right, there's this tremendous
strength of conviction,... and I wouldn't at
all be surprised if this was true of St.
Paul.
377
After his experience, his closed mindedness to
those he had persecuted ended. He stopped excluding
people through the biases of old laws, and discovered
an absolute openness to others. There is neither Jew
nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are
all one in Christ Jesus.
378
Though apparently open to
others, Saul remained strong-willed. He simply leveled
his tremendous strength of conviction in new ways. He
became a righteous champion for tolerance instead of
an equally rigid champion of intolerance. His change is
evidenced in his relationship with the objects of his world
before and after his experience.
Saul suffered what appears to be an inversion.
Instead of being closed off from a world of others
different from himself, he took an opposite stance. This
change in perspective is most obvious in regard to the
old Jewish laws. These laws represented the objective
world for Saul before his experience. He lived by the
terms of the law as-if it were the way the world was
supposed to be, and imposed those terms on others,
forcing them to live by the same terms, as if in the same

377
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/paul_1.shtml
(last accessed September, 2006.)
378
Galatians, 3.28 (New International Version).
221
world, or suffer. These others were not simply different,
they were wrong by his standards.
Where before Saul enforced the law, after his
experience he denied it. Now that faith has come, we
are no longer under the supervision of the law.
379
In the
space of Sauls life, he embodied two positions which
are mutually exclusive, each corresponding with
opposing determinations of the objective world. Where
once he lived as-if in one objective world, he then lived
as-if in another. This is a radical change.
Saul did not change, completely. He still
understood himself as-if he had a lock on what the
objective world really is. What had changed is that this
objective world is opposite the one in which he began.
One is a world of rigid law and retribution, one is a world
of tolerance and love.
380
Sauls objective world is not the
real world for Paul. Sauls world is closed to the new
situation, the new Way that is Christianity, while Pauls is
open. Saul and Paul both, however, take their
characteristic modes to be those which suit the objective
world by one of the determinations. Saul did not
change, completely. Saul was intolerant of tolerance.
Paul was intolerant of intolerance. Some things about
Saul remained the same.
381
Consider Sauls relationship with himself. After
his experience, Paul takes his old intolerant way of life

379
Galatians, 3.25 (New International Version).
380
As we shall see in the final chapter, we are in a world, and under laws,
which appear to have been inverted the other way.
381
I am thinking of Sauls conversion from o/c<->c/c, suiting his rigid
thuggery. Sauls conversion which blinds him with an o/c state, then o/o, to
an habitual o/c and then c/c state through the course of Sauls life, bringing
forward a much affected understanding. I suppose a home computer
corollary may be the flash-memory of a bios. Saul had his bios flashed.
And, though it only happened once, it had lasting effect.
222
as an object from which to close off and to reject. That
way was not the right way to live. He himself is the
object in terms of which his opposing situations are
mediated. He no longer does as his old way of life
prescribed. In the following passage, Paul identifies with
a religious persecutor and warns him that he will suffer a
similar conversion if he continues in his closed-
heartedness:
Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled
with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at
Elymas and said, "You are a child of the
devil and an enemy of everything that is
right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and
trickery. Will you never stop perverting the
right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of
the Lord is against you. You are going to
be blind, and for a time you will be unable
to see the light of the sun.
382
It appears that McKennas situated objectivity
does hold as a method for understanding changes in
ones self. Saul took the other to be in terms of his own
situation.
383
He had been as this person appeared to be,
but by his understanding of the situation God had
affected his conversion. Meanwhile, Sauls traveling
companions and fellow animals were not so affected at
all. The companions reported a sound. The animals
may not have been affected. Neither were the persons
far away from the event. Sauls change was unique, and
uniquely mediated by his own unique body. His body is

382
Acts, 13.9 (New International Version).
383
o/c.
223
both the object which mediated the difference between
the two positions, and the subject of radical change.
Sauls relationship with himself changed, but
everything else stayed pretty much the same. For
instance, though the Jewish authorities in Damascus
went from waiting for his help to wanting to have him
killed, they did not change. They were always intolerant
bullies. What did change was that Saul all of a sudden
exemplified the power of conversion to the new Way of
Christianity. This is the objective significance of his
subjective experience. He who was once also a violent
authoritarian was all of a sudden preaching tolerance
and forgiveness with equal authority. This is the same
subject with radically different objects. Herein the same
subject are two very different gods, two very different
objective worlds, two contrary positions, two
contradictory laws, two sides to the same rock, and
evidence that the Jewish bullies could change, too. Like
any other rock, however, we see only one side at a time.
With this information, we can ask Ballards question
again. How complete was the change from Saul to Paul?
If the science is correct, then Saul did not really
change (objectively), at all. He was affected, a dormant
potential was activated by a natural occurrence, but he
remained Saul. Saul, if the science is right, was born
with a certain sensitivity. What changed was Sauls
relation with objects which triggered that sensitivity.
384
Others were not forced to come to terms with this

384
If magnetic pulses propagate from earthquakes and some populations
have member sensitive to magnetic pulses then these more sensitive
members may serve as important sources of community revision
throughout deep evolutionary time. This interface between emergent life
and radiative backgrounds holds promise in explaining many folkloric
anomalies.
224
difference. This makes Sauls situation in the space of
history a critical one. He was a special chunk of carbon
who, with the right pressures, both cracked and became
a diamond. His example is still that valuable.
For others, the value of his experience came
through in his expressions regarding objects they all held
in common. His situation was different and this
difference was revealed in an inversion on basic
evaluations of worldly things. He suddenly took different
ends to be the right ends at which to aim than he had
before his experience. The most telling of these
inversions is Sauls difference in regards to himself, and
to others as intolerant as he had been. What he had
understood to be objectively the right way of life before
his experience, he took to be objectively the wrong way
of life after his experience. This is an expression of
radical change.
That a rigid man should come to terms with a
radically different objective world in the course of a few
days appears to be evidence for the reality of the
objective world as Paul came to see it. But, did Saul
change himself on the basis of this evidence? Was it
self-change? It may appear as-if he discovered the laws
of god, and through his dramatic change in perspective
he merely pointed to them. Yet, this is already what he
was doing, he merely began pointing to radically
different laws of god. We can only see one side of a
rock at once, but did this one turn itself over? No. It was
flipped by a magnetic field. For our own purposes, in
turning Saul over, we have discovered for ourselves this
objects underbelly, but we havent seen a rock present
its under-belly on purpose. Its just a rock with a dark
side.
225
In this section we have seen that it is possible to
reconcile contrary positions through common
engagements with the objective world. We have seen
that this is possible both inter-subjectively, between
ones self and others, and intra-subjectively, within ones
own self. We have begun to see how the body plays
the central role in mediating such difference by providing
the grounds for the changes which ones self undergoes.
It is apparent that ones self is capable of a great deal
more variance of perspective than one typically utilizes.
What is not yet apparent however is whether one can
take advantage of this capacity purposefully, freely, and
so change himself and his world through self-change
and self-determination. What is the role, if any, of the
body in grounding freedom through self-determination?
Let me briefly lay the issue out.
Ones body is the only constant in the whole
course of ones life story. It is always changing. It is
always ones own. It is always situated. Stories change,
situations change, others come and go. If a situation
changes radically, the body changes radically, and in
this space a person changes radically, too. In situations
different enough, ones very identity comes into
question. Oedipus went from King to madman in an
afternoon, for instance. The physical position of his
body did not change, but his situation did, and his life
was turned upside down. Even with his eyes torn out,
he could not deny the situation in which he discovered
himself. It was the relevance of objects in his world
which changed, and these which determined the end of
his lifes story, his objective realization of himself.
Oedipus, subject to the blind mechanisms of the
objective world, object of self-change, appears to be two
men at once. It is the difference between these two
226
points of view which drives him mad. His irony is that he
lives, from the subjective versus the objective
perspectives, two incommensurate life stories. His
tragedy is that these are two positions which he could
not reconcile. He simply cracked.
385
In tragedy, however, there is hope. On the basis
of the body, it is possible to live in terms of a completely
different story to a completely different end, all while
maintaining the continuity of a single life. This is where
we will find room for a mans freedom through self-
determination. But, it isnt easy; there is no pill for
freedom. Freedom for self-determination is limited by
understanding, and we have seen that gaining
understanding is hard work, stressful, and even risky.
Self-determination is nothing other than discovering for
ones self the meaning of life, and only then doing
something about it, becoming meaningful.

385
I will remind the reader of the first section, wherein conscience is defined
as that capacity which opens the space between situations, and point to the
relevance in this context as capturing the sense of ones entire life.
227
12. Conscience, and freedom.
The human individual lives usually far
within his limits; he possesses powers of
various sorts which he habitually fails to
use. He energizes below his maximum,
and he behaves below his optimum. In
elementary faculty, in coordination, in
power of inhibition and control, in every
conceivable way, his life is contracted like
the field of vision of an hysteric subject
but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric
is diseased, while in the rest of us it is only
an inveterate habitthe habit of inferiority
to our full selfthat is bad.
-- William James
386
Thus we see that the rule that the exercise
of a virtue is pleasant does not apply to all
the virtues, except in so far as the end is
attained.
--Aristotle
387
Because the good die young, and the hard
die best.
-- Wu-Tang Clan
388
If one is not content to wait on a geologic event
for an objective determination of the right thing to do and
the right person to become, he must figure it out for

386
Energies of Men, page 331.
387
Nichomachean Ethics, 9-5.
388
Better Tomorrow, Forever, RCA Records, 1997.
228
himself. Every person begins life subject to the world,
and makes his life his highest worldly object. Every
person begins life in subjective uncertainty, and moves
through life in discovery through an understanding of his
objective situation. Every person seeks the right
situation at the right time, and lives life in preparation
thereof. This is our universal condition. Some modes of
being in the world prepare ones self better to do the
right thing at the right time than do other modes of being
in the world. In these next sections, we will come to
understand the limits of our powers to affect what we
take to be the right thing to do and the right time to do it.
In life, one wishes to plot his course toward that
man ahead he wishes to become. I held this possibility
out as a special capacity of conscience many pages
ago. We have since found advice on how to reach this
goal. Socrates taught us about inner discourse and the
good. Kant reminded us how important it is that our lives
are esteemed by others alike. Diogenes starred in an
illustration of conscience opening a space of rest in a
situation determined by need. Heidegger showed us
that even in taking on everyday anxiety, we are coming
to terms with the limits of our own mortal situation.
McKenna helped us to see how we live together, even
beginning as if in different worlds filled with the same
things. And we have seen Saul, who through an
inverted perspective became Paul, and came to live in
terms of another world, altogether. Through his change,
Saul demonstrated a way of life whose object is that
conversion even though he was not responsible for this
change himself. He is still esteemed as a singular
example of the Christian object in life, a rock converted
to a mode of tolerance. In this section, the aim is to
229
discover a mode of being which makes such conversion
through self-determination possible.
Saul does not demonstrate that sort of self-
change to which Ballard alluded in the last section. We
see Saul both as an object of change, and subject of
change, but this change is not self-initiated. His
example does show that our bodies make it possible to
be situated in two seemingly contrary objective worlds.
His example thus shows that conversion is possible.
The trick now is in figuring out how it is that we have
some freedom to determine our own. We will find it in
another object of the meaningful life, the life story. Our
freedom lies in the determination of what makes for a
happy ending, and then moving towards it.
All the discourse and drama as one seeks ones
highest calling is often called writing a lifes story. To
talk about writing a lifes story presumes that one has
some power over the determinations which constitute
such a thing. Considering the terms which Saul had
imposed on others prior to his conversion experience, if
he had been asked to write his own story from that
perspective, he would not have written the story he
actually lived out in the end. On his way to Damascus, a
happy ending may have included a number of dead
Christians. Afterwards, a happy ending included
countless Christian converts. These are radically
different ends. Saul, however, does not demonstrate
self-change through self-determination. He does not
choose his ends. Saul does demonstrate a bodily
capacity for radical change, radical change possible for
others, as well. His example just doesnt show that this
man determined these changes for himself.
What we shall come to in this section is a
possibility for writing the story of ones own radical
230
conversion. I will present a view which locates the
freedom of self-determination in the choice of ends
towards which one strives in his life time. This is a
freedom to embed ones life within larger narratives,
stories, and myths, even as he determines them along
the way. For example, one is able to live for ends which
he will never in his life time realize. Like the silent
heroes in every epic story, those who live and die for the
ends of a story bigger than they, themselves, one can do
the right thing and yet not to be the hero alive at the
storys end. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr., here. He is
the hero, but he is not here with us. This does not mean
that happy endings do not come by way of his efforts. It
only means that a man is free to live for ends so that
others may be happily situated within them, if not
himself. It means that a man is free to live for anothers
happy ending if not for his own. But this freedom is
difficult to see clearly, and requires some convincing for
most to take as ends worthy of serious consideration.
In this section and the next, we will come to terms
with the role of conscience in providing for a special
human freedom, the power of self-determination.
389
In
the end, the capacity to determine for ones self those
ends in terms of which he lives his life is a freedom to
live as-if in another world. This power to become a
member of a just world as opposed to an unjust one is
the power of redemption, where deme means group,
neighborhood, or population as in demography. In
opening ones self to the world to meet the terms of a
moment, ahead, for others if not for ones self, one can

389
The trouble, for most people, will be that this power is only effective
through the lived life. There is no pill one can take to be a just man, a good
man, or whatever man he wants to be. Freedom doesnt come in a bottle.
231
be re-deemed. His story may have a happy ending for
others to whose group he belongs, if he does not,
himself. One can live as-if a citizen bound by the terms
of a just world, as if justice were his cultural, natural,
even naive attitude, and his way of life a demonstration
in how to engage with common objects justly.
390

Granted that this world is not a just world, to live
as if it is imposes radical changes from the status quo in
the course of a mans life. In aspiring to meet the terms
of the just situation, one invites self-change which suits
that end. Slowly, as these changes take effect, ones
course in life changes.
391
In order to change courses,
however, one must first have an end in sight. Lets
begin with how this first point comes to be established.
Plotting ones course in life is part of writing a
lifes story. Writing a life story is emplotting ones self
in terms of the objects of the world. Emplotting is a
process of making the intelligible out of the accidental,
the universal from the singular, the necessary from the
episodic.
392
Having a lifes story is the difference
between meaningful life and a series of random
disjunctions. The function of narrative is to artificially
order discordant experience by emplotting it.
393

390
Yes, there is a difference as we shall see. Acts which get rewarded in a
just world get you crucified, fired, or jailed in this one, for example, and
there are other costs as well.
391
See Christoff 2005 for research to the effect that persons are bound by
experience in what directs even spontaneous thought. That is, even free
movements proceed on the basis of prior determinations. It takes time to
see a happy ending if youve never seen a happy ending before.
392
Mann, xvi.
393
Mann, 12. If the reader expects that this makes emplotment sound like
living a life of fiction, I wish to refer him Ochsner et. al. 2003 for a sterling
review of emotional regulation mechanisms which permit a selective
engagement with the organisms situation thereby contributing to a self-
232
It is through narrative that individual experiences
hang together. Unless they are arranged by way of some
global structure like a strand of narrative, there is merely
a series of causes and effects, either without any
necessarily significant relationship with one another.
394
The story of ones life is the thread through which
otherwise paradoxical experiences come to be
continuously spun out in one ongoing tale.
Ones story begins by coming to terms with the
objects of ones own situation. It is in terms of that place
into which one is born and raised that objects come to
have special significance.
395
We saw last section how
such natural attitudes inform ones sense of self, other,
and right and wrong. Persons identify themselves in
terms of their way of life, and emplot themselves
accordingly.
396
Ones cultural attitudes prescribe what is
the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Emplotted
accordingly, a life story is, if nothing else, a telling series
of the right things getting done at the right times, or not.

constructed world-view. Life stories are not fiction, but they are
constructed, and there is deception of self and others within them.
394
I am thinking of the Sound and the Fury.
395
Consider the classic psychological experiment wherein kittens are raised
in rooms wallpapered solely in a vertical bar pattern. Once the visual
system prunes for optimal performance in that limited environment, the
kittens fail to recognize parallel bar patterns perpendicular/orthogonal to the
original. They literally bump their heads on objects arranged in such
patterns, literally unable to see them there to avoid them at all.
396
At no time in life is the pressure greater to discover ones own story for
ones self than in youth. Especially in adolescence. Herein, one takes his
situation for his own, for the first time. It is not merely the objects of the
world which are his or not, it is the world itself. It is ones own life. It is no
longer ours. And it is never too late to change. I remember. Imagine a
hurting boy in a room 20 years ago, and then recount how he got here.
That is the story of my life. But it is not yet my lifes story. Not yet. I have
not seen many happy endings. Still, lets see if we cant whip one up.
233
It is natural for persons to think of their lives in
terms of stories. Here, I do not mean a reductionist story
iterating some series of events. I mean myth, drama,
comedy and tragedy. These are all products of culture.
To be in a culture is to be enculturated. To be
enculturated is to be emplotted in terms of ones native
myths and stories. One is not born merely to a group of
persons in a cleared area of land with a given
geographical character. One is born into an ongoing
narrative, the collective story of others all writing their
stories and writing their stories together in terms of their
shared situation. To be enculturated is to have ones
own story interwoven with others, and all of these
together form one broad-cloth spun out over
generations.
397
One is spun into this world story at its open end,
and moves ahead from there. The ongoing narrative
into which one is born is a fundamental factor in ones
life story, as who one is and what one will do will be
determined by the story one sees oneself a part of.
398
Thus, it is natural for a man to find meaning in his life
through the medium of the broader narrative through
which his own life threads:
The fact that people have been willing to
give their lives in the service of a larger
story of possible human liberation, peace,
growth, or flourishing attests to the human
drive for narrative meaning.
399

397
The strength of a nation, thus, is the strength of this flag. The material
thing has no significance of its own if it does not represent this fact of lives
lived in and for one another, lives lived in terms of a common situation for a
common end. A big issue, chapters 15, 16.
398
Mann, 84
399
Mann, Introduction, vii.
234
In her text, Internarrative Identity, Ajit K. Mann
argues that traditional views on what makes for a good
life story carry implicit, and arbitrary, constraints on what
one takes to be the right way to live. The presumptions
of what makes for a good life story inhibit the freedoms
one might otherwise have to do otherwise. One can
hardly be free if he is bound by the very form of the very
story he lives even before he begins to live it.
Manns problem with traditional narratives is
structural. If one assumes a certain life story type, one
assumes a way of life which makes that story type work.
This goes for any narrative structure so long as a certain
structure is presumed to be sufficient for the emplotment
of all positively regarded, pro-social, ways of life.
Manns primary concern is that options are undervalued
by the presumptions of traditional narrative structures.
These structures pressure against different ways of life
by failing to value certain types of experience:
The basic principle of narrative identity
theory is that personal identity is correlative
to plot, that the only sense in which a self
can be identified is in relation to the stories
one sees oneself as a part of. The
problem with this conception is that identity
is not simply emplotted, it is emplotted in a
very particular type of narrative structure
one that admits only a particular type of
assimilated experiential material.
400
According to Manns analyses, the traditional
narrative schema is selective for a certain type of life-

400
Mann, 55.
235
story. It does so by discounting certain experiences,
while trumpeting others. This encourages certain modes
of engagement with the world and discourages others.
What this means is that how one thinks about stories
imposes terms on how one thinks about his own life
story. What this means is that how one thinks about
stories influences how one lives his life. This implies
that how one thinks about life stories imposes terms on
what one takes to be the right thing to do and the right
times to do it. It determines what is virtue, and vice.
This leads to the biggest problem, that how one thinks
about stories imposes terms on what one takes to be the
right life to live, and the right ends to live for.
Manns concern is of the latter scope. The
problem is that certain heroes and their aims, their
happy endings, are selected against by way of the
traditional narrative standard. This means that, not just
any ways of life, but ways of life which are good are
denied value by these standards. For example, the story
of a selfless mother is certainly one which aims for a
happy ending, but it is certainly not the narrative which is
recommended by traditional standards. The hero of a
traditional narrative is defined by an exclusionary means,
by separation, by uniqueness.
401
Yet, who would argue
that a selfless mother is not a hero?
By traditional standards, a life story is a good one
when one player, ones self, pursues and satisfies a set
of intentions which are the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the completion of his lifes projects. My
favorite example is The Count of Monte Cristo.
402
This
story emphasizes one identity and one aim. Other

401
Mann, 59.
402
Thanks to Eddie Adelstein for the suggestion.
236
persons are integral to that, but the aim is the heros own
end. The story is not about the girlfriend. It is not about
the gold. It is not about anyones mother. It is about one
mans redemption. It is about himself.
This narrative structure forces the evaluation of all
intermediary events and actions in terms of the ultimate
end of one heros own life story. In the Count of Monte
Cristo, Edmund Dantes ultimate end is the restoration of
the situation in life which was unjustly stolen from him.
He begins a newly appointed ships captain and on the
basis of that promotion becomes engaged to the woman
he loves. His life is destroyed by false accusations. He
is imprisoned. He suffers, and struggles, and frees
himself through resolve fueled by desperation. Dantes
himself is transformed through his experience. Where in
the beginning he is a fair and patient, in the end he is
calculating and hard. He takes on roles at both sides of
the law, gains a fortune by luck and becomes, instead of
Edmund Dantes, criminal, The Count of Monte Cristo,
hero. It is still his story, and its tale is the transition
from subjective loss to objective redemption.
The tale is told in terms of Dantes distance from
his ultimate aim. His love, his home, his life. It is also
told in terms of the distance of this good man from
himself. To return home, he must change. To reclaim
his unique situation, he must become a different man.
Edmund Dantes could not regain his station. Edmund
Dantes could not regain his love. To do this, Edmund
Dantes must become Monte Cristo. This man, excluded,
separated from the world he cares for, is uniquely
attached to a certain end. Gratefully, so the story goes,
he succeeds in living to this end, and happily.
In terms of a traditional narrative like this one,
everyone wants a fairy tale ending uniquely his own.
237
The problem is that, in order to live this life story, there
have to be evil men and monsters to kill and gold to find
and damsels to save and all for ones self.
403
The
structure of the story prescribes that this is the right thing
to do and any opportunity to do so the right time to do it.
To live this life story requires that one find evil, that one
seek gold, do so for himself and, it is presumed, within a
hostile world already full of evil men and monsters. This
is the traditional narrative structure, a singular hero with
a happy ending. It tells us to find evil, destroy it, and to
take what we want for ourselves. End of story.
The problem is that the story of the exclusionary
and unique hero of traditional narrative may not be the
right story to live. The problem is that the ends which
this selfish character seeks may not be those which the
situation demands. The problem is: how can one be free
for self-determination when these determinations are
evaluated as already good or bad by a narrative
structure which is not freely self-determined?
This is where others become so integral in
exerting the formal narrative pressure which Mann warns
about. If one fails to find and kill the evil man, he does
not fit into the story. He appears to be doing the wrong
thing at the wrong time. Others may find his behavior
unintelligible, or simply unintelligent. If one consistently
finds the socially significant object, and does what is

403
Though I use fairy tale examples, this presumption of the traditional
narrative structure exerts forces in an everyday way. The sentiment
encouraging this life story is captured in phrases like get a purpose in life
and the key to success is choosing a narrow specialty and doing that one
thing very well. This sentiment also encourages slogans like shoot them
all and let God sort them out. What is presumed is that there are others
who need to be shot, just as ones self never does. Whether or not this is
deserved is beside the point.
238
expected with it, then his behavior is intelligible, and
even intelligent. He does the right thing at the right time
as defined by what makes sense to others. If one does
not follow the rules, his capacity to live a coherent life
story is brought into question.
Subjects are intelligible according to narrative
structures in which they and others reside. That is to
say that intelligible persons live consistently in terms
already, routinely, considered to be socially significant.
Intelligible subjects are the effects of rule based
signifying practices and these rules operate through
repetition.
404
Think again of the traditional narrative
structure. Within this given structure, ogres are
significant because they must, as a rule, be destroyed.
One is intelligible when he says ogre and draws his
sword. He is equally intelligible, however, when he says
ogre and runs. He is unintelligible when he says ogre
and then tries to reason with the ogre. This
engagement is not only unconventional. It is essentially
impossible! Ogres, after all, do not reason. Trying to
talk with an ogre is simply the wrong thing to do, and
while he is alive it is the wrong time to do it. Running,
now, that makes sense.
This illustrates the force of the narrative structure
pressuring one to live a life story commensurate with
that of others. This pressure shows up in every
engagement with every significant object throughout the
course of ones life. The pressures to live consistently in
terms of the conventional significance of common
objects in the world depends on the presumption of a
certain way of life as a standard. The ubiquity of this
pressure captures how critical this concept is in

404
Mann, 27.
239
understanding the inter-subjective force of narrative
structure on the shape of a mans life.
405
One is intelligible to others in terms of the
presumptions of a shared narrative structure. Insofar as
one understands himself in the same terms, he is
intelligible to himself by the same standard. It is in terms
of such a structure that one makes sense of his
experiences at all. For example, if there were no such
standard, there would be no such thing as failure or
success. In terms of the narrative structure in which one
lives, the failure to reach the prescribed end is not simply
a matter of reaching a different end, but is a matter of
reaching the wrong end. It is not a matter of succeeding
in doing something else. It is a matter of failing to meet
the terms for a happy ending implicit in the very structure
of ones life story. I will leave it as a given that no one
wishes to identify himself as a failure.
The pressure which presumptions about the way
a life story is supposed to go imposes constraints on
what one takes to be the right thing to do and the right
time to do it. One is successful in terms of his narrative
structure so long as he does the right thing as prescribed
by his position within that narrative context. For
example, one is successful if he saves the damsel, a
failure if he lives the lonely life of a selfless Philosopher.
This is all well and good if the narrative structure in place
prescribes the right things to do and the right times to do
them. It may be the case that philosophy is not the right
thing to do when the damsel needs saving. It is not

405
Fairy tales, religious or not, are the greatest lies of all. Yet, for some
reason, we insist on orienting our children within them even as we teach
them language. Imagine how deep and lasting the impact! Of course, our
own chains are forged similarly.
240
clear, however, that traditional narratives sufficiently
provide for all contexts in which the question of the right
thing to do arises.
Manns criticism is that this narrative structure is
not only insufficient, but that it is psychologically
oppressive. By her analyses, it actively discourages the
possibility of plotting a lifes story which does not fit that
of the traditional hero. Not every life story needs to be
one of one man becoming a hero against all odds and
against all others who finally through strength of will and
at all costs forces his terms on a final situation.
406
There
need to be other lives lived for other things, too. Many
times life is peaceful and filled with family and
community. What then?
What of stories which do not presume such
extreme experiences, one man against the world? What
of stories which are lived in terms of love, home, and life
which is not unjustly lost? What narrative structure
provides for doing the right thing when that doesnt mean
finding an evil man with gold and damsels to kill, steal,
and rescue? Mann faults the traditional structure for
failing to account for those narratives. Without the
isolation and the separation which motivates the
traditional hero, an alternative life story may be lived
toward the successes of others projects, of others lives,
and not necessarily toward the successes of ones own,
alone. In fact, this story is not uncommon; it is much

406
Her criticism is that it is insufficient to accommodate typically feminine
stories. She argues that traditional structures are psychologically
repressive. I agree. I have dropped the qualifier feminist as I see no
reason why the point doesnt hold, generally. Although, if one must be
essentialist, there is good evidence for physiological grounds for
generalized differences in storyboard preference, though I shall not review
this research here.
241
more common than that of the uniquely individuated
hero. This is the story of all those countless persons
who through history have been willing to give their lives
in the service of a larger story of possible human
liberation, peace, growth, or flourishing.
Such a narrative does not necessarily aspire to
traditional determinations of what makes for a good life
story, one in which a strong character suffers and
succeeds in a final redemption.
407
In fact, such a
narrative may not come in terms of a single thread at all,
but may consist in multiple narratives, and altogether by
some narrative standards not consist as a story.
Consider again the story of the selfless mother.
Her life story may consist of many threads, each
consisting of the narratives of her children and spouse,
her home and her house. Her own life is spent meeting
the needs of these others. Her own life story is not a
single strand of narrative, but a rope of many strands
woven around her own selfless core. Without these
others, there is no story of a selfless mother.
The scope of this analyses is not limited to the
nuclear family. A similar structure can be found in the
life of the selfless Philosopher. Picture Socrates astride
in the markets conversing on justice and virtue. He
never charged for his Philosophy. He always began
dialogue with the terms of the other, and moved from
their starting place toward only what all present could
consign the good. Without these others, there is no
story of the selfless Philosopher.
Instead of being a long strand of narrative
soliloquy, this life story is already interwoven with those
of others through the great tapestry of human history.

407
An opportunity with which this text shall close in offering the reader.
242
On this view, there is no single aim and no single main
player.
408
Ones life story is written with others
inseparably. This is a narrative which isnt driven to
satisfy some heroic standard. This is a narrative the
focus of which is doing the right thing at the right time by
a selfless standard. These are the stories which weave
the very fabric of society, and create that substratum
underlying all differences between men no matter how
heroically individuated. These are not the stories of men
off on their own. These are the stories of communities,
told by way of its members.
By Manns thesis, ones life narrative is not
necessarily bound within the horizons of ones own
personal projects. Ones life narrative is bound within
the horizons of ones society. [The] emphasis is less on
individuality and more on community; that is to say, there
is identification through relationship rather than through
individuation.
409
On Manns view, I do not live my life
story, we live ours.
Inside of the traditional narrative form, there
appears to be no object to this sort of narrative. Once
one finds himself inside of the traditional narrative
structure, all that is left for him to do is to discover
objects in its terms. This life story is written about
overpowering bad guys and saving damsels, overcoming
obstacles and securing objects for ones own. From this
point of view, if there is no evil it is not that things are
good, it is that something is missing!
410

408
For instance, at a local level, to read the story of a selfless mother is to
read the story of her children and home.
409
Mann, 59.
410
I cannot stress this point enough. Recall the discussion on the
concentrationary universe last section. See the systemic need for a tyrant
in upcoming sections.
243
There is pressure to be the hero, the princess,
and to aim for that one holy object of desire. This is not
to say that there is pressure to kill ogres, to sleep on
peas, and seek the grail. Not literally.
That does not mean that these narrative
expectations are inactive. The critical issue here is that
there is pressure to think of ones life in a way which
finds ogres, and peas, and grails in the world. It is as if
those who do live in terms of such a narrative live in a
world which really contains evil, and ogres, and fairy tale
endings where the good live happily and the bad suffer
righteously. There is pressure, in other words, to live in
a concentrationary universe, not because ones prior
experience demands it, but because that is the
experience that the narrative structure itself demands.
The structure itself exerts pressure through the
expectations of others that one will do the same. The
others exert pressure through the presumption that the
common tale of life will be in every man repeated. Some
may meet the terms of the happy ending, others will fail,
but this is beside the point. Each man is held to this
standard. Each life story, thus, is a repeat of the last at
least in terms of its structure. To deviate is to risk
unintelligibility. To deviate is to risk membership in the
community. This is to risk isolation, alienation,
loneliness, and the anxiety of self-responsibility.
Deviation is still an option, however uncomfortable. At
best, the pressures to conform are inter-subjective.
These inter-subjective pressures are not objective
forces. There is still room in the world to do otherwise.
These may be felt as if they were objective forces
shaping the course of ones life. But they are not; they
are social pressures.
244
If we are to escape from the concentrationary
confines of the narrative into which we are born, we
must have somewhere to which to escape. We must
begin by coming to terms with a different sort of ending.
We must begin by setting up a different sort of aim. This
aim is an ending which suits any and every pro-social
narrative. This is an ending which is for every person at
all times a happy one. This is an objective aim. It is a
universal aim. This ending will be that in which every
action of everyday along the way is evaluated. This is
an ending in terms of which a man lives justly. This is
not to say that one does what one wants and then sees
where that takes him. This is choosing a situation in
terms of which one would want to live, and then living as
if one were there. It is this end, and this freedom, which
is the meaning of a mans life.
The meaning of life For Socrates, as discussed
in depth earlier, his end, his aim, is a just world. He lives
as-if in its terms, and stands out from others who do not.
Walking innocently as if in a just world, Socrates
marches to the beat of the proverbially different
drummer, and walks the walk of a just man. Talking as if
in a just world, Socrates is targeted by power hungry
sophists, professors to wisdom and would be leaders of
Athens. Living openly as if in a just world, Socrates is
ridiculed by the ignorant masses. One man alone in an
unjust world, Socrates exemplifies the conscientious way
of life. He was unable to convince many that his was the
best way of life while he lived it. He may yet be able,
however, to fulfill this aim in his death. It is toward
coming to terms with the limits implicit in his life story
that we now aim next. This limit is the freedom to do the
right thing at the right time regardless of the situation.
245
13. Conscience, and the just life.
Socrates: The ridiculous is in short the
specific name which is used to describe
the vicious form of a certain habit; and of
vice in general it is that kind which is most
at variance with the inscription at Delphi.
Protagoras: You mean, Socrates, "Know
thyself."
Socrates: I do; and the opposite would be,
"Know not thyself."
411
Persons note changes in themselves in relation to
objects, but the only changes of which persons are
aware are those of their own bodies. In fact, it is
impossible to imagine change without some affect of the
body indicative of the dimension of said change. The
change is itself only a matter of a difference between a
before and after embodied situation.
412
We have seen in McKennas work a method for
coming to terms with others situations. His method is to
identify with the other by taking up his situation in terms
of the objects therein. On McKennas program, the
locus for the identification lies in the common objects.

411
Philebus, 48d.
412
This goes for space as well as for time: who moved my shoes? marks
a similar phenomenon to where did the time go? In these instances, it is
objects external to ones self which determine the difference in the
situations. This analyses applies equally well to changes in the self, with a
slightly different result. When forgetting an appointment, one is heard to
say things like where did I put my head? or I lost myself. In these
instances, it is ones self as an object which determines the difference in the
situations. In either case, it is the changing situation of the body relative to
some object which is expressed.
246
Through common engagements, one begins to come to
terms with the others situation. This presumes that the
other is a similar critter, a human being with a body
which needs the same things in the same ways at similar
times. On top of this, one and another can try to talk out
their differences.
For Mann, the locus of the identification relation
with others is the body, itself. Her focus is on how one
person can live a good life story in terms of more than
ones own selfish narrative. Her interest is in discovering
how this can be the case, when the traditional theory
assumes that the good life story proceeds on the model
of the individualized hero. What she finds is that in
every situation the body is common, and that it grounds
more possibilities than traditional structures utilize:
The only constant through spatial and
temporal discontinuity is the body. One
may not have an over-riding narrative
which unifies her experiences. There may
be multiple narratives which differ from
place to place, but they are all housed in
one body.
413
Our bodies show up every place we go. The
bodys movements constitute the moments of ones life
story. Each step in the plot is a situation in a series of
situations from birth until death. No matter who we care
for, whose terms we meet, whose lives we place above
our own, how radically we change or what object we
fumble over, our bodies rise, rest, and change along the

413
Mann, 59.
247
way.
414
Ones narrative, no matter how diverse, diffuse
or extended threads through the single body.
The body is situated in terms of objects, aims and
obstacles, and these are nestled in narrative form. The
body is situated in terms of an unfolding life story,
however conceived. Mann argues that ones life should
not be constrained arbitrarily by any given narrative
structure, however traditional: assuming that narrative
structure affects action and identity, narrative choice
should include not only alternative plots in terms of
content but also alternative formal structures.
415
The
formal structures, themselves offer terms by way of
which objects and ends are evaluated throughout the
emplotted life. It is in his choice of narrative that one
comes to see himself the way that he does. It is in his
choice of narrative that one comes to see actions as
either right or wrong. It is in choosing again, differently,
that one is free to become otherwise than he is.
Earlier, we saw how ones self arises in terms of
differences from others.
416
We have also seen how
objects serve to mediate these differences. We now see
how ones life story is such an object, and the direct
influence of language on this process of mediation is
becoming clear. When ogres signify something to be
killed, linguistic signifiers express this relevance. Others
take up this attitude, act on the basis of this vocabulary,
and repeat, as if they are unable to determine otherwise.
Repetitive signification is what makes language more
than a bunch of random sounds. It is routine. Others

414
Again, as hers is a feminist critique, this speaks of the cultural
dominance of the male embodiment even in terms of what one expects of
his own life story.
415
Mann, 16.
416
Most recently in the section on Heidegger.
248
repeat utterance and action, and become so situated, so
determined. This is simply the way things are.
Accordingly, repetition grounds narrative. Every
story is a lifes story, or part of one. Every story is
something we hear along the way. Every story becomes
part of our lives. A person identifies with the actors in a
story, otherwise it is not a story at all but a mere report
on a series of events. A person sees himself similarly or
differently from the actors in a story. In every story there
is implicit the question: could I repeat this story as if it
were my own? Where do I fit in?
Life stories can be good or bad. If it is a story
about killing ogres, then, in traditional terms, it is a story
of a good life. If it is the story of an ogre alive and
happy, then this is not the case. Ogres, after all, are not
good. There is no happy ending with a live ogre. So
long as he lives, there is something more to do. We
repeat the actions which eventuate in the deaths of
ogres, or we do not live a good life story.
The process of repeating in our own lives actions
based in terms of given narratives (or not) is called
enculturation. There is no life story in a random series
of words. Yet, one need not merely act according to
whatever terms are given through enculturation. This
may be a life worth repeating, but it is hardly heroic.
New terms, new stories, are good things, too. This is not
to say that every aspect of a different way of life is worth
repeating just because it is different. To deviate from
prescription, of course, requires experimentation, and
experiments often fail. Still, deviation is necessary.
Change is necessary. Cultures are also experiments, on
a grand scale, and these fail, too.
One may open himself to previously unthought
determinations by opening himself to a world of objects
249
outside of repetition. One may become an agent of
change. He may speak differently, and act otherwise.
He may open himself to new evaluations of the objects
in his world. He may discover hidden significance. This
is risky. Discovery takes courage. He could be hurt. He
could be killed, accidentally or assassinated. He could
be revered. Everyone understands the value in these
states. Not everyone has what it takes to get there.
Opening ones self to new evaluations of objects
in the world also involves opening ones self to the
significance of ones own body as a vehicle for change.
One can do otherwise than what is prescribed, but he
will become otherwise by way of it. One need not
merely repeat the evaluations of the objects of the world
which had been handed down in repetition, or even to
which he had come in prior experience through his own
repetition.
417
This fact brings us face to face with human

417
Sometimes, you just cant help it! Consider adolescence. All organisms
with a sufficiently complex brain undergo an adolescent phase in which
prior enculturation is discounted and the neural networks which pattern the
merely repeated actions taken up from prior generations are reordered
around ones unique individual experiences. In this way, the group of
organisms benefits as each individual agent embodies his own unique
experiences, identifies as that unique embodiment and struggles to survive
as that product. Thus, each individual is in terms of the group - an
experimental agent, an agent in the mode of discovery in order that others
learn from his example, to live his way, on his terms, or not. From the
perspective of the group, the only perspective which makes sense of the
process of evolution (contrary to the implicit egoism of genetic determinism,
which is an adulteration of the true science and product of the ethical
atomism common to contemporary theorists). The upside is that a few of
these experimental cases succeed in developing new ways of being in
terms of novel evaluations of objects common to the shared situation. The
downside, of course, is that most fail. Such a theoretical result challenges
contemporary social-political theory which rests in atomic agency and
individual responsibility, having even gone so far as to put forward a
bankrupt if not shrewd theory of freedom as centered in individual agency
which is correct so far as this goes, but fails in landing responsibility for the
250
freedom: agency, then, is to be located within the
possibility of a variation on that repetition it is only
within the practices of repetitive signifying that a
subversion of identity becomes possible.
418
It is only by
variation on repetition that one can become otherwise
than he is. It is only in opening to change that there is
freedom.
Open to the changing world, one also changes.
And, he does so of his own initiative. Instead of going
with what is given, with what they say or with what
they say that God says, one can open himself to
objective alternatives. Instead of closing off into ones
own world, into prior understanding, repetitively acting
on its terms, these habits can be broken. If one opens to
the world, and discovers what is hidden in it, he can live
according to his own unique determinations. He can
discover rather than sleepwalk through life on the basis
of a map to a magic end drawn by generations past.
Human freedom is the self-determination otherwise.
What, then, does stand for a good life story? It is
the life of self-discovery, self-examination, self-
determination and self-creation. Once we are freed from
pressures implicit in prior determinations, our story is
ours to write, our situation, our selves, ours to determine.
The reconceptualization of identity as an effect, as
produced and generated, [as opposed to something you
are born with] opens up new possibilities for agency that
are closed by positions that consider identity fixed and
foundational.
419

outcomes of agent-centered freedoms also on the shoulders of the
individual without consideration for the common benefit implicit even in
individual failures. This talk specifically deserves another book.
418
Mann, quoting Judith Butler, 27.
419
Mann, page 28.
251
As we have seen, our bodies allow for radical
change in the course of a single life. We are now seeing
how this radical change is within our power to initiate.
All that is left now is to explore the limits of this power.
Freed from the artificial constraints imposed by ones
narrative tradition, the limits to change are simply those
of the body to deliberate. Freed from the inter-subjective
constraints of conventional determinations of the good
life, one is free to live by other terms, and to become
otherwise, that person ahead adequate to them, instead.
One is free to seek other ends, but this freedom is
limited. This limit is ones understanding of the objective
situation, and his embodied capacity to meet these
terms once they are understood. If one goes out on a
limb, and acts with a partial understanding of the way the
world works, his risk is great. At least life is safe in
terms of the old narratives; there is some reliable record
of success. There is always this strategy in life: stick to
the tried and true. But, what if the terms of the old
narratives no longer hold up to scrutiny? What if the
terms in which persons have lived their lives are no
longer effective, or even vicious? Is it enough to simply
reject them? If not in terms of the tradition, where does
one look for orientation toward the right ends?
We look to conscience. Conscience is an aspect
of embodiment. Conscience gives the sense that one is
a body in the world of other bodies more or less alike in
situation s to be compared. Conscience gives the sense
that there are other ways to be and other places to be
that way. Thus, the question becomes not is there
happiness ahead? But it is in what terms will it be
realized? What is left is merely the getting there.
What we really need in freedom through self-
determination is to be able to see objectively who one
252
subjectively would like to become even before he
becomes so. That we are able to see ourselves as
either subject or object in the world is a given:
It is because we are embodied
consciousnesses that we can view
ourselves from two different standpoints:
as objects of theoretical understanding
(from a third-person perspective) or as the
originators of our actions (from a first-
person perspective).
420
Here is where it is good to have a guide. What
differs between persons
421
is the understanding which is
brought to bear from either perspective. That we are
embodied consciousnesses grounds a native capacity to
see ourselves from both subjective and objective
standpoints, and grounds further judgments that some
situations are good and others not so good, but doing
the right thing, living the good life story takes more than
that. One must have been subject to various
determinations of worldly objects in order to see himself,
and others, in any terms other than his own if he is to
see ahead of himself. Thus, as we exercise our human
freedom for self-determination, the crucial difference
between persons is practical wisdom.
I have maintained throughout this text that ones
understanding is a product of ones experience coming
to terms with his ever-changing situation. This is
universal to all embodied consciousness. One begins a
subject in the world, and increasingly comes to self-

420
Atkins, 2004, page 345
421
I do not think that this is all it takes to be a person, but I will skip this
problem for now.
253
understanding through a cycle of action and the
realization of the situation resulting from action. It is in
coming to terms with ones changing situation that one
comes to understand himself and his place in the world.
There are good ways, and bad ways to go about this.
If one comes to terms solely with other persons
prior given situations, then ones situation is determined
solely inter-subjectively. This situation is defined by the
partialities, and even biases, of these other persons no
matter how wise and experienced they may have been.
The understanding which such a limited sensitivity
produces is a purely conventional understanding, or at
least an arbitrary one based in the partial
understandings of others more or less alike to ones self.
This leaves room to do otherwise, but on what grounds
should we dismiss others determinations in order to
discovery differently? There must be an objective
grounds for such deviation, for the freedom to do and to
determine otherwise, besides merely repeating the old
mantra you are not the boss of me! There is
discovery, and then there is mere disputation. Only one
of these ways of life is, objectively, good.
Very early on in this text, I introduced a concept,
kairos, which the Greeks took to signify objective
constraints on right action regardless of context. No
matter the narrative in which a moment is couched, each
moment is essentially the same. No matter the moment
which calls for action, every moment shares a
fundamental structure. Each moment has a beginning,
middle and end. The opportunity for right action
approaches from the future. The capacity to see an
opportunity, however, is a product of what has past. The
right thing to do is always up ahead, but the wisdom of
what to look for is something one must discover first.
254
Along with kairos, I introduced the concept of
logos. Logos was defined as the form of the practice
which fits the situation requiring action. The capacity to
arrive at this form of action was defined as practical
wisdom. It is clear that the second step to doing the
right thing at the right time is recognizing the opportunity
to do so when it arises. The first step is to maximize
ones capacity to recognize opportunities before they
arise by becoming practically wise in the first place. To
this end, as we have seen, there is the conscience.
There is one mode of conscience in particular
which is productive of practical wisdom. I have
described it variously as the open mode of conscience,
being open to the world, to the terms of the situation, to
the terms of the moment, and also as the mode of
conscientiousness. In being open to coming to terms
with the situations of others and with other situations,
one comes to understand what is common to these
situations, what is universal. As one accumulates this
experience over the course of a life, one comes to see
what is universally good in all situations. The wealth of
this wisdom is only possible if one is open, not only to
others, but to the things of the objective world which
determine every situation equally. This includes other
animals and plants, and also rocks and clouds and
stellar bodies.
It is in terms of these things which all human
situations are universally understood.
422
It is only in

422
For all appearances otherwise, the human situation is always nestled
inside an envelope of natural order. It is important to understand that the
mode of being open which is ultimately productive of practical wisdom is
being open to the objective terms of the situation whether anothers or ones
own, in ACTWith terms, */o.
255
terms of these things that one can say he understands,
at all.
In being open to the terms of the moment, one
lets things be seen rather than to see only what prior
understanding predetermines.
423
One lets what he
engages in action stand for itself, rather than stand as
some extension of himself.
424
For example, imagine
walking over a steaming grate on a big city sidewalk in
the winter. Homeless men huddle over garbage cans.
The heat from the grate is comforting, even for a lonely
philosopher on a short walk between strange pubs.
Subjectively, this brief steam-bath is mere reminder of
the cozy stool and cold drink inside. Objectively,
however, heat is life or death for an even lonelier man, a
homeless man. Objectively, this heat is what it takes to
see another sunrise. Subjectively, this heat is a clue for
both men to the difference between ones own and the
others situation. Experiencing this difference, as the
philosopher comes to terms with the life of a man on a
street grate, he comes to something objectively new
about his own situation. He also understands some
small part of the others situation: what it is like to be a
homeless man on a heat grate in the cold. Experiencing
this difference, a mans world comes to hold others
within it. Reconciling this difference, a philosopher

423
This returns us to Heideggers anticipatory resoluteness. In this mode
of being one is open to come to terms with his situation however that
situation comes to be determined. This is how one comes to understand
ones situation. In fact, it is only through resoluteness that the situation is
understood at all. This text, page 190.
424
Only as the present, in the sense of making present, can resoluteness
be what it is, namely, the undistorted letting what it grasps in action be
encountered. B&T, 299-300. Think o/o, or at least */o.
256
becomes concerned. His situation, inclusive of others, is
not the same, and things could be made better.
In this way, being open to the terms of ones own
and others situations is productive of an understanding
of what is universally good. The terms of this
understanding apply equally to all persons in all
situations. It is this understanding which recognizes
unique opportunities within those situations. This, again,
is practical wisdom. It is with this understanding that one
is able to live in universal terms, as if in a just world
evaluating every action along the way by universal
standards. Meeting these terms is the motivation for
actions as a man moves from moment to moment along
the way. It is important to note that this objective
situation is that toward which one aims in life whether he
understands so or not. It is equally important to note
that, with an understanding of what it is to be anyone
anyplace at anytime, the practically wise man is able to
live as if in a universally good world and to aspire to
meet its terms as an act of free self-determination. This
is what makes life meaningful, what makes life worth
living, and is the work of the conscience.
With an objective understanding of what is
universally good comes an understanding of what is
necessary so that anyone may live a life with an
opportunity to become good, bad, happy, sad or
otherwise within it.
425
With an understanding of what is
universally good comes the picture of a world wherein all
persons are held to objective standards for the

425
Everyone always already understands that every body wants to be
happy, to live comfortably and securely in terms of his situation. Every
body wants to live the good life and this is why everyone always already
knows that it is bad to keep another from doing so and good to help.
257
evaluation of actions. Conscience motivates Socrates in
terms of this end to justice throughout his lifetime.
Taking these terms as his own, a man may live a just
life. Otherwise, his life is lived for the sake of less.
Being open to the realization of a just world is not
a passive mode of being. Very early on in this text, we
found Martin Luther King, Jr. in a jail cell saddled with
the task of reconciling seemingly contradictory
ascriptions of himself, his own and those of others. He
was a practiced peaceful man, though by the community
of clergy he was simultaneously understood as an
inciter of violence. He was a man struggling for the
freedom of others, yet simultaneously caged for his
personal sacrifice. He was a man who rose to meet the
terms of the moment, while his actions were widely
reported to be untimely. He was a man who marched,
who risked his life, who suffered, for a just world.
King put himself in the crux of conflict and
contradiction. One side proclaimed its equality, the other
denied it. One side maintained the old order, the other
sought to have that order remade. King put himself in
positions in which he had to come to terms with both
sides of the issue.
426
He put himself in the middle. In
opening to both sides at once, he came to new
determinations of the shared situation. These new
determinations he expressed in new language. He
recast the conventional vocabulary to describe the world
he came to understand through this open reconciliation

426
Here is my understanding. It may appear that he rejects one side or the
other but this is not the case. In order to do his work, he must understand
both sides to issues. He may speak against one side or another, but his
intentions are not to reject the other side, but to expose it as untenable and
to at once provide an alternative interpretation without such conflict. This is
basic reconciliation, by my view.
258
of apparent contradictions. In coming to this
understanding, King was able to discover an opportunity
for equality where otherwise there was none from the
space of a jail cell. Through his understanding, he
opened this end as an end, a promised land. Even
though he would never come to stand in it, his own
understand is this promised lands fertile grounds.
In the next sections, we shall put the tools of
conscience which we have thusfar collected to the test in
creating for ourselves the vision of a better world
towards which to aim in life. We will put the potato
game, and Diogenes bathtub, and the ACTWith model
all to use in the conscientious construction of a promised
land of our own.
For the moment, however, I wish to remark briefly
on the Socratic example of conscience, and the role of
irony in the development of practical wisdom. It is a
worthy end to die a good man in a world full of bad
people even though these others look on ones own way
of life as a mistake. However tragic, this end is one
worth living toward, and is even inevitable for a just man
in an unjust world, such as was Socrates.
In the final movement of Socrates life as detailed
in Platos dialogue the Crito, we, as we found King, also
find Socrates jailed, in a cell. He too is forced to
reconcile a certain tension. He is the most just man in
Athens, he is the wisest man in Athens, he always aimed
for the common good, but he awaits execution for
corruption by the selfish, the ignorant, and the vicious.
Awaiting execution, Socrates friend Crito is trying
to convince him that escape is the right thing to do and
that now is the right time to do it. Socrates politely
entertains his friends plea. Finally, however, he asks
whether Crito would think it right for him to break the
259
laws of Athens, now, when he could have left Athens for
another city at any time prior, or, barring that, when he
might have convinced the people of Athens that the laws
were in need of correction.
According to Socrates analyses, in escaping he
would offend Athens in three ways.
427
Athens is the
place of his parents, and in fact is like his own parents.
It is the place of his birth, and the womb of his
development into the Philosopher. Socrates began his
life as an Athenian, had taken up the Philosophers
mission, and had made no moves since to change his
residence. It was the place in terms of which he sought
to be the man he would become. To escape Athens
would be to become a scarecrow of himself, to deny his
own integrity, his own ends and his own way of life.
In fact, that very way of life speaks against
escape. Socrates lives in the mode of discovery, of what
is objectively good, not of what he merely thinks is good.
He was always the Citys most ardent critic, and one of
its greatest heroes. Its laws were in part a product of his
own influence, after all. Being a stone-mason by trade,
and a son of a stone-mason by trade, his life is
inseparable from the objective situation that is the City.
He was the most constant resident in the city, leaving
Athens only once in his life besides those times he had
been sent away on military service, in Her defense. His
military service was exemplary, and selfless, even
deferring an award for courage to his friend, Alcibiades,
instead of accepting it for himself. To escape would be
to deny that through his body he had shaped the
situation which was Athens as best as he was able. This

427
These are roughly intersubjective, subjective, and objective reasons.
260
City had made him, and he It. They were stitched
together as one, such was his fate to stay.
Athens had made Socrates the man he was. This
is the culture into which his own life story was threaded.
He had made no moves to unthread himself from its
history. He had lived his life in discourse with the people
there, purposefully integrating his own story into the
unfolding life stories of the City. It is in fact this work at
shaping Athenians themselves which lands him in jail. It
all hangs together, he with his City and the people all
together. To escape would be to begin a thread of life
anew, apart from his prior integration, and at his age this
narrative promises to be very short. There will be no
rethreading of his narrative into that of another City, and
if there were what story would there be for him to write?
For Socrates to escape is for Socrates to die alone, and
for nothing but a momentary freedom from the very
social responsibility for which he had always already
lived. A just man unjustly imprisoned, to escape would
be to arbitrarily deny his own past, his own present, all
for a future in which he could not find himself as the man
he had always already lived to become.
After all, the problem is less with the laws than the
people who misuse them. Socrates was a champion of
and not an enemy to a justly ordered city, and laws play
a crucial role in these constructions. Equally, so does
the justly ordered citizen. His Philosophy focuses on
becoming a just man, but Socrates does not take the
lawful order of the City lightly.
428
Escaping, what sort of
City would he leave behind, what would he have made
of the objective situation he had worked so tirelessly to
erect, of himself, and would others follow suit?

428
Though, he did not always do as authorities directed.
261
It is in terms of the Citys lawful order which he
finally judges himself as he speaks to Crito. Taking up
the perspective of the City he would leave behind in
terms of the laws he would be breaking, Socrates finds
no motivation for escape. Taking up the third-person
perspective, he sees himself as if any other citizen, and
judges his escape accordingly. He takes the lawful
order of Athens for his own, even as this means his
death, because this is the future Athenians objective
situation. Though he understands that his own situation
is unjust, these are the laws and they suit everyone
equally. It is not his place to deny them arbitrarily. It is
his place to suffer a tragic irony, to die by the law
because he respects the law as if himself. It will be for
those who are left in Athens to repair the situation, if it is
one that disgusts them, if it leads them to become men
with whom they are disgusted. His place is to evidence
that something is wrong, objectively, to be an object of
injustice, and thus for others to respond, subjectively.
Though he would like to be convinced, as a man
with a family, that escape is the right thing to do, he
reconciles these competing points of view. Holding this
objective perspective on par with his own subjective
perspective, Socrates cannot escape. Working to
ensure that Athens was a just city in which just men may
live, happily, was the purpose of Socrates life. It will be
the purpose of his death, as well. To spurn that effort at
his lifes end would be to deny that his every action
along the way was in fact the right thing to do, each one
brick lain at a time on the road to the just world.
That the citizens, themselves, have been misled
to a singular injustice is beside the point. His mission
remains the same. If the people of Athens are to see
that Her laws are unjust, they must see that these laws
262
lead to injustice. This demonstration requires that a just
man suffer injustice in terms of the law out of respect for
the law. Socrates is the vehicle for this realization. He
is the object by way of which Athens perspective will
change.
429
In the Socratic example, we find the conscience
at work. He sees the man ahead he must become and
becomes that man, even in the face of death. He
complains that, should he run, he would make himself
ridiculous by escaping out of the city and wrapped in a
goatskin or some other disguise, and metamorphosed as
the fashion of a runaways is.
430
He is a just man; he is
no scarecrow. There should be no need to disguise this
fact. His final defense of the laws proclaims that he
should think of justice first, so that he may be justified
before the princes of the world below.
431
Even at the
end, Socrates sees himself in terms of a just world, and
lives to its standards, not those corrupted by the selfish
leadership of Athens.
For Socrates, it is this sense of integrity which
denies his escape. He is a just man, living in terms of a
just situation; anything else is not to be revered. It is this
sense which also denies a false confession of
wrongdoing which would have persuaded the jury to
spare his life. It is also this integrity which denies the
use of his children as a tool to gain sympathy from the
jurors for the same end. It is also this same sense of
integrity which he then finds deficient in the City, and
especially in its judges. They, not the laws, are the
source of injustice. He does not beg for his life. He

429
And, it does.
430
Crito, 53d. Looking much the ogre he has been made out to be.
431
Crito, 54.
263
does not offer to quit Philosophy, to quit his discovery
into justice and the good. He will not be pressured into
becoming a man he cannot stand to be. For Socrates,
a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate
the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider
whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong -
acting the part of a good man or of a bad.
432
Socrates
is, above all, a good man. He will not become
otherwise, as such a life is simply not worth living.
Let the painter of your mind loose on the following
scene. The situation is Athens, and it is 400 years
B.C.E. Socrates is on trial for corrupting the youth and
worshipping false gods, charges brought against him by
Anytus and Meletus and other vicious rising powers in
Athenian leadership. Socrates announces the charges
against him in the following terms:
Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious
person, who searches into things under the
earth and in heaven, and he makes the
worse appear the better cause; and he
teaches the aforesaid doctrines to
others.
433
Socrates is the kind of man who turns over rocks,
discovers new things, and shows others how to do the
same. He finds a man who professes to wisdom, and he
interrogate[s] and examine[s] and cross-examine[s]
him.
434
The charges stem from the fact that Athenian
leadership is not exempt from this discovery. If any man
appears to have no understanding of what he professes

432
Apology, 28d.
433
Ibid, 19c.
434
Ibid, 29d.
264
to understand, Socrates aims to show him that he has
seen only part of the picture. To that professor to
wisdom who is in fact not wise, Socrates confesses to
reproaching him with undervaluing the greater, and
overvaluing the less.
435
Socrates is the kind of man
who shows others that their understanding of the world
is partial, prejudicial, or biased. He pursues this work
actively, even when his subject is Athens leadership.
Socrates takes this to be the philosopher's mission of
searching into myself and other men.
436
He does this
not in order to corrupt men, but to lead them to become
the best men they can be, to lead them to live lives worth
living.
This means searching out practical wisdom, and
testing the professed wisdom of others. This is the
Philosophers mission, on Socrates understanding. This
is how he understands his own experience, from his own
point of view, and the charges against him, from that of
those who falsely benefit on the basis of their ignorance:
young men of the richer classes, who
have not much to do, come about me of
their own accord; they like to hear the
pretenders examined, and they often
imitate me, and examine others
themselves; there are plenty of persons, as
they soon enough discover, who think that
they know something, but really know little
or nothing: and then those who are
examined by them instead of being angry
with themselves are angry with me: This

435
Apology, 29d-30a.
436
Ibid, 28d-29a.
265
confounded Socrates, they say; this
villainous misleader of youth!
437
Against this characterization, Socrates does not
so much offer a defense as he does an explanation for
why he has lived the way he has, and how others in
Athens have come to misunderstand him. He does not
try to persuade the jury with dramatic expressions. He
addresses them honestly, anticipating that, if these men
are just, each shall consider his words on the basis of
common experience and he shall be acquitted.
438
If they
are not just, well, then they will do injustice, one way or
another. As we already know, the jury, the men of
Athens at large, failed this final Socratic test.
If they were just, then they would have shared the
experience of being a just man in an unjust world, in
common, with him. They do not. They do not
understand, and so are unable to listen, to see what it is
that he means, as Socrates confesses that he has
remained open to the direction of an inner voice. He
believes this to be a sign from god to do the right thing in
any given situation. To this end, he preaches practical
wisdom, and disdains politics because politicians do for
themselves at the expense of others, while he does for
others at the expense of himself:

437
Apology, 23c-d.
438
The great tragedy is that Socrates, who met every citizen of Athens eye
to eye and one on one, treating each with the respect of his equal esteem,
is treated with an opposite regard by the City, itself. Should he have
discussed with each jury member one on one he would have been found
not guilty and freed, as he himself attests in the Apology. How can a man
be just and good to every other man, and still be found unjust and evil in the
eyes of the City as a whole? Tragic irony.
266
This sign I have had ever since I was a
child. The sign is a voice which comes to
me and always forbids me to do something
which I am going to do, but never
commands me to do anything, and this is
what stands in the way of my being a
politician.
439
Instead of seeking influence through persuasive
rhetoric and politics, Socrates confronts pretenders to
wisdom and compels others to speak constantly of
virtue, wisdom and justice. He does not charge for his
Philosophic work, and greets everyone equally as if he
were they. He takes this to be his role as dictated by the
guiding inner voice which motivates him to seek his
highest potential, wisdom. Even at his own defense, he
does not stop in this habitual mode of being in the world.
His Philosophy is not, as was that of the sophists,
intended to corrupt persons to seek their own wealth and
luxury over that of others. In fact, he rejects these things
as any kind of real wealth at all. For Socrates, the health
of the City is measured in the justice of its members.
Tragically, for all his efforts, it is a city in denial of its
injustice which puts him to death. It is the men of the
jury who fear a Socratic interview by Socrates
estimation. He is the mirror of justice, and they cannot
face themselves. It is this fear of being brought before
themselves which leads them to Socrates death penalty,
not the charges against Socrates, themselves as
Socrates himself makes clear:
Me you have killed because you wanted to
escape the accuser, and not to give an

439
Apology, 31d. Clearly, the voice of conscience.
267
account of your lives. But that will not be as
you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that
there will be more accusers of you than
there are now; accusers whom hitherto I
have restrained: and as they are younger
they will be more severe with you, and you
will be more offended at them. For if you
think that by killing men you can avoid the
accuser censuring your lives, you are
mistaken; that is not a way of escape
which is either possible or honorable; the
easiest and noblest way is not to be
crushing others, but to be improving
yourselves.
440
Tragically, being open to their potential,
understanding and living justly, is the last thing these
judges wished.
441
Socrates has his life stolen for being a
conscientious man, a just man. He was murdered for
the vices of other men, that they should keep them
hidden from their own consciences. These men would
rather sleep comfortably in their own worlds alone than
bear the burden of caring for a shared world awake. Let
us not become these men, but become like Socrates
instead, whatever the discomfort for doing the right thing:
Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary
to create the tension in the mind so that
individuals could rise from the bondage of
myths and half-truths to the unfettered
realm of creative analyses and objective
appraisal, so must we see the need for

440
Apology, 39d. See remarks to this effect in the Forward.
441
Again, see the Forward for further remarks on their possible motivations.
268
nonviolent gadflies to create a kind of
tension in society that will help men rise
from the dark depths of prejudice and
racism to the majestic heights of
understanding and brotherhood.
442
Yet, it is his freeing men to brotherhood which
invites his own ultimate expulsion. And, this brings us to
one final aspect of the Socratic example which deserves
mention. Socrates is famous for many things, one of
which is Socratic irony. Often, Socratic irony is taken
to be merely that the wisest man in Athens confesses to
knowing nothing. However, there is much more than this
to irony by the Socratic example.
Irony occurs at the intersection of the subjective
and the objective. Consider the man who lives justly
and for the right things. Subjectively, he does all he can
to be recognized as a good man. He sacrifices and he
suffers in order that others do not. Objectively, the world
is ordered such that, from this perspective, for all of the
subjects efforts, he will be led only to fail. From the
objective perspective, with enough distance, the turn of
events is comedy. For all his efforts, he is only tripped
up. From the subjects perspective, however, it is
tragedy. For all his efforts, he is only tripped up. Irony is
these two together, bound in the same person.
Socratic irony is of the greatest possible scope.
Socratic irony captures the sense that everything about
ones situation is out of place. It is not simply that ones
keys are not where they are supposed to be, for
example. It is that nothing about the subjective and the
objective perspectives match up. Socrates is not on trial

442
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail, page 3.
269
for some aspect of his life. He is not confronted with the
loss of his keys, or even the loss of his left arm. He is
confronted with the loss of his life. He is not confronted
with one aspect of his life story, but with the significance
of his life story as a whole.
Where does Socrates find room to understand the
contradictions between the third-person and the first-
person perspective on himself? In himself. He finds
room in the just world, where he looks forward to
meeting just judges of character, and from which he
looks back on the corrupt judges of Athens juries. It is
this reconciliation which makes sense of the irony he
suffers: the most just man executed for corruption.
Socrates and Plato provide clues that irony plays
a very special role in the development of wisdom in other
places and in other texts. Famously, as the Platonic
dialogue the Symposium closes, Socrates is telling his
half-sleeping friends that the artist who appreciates
comedy must also tragedy and vice versa.
443
He does
not tell us why, but in irony it is obvious. It is comedy
that a man comes to the moment of truth for an audience
already asleep. It is tragedy that a man comes to the
moment of truth for an audience already asleep. It is
comedy, that this man wanders into the dawn, alone. It
is tragedy that this man wanders into the dawn, alone.
It is in the reconciliation of the subjective and
objective perspectives that either arises to
consciousness at all. It is in the reconciliation of these
two aspects of ones self that he comes to understand

443
Without fully developing this argument here, I believe that this is
because, at the level of physiology, laughter is the sense of getting
something for free, of gaining something for nothing, while tragedy is the
sense that the organism is losing something for nothing. This symmetry is
the source of all irony, and the reason for its universality.
270
the situation, his own and others, as that space of life
between the subjective and the objective. It is in the
reconciliation of the greatest scope of these two aspects
of ones self that he comes to the greatest understanding
of the differences between the way persons think of the
world, and the way that the world objectively is proven.
Irony, thus, is productive of wisdom. Socratic irony most
productive.
Socrates was known often to wonder whether
virtue meaning wisdom - could be taught. If irony can
be taught then wisdom can be taught. But, irony is
essentially unteachable. It is something which happens
when a subject does his best and what he does not
know forces his failure. It is the difference between
where one intends to go and where one ends up. I
suppose that such instances could be arranged by
others, but at what expense?
444
It seems as senseless
as a man asking the heavens why he must suffer so,
while at once expecting another man, no matter how
great, to give an adequate answer. It would be fine to
have an answer, but it is mans condition that he must
find out for himself. It is mans condition to discover. A
mans condition to die. He does it for others, as even
enlightenment does not enter all dark places. It is only
tragic that he be punished for it. Otherwise, we all may
laugh at lifes great joke, that a man does great things
only because he hurts, because he cares, and he suffers
that the world is not right to begin with. If the situation
were a good one, there would be very little to do about it.
One last note. I have spoken off and again about
turbulence, chaos, disorder. Irony is of this family, its
disorder existing in the fact that two irreconcilable poles

444
I am thinking of the farmers plot in Emil.
271
are brought together in a single human being. It is
superimposition of two contradictory states in a single
human heart, one the subjective and one the objective
points of view of ones self. It is a contradiction within
ones sense of his place in the world. How is it possible
to be in two situations at once? This is exactly the strain
which irony imposes on ones self.
It is for the man who suffers irony to find the order
in this torn embodiment. It is for the man who suffers
irony to see a way past his own torn world. This man
must find a way to render contradictory determinations of
his entire character continuous. He must find a way of
life where otherwise there was none. He must do it for
the sake of himself, or he risks doing nothing at all.
Remember Oedipus. Irony calls into question his
entire being. Irony is angst. Angst confronts Oedipus
with the meaninglessness of his life. His life is nothing.
Unable to reconcile reverence as risen King with the
disgust at his own fell origins, there is no room for
Oedipus in the space of his own world. He is cast out
from himself. Oedipus cracks. He is crushed between
his subjective and his objective self-realization. He finds
no way to understand his situation, so he blinds himself
to it, even as he did not understand his situation
because he was blind to it before. His tragedy is this
realization. He suffers for what he comes to know, the
objective determinations of the situation for which he has
struggled, suffered and sacrificed. For all his efforts, his
life is null.
Not every irony is as crushing as is Oedipus.
This man must come to terms with his situation en toto,
as if caught in the eyes of god, or he is lost completely.
Not every irony reduces a man to nothing. There are
lesser tragedies. However, every instance of irony
272
brings ones place in the world into question. The
question is, do I come to terms with my situation, or do I
blind myself to it?
Blind, there is only the past. Closed off, there is
only ones self. If we open to the world we can discover
what is hidden in it. And we can be hurt. We can take
the world for our own. And we can be hurt. We can
suffer change. We can live according to our own unique
determinations in full view of the universality of the
human situation. We will change. It will hurt. And we
will have done so of our own initiative. This is our
freedom, to deliberate over an end and to live by its
determinations. This is our freedom, to change, and to
suffer. A man is more than a rock. A man may become
otherwise than his environment. A man may become
himself.
445
This is our freedom. It is a freedom that is shared
with every embodied human being. This is our universal
condition. Realizing the promise of human freedom
begins by tying ones self to an end. Freedom is slavery
to the right things. Choosing ones master is hard work.
It is the work of conscience, work which will open our
next and final sections. The freedom to live as if in a just
world, to live as if amongst just persons, to live as if in a
healthy world, even though we do not: this is a good life,
or at least the best life a free man can live.

445
The agent on the cusp of disorder, stitching himself into the world and
the world together with himself as he moves back and forth between what it
feels like and what it is.
273
14. Conscience, and the end of the world.
Did any obstacle oppose you in your effort
towards an object? If indeed you were
making this effort without any reservation,
this obstacle is at once injurious to you as
a reasonable being. But if you take into
consideration the common lot, you are not
yet hurt nor hindered.
-- Marcus Aurelius
446
They may imprison or torture or take away
our lives, but they can never take away our
freedom to choose what is right and just.
-- Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada
447
We live in an increasingly unified world. The
human globe is increasingly unified by a single human
language, the binary language, machine language.
Machine language is a bunch of 1s and 0s, ons and
offs, trues and falses. Machine language is the code
directly processed in the circuitry of computers; gates
open and close, lights brighten and dim, and electricity
goes in and out.
Persons do not type 1s and 0s into computers to
get them to do these things, however. There is a sort of
language barrier in the way. The fact is that each
individual 1 or 0 isnt very significant to a human being,
even if he is a logician or a computer programmer.
448
Every individual 1 or 0 captures only one minimal aspect

446
As translated in Samburskey, page 115.
447
March 18, 2007, Eugene, Oregon.
448
That is, until things quit working.
274
of the logic at work in the machine. A computer uses so
many of them that, even when the language of machines
is understood, it would take way too much work for a
human to program anything useful in its terms. The
language barrier is at root, thus, energetic. But, it can be
overcome.
The 1s and 0s, themselves, are energetic. They
are electrical pulses, 1s, or the lack thereof, 0s. Where
the natural languages of humans consist of waves of
sound and gestures and postures of body in complex
contexts, a computers natural language consists of
switches opening and closing, thereby permitting or
denying the movement of electricity through a circuit.
A computers circuitry is a set of switches
arranged in ways which turn input electrical pulses into
output electrical pulses. It shuttles 1s and 0s, from
beginning to end, input to output, circuitously. The input
is given in complex expressions, human terms. These
are converted to electrical pulses, operated on, then
output again in human terms. Thus, the circuit begins
and ends with a person, and the computer is the
translating calculator in the middle. What happens
hidden away inside the cold metal box is only a means
to very human ends.
A person does not see the logic at work in the
computer system any more than he feels the switches
open to the flow of electrons or shut them out. It all
moves way too fast! Besides that, one little gate
opening and closing just like one little pulse of electrons
speeding along does very little work on its own. It takes
billions and billions of openings and closings, billions and
billions of little electrons, billions and billions of 1s and
0s, to do anything significant. Thus, it takes a lot of
work to make a set of electric switches into information
275
useful for a human being. This is where the barrier
comes in.
This barrier makes communication between
persons and computers difficult. This is why computer
programming is so important. This is also why logic is
so important to computer programmers. Programmers
make the computer meet the terms of the person. They
use logic to order pulses of electrons in ways that do
work for people. Logic bridges the language barrier gap.
They use logic to make insignificant 1s and 0s get
significant things done.
Inside the box, the computer processes a series
of 1s and 0s as a series of open and closed switches.
One at a time, this is what happens inside the box. One
at a time is not all that significant. One little blip on a
screen does not grab anyones attention, not for long,
especially if it doesnt go anywhere.
Significant things happen when the blips show up
and disappear and move around in fine-grained
coordination. Significant things happen outside the box
when a bunch of switches open and close together.
With enough circuits arranged in the right ways, opening
and closing together inside the box, computers produce
full-blown virtual environments for human beings outside
the box. Now, this is significant! When logically arrayed
on a massive scale, 1s and 0s begin to mirror the
outside world. Virtual environments signify for human
beings, essentially in 1s and 0s, the actual world in
which they actually live.
Virtual worlds represent everyday objects with
patterns of electrical pulses. These patterns of pulses,
when either on or off, indicate that there is some thing in
the virtual environment, or there is not. When a pulse is
on, a thing is there. When off, a thing is not there. The
276
pulses are insignificant to humans, directly, but the
computer turns these into the objects of the virtual
environment to be engaged with as if they were objects
in the real world.
Persons increasingly live their lives in terms of the
virtual world, dealing with objects of the virtual
environment, as opposed to the real world. Virtual
environments are designed by computer programmers.
They are designed to be significant for humans by
reflecting the logic of the natural world in which they
already live.
449
For example, when the virtual basketball
floats to the virtual basket in the virtual world, the
trajectory which the virtual basketball mirrors is that
trajectory which a real basketball follows in the real
world.
This realism is evident to everyone in the virtual
world, whether Chinese or Spanish, because these
people live in the actual world, already. Real basketballs
behave the same way in every culture because
everyone is bound in terms of the same natural laws.
Virtual environments reflect this fact; their programmers
approximate the natural logic in the logic of machines.
In the natural environment, a human being tosses a ball,
and gravity and friction pull it down. In the virtual
environment, the programmer orders a series of
switches to open and close in order to approximate this
engagement. Virtual environments are realistic when
what the player sees in the virtual world mirror what the
player has come to expect of the actual world.
There is at least one way in which the virtual
world practically exceeds any expectations of the real
one. This is that some relationships between persons

449
If indeed code monkeys count as human
277
which are impossible in the real world are possible in the
virtual one. A Chinese man in Hong Kong can play
basketball with a Spanish man in New York. There is no
potential for this to happen in the natural world. Even if
the players could agree to it, the court would have to be
thousands of kilometers long, the players would have to
toss the ball an impossible distance, and literally run on
water back and forth the entire distance in a matter of
hours. The energetic barrier for this to become a reality
is simply too great. Virtual worlds have a leg up on the
real world this way. Things that are impossible out here
happen in there all the time. Most significantly, virtual
bridges increasingly unify the globe in a network of
human relationships.
Globalization is essentially a virtual enterprise.
Persons spend an increasing amount of their lives
engaged in virtual activities in the virtual world, even
finding true love there. They identify as citizens of the
world even as they work and play with objects of the
virtual environment rather than the real one. Virtual
environments have become the spaces in terms of which
persons live their lives, plot their life stories, and
prefigure their happy endings. Computer programmers
are the intelligent designers of this virtual world. They
make the impossible possible, the insignificant
significant. They are the bricklayers of the virtual world
whose works bridge the four corners of the Earth. They
are the meek. It is their logic which binds us together. It
is their information superhighway from which we see
everything there is to see, know all there is to know, and
travel everywhere, all at once, in an electronic instant.
We have seen how they do it. Computer
programs are translators. They order electrons in terms
significant to human beings, and vice versa. No matter
278
the human term, whether Chinese or Spanish, it can be
translated from and into machine language. No matter
the objects we name, there can be a representation in
terms of 1s and 0s. All human languages, thus, find
common ground in the language of machines.
Computer programmers are responsible for the virtual
order in which this work is done.
It is no surprise that their constructions should
rise so rapidly, or that persons take to virtual
environments so easily. It is not simply that virtual
environments are made for human purposes, as
approximations of the natural world. There is something
deeper going on here.
A computer works by shuttling patterned sets of
pulses around to its various parts, like the graphics
processors, and the audio processors, and other
specialized sets of switches which are designed to
recognize and to operate on some patterns of electrical
pulses as opposed to others. The human brain works in
much the same way, with the essential difference being
merely that the pulses in question are produced
electrochemically, and not electronically. Thus, what
goes on inside the computers box, and inside the
humans skull, are a lot alike, if not mirror images.
450
A computer is a network of processors which
works to translate certain routine input into certain
routine output. The human brain is also a network of
switches arranged in ways to process routine input into

450
One essential difference has been that computers have yet to be
designed which will modify their own hardwired logic, as human brains
modify their structures in learning. Baby brains learn and healthy brains
adapt to changing environments. People are plastic, at least in the
beginning, in ways in which machines are not. But, programmers are
rapidly bridging this gap, as well.
279
effective output. The computer has special cards and
chipsets which are switches arranged to operate on
different aspects of the sensed world. The human brain
is also modular in this way. There are audio and video
processing areas, input and output apparatus, power
supplies and even heat dissipation units, just as in the
computer.
The parts of either computer or human being
coordinate with one another to produce a particular
output given particular input. The coordination of all
these parts is taken for granted. If they are not
coordinated, sense cannot be made of the output, sense
is not made of the input, and the result is dysfunction.
Consider what it is like to have the sound mismatched
with the video on a movie or a video game. There is
something wrong, here. Persons expect these
operations to come together in the output in ways which
meet the terms of their own everyday input. Without
their coordination, the entire system is broken.
Coordination is taken for granted in systems of
relations between whole persons and computers as well
as within them. Persons coordinate with other persons
with computer mediation, computers coordinate with
computers through human mediation, and persons
coordinate with computers through human and computer
mediation. With the pulses coordinated between human
being and computational machine, and the input/output
processed rapidly enough in just the right ways, these
sets of switches produce virtual environments like the
internet. Thus, persons around the world work together
to network between human brains and computer
processors, and back again. Were they to fail, not only
world the network of machines fail, but so would the lives
taken up, together, within it.
280
It is this networking which is responsible for the
increasing unification of the human globe under one
language, machine language. It is under the umbrella of
this language and its logic that people have increasingly
taken for granted the lives they live, the stories they
write, and the happy endings they project in concert.
It is this coordination of persons which is the great
promise of the virtual world. In the real world, persons
are positional. Sometimes, one persons position is
distant from anothers, when they would rather be close.
Networked together, virtual environments seem to close
this distance.
Computers, however, are also positional. Just as
every person in a network of persons has a uniquely
identifying position relative to the other persons in the
network, a computer in a network of computers has a
uniquely identifying position within that system of
relations, too. A person is identified by his place in his
family, society, and civilization. A computer is identified
by its place relative its router, its server, and its internet
service provider. Each takes up a unique position within
a system of relations as whole, and each identifies itself
in terms of the relationships in which it is embedded.
Some positions are critical for the continued
integrity of the system in which it is embedded.
Consider the preacher in the church, the leader of the
cult, the professor in the classroom, or the tyrant in the
tyranny. If one of these is missing from its place, the
systems of relations as a whole fails. If the system of
relations as a whole fails, the position of everything and
everyone within the system, ones very identity, is
brought into question.
So critical are some positions for the continued
integrity of the networks in which their positions arise,
281
that, if they are left empty, rather than recasting the
order as a whole, rather than rethinking their own
identities, the members of the system will simply search
for a replacement. The churchgoers will seek a new
preacher, the cultists will seek a new leader, the
students will seek a new teacher, and the enslaved will
seek a new tyrant. Thus, as more and more people
depend on a given network of relationships for their own
identities, that system becomes increasingly resistant to
change.
Furthermore, the more the members of given
system depend on a few critical positions for their own
identities, the more fragile the system becomes. In the
case of the internet, the information superhighway, and
the virtual world in terms of which persons across the
globe coordinate their everyday lives, their life stories,
and even their concerted happy endings, the system is
very fragile, indeed. Should the power go out, the heat
build up, or some part of some crucial member fail to
coordinate in the right ways at the right times, the whole
system of relations and all the identities undertaken in its
terms could fail.
As the world is unified under the language of
machines, any one persons position relative to another
persons position is increasingly dependent on that
persons position relative to some computers position.
One IP address is as good as is any other for a
computer, but what makes that position significant is the
person who calls it home. What makes any given
place in the virtual world unique is the person at either
end of a computer. It is because there is a person there
that we can call the machines location an address,
why we call the machines opening screen a
282
homepage, and why e-mail is called mail. Otherwise,
it is all merely data.
For all we make of opening the e-mail, it is the
computer which actually does the opening. We simply
point and click, the computer mediates, and here is a
message from a friend. The information is kept in a
bigger computer likely very far away, but that doesnt
matter to your own computer. It reaches out, through
the virtual world, and asks for your mail. It addresses
another computer, from its place in the real world, so
that your friend may address you from his. Your
computer has to be there, with you, wherever you are in
order for you to be at home to receive your mail. Thus,
computers are like cups on a string which tie us together
as if with a silver cord through the virtual world. If they
are connected, we are connected.
So critical are the positions of each computer that,
if a computer is missing from its place, or breaks, the
network of personal relations which depends on it also
fails. If a computer is stolen it is as if someones home
were stolen. If it is broken, it is as if ones house has
burnt to the ground. If someone grabs another persons
cup, he may stand to lose more than a line to a distant
friend; he may lose his identity. This is a fragile
arrangement, indeed.
However fragile, the virtual environment
increasingly provides a crucial avenue to meaningful
socialization. The internet brings people together.
Persons are increasingly enculturated in terms of the
unified society of the virtual world. Picture the rows of
children staring at screens as they look for clues for how
the world works, from sex to all the other sciences, and
picture the lonely fat banker intent in the World of
Warcraft. Picture the fattening divorcee browsing the
283
personals and typing in chat rooms. Picture this and you
picture persons alone, even if they are in rooms
together. Picture this, and the increasingly unified world
appears more than ever dis-unified. Lonely: this is what
it feels like to be globalized.
Computer mediated networks of personal
relations have become increasingly important to
increasing numbers of people. But, far from unifying the
globe, these networks pull people apart. Globalization
via the virtual world motivates increasing isolation from
friends and family in the real world. Virtual world
societies arise, thus, at the expense of real world
societies.
For instance, MySpace is a global phenomenon
which facilitates human relationships without regard for
geographical constraints.
451
These are networks of
unique persons fulfilling unique roles in unique human
lives over the internet. This virtual society is a network
of persons built on the silicon bedrock of networked
machines. Should this bedrock dissolve, so shall the
society.
Insofar as the virtual society depends on the
industries which keep computers going, its integrity is
difficult to ensure. People work day and night, the world
over, in concert, to keep the bedrock of the virtual world

451
In general, I am skeptical of the MySpace phenomenon. Insofar as
computer mediated socialization stands in for direct care for another human
being, I see a problem. I feel that it is always best to remain responsive to
local needs first, as this is generally where ones capacities to care are
most effective. Insofar as persons live in terms of MySpace mediated
relationships, much of that most effective capacity to care for persons near
at hand is underutilized, undervalued, and left unpracticed. Meanwhile,
MySpace devotees collect friends as an object all its own, not to care for
them as persons in the real world, but as evidence for ones own virtual
worth. This is a vacuous existence, at best.
284
in place. They bridge barriers of language, tie the world
together in one big circuit, but this building project,
perhaps the greatest mankind has ever achieved, does
not come cheap. Every brick in this tower of human
achievement is a constant drain on natural resources.
Virtual bedrock, alight with electricity, is energetically
very expensive. People work around the clock, day in
and day out, to bridge this energetic barrier. Thus, the
virtual environment is renewed, the virtual world remade,
every passing instant. This is a fragile arrangement,
indeed.
The problem is that this fact does not keep people
from developing ways of life which are increasingly
dependent on this arrangement. From local wanna-be
rockstar or web designer to the economic policy makers
who encourage them, there is increasing dependence on
a virtual environment for everyday human opportunity.
Meanwhile, the natural environment, on which all of this
eventually rests, is taken for granted. The capstone of
humanitys greatest building project is the cornerstone of
its very foundation.
Computer networks are fragile, complicated, and
expensive to maintain. These networks themselves
depend on other, hidden, networks. These networks
depend on networks of people, and people depend on
networks of industry, and these industries depend on a
fragile network of natural systems.
Computer networks require systems of industry
which refine silicon the stuff of beaches into
programmable computer chips. These industries are
networked with others which provide heavy equipment,
high temperature furnaces, lasers and, perhaps most
importantly, highly specialized human labor. Computer
networks also require other networks which reliably
285
provide for electrical power, fiberoptic cables,
replacement hardware, not to mention technical support,
which itself requires telephone systems, educational
systems, training systems, monetary systems, and all of
these, of course, require further networks of human
beings delivering highly specialized labor.
Just as there is a person at either end of a
computer, there are networks of persons at either end of
computer networks. These networks of persons turn the
objects of the natural world into objects of the virtual
world. The production of the virtual environment, thus,
depletes the resources of the natural environment. And,
where the virtual world must be remade every day, day
in and day out, the natural world cannot be remade. Not
by us. Ever.
The fact that the planet is on the cusp of a global
environmental crisis is well known, and shall receive
greater attention later on in this section. The point here
is merely that, should the resources of the natural world
fail, their delivery fail, or any other link in the networks
which support the production of the virtual world fail,
then the virtual world, and all of the social networks
which depend on it, and all the human lives which
depend on it, and all the personal identities which
depend on it, will fail. At its bedrock, the virtual world is
a logically ordered electronic brickwork of silicon
processors. Thus, that virtual world in terms of which
persons increasingly order their very real human lives is,
truly, a castle made of sand, and a fragile one at that.
452

452
As should be clear, this fragility is a consequence of its energetic
expensive primarily, which is somewhat represented in its monetary
expense secondarily. That is, it takes a lot of energy, in the form of human
life and other resources, to keep this sort of thing going. Too much. But,
the case is deep and not easily seen.
286
For the moment, instead of looking directly at the
impact of computer mediated networks on the lives of
persons around the natural world, lets look for a
moment at the logic in terms of which these networks
are arranged. Lets look at the order of information
processing which underwrites this global virtual sand
castle. Lets see what it is some people call the truth.
Consider the Law of the Excluded Middle (L.E.M).
This is a fundamental notion in binary logic, that sort
taught exclusively at most schools and universities.
453
Taking the L.E.M. to be a law is the hallmark of classical
logic. The Law states that a thing either is, or is not, in
the way ascribed at any given moment. So, whatever
we take to be p, a thing at any time is either p or not p. It
cannot be both; this is the middle that gets excluded in
the L.E.M. the L.E.M., in other words, reduces the world
to 1s and 0s.
Everything is a dilemma according to the L.E.M.
Everything either is or is not, and it is up to us to figure it
out. In everyday terms, this seems to make sense. A
car is either blue, or it is not. A computer switch is either
open, or it is not. A carrot is either rotten, or it is not. A
person is either evil, or she is not. This seems to be
more than a law of logic; it seems to be a law of nature.
But, is it a law of nature? What is a law,
anyways? What does a law do? Laws, themselves, are
supposed to hold things together. They tie things
together in terms they have in common. Articulations of
laws specify common relationships and the objects
which are bound by them, but the relationships
themselves are supposed to be there first.

453
There are other sorts of logic, like fuzzy and multi-valent logics, the
discussion of which I will neglect here.
287
Consider the Law of Gravity. It is not as if some
cannonball follows the letter of some specified law. It
does not tell cannonballs how to relate with one another
and the natural world around them. This law tells people
about cannonballs and the natural world around them.
The Law of Gravity is a law because it applies to all
objects in the field of gravity, cannonballs and people
included. That is what makes it a law. Its articulation
comes later.
This goes for any given law of nature. A law of
nature is a law because it seems that natural things are
bound by its terms. A natural law represents the order of
the natural world, and puts in human terms how the
apparent objects of the natural world appear to be
related. If the natural world is an ordered whole of such
relationships, and people who try to figure out how the
world works, like scientists, already presume that it is,
everything natural operates according to laws of nature.
The science lies in their observation, articulation, and
increasingly adequate determination
Laws are supposed to explain things. That is, a
law is supposed to put all things under its scope in terms
of their common relations, like gravity. Whatever does
not fall within its scope, and so outside of lawful
determinations, is not a relationship which is supposed
to arise in the natural world. If it does, either the law is
wrong, and so not really a law in the first place, or there
are unnatural things which perhaps behave according to
some law lawfully, just not in terms which the given law
in its current form adequately articulates. This goes for
anything called a law, natural or not.
A law tells us what is necessary, and what is
necessarily not. In terms of a natural law, unnatural
things are necessarily impossible. They are not given as
288
possibilities in terms of a law of nature. For a law to be a
law it needs to tie together all the objects under its
scope, so unnatural things are necessarily not natural.
This goes for any other sort of law as well. Logical laws
indicate that illogical things are logically impossible, for
example. They are necessarily not logical. Thus, no
matter the context, a law tells us not only what is
possible, but what is impossible. What a law gives as an
impossibility is necessarily not possible, otherwise it is
not a law covering the field at hand, in the first place,
and is in need of revision.
What makes logicians think the L.E.M. is a law is
that, classically, logicians presume what the Law gives
as impossibilities are necessarily not possible. Logicians
presume that this goes for everything, in every context,
natural or not. They presume that laws of logic, like the
L.E.M., have the greatest possible scope. This means
that laws of logic are never revised, but that where they
appear to fail, it is the system of relations within their
scope which is in need of revision. The L.E.M., itself, is
taken to be universally binding. For the logician,
everything is bound to its terms.
454
That is to say that
what the Law says will, in every case, at every place,
explain what is at hand: 1 or 0, a thing is p or is not p,
and any other determination of the relationships at hand
is necessarily not a possibility.
One way to picture what is going on here is to
imagine the space of the whole of everything. Call it the
cosmos, the universe (literally, the one story, uni -
verse), the Creation, whatever. Just imagine that

454
Except for itself, which is where the logician goes wrong, but we shall
get there in a moment.
289
whatever is, is in this space.
455
Now, the logician
imagines that this space with everything in it is logical
space. That is, the logician imagines that this space is
determined by the laws of logic. Within this space, there
are other spaces. One of these spaces is determined by
the laws of nature. This is what logicians call
metaphysical space, and is bound by natural laws on
the inside as well as logical laws from the outside. In
this space, there are you and I and the planet Earth.
Everything in the space of nature happens according to
natural laws, like gravity on Earth and you and I growing
old, but these natural laws themselves are determined
by laws of logic. So, outside of the natural world is the
logical world, and for the logician the laws of logic are
the foundation stones for the rest of the universe. They
hold everything in their bounds, and are the final arbiters
of what is possible, and what is not.
Now, there is another way to picture the universe
and everything in it. I tend to see things in this second
way. Picture again the space of everything, and call it
what you will. I take this greatest of all spaces to be
determined by the laws of nature. Laws of logic are
merely a sub-set of this natural space. Laws of logic
come from people who apply them to the greater natural
world in order to make it appear simpler than it is, so that
they can pretend to understand it. Thus, I take the
natural to be the fundamental, and the logical to be
derived from this. However one takes the world to be
ordered, logic first or nature first, I call his metaphysical

455
This process raises some issues, like where are you when you are
imagining this space, because you cant be inside it and see it all at once,
so you must be outside it, which means there must be more space than the
space you are imagining. But, we will gloss over this problem, for now.
290
starting grounds. I think that other logicians are wrong
in presuming the space of logic as their metaphysical
starting grounds. I think so because even they must
actually, in the real world, begin their speculations from
within the space of nature. There is simply no space of
logic from which they can view our natural world, and
themselves within it, at least not from my perspective. I
think other logicians, philosophers, take up their
metaphysical starting grounds because it makes them
feel special, and powerful, and not because it has
anything to do with the way things really are, but we will
get to that later. Anyways, amongst philosophers, and
especially amongst logicians, I am amongst the minority
on this point. Most people working in this field presume
that life, the universe, and everything are bound
fundamentally and primarily by the laws of logic, of which
the L.E.M. is a prime example.
Lets test this presumption. Does the Law hold in
every context? This is a complex question. That the
L.E.M. is taken to be a law in the world of classical logic
is one thing. For it to hold everywhere and at all times in
the natural world is another thing. For the Law to qualify
as universal, it must satisfy the latter, stronger,
requirement. Lets see if this is the case.
Lets think of p or not p as either good or not
good. In these terms, the L.E.M. says that a thing is
either good or not good at any given time, and not both.
Are all things either good or not good? Arent many
things some of both? Dont many things seem good,
and turn out bad, or vice versa? Are some good things
good because they are bad, and vice versa? Much of
life is lived in these apparently contradictory terms, at
least in the natural world. Meanwhile, the Law presumes
this to be impossible. Could it be that we spend much of
291
our lives doing the impossible? Or, have we just not
figured it all out well enough, yet? So far as the L.E.M.
being universal, it must also be a law of nature. Could it
be that, in doing the impossible according to the L.E.M.,
we are also doing the unnatural? Is the Law really a
law, and are we merely criminals, breaking the Law,
when we do the impossible?
Lets test the L.E.M. within the space of the
natural world. If it fails, here, it fails to be the
grandmother of all laws from the space of logic. If a law
of nature is broken, it is not a law of nature, but merely a
proven poor approximation. We will find that the L.E.M.
is only a law in the imaginary space of binary logic, and
the presumption otherwise the cause of a lot of serious
problems here in the real world.
All naturally occurring things are part of the
natural order. Now, that said, there is no such thing as a
naturally occurring thought criminal who breaks the laws
of nature, at least not one who fails to get caught when
he acts on his criminal thoughts. Therefore, a law of
nature cannot be broken, at least not by any naturally
occurring thing.
This does not mean that some thoughts to the
contrary are unnatural. It only means that people can be
wrong about what they think. This also does not mean
that there are no unnatural things. I suspect there are
not, but an unnatural thing is just the sort of thing one
would expect to be breaking a law of nature. Neither
does this mean that there are no such things as thought
criminals. That there are thought criminals seems a safe
assumption, and still narrows the above unconfirmed
options to two. We can presume the Law is still a law,
and that we do either the unnatural or the impossible if
292
we break it. In either case, if the Law is broken, it fails to
be a law so ascribed.
I will assume that, if the impossible is done, we
dont spend much of our lives doing it. This is not to say
that the impossible cannot be done. In fact, I think that
the only things worth doing are the impossible things.
456
It is just to say that if the impossible is done on a routine
basis, then we arent really doing what impossible is
usually taken to mean. We may be doing something
unusual, but that is beside the point. Laws cover
unusual cases; they do not cover impossible cases.
They exclude them. If the Law is a law, then it should
exclude all things which are not possible, and include all
things which are merely unusual. In the case of an
exception, the law has excluded a clear possibility.
Thus, doing the impossible is an exception to a given
law, requiring that the statement of law be revised at the
very least. Needless to say, this has been known to
happen.
To do the impossible is to break the law, thereby
denying the status of the law as law. This goes for the
L.E.M. as well as for any other law. Lets see if the
L.E.M really is a law, after all.
Here is a practical, and disturbing, case.
Consider the conflict in the Middle East over the
territories known as Palestine and Israel. If one were to
ask a stalwart defender of either side, he may say that
control over the situation on his sides terms is good, and
control over the situation on the other sides terms not
good. This attitude, naturally, excludes any middle
ground. It is p or not p.

456
The Forward makes this very clear.
293
Examples of this attitude are, sadly enough, easy
to come by. In conversation, recently, I confessed that I
am a pacifist, and unable to come to terms with the
violence which either side exerts on the other in their
mutually exclusive efforts to control the situation. The
Israeli man with whom I was speaking confessed his
solution to my problem. He claimed also to be a pacifist.
He suggested that I might be able to come to terms with
the violence if I subscribed to the following formula,
representing his own understanding of the situation:
Even pacifists can believe in pest control.
457
What
could he have meant by this?
Lets use the Law of the Excluded Middle to test
his assertion. On its face, the expression is committed
to two things, pacifists and the pests in need of control.
These things are exclusive. A person might be one or
the other, but not both; this is one excluded middle.
There is another excluded middle. Pacifists can hold to
two ways of thinking about pests. Consistent with the
L.E.M., a person is either a pest to be controlled, p, or
not a pest, not-p. Controlled pests are good,
uncontrolled pests are not good. Lets see where this
leads.
As a pacifist is essentially different than a pest,
then he may deal with them as if they were any other
object in the world like tables and chairs. For example,
even a pacifist can control a chair by pulling it up to a
table and resting on it. When the chair meets his needs,
he uses the chair for his own resting state. He is

457
To which he added that the other side birthed children, at all, for the sole
purpose to have them shot in the streets. On his account, the children are
sent, by adults, to attack tanks with rocks, so that the adults will have
opportunity to justify their own eventual suicide bombing.
294
passive. The chair, hereby, is no pest. It is under
control. When the chair fails to meet the terms of his
needs, things are different. It gets in the way of his
search for a resting place. It gets in the way of his
passivity. It is broken. The broken chair is an obstacle,
and in need of control.
Pests are also obstacles to rest. Per the pacifists
formula, the solution to the violent unrest in Palestine is
control of the pests. These pests are out of control; that
is the problem. Here is where the pacifists solution
differs from the solution for, say, a broken chair. Broken
chairs can be fixed. Pests, however, are essentially
unfixable. The only good chair is a fixed chair; the only
good pest, however, is a dead pest. Thatll fix em, per
the pacifists formula.
Pests are a special kind of obstacle. They are
essentially bad. They are, essentially, not-pacifists. For
a pacifist, if you are a pacifist, you are not a pest. If you
are a pest, you are not a pacifist. Per the L.E.M., not p
is not pacifist or pest. A person is either one or the
other; this is an excluded middle. Furthermore,
according to the L.E.M., pests are not-good and this
means that not pest is good, or not p is good or, even
more simply, not-bad is good. This means that it is not
bad, per this pacifists formula, if those pests are simply
not.
This logical attitude is prefigured in his natural
language. Pests are nagging little critters. Pests are
parasites. They prey on you. It is either you or them.
There is no sense making things easy for a pest,
especially seeing as how pests work at making things
harder for ones self. Pests of every sort are typically
treated according to the option most conducive to the
comfort of the one seeking rest through control. There is
295
no fixing a pest. Too expensive. There is no bargaining
with a pest. It would be like negotiating with a broken
chair. But, worse, pests cant be fixed like chairs. A
good broken chair is a fixed chair, but a good pest is a
dead pest. Pests are destroyed. Thus, the expression
even pacifists can believe in pest control is nonsense.
There is nothing passive about it.
Considering that this pacifist is an Israeli, and
his pests Palestinian, even pacifists can believe in
pest control takes on a sinister tone. Pest control
means removing obstacles to rest. Pest control means
killing, torturing, and bulldozing homes. In a way, this is
a solution to violent unrest; dead people tend not to
cause a lot of trouble.
But, there seems to be something wrong with the
logic at work in reaching this solution. According to the
L.E.M., one is either a pacifist or he is not. Yet, there is
nothing passive about the Israelis formula. The Israeli
man isnt merely making a mistake. He hasnt mistaken
himself for a pacifist. He really is a pacifist. After all, he
isnt the one bulldozing homes. He advocates violence
in action and maintains his pacifism. This makes him a
very special sort of bigot. What he says, and what he
does, are two tragically different things. Pacifist and not-
pacifist; this man is both.
He has broken a law of logic. But, he has not
broken any natural laws. Lots of other people do the
same thing, all too often. He wants to feel he has the
moral high-ground, while getting what he wants no
matter what it takes. This is perfectly natural. It doesnt
make it right, however. It just means that life happens in
the middle that the L.E.M. excludes, and that by hiding
away in this grey middle, people can hide from an
honest analysis of the way they choose to live.
296
There is another way to look at the problem.
There is another option for the Israeli. There is another
solution, hidden under the second of his formulas
excluded middles. He may remain consistent with his
claim to pacifism. He may continue to maintain that
even pacifists can believe in pest control. Consistent
with his pacifism, and contrary to the L.E.M., he may
hold that he is a pest as well as a pacifist. He may
maintain that he is both p and not p. He is a hybrid. He
bridges the two poles because, after all, he laid them out
in the first place.
When indicting the pest in his expression,
because he is both pacifist and pest, he indicts himself.
He cannot put all the violent unrest on some exclusive
other, per his natural attitude and its non-sensical
formulation, above. After all, in trying to control the
pests he is himself responsible for much of the
violence. When he considers that he is also a pest, the
situation appears differently.
The pest as well as the pacifist are both himself.
Through this lens, the expression even pacifists can
believe in pest control starts to make sense. If the
pacifist is the pest, both the same self, then this
expression may be rewritten: even pests can believe in
pest control, or even pacifists can believe in self
control. To this, I will add a further revision: especially
pacifists can believe in self control.
That is, especially pacifists do not believe in the
L.E.M., at least whenever it applies to other persons. In
terms of the Israelis expression, the L.E.M. presumes
an essential difference between persons: one is a pest,
the other not. This essentially means: one is a person,
the other not. The middle which is excluded is any
bridge between the two. The excluded middle is
297
reconciliation. The excluded middle is the space of rest,
the space of life. Until one puts himself in this middle, he
is nothing but an agent of death. Life and death; this is
the only place in which the L.E.M. holds. Dead people
stay dead; there is never any middle ground, here.
Needless to say, the L.E.M. is of limited utility
when ones object is to share an increasingly
overburdened natural world without violence. This is the
object of the pacifist. The L.E.M. works if the object is to
close off from one another. If the persons on either side
are taken to be essentially the same, these implications
of the Law no longer hold. There is no other side from
which to close off. There is no middle to exclude,
because ones self is in it. The only obstacle left to this
realization is the L.E.M. itself.
Ethically speaking, the L.E.M. should be renamed
the Law of the Included Extremes (L.I.E.). On this logic
there is no middle, only an object, and its negation. The
L.I.E. is that the world consists of a bunch of 1s and 0s,
ons and offs, either/ors. The L.I.E. is that a thing in the
world either is, or it isnt.
Practically speaking, there is no way to share a
situation on this way of thinking. What this logic does is
split things up, not tie things together. This seems to
disqualify it as a law, altogether. The presumption is
that ours is a world divided, or at least in principle
divisible, between ourselves and others to be excluded
from it. By the L.I.E., it is perfectly logical that there is,
already in the world, an us and a them. This is the
logic beneath guns and tanks, prejudices and arbitrary
distinctions. This is the logic of mutual exclusion, and
these are the tools for the removal of other living things
from the otherwise shared space of life. It is obvious, as
we see it now, that the L.I.E. comes after the fact of the
298
natural world. The L.I.E. is no law of nature. It is an
excuse for ignorance. It is an excuse to kill people.
Where, then, does the Israeli find grounds for his
solution by pest control? They are not grounded
ultimately in the natural world. On his logic of exclusion,
there is simply not enough world to go around. Yet, its
articulation already presumes a unified world within
which exclusionary distinctions are made! His
expression is one weapon in an arsenal of exclusion
imported into a natural world that is already shared. It
says there is one world, and it is not theirs. Yet, there
they are. So long as they dont object to being removed
from this one world, the Israeli has no reason not to be a
pacifist. Once they do, he finds his reason for violence:
so that he can again be a pacifist. His position may be
arrived at logically, but not by any law of nature. It
excludes possibilities that are clearly hidden beneath the
natural middle his artificial logic excludes. Where does
he find grounds for his logic? At the bottom of his own
cold heart, from the mouth of his own closed conscience,
and that is the extent of that.
Though it presumes one world within which to
force distinctions, and so disqualifies itself as a law
even as it is expressed, can the world be reunited once
the L.I.E. has torn it apart? That is to say, is there a
place for the L.I.E. in the natural world, at all? No,
unless that unified natural world is reduced to a
universally bound field of mutual exclusion and global
conflict. War is what it feels like to be globalized under
this logic. It is not that this is altogether a surprise, or
that it is for all persons on Earth altogether unwelcome.
Consider the endorsement of the L.I.E. in terms of
the worlds old religious stories. Religions posit ultimate
realities, and these are often exclusive of one another.
299
After all, there can be only one ultimate reality. It is
senseless to speak of an ultimate anything in plurality.
The old religious L.I.E. leads to mutual exclusion on a
global scale. The ultimate reality of these ultimate
exclusions is ultimate conflict. There is nothing
surprising, here. The greatest religious L.I.E.s predict it.
The end of the world in fiery warring death, the
Apocalypse, and, for all its exclusion, this final conflict is
ultimately shared. Though I, for one, wish these bigots
would keep their cold-hearted conflicts to themselves,
there is nowhere else for the rest of us, stuck in the
space of life in the middle, to go. There is one world,
shared, one planet Earth, and they are bent of tearing it
apart. There is simply no getting past it.
So, we are forced to look more closely at the logic
underlying the stories which have brought us,
inescapably, to this end. These myths represent the end
of the world as that necessary end resulting from the
law of god. On these accounts, this god is the
exclusive designer of natural law. It is in the space of
god that natural law arises, and it is in terms of the law of
god that these natural laws gain their validity, not the
other way around. This picture should look familiar.
So construed, the ultimate end of the world in
fiery warring conflict is the natural result of an ongoing
battle between good and evil, heaven and hell, light and
dark. In other words, the ultimate end of the world is
inescapable by way of the logic which divides the world
into 1s and 0s. This should also look familiar. In terms
of the myths specific to the West, the ultimate end of the
world is revealed in the Christian New Testament book
of Revelations. The inclusion of this portion into the final
arrangement that is the New Testament is controversial.
It likely was included on the basis of bad information, but
300
that is beside the point. The end-time it describes has
been called the Apocalypse.
We have seen the holes in the logic by way of
which this end-time is approached, but lets see if we
cant make sense of the natural world the end-times
describe in terms which are a little less holy.
Consider this word apocalypse. Apocalypse is
a word ominous in Christian theology because of its
association with the destruction which marks the end of
the world as described in the New Testament. It can be
traced to 16th century Latin meaning revelation,
disclosure. But the word appears in the history of
thought much earlier than the controversial book of
Revelations. Apocalypse is from the Greek, apo
meaning from and kalyptein meaning to cover,
conceal. Apocalypse, according to its original
significance, thus merely means to remove from cover or
concealment, to reveal. Apocalypse is discovery, and
was discovery long before any Christian claimed it stood
for something else. This has nothing necessarily to do
with the end of the world. All that is destroyed in an
apocalypse, properly understood, is ignorance. All that
is necessarily not in an apocalypse is the impossible.
Lets see if we cant use this new information to dispel
the great L.I.E. that it is something else.
All that apocalypse is, as discovery, is the no
longer not possible. What we discover depends on what
we understand. There is no law of discovery, per se,
though we have come to understand that there are more
or less effective methods for discovering what seems to
be possible.
458
In every case of every discovery, no

458
The scientific method is the distillation of the best of methods, here, and
so a discovery about discovery, or a meta-discovery, really. Waiting for
301
matter the method, we discover what was not already
understood. We discover what had been, on the basis
of prior understanding, not possible. Discovery makes
the impossible possible. It bridges the gap, uncovers the
middle. The L.I.E. here is that there is no middle ground
between the possible and the impossible to discover.
Discovery is doing the impossible. We determine
what is possible, and what is not possible, and the basis
of discovery, and we confirm, after the fact, whether or
not our determinations hit their mark. Discovery is the
object of every science. Thus, so far as science is
concerned, the impossible and the confirmation of the
impossible are the only things worth doing. I will add
that taking it as ones purpose in life to discover and to
understand is the proper mission of the Philosopher.
459
All other action is ignorance, or habit, or convention, or
tradition, or even religion. When there is change, and
there is, there must be men and minds to meet it, or men
will only have it in mind to do the wrong thing. We have
just seen a sterling example of such a mindset in our
Israeli friend, above.
But, what does the space between the possible
and the impossible, between a law of god and the fact
of the matter, look like? It would be good to have a
model in mind in order to identify similar opportunities for
discovery in the future.
Consider the following illustration. Imagine that
you live in a primitive society in a desert. Imagine that
the desert had not always been a desert. It had once

god to reveal the truth, is, well, not much a method if discovery is the object.
But, this does not grant scientific proclamations any special status. If these
are also held above investigation and contrary determination, they are
nothing but dogma in desperate need of revision. Case in point, the FDA.
459
Note the capital P here.
302
been an opulent forest. Life was everywhere. Life was
easy. It is no longer. Resources were plentiful, and your
society has a mythology which reflects this change. God
was good. He provides no longer. God is harsh.
When the weather changed, and drought set in,
life became more difficult. Religious leaders determined
that God was angry. After all, why else would He take
your great waters away? The people were being
punished for not following his old laws. That stood out
as a clear explanation, and enforceable by those in
charge. The people began to go without; expectations
went unsatisfied, needs went unmet, many starved.
God must have been especially angry with them
to cause so much suffering. The variability of the
environment made some ways of life untenable, even
those which had followed the letter of His old laws.
Clearly, according to the authorities, God had changed
his mind, and in changing His mind He changed the
world. Such was the logic of the day.
God ordered the world according to His reason
from the greater sphere of the perfectly rationally
ordered Heavens where there is no change, and no one
in need of punishment. It was merely up to the little
people, on the flat little planet Earth, to figure out what
Gods new laws were, and live by them. Else, surely,
His wrath would strike them down, again, every one!
It had been that they had lived on the water.
Now, God had taken all the water away, and the only
explanation for that was that it fell off the side of the flat
little planet. This required that the people change their
way of life to suit Gods design. For instance, living on
the water, shellfish are a relatively safe food source also
easily secured from the shallows. God had provided.
To live on shellfish was a possibility in the old situation.
303
It is no longer a possibility in the changed situation.
Living in a desert, shellfish are deadly. Living in a
desert, shellfish kill. To eat shellfish and remain
consistently healthy is not a possibility in this situation. It
is a practical impossibility.
People became ill and died with enough regularity
that to not eat shellfish became a rule. God had spoken.
In coming to terms with the situation, the injunction do
not eat shellfish became the law of the land. Do not
eat shellfish became the law of God. This law
represents the terms of an ultimate reality, Gods reality.
There is no middle ground, here. To break this law is to
invite Gods wrath: you will die. And, where you fail to
die from eating shellfish contrary to Gods law, clearly
there must be something un-godly about you. So, rather
than risk His wrath upon the rest of us, every one, we
will pick up where God leaves off and kill you, anyways.
At least, thats the logic at work, here. No middle
ground.
The reality of Gods law, whether divinely
enforced or executed according to some more Earthly
authority, is more extreme than the practical reality. The
practical reality is that shellfish are not necessarily
deadly. The divine injunction does not reflect the
variability of this fact. It is all or nothing. The injunction
does not invite further inquiry into the laws of nature
which drive the matter at hand. If people could have
gotten away with eating shellfish, seemingly contrary to
the law of God, without being executed by the religious
authorities for it, they may have discovered the middle
ground that the religious L.I.E. excluded. Sometimes,
old, warm shellfish makes people sick; but that leaves a
lot of middle ground.
304
Meanwhile, the administrators of the society, and
executors of Gods law on Earth, arbitrarily denied
inquiry by covering over this middle ground. Science,
and its fruit, discovery, were contrary to the lawful
determinations of God, himself. God will reveal the
truth when we are ready for it, one might have heard the
authorities claim. One either does not eat shellfish, or
one violates the law of god. One route gets you to
Heaven, the other gets you stoned to death. There is no
middle ground, here. Thus, the divine order failed to
represent the natural order, but that doesnt keep the
men who ran things from making sure that it was the
divine order in terms of which people lived and died,
rather than the natural one. How did they do that? They
L.I.E.d.
460
That is, they arbitrarily excluded very real
possibilities.
Today, at the expense of a great many inquiring
minds, we know better. It is no longer impossible to
safely eat shellfish in the desert. In fact, it is difficult to
understand the attitude that holds that do not eat
shellfish is still a law of God, a law of the land, let alone
a law of nature, today. We know about bacteria. We
have refrigeration. Shellfish are no longer necessarily
deadly. Some persons are allergic to shellfish. This is
true; they may not eat shellfish of necessity. Others may
simply become ill from its consumption, and some may
even die because of factors completely different than
those captured in the law of God. Some shellfish does
go bad, and some people do get sick on it. But this is
now the exception, and not the rule. We no longer
necessarily live bound to a desert world by ritual chains

460
See the Forward for the obvious allusion to the story of Socrates
execution, and of course there is Saul...
305
two-thousand years long. We live in the middle ground,
the space of life that the old L.I.E.s excluded.
What would a properly reformulated law about the
consumption of shellfish, which qualifies as a law, of
sorts, actually look like? Do not eat shellfish (which are
far from the water and which have not been adequately
refrigerated or otherwise preserved given that you have
no allergy and they come from clean waters free of
heavy metals, especially if you are pregnant, and other
things as well some of which we may not as yet be
aware). The old divine command could be changed to
these more realistic terms, and still be represented as a
law of God, but in this form it is no longer an all or
nothing rule. There is no iron hand of religious authority
calling people to stone other people to death on this
formula. The line this formula draws is fuzzy. There is a
lot going on in the middle, but it is a better Law. Rules
like these are closer to representing mans natural
situation. We live on the cusp, in the warm space
between a cold Rock and a hard heart, and we die or are
put to death at either extreme.
461
When our object is discovery, rather than
enforcement of exclusionary law, we are continuously in
the process of coming to terms with the situation, and
with our places in the changing world. There is for us no
one or the other. We live in the middle. It is not either
you or I. It is us, together, in the world around us both,
cooperatively stitching together the womb of the future
even if the world we make for one another is a fiery
warring mess. There is no distinction to be made
between a me and a you and an us within an it.
No world, no womb, no us, no future. The L.E.M. fails to

461
Perhaps god is fuzzy, as well?
306
provide for this fact. Thus, it is not a Law of nature. In
fact, to adhere to it as a Law at all appears to be quite
the opposite, unnatural, contrary to life, even evil.
462
In order to unify the world under one set of laws,
either side to conflict must see themselves as part of a
larger system of which the other pole is an essential
part. We must put ourselves in the position of the other,
and in the space of our own lives bridge the middle. In
other words, conflict cannot be the ultimate reality, but
neither can peace. There must be both of these, as well,
else all goes up in flames or all comes to a cold stone
stop. If the pacifist endorses the neglected middle
option, that made impossible by the L.I.E., then he is
both a pacifist and a pest to be controlled. Thus, he is
unified, and in tension; he is freely bound and at once
struggling to break his bonds, to understand, to discover,
within the world, within himself, and everywhere in
between.
This is our method. What are its results? Lets
consider one thing which all parties to conflict share.
Lets look at an envelope which no message, and no
messenger, can escape. All parties to all conflicts and
tensions live in terms of the same single planet Earth.
There is no space of logic into which we can escape our
situation, here, bound by the terms of the natural world.
Lets look at the current state of this shared situation.
Lets look at the state of this natural environment, and
the damage we have caused on the basis of bad
information, like the L.E.M. and all the L.I.E.s enforced
on its presumption,

462
As well as un-Philosophical. EVIL, interestingly enough, is LIVE
spelled backwards
307
Through the lens of technology, from the
highpoint of history, with computers and their supporting
industries, men have a view on the world as a whole. It
is as if the entire natural world was an object, and we are
standing on a space so removed that we are outside of
it. This is the unprecedented result of mankinds most
ambitious building project to date. We can see it all from
the topmost spires of a space of a logic of our own
creation.
In the history of science, people could get a view
of, and so discover, only one part of the world at a time,
that part in which they lived. Instead of isolating one
system or another, modern science presents us with a
view whereby the whole world can be seen all at once.
From this perspective, the world is a network of
coordinated sub-systems, ecosystems, which remain
healthy only so long as they exist altogether, as an
inseparable network. These sub-systems forests,
deserts, reefs and wetlands - do not arise on their own.
Likewise, they do not fail on their own. Where one goes,
the others follow.
Gradual change can force the network of sub-
systems to adapt. Nature evolves. The natural world is
resilient this way, in ways which mans computer
systems, for instance, are not. But, rapid change, when
rapid enough, is violent change, and can destroy first
one sub-system, then another, and then the network of
the natural world as a whole. This is the view we have
of the world today. It is under attack, we are under
attack, and we are, at once, the attackers.
463

463
Which is, I believe, the timely message in Spielbergs re-make of The
War of the Worlds. The one-crop-wonder aliens who cannot survive in the
natural world: they are us.
308
The global environmental network is faltering.
Good evidence for this is that individual ecosystems are
failing due to overly rapid change. Reefs are dying,
wetlands are growing over, and ice caps are melting.
Yet, none of these on their own necessarily indicates the
failure of the entire natural environment. Some isolated
changes can be accommodated by the rest of the
system. But, when the here and the there are part of the
same global system, and it is the global system itself that
is changing so rapidly, it all adds up to one thing; the end
of the world. Or, does it?
The best evidence for rapid change in the global
system, altogether, is the growing instability of global
weather patterns. This instability has been linked with
higher temperatures. Higher temperatures across the
globe, in turn, are linked to the fact that increasing
numbers of people increasingly rely on gasoline
powered automobiles. Increased combustion of
gasoline makes heat, and the heat makes the globe
hotter. Thus, a growing instability in global weather
patterns is linked with how much you drove your car last
weekend.
Driving your auto makes the temperatures
increase. The best evidence for this is in your garage.
Do you have doubts? Feel the hood of your running car.
Breathe the exhaust. Where do you think all of this stuff
goes? Cars get very hot, spit poisons at prodigious
rates, and the reefs are dying. All that is missing in this
formula are the billions of people, just like you, driving
back and forth across the space of human life in the
middle.
The best evidence for the global effects of
increasing heat is the weather, itself. Heat affects all
ecosystems together, globally. Heat does not stop at the
309
edge of the woods. You cant build a fence around it.
Hurricanes and tornadoes and floods also do not stop at
the edges of woods. They are the products of increased
heat energy, and take this energy with them wherever
they go, often violently. But, this is beside the point.
Heat has a tendency to escape from any system in
which it is held or produced, like your auto.
The problem we are facing around the globe,
today, is that not enough of the heat energy on the Earth
is getting the opportunity to escape it. The heat energy
is being held close to the planet by the by-products of
things like combustion engines in automobiles. Again,
the best evidence for this problem is in the weather.
See, sea water warming, especially at the surface,
evaporates more rapidly, and adds water vapor to the
atmosphere. This makes the air heavier, and causes
stronger winds which lead to more violent hurricanes,
larger tornadoes, and extremes in rain and drought.
Everyone on Earth, and everyone to come, is subject to
the resulting violence. You cant fence it in.
There is no escaping it. The world over, hot
evaporated water is fueling increasingly violent
hurricanes and tornadoes. Without all of the extra water
vapor, and all the extra poisons from combustion, the
heat may dissipate into the cold vacuum of space. It
may leave the Earths natural system. The problem is
that people are simply getting in the way. Living in the
space between, we are blocking more than the heats
opportunity for escape. In so far as we would rather be
in another situation, not drawing nigh to environmental
310
collapse, we are the biggest obstacle to our own
escape.
464
Lets look a little more closely at this situation in
which we seem to have trapped ourselves. As we have
seen, one important aspect of the global effect of heat
on weather is the warming of sea water. For one thing,
this water turns to vapor and as reported above leads to
increasingly violent storms. Yet, there is another
consequence of hot water which is less spectacular, but
even more dangerous for life on Earth. Hotter water has
a lower capacity for dissolved oxygen, as for other
gases, than does cooler water. This means that the
animals and plants which live in the hotter water have an
increasingly hard time breathing. It is these critters
which constitute ecosystems like reefs and fisheries,
ecosystems which people are already attacking even
more directly than simply by heating the water, with nets
and explosives and sonar and pollutants and turbines
and human waste, you name it. As these systems
individually fail, so does the system at large. And,
people are at either end of the circuit; input (pollution)
and output (consumption), the natural world is failing for
an all too human end. Finding ourselves in this position
is the high-water mark of scientific discovery. But, at
once, it is this high-water mark which is responsible for
the position we are in; how ironic.
There are countless other factors which contribute
to the increasing temperatures. Scientists have tended
to focus on warming due to gases trapped by gravity in
the atmosphere which insulate the Earth, keeping heat

464
Of course, the greatest source of heat on earth is by far the Sun, but this
is beside the point, as people are still making the escape of this heat into
the vacuum of space harder.
311
from escaping into the vast cold vacuum of space.
Scientists have tended to focus on what people have
done to aggravate this global situation. Everyone on
Earth, who has been and everyone to come, shares this
atmosphere. We have contributed to it. We have
dumped the waste of our own progress into it. Now, we
breathe it and are responsible for it. We are suffering
our own consequences.
Some persons have turned to bottling air as a
solution. This, like distilling and filtering and ozonizing
bottled water, costs energy and uses resources and,
ironically, makes a lot of heat. Thus, we further
aggravate our situation even as we look for a way to
make it better. The atmosphere is a bank of heat
energy, and it is the only account, the only resource, in
an era of increasing resource depletion, which is
growing. It is growing so fast as to have become a
problem.
465
Most of the heat which warms the Earth in fact
comes from the Sun. However, there is very little which
can be done about that. Some also comes from car
engines and electric motors and blast furnaces and
power plants and the like. A car, if one looks at it in the
right way, is simply a big heater with benefits that
produces a lot of water vapor and other heat trapping
gases.
466
Water vapor, itself, captures and retains heat
energy with incredible efficiency.
Water vapor, itself, is a great banker of the heat in
the environment, and few scientists have focused on this
fact of the matter. Ironically, as the atmosphere warms,

465
Mr. Gore says that the Earth has a fever. Cancers cause fever, too, as
we shall consider next section.
466
And helps people be happy fat and lazy flat-landers.
312
it holds increasing amounts of water vapor. Water vapor
is heavy, too, so it tends to stay close to the ground.
Thus, the heat of human action lies like a wet blanket
smothering the hot Earth. Thus, the globe is warming, at
least in part, because of how much you drove your car
last weekend.
Again, this fact presents us all with a simple irony.
Technology has made this all possible, both the situation
and the view on the situation. This view of ones self in
the world, as essentially one little part of one great big
system, all together at work according to the same laws,
is made possible only in virtue of technology. The irony
is that it is the technology which is itself responsible for
the state of the global system under study. The irony is
that the industries responsible for the technology, and so
responsible for this view on the failing global
environment, are themselves responsible for the failure
of that global environment. It is only because of the
technology through which we view the environmental
crisis that we have a crisis, at all. Thus, we are
presented with a this simple irony.
The L.I.E. may have brought us to the following
conclusion. Either p or not-p, either people or not-
people. This is the question before us, every day, day in
and day out, as we move from virtual world to real one,
from self to other, past to future and back again. There
is no virtual world when the power finally goes out, no
history to make when there is no middle ground left for
our children. We can wait for the foundations of our
sand-castle virtual reality to wash away and collapse
from the water weve freed from the ice. We can wait for
a prince to come, and for a fairy tale happy ending of the
sorts we were raised on. We can kill ogres. We can
313
bank on the all or nothing. If we keep on as we have
kept on, this way, our L.I.E.s may just come true.
But, that doesnt mean we dont have at our
disposal a neglected option; we may yet discover a new
end to our old stories, a middle path of our own making.
We may yet rethink our situation, recast the system in
which we live, and become otherwise than we are, as if
reborn, with a new identity. We may yet reconcile the
way we have lived with a way of life worth living. We
may yet leave for others a situation the terms of which
we would seek as our own. We may yet be redeemed.
But, it will not be easy.
Instead of recounting platitudes, like our
knowledge is our downfall, just as in the myth of Adam
and Eve, or man has built himself a single structure
from which to see as if he were God, and that structure,
now, will crumble, just as in the myth of the Tower of
Babel, I prefer a more pragmatic route. Lets take this
face on.
314
15. Conscience, and the beginning of the world
Each individual possesses a conscience
which to a greater or lesser degree serves
to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses
destructive to others. But when he merges
his person into an organizational structure,
a new creature replaces autonomous man,
unhindered by the limitations of individual
morality, freed of humane inhibition,
mindful only of the sanctions of authority.
-- Stanley Milgram
467
Did the Captain of the Titanic cry?
-- The New Radicals
468
Science delivers a view on the future, on the
Promised Land. It is a world in ruin. If we continue on
our current path, science promises tragedy, and religion
promises the Apocalypse. This means more than
driving a smaller car. This means rethinking the global
economy. This means reordering the world, and
reordering the ways people live within it. This means
living to different ends, one day, one action, one
opportunity at a time. This means a new way of life.
Science delivers an objective view of ones
situation. Our current world order is not sustainable. The
ways of life which suit this order are not sustainable.
Thus, our places in the world are collectively drawn into

467
http://www.stanleymilgram.com/quotes.php
468
The New Radicals, Someday Well Know, Maybe Youve Been
Brainwashed Too, MCA records, 1998.
315
question.
469
This is a situation which all persons share.
We must move.
This fact carries with it a budding irony. The irony
is that the view on this crisis is from the high water mark
of its cause. We have worked to get here for a very long
time. The stories and standards whose terms we aspire
in progress have held the end of history as a carrot
before the cart, and we have arrived on hot wheels.
What had appeared to be good in terms of these stories,
old or new, and what is good, are tragically different
things.
One thing is clear. As our days and works are
increasingly bound together, our world is increasingly
bound to an end in common. What I do, who I become,
affects what you may do and become. In fact, the
situation is even tighter than that. The situation I make
for myself effects not merely affects - your own. What
I do makes it that way, for you.
The world is an increasingly closed system. This
means that there are fewer windows of opportunity for
escape into new and different ways of life. It is not that
we are no longer able. We are more able now than ever
before. It is that the windows, themselves, are closing.
It is that there is an increasingly long list of things which
need desperately to be done here and now before there
is anyplace to which to escape. The time for
experimentation, exploration, and expatriation is drawing
down. It is high time to do the right thing. We simply
have no other choice.
Here is why. What I do now affects the situation
into which future persons will be born. Look around.

469
Remembering the discussion from chapter 10, this is an opportunity for
angst.
316
What I do now affects what others must do later, and
predetermines who they must become in order to do it.
This is because what I do now will require a correction:
someone will have to wait 10,000 years until the
molecules of the Styrofoam plate I just ate a frozen pizza
from breaks down.
Of course, as we have seen, the problem isnt so
much that I used one Styrofoam plate. The problem is
that lots of other people use them too. The problem is
political. With an increasing number of plates tossed
into the shared environment, today, there are increasing
pressures on others to live in ways which permit the
breakdown of the plate, tomorrow. Otherwise, should
they simply keep on doing as we have been doing, the
Earth will run afoul in 4 day old cole slaw and the rest all
stuck to a toxic accretion of plastic plates. There is no
escaping this fact.
The situation I make for my self, and others,
determines who others will necessarily become in order
to meet the terms of that situation my actions leave
behind. If we act to make the situation a certain way,
certain ways will suit that consequent situation.
Necessarily. The situation resulting from many of our
own present routine actions is decidedly not good.
Just as hard times suit broad shoulders and open
hearts, bad times suit crooked spines and broken hearts.
Good people, it must be said, do not do well in a bad
world, and the picture of the world to come is not a good
one. Subjectively speaking, the world is an increasingly
bad place to be a good person, already.
470

470
It is not merely hard; it is bad. Whistleblower laws crippled with
enforcements relaxed, corporate liabilities for health and environment
negligible, attorneys dismissed for investigating corruption, support for poor
317
If not to the preordained Apocalyptic end of the
world, if not to an economically fueled exhaustion of
world resources, to which end should we aim? What
should we do? That is up to you. We may begin with
where we are beginning. Here and now. We may begin
by changing ourselves to suit the terms of another
situation than those two-thousand, or two-hundred, or
even twenty years gone. We may begin by changing
ourselves to suit the terms of the situation in which we
now live, confronted with a situation in which we would
not want to live. Lets start with today.
471
Our world is increasingly globalized. This
means more than that all human beings share one
globe. It means that we all are supposed to live under
one purpose in common upon it. The end in common is
supposed to be each persons individual liberty. This
individual liberty is supposed to be freedom.
Freedom, on this scheme, has become
increasingly equated with purchasing power.
472
Power
to purchase is access to objects made available to meet
ones own ever arising needs. Individual liberty is

and moderate income persons drying up, a get-ahead-at-all-costs academia
of self-aggrandizement, evangelists calling for assassinations, liars for
leaders and without consequence, you name it, the contemporary
corporate-political-industrial-religious environment is made by and for the
success of the selfish, the shallow, the sycophant, the psychotic: not good.
471
Thomas Jefferson famously maintained that we would need a revolution
every 25 years to keep the democracy going. It is no mistake that I have
stressed, throughout this text, in various ways, the necessary benefit of
generational updates in light of a changing environment. Jefferson was
right; we are 6 revolutions behind.
472
Consider that politicians count monetary contributions as a citizens free
expression, his voice, in civil government. If free speech is purchasing the
ear of the governor, then some are certainly freer than others, and the
following discussion has considerable weight. Purchasing power is literally
purchasing power, and this is freedom in the current regime.
318
equated with the power to meet these needs. Everyone
wants to be free: everyone wants their needs to be met.
Freedom, thus, is access, and wealth is supposed to
unlock the chains.
On this scheme, there are winners and losers.
The presumption is that purchasing power, and the
access to objects (and opportunities) which mark
freedom on its basis, is a consequence of merit. You
get what you deserve; you end up where you belong, so
the story goes. How well and how fast ones needs are
met defines ones success for his efforts. This is his
dessert. Those whose efforts are not successful are
without power to purchase, without access to objects
(and opportunity), and without even their most basic
needs met. They end up decidedly un-free, unhealthy,
and unhappy: in a bad situation.
There is another downside to this scheme. It is
that this array of opportunities, the stories that support
it, and the lives undertaken in its terms are especially
difficult to change. There is increasingly little room for
deviance.
473
If ones objects are not amongst the array
given, success by given standards is unattainable. The
only way to succeed is to produce an object which
answers to the wealthys needs within the given array,
which will be then purchased, thereby transferring to the
creator some of the wealthys purchasing power.
Individual liberty, freedom, is the product of chaining
some one else to a need he otherwise didnt even know
he had.

473
See the Forward for discussion directly to the effect that without room for
individual deviance, true leadership, we are doomed to failure in the face of
a changing natural environment.
319
This is bad enough when one person lives this
way. The real problems start when everyone follows
suit. With increasingly limited resources from which to
produce novel objects representative of novel
opportunities for success, and with increasingly
restricted access not only to the resources, but to the
economic array, itself, this way out is increasingly
difficult to discover. This doesnt keep people from
wanting to be free, from wanting their needs to be met.
They keep pushing. The structure resists. The resulting
pressure is what might be called a powder-keg.
For us inside this array and not on top already,
there is an option.
474
Here is where the truly cynical
place todays freedom for the poor. Have not, be un-free
and unhealthy, or contribute to the existing structure.
Add the weight of your own life, the pressure of your own
work, and make it grow!
475
Now, being a powder-keg,
we already know how a story about increasing pressures
goes. Boom! But, that doesnt keep people from telling
the story, believing the story, and living toward the
inevitable end. After all, there seems to be no way out.
Under increasing pressure; this is what it feels like to be
globalized.
With everyone after the same things in the same
ways, the good that was individual liberty becomes the
common good, economic growth. Economic growth
represents increasing opportunities available to
increasing numbers of free people. Because everyone
wants to be free, and have their needs met, and
economic growth is supposed to make this possible,

474
Sell an organ, already!
475
Which, considering what we understand about the situation, amounts to
either fraud or simple short-sighted irresponsibility.
320
economic growth is what philosophers call an intrinsic
good. Intrinsically good, economic growth is good for
its own sake; it makes goodness possible. It is not
merely that economic growth is a good amongst other
goods, it is that growth for the sake of growth is good.
Let me explain.
Most good things come by way of other things.
For example, exercise produces health and brushing
teeth reduces cavities. These are called extrinsic
goods, because what makes them good is something
besides themselves, health and clean teeth. Health is
the good to which exercise aims. But, economic growth
is supposed to be different. Under the current scheme,
the fundamental good toward which all these other
things both aim and the basis on which they are good in
the first place is economic growth. Economic growth
makes these other things good, and these other things
are good because they make the economy grow.
476
However you slice it, economic growth is good.
Economic growth, thus, is intrinsically good.
For example, exercise produces health, so fewer
become ill and more work longer, faster, better and this
reduces health care insurance costs, and this is good for
the bottom line, and this is good for the economy,
because more efficient workers produce a greater array
of objects to meet the increasing needs of those
increasing numbers of other persons successful enough
to gain access to those objects by also providing objects
for still others to access.
477
So the story goes, and so
the economy grows.

476
Recall Socrates in the Euthyphro
477
The same goes with tooth brushing, plus big smiles make people appear
fiercer, healthier, and happier; that is, more likely followed.
321
Economic growth is supposed to be the good
which binds all of our individual liberties in common. If
you can maximize this, you can maximize the good
everywhere else, and if you maximize the good
everywhere else, you maximize this. Globalization
always and already comes down to economic growth.
Growth is good. Or, so the story goes.
478
Now, modern man isnt the only critter on the
planet to feel this way about growth for the sake of
growth. There are other critters in the natural world for
which growth is intrinsically good. There are living things
which share in this school of human economy.
479
Anything which maximizes growth regardless of the
security of its future situation can be counted amongst
those things which share in this economic orientation.
Algae, fungi, and viruses can be counted amongst
them.
480
There is one reference which is especially fitting
our current situation, however. That is cancer. Cancer
grows for the sake of its own growth to the detriment of
the system which supports it regardless of its own best
interests. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology
of the cancer cell.
481
The human economy also
threatens the integrity of its supporting system, the
planet Earth. Here is where you and I enter the picture.
Once we seek economic freedom, each of us becomes a

478
Thus, Socrates, it is good because it pleases the gods, and once the
gods are pleased it is even better. The god here is the economy.
479
Recall that economy essentially means the way one orders his house.
480
In fact, mankind is alone in a capacity, however underutilized, to curb his
over-population in light of looming scarcity. I use these examples for ease
and effect.
481
Props to an anonymous graffiti artist for capturing this sentiment so
eloquently on the U.MoCo campus, 2004.
322
part of this organization which maximizes growth. Each
becomes like a cancerous cell.
Cancer consists of cells each of which consume
and divide and add the pressure of their own needs to
the powder-keg of their collectively selfish short-sighted
virulence. The end that goes Boom! in a cancer is
called metastasis. That is, the cancer spreads to other
parts of the system. It colonizes. This picture should
look familiar; we are inside of the colonial economic
equivalent. Metastatic globalization.
At every colonial locus, the object of cancerous
cells is access to resources. They force the system to
develop the infrastructure necessary to increase
supplies of their own object, in the case of cancer, living
blood, in the case of the economy, human labor. The
cancer cells spread chemical information which causes
the formation of new blood vessels which bring them the
resources they need to keep growing.
482
Thus, each cell
plays its part in redirecting the resources which
otherwise maintain a healthy system - as a healthy
whole - to meet its own selfish needs for growth in
particular, and for the moment.
Consider the everyday human parallel in the
everyday space of value. Look around, and witness
persons acting similarly to how one might expect a
cancerous cell to act, uncaring of their own misuse of
resources and of the sick world they leave behind.
There are HUMVEES speeding by without cargo and
without a single passenger. There are obese men in t-
shirts with air conditioners turned up and doors left open.
There is garbage in the streets from snack foods and

482
Development directives (IMF, World Bank) enforced as rigid precepts for
progress, (often militarily) for instance.
323
cigarettes. There are shiny-shoed weapons dealers fat
and happy on the suffering of others, for now they can
direct the resources of the world to deliver them
HUMVEES, snack foods, shiny shoes and cigarettes.
These lives suit a dying system.
Killing for profit is the single largest growth in the
U.S. economy. Billions are redirected from hurricane
relief to mercenaries, from hospitals and schools to
Halliburton, private prisons, and torture camps.
Repetition becomes routine with every murder, every
day of occupation for oil, the life-blood of this globalizing
colony. These are the terms to which we have come,
the situation we have made. Bullets are cheap, but
desperation means huge mark-up. Every enemy made
is an untapped market. This is all good for the economy,
perhaps lots of encouraging growth! - but it is anything
but good for much of anything else.
Remember that Socrates concern was the health
(justice, the good) of the system as a whole and not how
fat particular cells (wealthy men) can become on others
suffering. Remember that Socrates felt that men are
essentially good, or healthy, but are corrupted to do the
wrong things on the basis of bad information. Consider
that cancerous cells are merely mutations, deviations,
from healthy cells. They have bad information which
moves them to behave like a fungus, or a virus. They
are especially dangerous because they embody
apparently successful all-or-nothing ways of life which,
when taken up by other cells, more rapidly destroy the
integrity of the system as a whole.
483
Healthy cells resist,

483
Interestingly, cancerous cells produce chemical inhibitors so that other
cancerous cells do not grow too rapidly, thereby overbearing the system
and destroying the organism too rapidly. We can see parallels in the global
324
but when the system as a whole becomes unhealthy
enough, their resistance is weakened, and the organism
is eventually over-run.
Cancer kills. It doesnt have a heart that beats. It
doesnt have a conscience. When it comes to cancer,
the cells must be removed. They must either be
reclaimed with the help of the organisms immune
system (that is, they are killed off by agents internal to
the system whose purposes are the maintenance of the
integrity of the system as a whole) and their supportive
infrastructures broken down, with resources redirected to
globally healthy ends; or, some agent from outside the
system must intervene and remove the destructive
bodies. When it comes to cancer, the latter case
requires a surgeon, chemical and radioactive therapies.
Of the two, from a clinical standpoint, this is not the
preferred route.
Consider again the current human situation in
light of these results. We may either wait for divine
intervention (a surgeon) and continue on destructive
paths, or we may actively take up the interests of the
global community. We may determine ways of life which
do not invite an early end to the whole of the natural
world order, merely so some elite few can become
overly-fat, overly-wealthy, and overtly-consumptive for
the time being. Ethically speaking, self-determination is
the preferred route.
We are in the midst of conflict. Proponents of the
first option attack proponents of the second option for a
lack of faith in the existence of a great extra-dimensional
Surgeon in the Sky. They confirm economic imperialism

economy whom also regulate the good of remote growth and thereby
maintain their own access to resources.
325
in terms of their own religious isms, for instance
dominionism and Zionism and nationalism and
capitalism and neo-conservativism. It is also no
surprise that would-be proponents of the second option
end up jailed, tortured, maimed, and murdered. They
reject economic imperialism in terms of pacifism and
liberalism and naturalism and democratic socialism.
We are on the cusp.
484
Granted that there is no Surgeon in the Sky,
however good a rapture removing the cancerous cells
would be for the rest of planet Earth, it is up to us to deal
with the problem. For those of us living in terms of this
second option, the clinically and ethically preferred
option, for those of us able to ask the question, the
problem is: what are we going to do about it?
Lets start with a review. Without the sprawling
infrastructure required by the economics, globalization
cannot get off the ground. This economic infrastructure
is progressive. It is built from bricks of increasing needs
joined to increasing numbers with a mortar of greed.
These two terms, need and number, wind around one
another trading advances. This is where we enter the
picture. It is a picture of mankind climbing spiral stair
steps of progress from past to present and upwards like
the floors of an ever rising tower. Its progress unifies the
contemporary world under one ultimate objective.

484
Perhaps the best measure of which way the system is leaning, to
sickness or to health, resides in the reconciliation of the two terms
pacifism and terrorism. Somehow, non-violent resistance to economic
imperialism has been equated under the current regime with terrorism. The
sense that we make of this equation, pacifism is terrorism points to the
eventual state of the global system. This marks a bifurcation point, and the
projected ends ahead ground interpretations of pacifism is terrorism today
If this equation adds up, then we are moving to a very sick world, indeed.
326
Growth is good. The order must expand. Where to
next? The stars?
485
We are at the high-point of history.
Look around. Reflect on the view. From atop this
structure, we can now see the true cost of our project. It
is not sustainable. Without increasingly expensive input,
it will crumble, crash, and take much of the world with it.
It is increasingly difficult to maintain, and men around the
world kill and maim and torture to secure the resources
necessary to keep it standing.
486
With or without our
own planning, it must change, or it will change. We are
confronted with a vicious irony: the view on this crisis is
from the high water mark of its cause. And, that cause is
us; this picture is a mirror. What we subjectively have
called the good, and what, objectively, is the good, are
two tragically different things.
Here is the point. There is one aspect of the
healthy human constitution which differentiates us from
cancer cells. We have a conscience. We have a limited
capacity to change. We may have been blind, but now
we can see. We are able to open to turbulence, to
endure crisis, and to determine, for ourselves, for others,
and for the world as a whole, an entirely different end to
an entirely different story. Like it or not, we will make
history together; lets see what we can do about making
it a good one.

485
Not surprisingly, fungi, and virus, and other such critters work this way,
too. Increasing need and consumption until the source of energy (food) is
run through, then forming spores and casting off into the emptiness of
space in the hopes of landing on some other energy source (food) to then
again colonize, run through, and repeat. The plan of man in which we are
tenants looks a lot like a mushroom: spread out, eat it all, rise up, and cast
out into space from atop a great tower like a phallus spitting seed to the
stars.
486
Case in point: Iraq.
327
Recall the potato game introduced in the 5
th
chapter of this text. We ended that chapter by noting the
cycle that is the beating heart of conscience. We saw
that in exercising our conscientious hearts, we stitch
ourselves into the world. We make ourselves who we
are, and the world what it is. That is our creative
potential, and our current global situation is what we
have so far made of it. We are sick; the world has a
fever. We live lives of our own making in a world of our
own consequence. Time to face facts. Time to say no.
Hear the voice of conscience? We are between
the last stitch, having come to terms with the situation
we are in, and the next. Right now, confronted with the
inevitable end of a powder-kegs story, our hearts have
stopped. Our next stitch, that situation to which we must
now open, and to which we will next tie ourselves, is
critical. If we continue to stitch as we have, into the
world as we have, in the terms that we have, this next
stitch could be our last. It could all come apart at the
seams. Somehow, you and I must reconcile our current
Earth with one on which life is worth living. That is
where we enter the picture. On the cusp of the greatest
ethical problem in human history.
Think of the whole planet as if it were one big
potato, the world-potato. We are inside this potato. We
are on this potato. This potato is our situation. It is
where we live, and where future persons will continue to
live. It is what we eat when we are hungry, and it is
where we all seek rest when we are tired. It is the
shared environment. It is the planet Potato.
In this version of the potato game, there are
billions of situations to consider, not simply ones own
and that of the grinning fat man across the table. If we
think about things in the right ways, there are countless
328
unborn children at this table with us. There are
countless dead persons, too. And, there are our friends,
and family, those by whom we have been raised and in
us whose interests have been entrusted. This fact
changes the dynamic of the game little, however. All of
these billions upon billions of uncounted situations have
one simple thing in common. They begin and end with
the planet Potato.
In the original version of the potato game, there
were two players with two essentially different
understandings of the value of a potato. These
evaluations were compared to reveal how different
experiential bases lead, through the four basic modes of
conscience, to differences in how we treat each other.
The two players were both hungry, and were presented
with the same set of opportunities. Thy could share the
potato or not. They treated each other better, or worse,
whether, or not, they had ever gone hungry, before. He
who had never gone without a potato, player 1, failed to
share resources with the other, 0, who had gone hungry
before. 0, on the other hand, did share with 1, because
he understood the value of scarcity, the value of the
potato. Hunger hurts.
In the discussion of the game, some interesting
side issues were raised. During that discussion, the
issue arose that 0 had an option to not share with 1 in
order that 1 might learn a lesson, the true value of the
potato. With future trials in mind, 0 might think of
withholding the potato so that 1 could feel what it is like
to go hungry, and come to terms with hunger. If 1 were
to understand the value of the potato, empowered by
this experience, he might share the potato in future trials.
So long as 0 has both the potato, and has a future
in mind which he must share with 1, this option seems
329
prudent. It may be the case that in the future, 1 will have
the potato, and 0 will not, and it would be good for 0, as
well as for anyone else who may be hungry in the future,
if 1 were to share the potato, then. In order for 1 to do
so, later, 1 must be brought to terms with the value of
the potato, now. And that confronts a very openhearted
0 with a very difficult moral problem. 1 must suffer now if
he is to make the future a better place, given the
opportunity, later.
Lets take advantage of what we have learned
since we first saw the potato game. We have learned
about lives worth living, about justice, death, disgust,
and anxiety. We have learned that 1s and 0s are too
simple for real life. We have learned that the natural
world is fuzzy, and warm. We have learned a lot. Now it
is time to put it to use.
Think of one person on the planet Potato. Think
of your self. Now, imagine that your unique situation is
such that you control the planet Potato. Imagine that
you are King of the world.
You have it all. You could burn and eat so much
so quickly as to ensure that there is never such bounty
on Earth, again. French fries and tater-tots and hash-
browns and potato bread and potato biscuits and
potatoes baked, smashed, mashed, and strung. You
could easily use it up in fewer than ten generations, and
nuke it in less than 10 minutes. Or, you could manage it,
conserve it, care for it, and share it with a thousand
generations to come. It all depends on how you
determine your own needs, now. Your needs will be met
however you determine them; after all, you are King.
Others will emulate you, mirror your actions, model your
habits; after all, you are King. And, those who follow
your leadership, and live in the world of your own
330
making, well, they will be forced to take up the terms of
the situation you leave behind. Their lot is what is left
over. They are your subjects. Their ends are up to you.
Meanwhile, you have leisure to consider your next
move. You are free. There is nothing forcing your hand.
You are not driven by need. You have no unsatisfied
hunger. Take this opportunity for self-reflection. Look in
the mirror. What will be your mode of leadership? What
sort of King do you want to be?
In the 5
th
chapter, we briefly reviewed the types of
leadership which followed from consistent exercise of
the basic modes of the ACTWith model of conscience.
Lets look at these again.
First, there is the c/c mode of the tyrant. This
leader is closed to any determination other than his own,
and is not open to any situation other than his own. His
style of leadership is to impose his terms as if his own
situation were all that matters. He is the sort of leader
who will burn Rome, set fire to office buildings, and even
kill and torture his own subjects for disagreeing with his
vision of the future world order. This style of leadership
resists change, and finds the prudence in violence: I
would rather split anothers skull than change my own
mind. This mode says I am the decider, and You are
either with me or against me.
Next, there is the o/o mode of the just ruler. This
leader is open to the reconciliation of determinations
which differ from his own, and puts himself in the
situation of any subject to his rule. He is the sort of
leader who will finance diversity, live modestly, and live
openly in the face of danger in order to protect even
those subjects who do not share his vision of the world.
This type of leadership encourages change, and abhors
violence: I would rather change my own mind than split
331
anothers skull. This mode says: Healthy discontent is
the prelude to progress, and And unjust law is itself a
species of violence. Arrest for its breach, more so.
The hybrid modes of leadership are a little more
difficult to typify. One style suiting the o/c mode is what
has been called compassionate conservatism. This
leader recognizes different situations, but imposes his
own determinations on them anyways. This is the mode
of the missionary who confesses that he feels for the
other, but that if the victim will not concede to the rigid
terms set out for his salvation, then his just dessert is to
burn in hell, one way or the other. He says: If you do
not change your mind, your skull will be split. This may
be the worst type of leader, as he is the most insidious.
A tyrant is more easily identified for his wanton egoism,
while this modes paternalism shrouds an even more
vicious agenda. Both, however, are feared, not revered.
The c/o mode is the sort of leader who responds
to the terms of others as if these were his own situation.
He is cognizant of his own position as leader, and works
to integrate other determinations into his official actions.
Here, I am thinking of an Abraham Lincoln, whose most
famous Emancipation Proclamation is itself a
restatement of efforts already put forward by members of
congress. He is the sort of leader who confesses that,
far from being the force which determines the situation,
he has all along been a slave to the forces which have
shaped his own. All things considered, one can do
worse in a leader than this. This unifying and dutiful
servant, as the just ruler, is to be revered.
This is far from an exhaustive review of the
various modes of leadership. What we see here is
merely a snapshot of these leadership styles. Most
leaders, if they last as leaders, change modes to suit
332
situations most effectively; though, a tyrant is as unlikely
to compassion as is a just man to graft and corruption
and profit in war. For now, however, consider which of
these you would adopt if you could adopt only one.
Put your self in this position. You have the world
Potato at your disposal. There are billions of hungry
persons in front of you. All of them expect a piece of this
world. Furthermore, there are billions of hungry persons
lined up behind these persons. These are the
generations of unborn children to come, and they all
expect a piece of that world. What will you do with it?
Imagine that you close off to them, */c. You put
your needs first as is your due. You are, after all, King.
You hoard and waste. You reward the wealthy who help
to keep you in power. You hire gunmen to keep the
hungry and desperate subjects at bay. You enslave
them, or indenture their servitude if they are to have any
access to the wealth of Potato at all. You reduce them
to poverty to shrink their power and remove their
freedoms to dissent. You impose heavy taxes on health
care and deny assistance for basic needs in order to
make their situations even less secure. Under the cloud
of fear you strengthen policing, make punishments
harsh, and encourage intolerance. You reward bullies,
discount wisdom, and impose educational standards
which discourage free thought and new ideas. You are
a tyrant, selfishly conservative. Feared.
Is this the situation to which you aspire? Closed
to your subjects, you are spared the suffering of sharing
their situations. Unable (c/c) or unwilling (o/c) to
understand their suffering, you are spared
determinations contrary to your own. You are
surrounded by yes men, and only read books
commensurate with your prior understanding and an iron
333
fist. When you look in the mirror, it is only in your own
terms that you are judged. You are ignorant of any other
ways of life, hold difference in no esteem, see others as
pests, and enrich your self at the worlds expense.
Lets assume you are open to your subjects. You
are a just ruler. You look in the mirror, and judge your
self in their terms staring back, either open to their
situations (o/o) or taking their terms as definitive of your
own (c/o). You champion difference, encourage
independence and self-sufficiency, see others as
sources of wisdom and ensure the security of the future
even at the expense of your own passing popularity.
Whatever your mode, you are King. However,
lets presume that being King is not good enough; you
want to look in the mirror and see a Great King. It is said
that great Kings are made in just wars, but this is false.
Great Kings are ready to die for a just cause, but there is
no justice in war. War is tragedy. There is no justice in
tragedy. Injustice is tragedy.
For a Great King, who looks in his mirror and
sees his countless subjects staring back, the question,
how should I rule? becomes: What situation should I
put them, my subjects, in? Answer: none I would not
seek as my own. Thus, there is no Greatness in
tyranny, and less so in paternalist imperialism.
How do I arrive at this conclusion? Lets return to
the bathtub experiment from section 9 for some insights.
The basic idea underlying the bathtub experiment is as
follows. In the bath, all the tensions of the world slip
away. This is a state of rest. This is where we begin.
This state serves as a baseline for what it is to be ones
own self at rest, without felt attachments to worldly
objects pulling at ones self, without tensions imposed by
unmet needs, without obligations and anticipations
334
looming, without anything forcing ones hand in action.
From this baseline, the bather may begin to reconstitute
the tensions attached to one object at a time. In this
way, he may begin to understand his situation in the
world outside the bathtub, identify ties which cause
tensions, isolate obligations and anticipations which
force his hand in everyday action.
Once inventories are done, and various situations
are felt out, with objects and their related tensions
determined, these situations can be compared. One can
compare the situation, at rest, with other more tense
situations. Then, one may return to the baseline at rest
in the tub, and consider another. This is leisurely self-
reflection, confined only by the waves as they lap
against the de-terminations of the space of the tub. In
the bathtub experiment, one searches the space of his
life for opportunities, and discovers situations which he
might pursue when he leaves the bathtub experiment.
This is the power of the bathtub experiment. It is
a tool for self-determination. One may think of a thing,
and feel the tensions rise, and note those things to which
these may themselves be tied. Then, one may sink
again, into the tub, and let go of the tensions again.
From this bathtub baseline, one may pull up another and
another object for inventory, and feel out what it is to be
in any given situation. The power of the bathtub
experiment is that it is one way to develop a conscience,
and the best I can think of to do so on purpose.
487
Through its exercise, an exercise of leisure, there opens
a window on what it is to be in other situations than that
in which one finds himself.

487
The bathtub experiment was designed to provide a moral gymnasium of
sorts. I would call it The Socratorium.
335
Imagine that you are the King, in the Kings bath.
Imagine that there are others, each situated in his own
tub. Imagine being open to the situations of these
others. Imagine being in their bathtubs, all together.
Each have states of rest and tensions which pull at
them. Few have access to your own complete
relaxation. Each have needs which remain unmet.
Imagine being in their situations. Their situations are
tense, some without possibility for rest. Open to these
situations as if all of these tensions are yours. Imagine
that their every need must be met as if your own.
488

This, Great King, presents us with yet another
irony, and the last which I will leave for your
consideration. Though the King has freedom to do what
he wishes, the Great King has none. In opening to the
needs of his subjects, the Great King becomes a slave.
Their needs become his own. Thus, his ends are not his
freedom to choose, but their ends. He goes where he
must for the sake of others. This seems not a powerful
position, at all, but, in a Democracy, it is already your
own.
Still, there is a practical problem. There are
simply so many diverse needs, so much information to
consider, where does one begin?
Here is my advice to you, Great King. First, begin
in the bath. Develop your conscience when you have
leisure, opportunity, to do so. From conscience, the rest
will follow. Conscience is the intrinsic good for the just
man. It is his most sacred property, just as material
wealth is the good for the corrupt.

488
In the o/o mode, habitually, one develops a conscience, or library of
indirect and direct experience which makes this move more and more
possible.
336
Next, reflect in your bath over the terms that all
share in common. We have seen these unfold in the
passages preceding. All are bound by birth, and death:
everyone in every situation is dying, and everyone
wishes to live a meaningful life in the space of life
between. Everyone wants to become someone to
revere, and everyone avoids becoming that person who
is an object of disgust. Everyone must be loved.
Everyone must have basic needs met in order for any of
this to happen. Reflect on the following terms, and if you
cannot, then put your self in a position where you must,
or open your heart to another who can. Angst, anxiety,
fear, dread, reverence, disgust, wisdom, opportunity,
justice, fairness, the law, the good, the right time, the
right place, the right thing to do.
You are not alone. Your situation is shared. We
are all born into an ongoing story not of our own
determination. We are all born into an ongoing world
history. We must discover, make new determinations.
We must carve the space of opportunity, and chain
ourselves to these ends. We must forge a better world,
a just world, a world worth living in, and we must do so
together. For the wise, the history of the world is indeed
one world history shared. Lets make it a good one.
In the next section, we will look more closely at
the history of the world into which we are born. We will
come to this world anew, as if for the first time. Our
future will start there.
First, lets look at what it is to become someone
new. Lets see what it takes to become a Great King
through a self-change, a conversion of our own making.
Lets look inside the heart of a hero.
In prior sections, I laid out a process, the beating
heart of conscience. The beating heart of conscience is
337
the cycle undertaken by the conscientious person as he
lives, moment to moment, in pursuit of wisdom, in order
to become that person up ahead he wishes to become,
the just man, the man worthy of reverence. The
question now becomes, how does this process permit
the kind of change necessary for any ordinary person to
become a Great King, a leader amongst leaders who
makes history, changes the world for the better, and
takes us all along with him toward a just world?
The fact is that Great Kings are not made in war,
but some start out there. Lets take up this example, as,
after all, this is a time of war, the so-called war on
terror.
489
Put your self in this position. You value justice
and fairness. You are strong, and healthy, and
successful. Your fellows, friends, and countrymen are
attacked. You are told that the agents responsible for
the attack are to be pursued to all ends of the Earth.
But, this effort needs help. This effort needs strong,
healthy, successful men to seek justice and fairness, to
show courage in the face of danger, to risk their lives

489
At the risk of detracting from the point at hand, let us examine this
phrase, war on terror. It is meaningless. After all, war is terror.
Therefore, war on terror really means terror on terror, and this describes
our current situation much better than does the original as, for there to be a
war, there must be nations in conflict with one another. Yet, today, what
we see is the same nation, or the same handful of government/industrial
interests, arming all sides, financing all sides, and encouraging all sides to
conflict. They do so by causing terror, and this motivates reactionary
violence, which they then call war, and by way of this reasoning recruit the
wealth of nations to further terrorize, to further react, and thus to further the
cause of war for their own enrichment- in perpetuity. The only answer, I
believe, to terror on terror is war on war, and this is to turn the other
cheek, to carry him twice as far, to live and let live. This is o/o, rather than
c/c. This is love.
338
and to do what is necessary. You are just the man for
the job.
Lets put some more color on the face in this
mirror of our moral reflection. You are a famous
sportsman. You have a high profile. You have
succeeded by doing the right things. You are an
inspiration for others to do the same. You understand
that. You are capable, wise, and seek to become that
man ahead worthy of reverence. You are a leader.
There is injustice in the world. This injustice must
be corrected. Now is the time to act. If you do as you
always have, you will become very wealthy. You will
have stitched your self into the world of your own
making, and you will have deserved it. You are, at this
point, c/c.
Instead, you join the Army, and become a special
operative in search of the bad actors who you are told
were responsible for the injustice.
At this stage, you have a set of determinations
which have shaped the space of your life, thus far. You
value these terms. These are justice, freedom, liberty,
fairness, respect for human life, opportunity to seek
ones highest potentials. These are the de-terminations
of your own situation, and so far life has been good.
Others, who you feel shared this set of determinations,
have been hurt, murdered. Here, you are o/c, feeling as-
if others, understood in your own terms, terms you take
to be common. Here, you are at the beginning of the
cycle that is the beating heart of conscience. There has
been injustice and, here, you set out to do something
about it.
You go to the field. You are deployed in a tragic
environment. The situation is bad for everyone in
common. Peoples needs are not being met. You are
339
confronted with much suffering. You are sent on
missions to seek out and discover perpetrators of
injustice, but all you find are desperate people, poor
people without opportunity. They are of a different
religion. You study their religious texts to better
understand the situation. You are sent to kill these
people, to maim these people, to further their suffering.
This is not the man you set out to become. This is
disgusting.
You are a just man, and your heart remains open.
You have a conscience, you have the courage to have a
conscience, and you have the courage to look in the
mirror. You had not set out to create injustice, to cause
suffering, you had set out to correct it. This is not what
is happening. Both you and your enemy share a tragic
situation. You are now o/o.
But, you are confused. You had valued the terms
by which you had lived your life. You still do, but it is
these values that brought you to this situation. You have
been misled. This is not the situation you were told to
expect. Your terms are not being met. They have been
inverted. How are you to reconcile the situation in which
you discover your self, now, with that situation which you
intended?
You seek the help of a wise man, a scholar. He is
an expert in the fluctuating determinations of turbulent
times. He is famous for understanding the use of
language, as propaganda, to shape the intentions of
the less powerful to do as the more powerful wish. He
understands how you could have been misled to serve
the powerful interests, and to do the wrong thing. You
are now c/o, seeking determinations of that situation
which you now know is yours, and shared. Your object
340
is still to become a man worthy of reverence, and you
are on your way.
Coming to terms with this shared situation, you
discover the truth. You had been misled, a victim of bad
information and even worse leadership. They lied.
There was no need to pursue those responsible for the
injustice to the far ends of the Earth. They were right
there at home.
You now understand that those responsible for
the injustice were not those whom you had been sent to
kill, and to maim, at all. They are the wealthy, the elite,
the media moguls, industrialists, arms dealers, the
politicians and pretenders to special information. They
do not share your values. They stand against them.
And they sent you to a desert to die.
Now, you are angry. You are again ready to act.
You are c/c. And the cycle will repeat itself, so long as
the love of wisdom and justice beats in your heart.
490


490
And it is in the murders of heroes like these that we are forced to see the
corruption at work in our own City. If the people of Athens are to see that
her laws are unjust, they must see that these laws lead to injustice. For
context, recall the passages concerning the execution of Socrates, in the
Forward, and this one quoted in chapter 13. Of course, this example is
based on Pat Tillman, likely victim of political assassination.
341
16. Conscience, and the Constitution
When an individual wishes to stand in
opposition to authority, he does best to find
support for his position from others in his
group. The mutual support provided by
men for each other is the strongest bulwark
we have against the excesses of authority.
-- Stanley Milgram
491
This war is so fucking illegal.
-- Pat Tillman
492
However two of them died while being
attended to by the doctor; the third
recovered.
-- Life of Flavius Josephus
493
Protections for conscientious objectors and civil
disobedients from state persecution was foremost in the
minds of the framers of our Constitution. The freedom to
act according to one's conscience was their fundamental
natural right, the protection of which defined their project,
resulting in the founding principles of our contemporary
United States of America.
Freedom of conscience goes much further than
tolerance of religion, private or institutionalized. The
freedom that these founding fathers had in mind was
freedom to act, in the everyday public way, according to
ones conscience whether that action was endorsed by

491
http://www.stanleymilgram.com/quotes.php
492
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070326_defending_pat_tillman/
493
Section 75
342
some other authority, current, ancient, worldly,
otherworldly, or not. The freedom that these men had in
mind was freedom for each person to do what he
thought was right when he thought it was the right time
to do it, up to and including armed revolution.
494
What
we must tolerate, then, as citizens bound in common by
their Constitution, is all that this involves, including
conscientious objectors and civil disobedients, and
including armed deposition of illegitimate executives.
Acting according to the dictates of conscience
was not considered by the founding fathers to be the
same as acting according to institutionalized religion.
God does not depose tyrants. Men do. Freedom of
conscience was not, and is not, the same thing as
freedom of religion as this is commonly understood.
Religion, for the framers of the U.S. Constitution, was a
shared way of life stabilized in the face of the natural
world, not the political world. It was not understood to
be, primarily, a set of rigid, abstract principles instituted
after the fact in artificial environs. Protected freedoms of
religion, thus, have nothing to do with public pavement of
the road to heaven. It has to do with freedom to live
what one determines to be the right way of life here on
Earth. All of this requires explanation. Lets begin with a
contemporary world example.
How is religion related with conscience in the free
man, and how does the protection of the one seem to
follow from the other? It is common in other sciences,
as in the biological sciences, when there is some

494
This is what the 2
nd
Amendment is really for, a these men knew that
freedoms greatest threat is ones own government grown too selfish.
Socrates understood this, too: injustice of state occurs when wants exceed
capacities to provide. We are by law empowered to resist bad government.
343
question as to the inner workings of some critter or
other, to find a suitable specimen and dissect it. What
we need now is a specimen for analyses to help us sort
these things out. Preferably, we need a neutral third
party on which to practice before we bring our tools
home, again, just in case the knife slips.
Here is how an American man understands a
British man, for example. On March 4
th
, 2006, the New
York Times headlines read Blair Invokes God in
Decision to Send British Troops to Iraq. This headline
is misleading. It rests in confusion between conscience
and religion, as if these are inseparable. This looks like
a good place to start cutting.
How have these issues grown so entangled? In
the body of the story, it becomes evident that Tony Blair
cites conscience, not God, or the stripe of his particular
religious affliction, as the final arbiter in decisions like the
invasion and continued occupation of Iraq:
This is not just a matter of a policy here or
a thing there, but of their lives and in some
case their death... The only way you can
make a decision like that is to try to do the
right thing, according to your conscience,
and for the rest of it you leave it to the
judgment that history will make.
495
The interviewer, Michael Parkinson, incurred: So
will you pray to God when you make a decision like

495
"In the interview on the widely followed "Parkinson" show, Mr. Blair was
asked about sending troops to Iraq, ITV said." New York Times, March 4,
2006. Online at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/international/europe/04blair.html It
should be noted that the same author, Ed Gomez, is responsible for the
critical spin on this talk in multiple publications.
344
that? To this, contrary to the headline allusion, Blair
again deferred to conscience:
Well, I dont want to get into something like
that. Of course, you struggle with your own
conscience about it because peoples lives
are affected and its one of these situations
that I suppose very few people ever find
themselves in. In the end, you do what
you think is the right thing.
Where is the confusion? Blair seems clear,
enough. Conscience is conscience; religion, God,
prayer is something else. In the end, you do what you
think is the right thing. So, he sent British soldiers to kill
and to die. Blair speaks as if God had nothing to do with
it, at all. Time to cut a little deeper.
Religion is a politically charged topic, especially in
the context of the above cited interview. Blair is a deeply
religious man, by profession a Christian. Blair had
endorsed, or by his account his conscience had
endorsed, and through the power of his office supported
the invasion of otherwise peaceful, sovereign, primarily
Muslim (non-Christian) nations.
496
So, it is not surprising
that the interviewer would see an institutional religiosity
beneath Blairs testimony.
497
Blair is a professed Christian; this is true. But,
digging deeper, we can see that his appeal to
conscience is not exclusive to persons of his faith, alone.

496
Along with another world leader, a self-proclaimed evangelical who
introduced such action with the term crusade.
497
Especially since it has been common knowledge for so long that the
ostensible reasoning, that these were in fact not peaceful peoples, that they
had weapons of mass destruction and so forth, were direct fabrications.
Lies. Fabrications for personal profit.
345
Perhaps Blair described the situation in terms of
conscience, rather than religious precept, in order to
appeal to a broader audience?
After all, conscience is universal where religious
stripes are not. It is common sense that all persons, no
matter their religious stripe, are conscientious to a
greater or a lesser degree. Perhaps Blair was revealing
something of his psychology, the inner workings of his
mind and heart, in invoking conscience rather than
religion?
While most persons have a different sense of
what constitutes religion, or what form a god takes,
everyone has a conscience. In the context of a
contested occupation, polarized along religious lines,
Blairs appeal to conscience was politically safe. He
focused on his own responsibility for hundreds of
thousands of deaths of persons who just happen,
coincidentally, to be of a different religious stripe than
he. On Blairs testimony, there is nothing religious
about it; it all comes down to conscience.
This all seems to hold up to cursory inspection.
Blairs testimony reflects the intensions underwriting the
U.S. Constitution as well. The separation of the colonies
from the British Empire had nothing to do with religion,
either, right? It was a matter of conscience. Perhaps
the freedom of conscience is universal to all States who
resist the tyranny of empire? That is a bloody good
question! Lets send it to the lab for further analysis. On
the table before us, there is yet a lot of overgrown issue
to cut away.
In citing conscience, is Blair simply covering for
action actually undertaken on the basis of religious
precept? What is a conscience, anyways? Is it not the
voice of God in ones own inner ear? Is conscience
346
merely a code word for my religion? Was Blairs
conscience simply telling him to go to war against the
Muslims in order to prove, once and for all, that his God
is bigger than their God? Was the interviewer onto
something, and Blair simply dodgy?
For that matter, what is religion, anyways?
Religion is one of those words everyone throws around
as if they know what they are talking about but, when it
comes down to it, just what are they talking about?
The contemporary common sense of the term is
that religion applies mainly to supernatural prejudices
which are often inherited. This meaning can be traced to
the 16
th
century: recognition of, obedience to, and
worship of a higher, unseen power.
498
Likewise,
religious means relating to or manifesting faithful
devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity.
499
Religion is a way of life with some real world as its end,
whether this is God or some other reality.
This form of the term also has a past, however.
Religion derives this 16
th
century meaning from of a
few older Latin roots. These are religio, respect for
what is sacred, reverence for the gods; relegare, go
through again, read again; or, most universally,
religare, to bind fast. Religion, according to all of this
taken together, is a way of life undertaken in terms held
sacred, maintained through repetition, and toward an
ultimate reality.
This is not a casual relationship. This ultimate
reality is that to which one is bound, in both senses of
the term bound. That is, in one sense, it is the world to

498
All of this comes by way of one of my favorite online resources:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=religion&searchmode=none
499
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/religious
347
which one is tied or yoked, and in another that to
which he is headed or traveling. In the religious life,
the world to which one is bound is the real world, the one
that matters. It is in terms of this real world that
everyday actions are evaluated, whether this be God or
some other ultimate end. This brings us back to
conscience. And Tony Blair.
Before we get to Blairs dissection, lets consider
two very basic religious positions, theism and atheism,
and see if our recipe for religion holds water. It will pay
to know this carrot when we see it, so to speak;
otherwise we may keep on with the cutting forever.
On this recipe, the atheist, as well as his
antithesis, the theist, is faithfully devoted to an ultimate
reality. Either live, repetitively, in its terms. For the
theist, the ultimate reality is god. For the atheist, the
ultimate reality is merely the contrary. The atheists
ultimate reality, insofar as it is determined by his
atheism, is simply that there is no god. Thats as far as
the atheist goes; the reality is that gods existence must
be denied. But, it is a reality to which he is no less
tightly bound than is the theist.
In fact, it is an ultimate reality to which the theist
and the atheist are bound in common. The first party
says God exists, the second party says no, and the
two trade advances, faithfully repeating themselves in
terms of their contrary ultimatums, in an historical
discourse which brings us to the doorstep of opportunity
on which we stand, today. Like two sides of the same
coin, they are inseparable, beginning and end. They cut
from the same mold, and deposit in the same slot.
So far, so good; a carrot is a carrot. We see what
religion is, and that it suits any way of life lived in terms
of an ultimate reality, whether that be God or
348
godlessness. Now, where does conscience enter the
picture? We need another specimen for analysis.
In a section entitled Conscience is the
Representative of God from a text entitled On
Education, Immanuel Kant affirms for our examination a
critical relationship between religion and conscience:
The reproaches of conscience would be
without effect, if we did not regard it as the
representative of God, who, while He has
raised up a tribunal over us, has also
established a judgment-seat within us.
500
Kant points to conscience as a judgment seat.
Now, Kant was a Christian. He believed in God. From
the perspective of Kants religion, then, conscience
judges in terms of the ultimate reality that is God.
What of the determinations of other religious
afflictions? With our recipe for religion in mind,
regardless of religious particularity, whether one believes
in a Christian God, any other God, or none at all,
conscience remains the seat of judgment for the
evaluation of everyday action.
501
Its evaluations proceed
in terms of the ultimate reality, whatever one takes that
to be.
So far, so good. Blairs testimony seems to line
up with these results. Tests are coming back normal.

500
Kant, On Education, section 106, page 45.
501
Remember Socrates picture of the plane of justice after death and you
will see where I am going. Consider a distinction between accounts as
linear and only requiring two points of view and explanations as putting all
things together on a plane, requiring 3 points. One can account in terms of
ones self and god or not-god, and can explain in terms of either pair plus
conscience. See Helmholtzs Facts of Perception for a practical example of
this proposal in terms of scientific explanations. There is too much to
develop fully, here, but note the short fiction Flatlanders.
349
But, is this all there is to the relationship between
conscience and religion?
Not according to Immanuel Kant. Conscience, as
the seat of judgment over action, evaluates the everyday
in terms of the ultimate, and guides the way of life, the
religious life, in between. In other words, conscience
mediates religious observation. Rather than the
religious life being one of mere repetition, conscience
reforms religion. This is, in fact, the most crucial relation
between conscience and religion. Conscience is
freedom, God-given or otherwise, to live the way one
sees fit.
The foundation of the truly religious life in freedom
of conscience is missed, by most people, most of the
time, and this is nothing new. Kant writes:
Religion without moral conscientiousness
is a service of superstition. People will
serve God by praising Him and
reverencing His power and wisdom,
without thinking how to fulfil the divine law;
nay, even without knowing and searching
out His power, wisdom, and so on. These
hymnsingings are an opiate for the
conscience of such people, and a pillow
upon which it may quietly slumber.
502

502
Kant, On Education, section 106, page 45. As an interesting aside, Karl
Marx is often quoted as having said that religion is the opiate of the
masses. This is often enough represented as a dispersion on the normal
everyday person held in the sway of religious ideologies which in effect
enslave the poor critter, likely for the benefit of some selfish tyrant. In fact
this is not at all what Marx wrote. Marx, criticizing Hegels Philosophy of
Right, intended that religion is a set of ideas offering the calming space of
fantasy for the oppressed and the poor. Marx feels for these people; he is
not to be maligning them. All sick and suffering critters seek solace in some
substance, pharmaceutical or otherwise. His original text goes: Religion is
350
And here is the critical point. Freedom of
conscience is freedom to discover what are the terms of
that ultimate reality by which one will live out his life, and
plot his life story. Contrary to the religious life of mere
repetition, the conscientious life is not fixed to some
ultimate reality without question. Conscientious, one
searches out the ultimate reality, feels out the space of
it, and comes to terms with it. Conscientious, one does
this over and over again. Discovery, inquiry, self-
determination; this is the only repetition exercised in the
truly religious life.
Conscience disciplines religion. Religion,
disciplined by conscience, is dynamic, and not a static
thing to be inherited and passed along without question.
Religion, reformed by conscience, is a process and not a
rule or formula per se. Without the confirmation of
conscience in religious observation, no matter the flavor
or face, there is no real religion, at all.
Conscientiousness is the properly religious way of life.
By this analysis, religion comes in two forms:
good and bad. The basic distinction between theism
and atheism is no longer important. The basic religious
distinction becomes that way of life motivated
conscientiously, and that not. The former is effectively
religious only because of the conscience; the latter is not
effective for its lack. One good, the other a mere servant
to superstition.
Following Kant, religion pursued vacuously is not
the source of some moral disease; it is merely a

the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it
is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. It is
Kants formula, above.
351
symptom. Vacuous religion is an addictive substance,
an opiate, used to cover over the source of pain which is
the characteristic mark of disease. God, so to speak, is
in your heart, or god is not at all. He is not in some
book, or some other mans heart. He is not even in this
one.
This is not to say that if god is not in your heart,
then you are morally diseased. It is merely to say that if
you maintain that there is some ultimate reality, a god
who made you free, and that god is not in your heart, if
your heart is not free, then you are morally diseased.
The problem with bad religion isnt one of whose God is
bigger than whose God, or whose old religious or new
scientific story is closer to this set of facts or that. It is a
problem of heartlessness. There are a lot of god-fearing
scientific bigots out there. Better godless than without
conscience, better with God than servant to scientific
superstition. 1s and 0s are not the terms of a free man.
The healthy life happens in the middle.
Self-determination of that world toward which we
would ultimately live is our fundamental freedom. The
last step we take in this climb is the world we leave
behind. Responsibility for this world is our fundamental
source of pain. It changes, but we are free to come to
terms with this change. We are free to change our
plans, recast our projects, and reform our religions.
Moral disease is the abdication of this freedom. The
morally diseased is the coward of dogma before this
truth, with God or without. Either way. The freedom is
of conscience, and the religion of the free man the
courageous exercise thereof. This is not supposed to be
352
easy, for as we said, men are called courageous for
enduring painful things.
503
What does this tell us about Tony Blair? He is
right to follow his conscience. He is right to cite
conscience rather than religion, for, as we have seen,
his conscience determines his religion, and not the other
way around. He is right to suggest that future historians
will discover whether or not he has done the right thing
in sending soldiers to occupy the Middle East. After all,
it will be those future persons who will live in terms of the
world he leaves behind. He merely must have faith that
theirs will be a world worth living in, left over on the basis
of his own political actions.
Is he morally diseased? Apparently not; but that
doesnt mean he is a good leader.
504
Even a man with a
healthy conscience will do the wrong thing on the basis
of bad information. Doing the right thing is never easy.
As we have seen in prior sections, doing the right thing
is often doing the impossible, and being a good leader is
doing that first of all. Has he suffered to do the right
thing? Is he courageous enough to do the impossible?
Did he discover the truth, and act on false pretenses,
anyways? In the end, this evaluation may also be up to
history; for now, it is between he and his God. Time to
stitch Mr. Blair back into his world; and, armed with our
newfound tools of understanding, return home to ours.
With the relationship between conscience and
religion initially clear, lets return to the role of
conscience under constitutional law. The founding

503
Aritstotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 9-2.
504
With a bit more information, however, like his administrations
manipulation of intelligence regarding the lawful arrest of British sailors sent
as bait into Iranian waters in order to manufacture a context for war, this
diagnosis will change. Blair is likely a very sick man.
353
fathers of the United States of America shared our
convictions regarding conscience and religion. This will
fall out of the discussion to follow.
First things first, American democracy has no
necessary connection with contemporary Christianity.
No particular religion is protected under the freedoms
constitutionally guaranteed to citizens of our American
democracy. Particular religious institutions, largely
Christian in stripe, were influential on the framers of our
nations founding documents, this much is true. The
point I would like to emphasize is that this influence was
largely negative:
Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great
ignorance and all of which facilitates the
execution of mischievous projects.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates
the mind and unfits it for every noble
enterprise, every expanded project.
505
Granted that the Constitution of the United States
qualifies as an expanded project, the positive role for
any particular religion in the foundation of U.S. law is
clear. There is none. Individual dogmas, those of
Christians included, were individually negated:
Where the preamble declares, that
coercion is a departure from the plan of the
holy author of our religion, an amendment
was proposed by inserting Jesus Christ,
so that it would read A departure from the
plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our

505
James Madison, letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774; from Edwin S.
Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 37.
354
religion; the insertion was rejected by the
great majority, in proof that they meant to
comprehend, within the mantle of its
protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the
Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu
and Infidel of every denomination.
506
Note that we are not merely concerned with a
hold-out here or there. We are talking about the great
majority of those first composing, then ratifying, The
Constitution of the United States of America. The
umbrella of freedom that these men were casting was so
great as to encompass all the various faces of religiosity.
This is why there could be no singular appeal to some
particular religion in their designs.
Many of the most prominent founders themselves,
in fact, were decidedly not Christian. This does not
mean they were atheists. This also, emphatically, does
not mean that they rejected Christ. Yet, they
emphatically rejected Christian doctrine. George
Washington is reputed to have barely tolerated the
dogma, let alone its practitioners, and Jefferson was
understood to be a Deist, a believer in the underlying
rationality of the natural order.
507
Madison did work to
secure the freedom of some Christians to publicly ply
their faith after having affected the ire of their local
authorities, but this had less to do with that particular
form of religiosity than his primary concern, to preserve

506
Thomas Jefferson in his Autobiography, 1821; from Thomas Jefferson:
Writings, New York: Library of America, 1984, p. 40. Then, why are so
many of these men now in prison for no other apparent reason than their
religion?
507
A preoccupation shared by the wisest of men throughout the ages and
throughout the cultures of the world.
355
the freedom to express in speech as well as in action
according to his conscience even as one discovers what
is right and wrong along the way. There is no freedom
without freedom to err, no becoming right without having
been wrong.
John Adams, for one, was distraught with the
tendency of religious doctrine to discourage such free
expression and discovery. These doctrines pretended to
know what is right and wrong for every man at every
time and place, as if there were no more to understand
of the world than that which they had to tell of it. Adams
was especially worried about the tendencies of some
religious doctrines to delay considerations of justice until
after life, instead of living for the discovery of a just order
in the here and now. Such a presumption is obviously
contrary to the adequate determination of such an
expanded project as was the U.S. Constitution!
In the following passage, Adams rejects the
metaphysical presumption underlying this attitude, that
there is something like a heaven and a hell in which
justice, not secured on Earth, is served:
Now, my friend, can Prophecies, or
miracles convince You, or Me, that infinite
Benevolence, Wisdom and Power, created
and preserves, for a time, innumerable
millions to make them miserable, forever;
for his own Glory? Wretch! What is the
Glory? Is he ambitious? does he want
promotion? Is he vain? Tickled with
Adulation? Exulting and triumphing in his
Power and Sweetness of his Vengeance?
Pardon me, my Maker, for these aweful
356
questions. My answer to them is always
ready: I believe no such Things.
508
The framers of the Constitution refused to
endorse a life lived in servitude to superstition. Taking
Adams perspective, we can see that such presumptions
were contrary to his every effort. Where they stood in for
a just life in a just world, they were vehemently rejected.
Adams meant to ensure that the groundwork for the
current society would provide for, on its own, a just one
in this world. Thus, there is no wonder why he was so
hostile to contrary religious determinations. Adams felt
that a just world is created only by men free to do what is
right. Free men make history; servants to dogma do not.
Lets recast Adams sentiment. Left to dogma,
history stops, and there is no freedom in that. For
anyone interested in living for justice in the natural world,
as were these men, any thought that all of the universe
should be established merely so that the unjust should
be perpetually punished or rewarded and only after the
fact! is more than contrary to any conception of a just
and free society of equals here on Earth. It is absurd.
Metaphysical presumptions in an eternal prison
and penance-keeper short-circuit the very mechanism
that makes democracy work, if it can be made to work at
all. They are, thus, simply not terms to be endorsed in
the Constitution. The promise of a democracy is that it is
a nation of leaders. If we agree with Adams and
Jefferson, and choose to live in terms of a democracy,
then injustice is nothing to be put aside and left to some

508
John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Sept. 14, 1 813; from The
Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence, Chapel Hill and
London: University of North Carolina Press, 1987, pp. 373-374.
357
higher power on the vacuity of an after-life. With these
men, injustice is simply a call to action. Injustice is
simply a call for good leadership. In the presence of
injustice, something must be done. Injustice must be
corrected, not meditated over, and on ones own watch,
not that of some infernal penance keeper. Otherwise,
there is no freedom, and no democracy; there is only the
clockwork servitude to superstition:
History I believe furnishes no example of a
priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil
government. This marks the lowest grade
of ignorance, of which their political as well
as religious leaders will always avail
themselves for their own purpose.
509
It is this sentiment which grounded the push to
keep the reigns of government - not necessarily out of
the hands of people who believe in god(s) - but from the
hands of anyone with an otherworldly approach to
justice. Injustice happens in the here and now, in terms
of the natural world. Lives are stolen, lives are ruined,
lives are lost, real lives in the here and now.
All that injustice signifies is that anyone with the
capacity to rectify an unjust situation has failed to do so.
God need not enter this picture. All that it means is that
those for whom justice is a responsibility are not doing
what is necessary on Earth, in life, to ensure it.
Encouraging free people to do so was the responsibility

509
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Spafford in 1814; from George
Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press,
1983, p. 371. For remarks on the contemporary collusion between leaders
of industry and leaders of religion, see the the Forward and the Introduction.
358
of civil governance on the scheme of the Constitution.
This is where our leadership is supposed to come in.
Look around. See injustice? See political as well
as religious leaders availing themselves for their own
purposes? The uncomfortable conclusion is simply this:
someone is not doing his job.
510
Leaving it to god, or to
the governor, isnt going to help matters. This is what
has got us here in the first place.
Here is where conscience comes in. Conscience
is what grounds the freedom to lead, to become a
leader, and that is the necessary role of every citizen in
any healthy democratic society. The democratic person
does not serve some superstition before his fellows.
Disputes between contrary ways of life require a
conscientious appraisal between conscientious equals.
To love ones neighbor as himself is, after all, an affair of
the heart. Thus, on Madisons account, good democratic
government, per our own Constitution, must provide for
the free exercise thereof, and not interfere:
The settled opinion here is that religion is
essentially distinct from Civil Government
and exempt from its cognizance; that a
connection between them is injurious to
both; that there are causes in the human
breast, which insure the perpetuity of
religion without the aid of law; that rival
sects, with equal rights, exercise mutual
censorships in favor of good morals; that if
new sects arise with absurd opinions or
overheated imaginations, the proper

510
In my mind, this is the failure of Philosophy.
359
remedies lie in time, forbearance and
example....
511
Remedy contrary claims, however absurd, with
forbearance and example. This is an especially timely
message. Why is it so timely? Because we may be
running out of time; forbearance and good example have
been ignored as options by current leadership, despots
and warmongers. Even Christ met absurdity with force.
Even Christ got angry at the end; but, we will take up his
example in a moment.
Consider the recent text by neuroscientist Sam
Harris, The End of Faith. In this popular book from
2005, Harris argues that the promotion of religion
imposes deep strains between different persons of
different religious professions. Harris argues that
religious doctrines are essentially exclusive, that is they
are intolerant of different ways of life, because each
takes its own explanations to be those of the ultimate
reality, and others to be simply false. This makes
conversation and compromise impossible, so conflict
inevitable leads to violence. Harris argues that religion
is responsible for most historical warfare, as it is
responsible for most warfare on earth, today. So,
religion, on his estimation, must be discouraged.
512

511
James Madison, in a letter to Edward Everett: March 19, 1823; from
Jack N. Rakove, ed., James Madison: Writings, New York: Library of
America, 1999, p. 796.
512
As covered in the Forward, Harris has an affinity for Buddhism as its
practice leads to the opposite of intolerance. I cannot endorse this form for
political agency, but I see its usefulness in the context of allaying tensions.
Especially in the West, persons may find it effective for reduction of their
material expectations, and at least overconsumption. And this would
reduce pressures internationally, and warring. But, in the positive direction,
360
Harris puts forward a certain timely dilemma.
Either there is conversation, or there is violence. On his
count, the causes of violence are the rigidly held beliefs
in some end exclusive of others and for which there is no
determination open to common observation, only
dogmatic faith. Because there are no common
determinations, no tolerance for other ends, or faiths,
there is nothing to talk about. There is only institutional
bias. This bias becomes prejudice, prejudice becomes
corruption, and corruption closes avenues to political
influence. Contrary determinations of ends, even those
grounded in faith, are barred access to the opportunity
that is political influence. The promise that is democracy
is short-circuited by self-serving priest-ridden politicos.
Needless to say, the resulting inequity, injustice, and
elitist insularity gets in the way of conversation.
513
So,
the solution on the table is the end of faith.
But, faith may also be the place to start.
Conversation must begin somewhere. If what one has is

I think we need more; to become tied to the right things, not simply untied to
the wrong.
513
And denies the legitimacy of its governance. For those familiar, Jurgen
Habermas has explicitly tied the porosity of a political power structure to the
legitimacy of that structure. According to Habermas program, the
legitimate structure takes the form of an ideal democracy. It is on the basis
of a system so legitimized that he pins his hopes for a peaceful world order.
But, even his program presumes the possibility of a world-wide
conversation, whose arenas are open to the influences of the periphery.
To this end, in order to overcome all the difficulties which I shall not here
review, J.N. Mohanty recommends: You can ... save the idea of an
ongoing conversation by making it minimally structured, in which case you
approximate to the Habermas-Apel notion of an ideally communicating
society as the transcendental foundation. (Mohanty, page 97). This very
text is presented as a formula for the satisfaction of Mohantys
recommendation: the minimal structure is the open mode of conscience as
detailed in the ACTWith model. Legitimate democracy is in your heart, or it
is not at all.
361
a religious tradition to begin with, conversation must, at
least preliminarily, begin with this. The faithful have to
be able to talk about their faiths. Of course, this requires
tolerance from all sides of discourse. The faithful must
be willing to forbear and to show good example, and not
resort to violence.
514
Government, on this picture, must
provide the space for this discourse, and discourage the
use of violence to shape its ends. Government must not
determine its content. That would be un-
Constitutional.
515
This picture gels with Jeffersons. The general
question of religion for Jefferson, and the role of religion
in civil life, is conveniently captured in a written reply to
John Adams worries as represented, above. Adams
had famously written this would be the best of all
possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. Jefferson
saw a role for religion, if understood in a certain way,
differently from the sense of religion as an otherworldly
representative, from superstition, and from Sam Harris.
Jeffersons vision of this sort of religion is not of
an institution separate from the subjective internalization
of examples of right action, and so separate from the
debt of responsibility owed to ones self and ones
fellows. Jefferson sees religion done right in the
Christian example, not in the Christian faith. Religion,
as the repetition of this example, is the exercise of

514
It always stuck me as odd that those faithful in their own eternal reward
in the after-life are the first to kill and the last to die for doing the right thing.
This situation is only aggravated by the neuroleptic that since one good
man was murdered 2000 years ago, it is up to the good Christian to stay
alive at any cost, now.
515
For instance, Bushs prejudicially Christian publicly funded faith based
initiatives are emphatically un-Constitutional.
362
forbearance, and an essential ingredient in a world worth
living in:
if the moral precepts, innate in man, are
made a part of his physical condition, as
necessary for social being, if the sublime
doctrines of philanthropism, and deism
taught us by Jesus of Nazareth in which all
agree, constitute true religion, then without
it, this would be, as you again say,
something not fit to be named, even
indeed a Hell.'

Note that Jefferson encourages the Christian


example as that of a Philosopher and a conscientious
man. Jesus of Nazareth is open to others, philanthropic,
and open to the natural world, deistic. He is not the
absent idol of corrupt warrior-priests. Jesus of Nazareth
exemplifies a way of life worth living. Only by following
his lead (and presumably that of others like him) will we
end up in a world worth living in. This is the proper role
of religion, properly understood and executed, as set
forth by the framers of the U.S. Constitution.
With the globe afire in religiously fueled wars over
oil, and Muslim men encamped in concentration without
either charge or evidence besides a different way of life,
a different faith, we can guess what Jefferson and
Adams would call the current situation. I will leave it to
the reader to judge whether or not the current hell is
consistent with their Constitution. There can be no
mystery, however, regarding their opinion on how we got
here. We have failed to lead.
This is where you and I come in. According to
Jeffersons sketch of true religion, above, even the blind
systematic toleration of various religious dogmas does
363
not mean we must give up every particular religious
example, every preeminent conscience. Where these
examples lay largely hidden beneath religious rubric
reinforcing private wealth and power, it is our job, as
citizens in a democracy, to uncover them, and to live
them out. It is not our job to bow to tyrants in priests
clothing.
In fact, quite to the contrary. Conscientious
exemplars demonstrate the sort of active tolerance and
demonstrated forbearance healthy democracy demands
of each of us. Jefferson, himself, saw Jesus Christ
through this lens, not as an artifact of religious dogma,
but as a hero of conscience, and as a leader to be
followed. Constitutionally speaking, living like Christ is
what we are supposed to do.
Christ provides even non-Christians with an
example of doing the right thing in the face of suffering.
There is nothing religious about it.
516517
Jefferson was
so impressed that on multiple occasions he took to
cutting out the sections of various bibles which he
thought represented Christ in his lifetime, as a moral
exemplar, as Philosopher and as a conscientious man.
He dissected these bibles, and separated Christ leader
from Christianity, the corrupt institution which rose from
the world he left behind, and which bears his name in

516
I like your Christ. I do not much like your Christians. -Gandhi.
517
Though, disturbingly enough in these religiously torn times, I have read
some Zionists proclaim that they are glad they killed him. Of course, such
is the attitude of any would-be tyrant in the face of resistance to tyranny.
What is surprising is merely the callousness shown by persons whose great
call to sympathy is that it has been they who have been tortured for their
faith. Of course, this is not so surprising once we realize that such
statements are only symptomatic of a deep-seated moral disease.
364
vain. The resulting collection is known as the Jefferson
Bible.
Though he openly adored Christs example,
wrestling the truth of Christs example from the
institutionalized interpretations thereof was not an easy
task. Jefferson saw Christianity at large as a fairy tale, a
manipulated myth, and viewed the stories about Christ,
himself, simply as reports on the activities of a good
Philosopher, just as his Christian contemporaries viewed
the Greek fables as myths and the stories about
Socrates simply as reports on the activities of a similarly
good Philosopher. Theirs is only the priest-ridden
politics of self-aggrandizement:
The truth is that the greatest enemies to
the doctrines of Jesus are those calling
themselves the expositors of them, who
have perverted them for the structure of a
system of fancy absolutely
incomprehensible, and without any
foundation in his genuine words. And the
day will come when the mystical
generation of Jesus, by the supreme being
as his father in the womb of a Virgin Mary,
will be classed with the fable of the
generation of Minerva in the brain of
Jupiter.
518
Jefferson is especially critical of the absurdities
religious authorities saddle the Christian example, as
there remains in it no longer a comprehensible way of

518
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823; from The
Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence, Chapel Hill and
London: University of North Carolina Press, 1987, p. 594.
365
life for moral avocation. This is important, now, for the
same reason it was important to Jefferson, then. The
examples of conscientious men provide determinations
of lives worth living. Without these examples, there is no
model of life worth living, no lead to follow, and this
short-circuits the proper role of religion in the first place.
The Christian religion goes wrong once men turn
another mans sacrifice, 2000 years ago, into an
institution designed to deny their own worldly
responsibility, now. These are the same men who will
sell pardons to wealthy friends, in the name of Christs
example, for nothing but their own enrichment. This has
nothing to do with Christs injunctions and
demonstrations. In fact, it is contrary to them, and were
he alive today, the men responsible would stand as
Jefferson describes them, Christs greatest enemies.
Lets strip away the varnish of religious absurdity
beginning with Jeffersons reference to Greek
mythology. Minerva is the goddess of justice and
wisdom. Jupiter is the law-giver. One way to de-
mythologize this fable, in contemporary parlance, is to
read it as asserting that the law-giver is consciousness
of justice. To be aware of what is just and what is
unjust, what is right or wrong in any given context, is to
be able to determine to live accordingly. This is to give a
law, to ones self, and to follow it. To live according to a
self-given law, with the courage to discover where it
succeeds and where it fails, results in wisdom.
519
Thus,
from the head, consciousness, of Jupiter the law-giver,
springs Minerva, goddess of wisdom and, most
emphatically, justice.

519
And, for Socrates this is unified virtue.
366
Is consciousness of justice, the ability to think up
laws for ones self, all there is to wisdom and justice?
No. After all, one can make laws and not act on them.
One can consciously break a law, or at least think about
it. Wisdom is not the servant to law, but the product of
its failure. Justice only seems impossible before bad law
is broken. The split skull of the giver of bad law is first
wisdom, then justice. This is the meaning of the fable,
literally or figuratively understood.
No one is free in thought alone. No one becomes
wise without breaking some laws, just as justice is not a
superstition. These are products of freedom, broken
chains to bad law. Even the common sense notion of
freedom is not exhausted by a freedom to make laws
and think about justice. We can do better than that. We
must do better than that. No one ever freed himself, or
anyone else, let alone save the world as a whole, just
sitting around thinking about it. Jefferson was a thinker,
this is true; but he didnt merely declare Independence.
He made it happen.
Jeffersons is an example of a life worth living,
and an example of conscientious leadership worth
following, today. At no time is his message, and his own
regard for the Christian example, more poignant than at
present. Lets look once more at apocalypse, that word
ominous in Christian theology. According to the
Christian myth, apocalypse is the end of the world. It is
that Moment when Christ is supposed to return, marked
by 7 years of war, fiery death, a rift in the Mount of
Olives, the rapture, all that jazz.
Yet, there is nothing about the word apocalypse,
itself, which signifies these things. Apocalypse, again,
comes from 16th century Latin meaning revelation,
disclosure. And, even this late usage has a past;
367
apocalypse is from the Greek, apo- meaning from
and kalyptein meaning to cover, conceal.
Apocalypse, according to its original significance,
merely means to remove from cover or concealment, to
reveal. Not every revelation is of end-timers and global
tragedy! There is no reason why it must be the case
with this one, either. That is, unless one promises to
profit from the resulting destruction As does a priest-
ridden government of war-mongers and weapons
salesmen fat on someone elses natural resources.
Perhaps what we have been waiting for is not the
end of the world in fiery warring death, but the end of the
cover-up which has been the corruption of mythology so
that powerful men can secure for themselves wealth and
fame at the expense of everyone else? Perhaps what
we have been waiting for all this time is not the end of
the natural world in nuclear holocaust on the fields of
Armageddon, but merely the end of their world, the end
of tyranny in the light of the truth of discovery?
After all, discovery is the purpose of all serious
science. Discovery is the characteristic mark of all
traditional Philosophy. Discovery, as in revelation, is the
final object of the Christian religion, so given. Perhaps
what we have been waiting for, all this time, is an update
in these old stories of religion, and of the ways of life
undertaken in their terms? We have seen throughout
this text how conscience enters into this picture, by
empowering each of us to freely self-determine our own
ends regardless of the stories into which we have been
born. Perhaps what we are waiting for, now, is a specific
example? I think all we are waiting for is us.
Reconsider the illustration from the previous
chapters about shellfish and the law of God. Living in a
desert, Nature is cruel. Nature kills. Nature causes
368
suffering, and must be overcome. This is a lesson which
has fed a deep seated prejudice against Nature, and
against each other, a lesson which carries religious
force, the force of generations old habit. Some of these
prejudices are inherited in the form of specific religious
injunctions, like this one.
Living in a desert without refrigeration, shellfish
are deadly. Also, pigs carry disease, etcetera. In this
situation, choosing to bind ones self to these
determinations is prudent. Taken to be the word of God,
it may have appeared that, living long ago in a desert,
under the cruel umbrella of an oppressive natural world,
under the cruel umbrella of tyranny and empire, where
the natural world kills only slightly less harshly than
foreign rulers, the immaterial world, the super-natural
world of words and rules, saves. It may have appeared
that a deity, a God like a human being with a voice
issuing injunctions above those of tyrannical men,
saves.
520
Fair enough; we can understand this religious
stance in terms of its origin. We can even understand its
repetition.
Yet, it is difficult to understand the stance, and its
continued repetition, today. Shellfish are no longer
necessarily deadly; pigs no longer necessarily carry
disease. Nature is not cruel. It is people who are cruel.
Even in a refrigerated world, a world wherein shellfish
are safe, only the lesson from cruelty is remembered, as
if cruelty is necessary. This is a shame. Because
people have been, and continue to be, unnecessarily
cruel.

520
For a brief look into the psychology of the appearance of the face, here,
see the Forward.
369
The situation to which terms we all must now
come, the terms of the judgment that history will certainly
make, is that the world is not a desert. Not everywhere.
Not yet. Though, it will be should the ends of these
religious stories be lived out. It will be if people continue
in their cruelty to one another. Sam Harris is right; we
must call for an end of faith, at least for an end in that
faith which compels men to act, cruelly, heartlessly,
toward our mutually destructive end, in terms of a world
which never, really, was.
Destruction, to my mind, in my heart, is not an
option. The only apocalypse necessary is that which
reveals ways of life suitable to the wisdom of our times,
and that means coming to terms with some very big
mistakes. The only end-times we should be facing are
those which signal the end of old, destructive, habitually
maintained ways of being towards the end of the world.
We have reached the limit of that desperate vision, and
we must come to terms with the changing environment
that is our own understanding.
521
Constitutionally
speaking, as constituents of a democracy, this is what
we are supposed to do. Here is Jeffersons proscription:
We should all then, like the Quakers, live
without an order of priests, moralize for
ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience,

521
And there are few examples to live by on this count, especially in our
current democracy. Consider the following, written by Jason Scorza in
Liberal Citizenship and Civic Friendship: Politics in liberal democracies
has degenerated into the worst conceivable version of Madisonian
pluralism, with citizens divided and conquered by special interests, and
public opinion manufactured by powerful media forces. Ties uniting citizens
as such are practically non-existent, except at the concrete level of the
state, where individuals enjoy the status of taxpayers and clients, and at the
abstract level of nation, where citizens often love there country but not their
countrymen.
370
and say nothing about what no man can
understand, nor therefore believe; for I
suppose belief to be the assent of the mind
to an intelligible proposition.
522
And, I take it that we all can agree, any
proposition to the effect that we act in concert toward our
mutual destruction is not intelligible. It is as senseless
as is the phrase war on terror.
523
Jefferson sounds a lot like Socrates in the second
book of The Republic, here. Socrates also maintained in
this academically neglected early part of Platos classic
that the only just and healthy society is that in which all
of its members are free to become natural Philosophers.
Or, in the terms of Jeffersons times, Quakers. More
radical French sects were called Jacobins. All object to
war, all oppose tyranny, all stand for egalitarian
democracy, and all worked to free slaves, to aid the poor
and sick, and to correct injustice, on this world, in their
own lifetime, and at their own expense! Otherwise, there
is no justice: the point of the rest of The Republic.
With the institutionalized religious presumption
that wisdom comes to naught in the natural world as
mutual ends are predetermined from on high in some
other, there is no justice here on Earth. And, this is
emphatically where the practically wise man loses sight
of religion, and emphatically where the free man loses

522
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 22, 1813; from The
Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence, Chapel Hill and
London: University of North Carolina Press, 1987, p. 368.
523
Again, wars by definition take place between nations, and cause terror.
Here, there is no other nation against which this nation has declared war,
and it is we who are the greatest perpetrators of terror the world around and
getting worse.
371
sight of any religiously given way of life. This is where
Philosophy and religion split. This is where science and
religion split. This is where democracy and tyranny split.
In fact, this is where the American Constitution and the
current administration split. For there to be justice, this
is where the skull of the giver of bad laws splits.
According to our heritage, our government is
established to ensure freedom of religion. Understood in
fundamental terms, what freedom of religion adds up to
is freedom to bind ones self, freedom to determine for
ones self that to which one is bound, and freedom to live
toward that end as he sees fit. What does freedom of
religion add up to, today? If we were to look for an
example of a conscientious man at work in the world,
what would he show us to do, today? What would
heroes of conscience past have done were they with us,
here, today?
One popularization of this question has been:
What Would Jesus Do? If we asked Jefferson, today,
what Jesus would do in the face of apparent global
environmental destruction and an expansive and unjust
American empire, he would undoubtedly cite Christ's
own historic example. He would cite a section from the
documentation of this example, documentation he
understood intimately. And he would show that this
example was protected by the foundations of this
Constitutional democracy, the foundations of this world,
emphatically todays world, our world, because he made
sure of it. He put it there, himself. He would point to the
pillars of his own creation, and to the structure of law
which was to protect the very example we recall when
we ask such a thing as What would Jesus do?
Christ was a conscientious objector against
expanding empire and the cold injustice that is the
372
callous imposition of foreign terms on powerless people.
What would Jesus do? He may tell us to act according
to conscience, and he would show us how.
524

If there is any part of Christ left in the Christian
religion, and if this religion involves the repetition of
Christs way of life held sacred, and if ours is a nation of
persons bound to its principles, led by his example, then
this is, first, a nation of conscience, a nation of leaders,
and only then a nation of justice. Jefferson would likely
answer that this is a fact of law: personal, corporate
525
,
and universal. By design. After all, he made it that way.
Sadly, this fact is hardly recognizable today.
Since Jefferson, the freedom of conscience, especially
to speak and act against the injustices of empire,
oligarchs and tyrants, usury and inequality, has
degraded. Today, the picture of freedom of religion
under the common law is much different. Ties of the
current administration of the U.S. government to global
militaryindustrial and other interests who profit on
violence, disorder, and injustice has been a constant,
and repressed, scandal.
526
Ties of the current
administration to mass media, the great story-tellers of
the information age, to the torture and execution of
contrary voices, to the suppression of open inquiry and
distortion of the truth, is an unprecedented travesty. The
tragedy is that these leaders are empowered to do more
than to execute law. These leaders are empowered to

524
One may object that Christ was a pacifist but I will remind him that he
started out that way, but in the face of egregious empire, he got very angry,
and took rather radical, if symbolic, action.
525
Meaning, as pertaining to a unified body of individuals, intersubjective,
social, governmental; corporate in its original terms, common,
cooperative.
526
For instance, see the film Iraq for Sale.
373
set out for those who follow them which terms are worthy
of pursuit, and which are not. They are empowered to
set out for those who follow them what stands for the
good, and what does not. They are empowered through
their manufactured consent to spin the space of value on
its head. We are left in an inverted world. What had
been liberty is now imprisonment. What had been
democracy is now tyranny. What had been civility is
now criminality.
Somehow faking character, virtue and
strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror
is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not
hundreds, of thousands of people is
tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights
and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is
supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for
faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed
to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important
than reality.
527
And, somehow we have put our faith in the story
we have been sold.
528
We have suffered an inversion,

527
Kevin Tillman, 2006, After Pats Birthday,
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
374
not unlike Sauls magnetic field. All the terms we
thought worth living for are turned upside down. We
have plotted life stories to these inverted ends. As with
Saul, some of us are more affected than others. As with
Saul, it is only the force of electromagnetic fields which
prop up our own inverted world, only now powerful
televised media stand in for the voice of god. Unlike
Saul, however, we are free to correct this inverted space
of value, and ourselves within it, without waiting for
electromagnetic waves to bring us the good news. We
have all seen, throughout this text, how our lives
narratives can be rewritten. We are free to determine,
for ourselves, worthy ends for our own lives. We can set
the world right, and we have the Law on our side.
Ecclesiastical establishments, economic interests,
and scientific inquiry are forces indistinguishable from
each other or from our contemporary civil government.
529
This is directly contrary to the founding vision of this
nation. Few have acted in good conscience against this
agenda. Many of those who have are since murdered,
maimed, tortured, forced from office, discredited or
otherwise destroyed.
530
Meanwhile, many men, mostly

528
For an insight into our likely motivations, review the Forward.
529
This is no secret. For instance, consider the sources of funding, and the
decidedly suspect message, of the September 2006 broadcast on ABC of
the commercial-free 6-hour docudrama The Path to 9/11. Also suspect is
the absent mainstream media and mainstream science in regards to the
use of thermite explosives in the demolition of World Trade Towers, and
WTC 7. See http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/thermite.htm
530
This raises the question, whether cruel and unjust leaderships does not
act as a force in the artificial selection against persons of conscience,
resulting after many generations in a race of men essentially selfish, closed
to the suffering of others, heartless, shallow, and ignorant. It also raises the
question whether or not our current predicament is already a product of this
sort of mechanism operative over generations past. This is a question I
pick up in detail in my next effort, The Ethics of Inquiry.
375
Muslim men from the besieged Middle-East sit in prison.
They are tortured, disgraced, their families forced to
suffer not knowing whether they live or die, whether they
are sane or broken, and when will they return? When
will they heal? If ever
Where is the heroic example of the conscientious
objector in this so-called Christian nation now? The
conscientious objector, the civil disobedient, though
embodying the freedom of conscientious action
protected by our founding fathers, is himself under
preemptive attack from these same corrupted powers,
industrious civil government. Freedom of conscience
has no specific protection under the law without some
recourse to freedoms of speech, or freedoms of religion,
and both of these have recently atrophied under the so-
called Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the
subversion of our domestic agenda to the terms of the
most brutal, bigoted of religious narratives, incorporated
nationalism. This is the homogenization of empire, the
very force of leveling injustice against which Christ
himself stood.
What would Jesus do? What the stories say he
did. Any follower of Christ must simply ask himself: is
his example worth repeating? If not, then his example is
not sacred, his sacrifice in vain, and his religion not what
it pretends to be. If yes, then there are some tables in
need of turning over. This is where you and I come in.
Now.
This same goes for any follower of a King, or a
Socrates, a Jefferson, a Parks, or an Einstein. The time
has come to reconcile their determinations with that of a
future World in which the just life, the life of wisdom and
discovery, lives like their own lives, remain lives worth
living. It is time to act. Follow your leader. Conscience.
376
Appendix 1) Phenomenology and the Modern
Tradition:
531
young men of the richer classes, who
have not much to do, come about me of
their own accord; they like to hear the
pretenders examined, and they often
imitate me, and examine others
themselves; there are plenty of persons, as
they soon enough discover, who think that
they know something, but really know little
or nothing: and then those who are
examined by them instead of being angry
with themselves are angry with me: This
confounded Socrates, they say; this
villainous misleader of youth!
-- Socrates
532
Only living things are ex-static. Though rocks and
water come to terms with their environment, seeking
equilibrium, taking on heat and losing it to the
environment, they do not move from the equilibrium
states of their own accord. Water does not boil when its
boyfriend comes home late. In other words, non-living

531
(NOTE: Philosophy plays a central role in the preceding account of
conscience. The trouble is that there is a lot of bad philosophy out there.
Most philosophy is ill-suited to understanding living beings, let alone human
beings interested in doing the right things according to conscience. The
following Appendix offers a brief analysis of the two strains in contemporary
philosophic practice. One is most popular in the West, while only the other
is up to the task that is the Philosophic life.)
532
Apology, 23c-d.
377
things do not choose the terms to which they do come to
equilibrium, whereas people,
533
do.
534
Moreover, as
people move, they experience new things, or old things
in different ways, and so, as the phenomenological
tradition has maintained since the Greeks, they
disclose the world in their ex-static movement from a
resting place.
535
This is the clearing which in turn reveals things
in the world as the things that they are. The things
which are discovered are understood in terms of the
purposes which motivate the action, in the first place.
536
Thus, things in the world are discovered according to the
mode of their disclosure, which turns out to be the
purposes behind the clearing [verb] in the first place.
For instance, imagine clearing a field for farming. In this
mode, rich clean soil is good and rocks are revealed as
obstacles. Now, imagine clearing a field for geology, in
order to study rocks; in this mode, it is the soil which is
the obstacle.
This leads us back to the sense of clearing as a
noun; after all, the work in clearing [verb] is for the sake
of a clearing [noun] which is suited for, from the
beginning, the purposes which discovered the space, in
the first place. So, again, clearing farmland means
taking out rocks, which, in the end, means clearing a
space suitable for farming. Clearings which are

533
Or, at least free people, philosophers, can, and sometimes do, more or
less. As demonstrated by Socrates fable at the conclusion of the Gorgias.
534
Glynn (2002) makes this point nicely.
535
The locus classicus for Western Philosophys role this disclosure resides
in Platos Myth of the Cave.
536
After all, to plow is not to remain in place; that is, effective plowing is not
static. All good plowing proceeds to the end of the row, and then back
again.
378
rendered suitable for farming are called plots, or
acreage, but good farmland is good farmland - the
same thing under different names. The purpose in
discovery is always for the sake of ones self, on
Heideggers account; Dasein is clearing as both noun
and verb.
There are still a few things about this aspect of
phenomenology to clear up: which comes first, clearing
[verb] or [noun], and what to do when the clearing [noun]
is no longer suitable for its cleared [verb] purposes, are
two question which present themselves immediately.
But, for now, we should shelve these issues; lets look a
little deeper into the situation which confronts the little
space of clarity we may have cleared, already.
In the Modern tradition, there is a radically
different starting place. Instead of the disclosure of
things being of the constitution of the subject, and so
irrevocably tied to the mode of the disclosure, and so to
the discoverer, himself, with the significance of the
disclosed only in terms of the purposes of his disclosing
agency, the Moderns presume the rigid distinction
between the subject, and the objects of its world.
Heidegger worked directly against this tradition.
Descartes had thought that the mind and body were
each a certain different sort of substance, each, in virtue
of their being a substance, able to stand on their own.
537

537
Which seems to be derived from a scholastic misunderstanding of
Aristotles theory of the separability of some aspect of human soul. Where
Aristotle makes this claim, it is in relation only to some aspect of the
understanding which rightly does stand on its own, this being the essential
account of any given thing. Just as it is the purpose for animals, self-
standing unities of an organic variety, to produce other self-standing unities
that is have babies it is the purpose of the understanding, Aristotles
second tier of soul to do the same. What Aristotle implies here is merely
that some men are able to render self-standing understandings, of the sort
379
From this tradition, the mind as substance has been
understood as a vessel holding representations of things
so that the view of the mind is of a thing, able to stand
alone, with only external relations to other self-standing
things. But when a mind is conceived as a mental
substance the result is that the distinctive character of
perception and thought as the disclosing of entities in the
world is fatally obscured and has finally to be dealt with,
very inadequately, by means of a theory of
representation.
538
What such an approach leads to are
problems such as the existence of the so-called external
world, and from this presumption the necessary
appropriation of some sort of correspondence into all
theories of truth.
539
Traditionally,
540
this notion is exposed in terms
like the following: I am standing right here, gaping at
the object at point blank range. A distance separates
me from the object. I am thus detached from the
object.
541
To some degree, this attitude is encouraged by a
common sense understanding of the physical sciences.

for which Socrates would volunteer to serve as mid-wife. Sadly,
superstition and fear of death have likely conspired to ruin this ancient
insight, and to lead to such wars as we find ourselves in even today. As
Jefferson had long ago noted, how much we suffer for evils which never
existed!
538
Olafson, page 17.
539
Even though this inclusion is redundant once the primary mode of truth
as revelation and discovery is understood phenomenologically. For a
brilliant discussion to the effect that correspondence is presumed by all
epistemological approaches to bridging the gap as knowledge between the
radically isolated subject and the external world in terms of the analytic
tradition of philosophy, see David Lewis, 2001, and subsequent discussion.
540
Speaking here of the Modern tradition in the Cartesian mold of the
isolated self-certain atomic subject in an objective world.
541
Wirt, page 89.
380
Thinking about the famous line of inquiry called sub-
atomic physics, I can see two ways in which this is the
case, both theoretically and practically.
Physicists, for one thing, work at studying ever-
smaller particles by creating special environments,
environments by way of which observations thought to
correspond with a thing regularly arise. Physicists, and
for that matter scientists of almost every sort, might not
be successful in making their observations and if they
do, there is no guarantee that their discovery will have
any practical bearing on everyday life. Physics, thus,
works at exposing objects on their own terms, as-if they
were not being disclosed in terms of human agency, at
all, as if the researcher, himself, was not even there.
This presumes a certain detachment.
Theoretically speaking, Physics pictures things
as-if they had presented themselves in a vacuum space,
unaffected by the mode of the human inquirer, and by
any other thing which does not suit the sitting there, in
that environment, on display. This approach begins with
the detachment of the researcher. Sitting behind ever
increasing layers of theoretical apparatus, crunching
numbers so big or so small that neither find
representation in everyday experience, awaiting a blip
on a computer screen, working in a lab can be very
lonely business.
Practically speaking, the sense that the ever
smaller objects of physical observation are distinct and
separate from the human inquirers, themselves, is
bolstered by the fact that these objects are so tiny as to
never meet the human being on the street; no one is
going to stub their toes on one of these things. That is
just not an observation anyone is going to be making, at
least, not without the help of a lot of equipment, and
381
even then, few will find the work significant. Often
enough, it is the machine that makes the observation, in
any event; the scientist may not even be there. In fact, it
is not difficult to imagine that he need not be, at least not
that particular scientist; this all carries a sense of
detachment.
It is a fact that many of the more theoretical
sciences, especially, require sometimes huge tools -
practical and theoretical -which yield similar results no
matter who runs the controls. It is as-if the scientist and
his object were not related, at all. Objects of these
sciences, whether quarks or ion-channels, seem only to
show up for the machines, anyways. They arise in
situations in which human beings will not, and so no one
of us is ever going to be there, in the same situation,
when they are. Instead, in between the human being
and his object of study are hundreds of years of scientific
understanding, and perhaps hundreds of millions of
dollars worth of incomprehensible machinery. So, in the
end, nothing guarantees that the scientist at work
understands enough about the equipment around him to
find a personal connection between himself and his
study.
542
Now, this is actually a gross mischaracterization
of most physical scientists I have ever known, but it does
clear the way for the following point. For the average
everyday man on the street, there might as well be no
connection between the theoretical scientist and his

542
Though, originally, historically, the scientist would have had to build for
himself his bridging equipment, to close the gap between his capacities to
discovery and the situation in which his object of study reveals itself. Our
current effort is of this form. In fact, it can be argued that all science
presupposes this essential tie, and where it is forgotten, it fails as science,
but this is another story.
382
object of study; the gulf between them is conceptually
unbridgeable. In turn, this provides further ballast for the
notion that persons and the fundamental bases of the
physical world are fundamentally detached. Either that,
or persons are simply not they way that they appear but
are hidden away in little sections of the brain, as if
persons are merely chemical balances locked away
behind special equipment like eyes and voices. In either
case, persons seem to respond in terms of different laws
than the everyday world, altogether, as-if in entirely
different situations; these things, these people,
ourselves, are alien.
543
Why is this thinking so intractable? Lets look at
the scientific model, again. The object, and the subject,
according to this understanding, are separate. Once the
equipment is in place, over there, there is only for the
observer to make the observation, over here, and that
takes place inside the head of the scientist. Ideally, he is
only the observer; as-if there were two entirely different
situations. The idea is to put the physical world on
display, and the parts of it which interest sub-atomic
physicists display themselves in environments of which
the physicist has no direct experience.
544
So, subject
and object are detached, with a record of one inside the
skull-bone of another.
Sounds simple enough, if not too simple. In doing
Physics, there isnt any problem; to be able to proclaim,
the particle is there is, after all, the whole point of the

543
In fact, building bridging concepts has become the focus of unified
science, and has taken a form conspicuously akin to our own upcoming
focus, attunement.
544
It isnt always the case. When the physicist plays baseball, his science
has a more practical relevance. I concentrate on the extreme case only to
more effectively draw the comparison.
383
pursuit! If the physicist can specify the environment in
which certain observations obtain, then there is the
recipe for repeatability; other physicists can do the
same. This is the commercial bedrock of science.
545
The problem arises when a similar mode of
viewing objects is applied to a living being, like a human
being. They show up in vacuums, he shows up in air.
They show up under huge forces near light-speed, he
shows up with a bagel and coffee. They are static, not
ex-static; they exist in terms of the environment,
meanwhile the physicist is always trying to change his,
for instance in holding out for new equipment and better
graduate students.
546
Yet, when people think of each other as objects,
these essential differences are just the sorts of things
they deny.
547
If they are objects, then they are physical
bodies, and must obey physical laws, and behave
predictably in predictable environments. If this does not
describe ones experience, then perhaps persons are
immaterial, souls and spirits, ensouled bodies, but this
just leads to even more difficult problems. Either way,
understanding themselves as either material bodies or
not material bodies, they deny any avenue of access to

545
And, not all bad: Heidegger insists that even this mode of being with
things does provide grounds for further insight, just not in the way in which
we are interested, and not in a way which presumes the special nature of
the being under our current purview.
546
Insodoing, he might meet a brick wall in the administration, perhaps the
chair is especially dim-witted and cannot see the value of good research
and even better undergraduate teaching.
547
The allusion at an ambiguous use of they is purposeful. A case might
be made, especially considering the neurological evidence, that persons
who think of themselves and others like themselves as objects are,
insodoing, effectively giving up what we might otherwise understand as
their humanity, and so, by any rule of reciprocity, ask to be treated likewise.
384
each other. It is as-if there were an unbridgeable
distance, whereby self and other are essentially
detached from the world, from each other, and even
from those whom they love, whether that be themselves,
their significant other, or God.
548
No matter how much
we share, on either view, our worlds can never be the
same.
549
So long as one conceives of perception
and practical contact with objects as
having to occur inside a subject which is
closed off from the world, his contact with
the world can only seem puzzling. It must
seem as if each person is locked into his
own world of experience.
550
The issue becomes further confused when the
same mode of relating is applied to ones own self.
Seemingly, all of a sudden, one comes to the realization
that he has lost himself. Then in order to get to know
himself, he recruits a theorist bursting at the seams with
theoretical apparatus; maybe all this high-powered
equipment can find him? Of course, the highest-
powered tools are those of religion; often times, persons
turn to religion to find themselves. Internalized, the
sense of detachment which seems to characterize the

548
In fact, this goes doubly for themselves; when people treat them selves
as objects like any other, expect especially strange results. For instance, in
order to be sure that even he, his own self, exists, Descartes has to check
with God, first. To be sure that a given man feels a given way, he may run
his notions past a psychotherapist. If the therapist reflexively cites neuro-
chemical imbalance and prescribes medication, then the man has become
equipment.
549
And so identity is understood as either strict logical identity, or
indiscernible difference, in either case a third person stipulation.
550
Wirt, page 89.
385
surest modes of human inquiry results in absurdity. How
many crooked bridges must be built between a broken
heart and an unmade mind?
From the traditional phenomenological point of
view,
551
it is only through the exploration of my own
agency that any lived body comes to be aware of the
stuff of the physical world, including other living
bodies.
552
Our bodies are actual, their potentials
actualized in our experience, and other things in the
world are disclosed simultaneously.
553
Insofar as a thing
is an object, static, they always meet the terms of our
expectations on the basis of this experience. Evidence
for this asymmetry is everywhere: diamonds are hard
because we are softer, ice is cold because we are
warmer, and times are tough because we arent up to
them.
554
In every case, good diamonds are consistently

551
At least from Husserls distinction of lived body from body as corpse and
onward.
552
The difference between the body as object and as lived underlies
Husserls analyses of empathy (einfuhlung) as long as we understand
empathy in a certain way. This is well known to Husserl scholars, though,
probably because Husserl is not so easy to read, to few else. Our
discussion presumes this history, as well as the influence which Husserl
has on Heidegger in this regard in the next section.
553
Commensurately, Heidegger maintains that understanding is
equiprimordial with disclosure.
554
One might argue that diamonds are hard no matter our experiences of
them, and this might be correct to the extent that diamonds have consistent
crystalline matrices with low bond strain and so are an extremely stable
structure, resistant to change, and this goes no matter who or what does
the evaluation. But, this is not how we come to understand the situation,
originally; we do not, in fact, experience the strength of this order in these
terms, per se. The structure of diamond does not obviate the fact that there
is only a qualification, hardness, on the basis of our own experience of
objects in terms of our own constitutions; and, consequently, diamonds will
always be hard.
386
hard, good ice is consistently cold, and good times are
consistently easy.
If they are understood as objects, evaluations of
other persons proceed similarly.
555
Good persons are
consistent. They stay put, show up on time, and
proceed according to our expectations. Otherwise, they
are difficult, so-called free-thinkers, and defy any
traditional classification, unless those be trouble-
maker, or criminal. Socrates, himself, fell into these
categories, and others.
556
What this discussion thus far shows is that we
first experience, then we understand, and this process
implicitly evaluates: first, we feel out the situation in
which we find ourselves, and insodoing we come to

555
Persons are rational, for instance, when they are consistent with ones
expectations in the terms of ones own prior understanding, and irrational
when they are not. Again, though, absurdity is the result. On the basis of
this seemingly innocent presumption, persons have moral worth when they
are responsive to the reasons of the rational other self, and without moral
worth, or of negative worth irresponsible, immoral or amoral, and yet still
culpable - when they are not amenable to the appeals of reason. Thus,
what we see is a presumptive rationalism which procures the moral value of
its own orthodoxy, and which at once frees the orthodox practitioner from
responsibility for the failures of the tradition, for, after all, in retaining
fundamental dogmas, and in evaluating self and others in terms of the
essentially out-of-date, that presumptive rationalist is only being rational.
Perhaps nothing is more telling of the weakness of such a position that the
comedy that is watching this same approach attempt to theorize practical
reason. Without any practical experience to speak of, these efforts fall
hard on the concept of reason, and, so there is nothing practical about the
reasoning which attends, at the same time, to practical reason at all. If you
cannot embody the phenomenon, then it is beyond your study; if you cannot
allow the thing under purview to be realized, then you shall never realize
that thing.
556
A good friend.
387
terms with it.
557
These terms serve as a resident
standard; they provide the high- and low-water marks by
which further experiences are evaluated. We find those
experiences which confirm our expectations pleasant,
like people and diamonds. We seek pleasant
experiences, and avoid unpleasant ones; we value
things associated with the one, and disvalue the other.
But this hamstrings us; learning is hard work, health
requires sacrifice, and the truth hurts. Sadly, few people
are willing to go against the grain; normal people take it
easy. Normal people are, well, normal. This will not
give you conscience of the not so everyday sort.
Heidegger takes a different tact.
It is in the view of a mortal being, a being for
whom time matters, that any other relationship matters.
Space matters because it traversing space counts
against the time of life, and it is in the traversing as a
temporal movement that the significance of the world
arises. But, this issue must wait; we will come to these
terms in fuller detail when we get to conscience and
guilt. For now, it can only be alluded to that, for mortal
living beings, significance shows up in the space of time
as temporality; with significance comes urgency. When
time is short, short distances seem long; when time is
lost, unlike car keys or autumn leaves, ones self is
forgotten. For us, the most important situation is always
up ahead; the things we count on are those which we
anticipate being there, then, as before. Otherwise, unfit
for calculation and planning, they may not be such good
things, as if they had abandoned us.

557
And only further downstream verbalized, which disqualifies knowledge
that from any sense of being a realistically grounded epistemological
foundation.
388
Things are not alone, in the world outside of us;
they are with us, and us with them, always already
together in the space of the situation, which is essentially
shared with other like ourselves. We are the things of
the world, as they are us, and altogether we are the
situation. What we care about becomes constitutive of
our selves; we become bound up with our being
toward the world taken care of.
558
Instead of conceiving the relation between self
and world in terms of spatial relations between
objectively given things, as if there were distinct
substances whose ties are outside of themselves, so to
speak, Heidegger articulates a view of being which takes
attunement as fundamental. The proper Philosophic
study, on this view, is not of detached beings, outside, in
an external world, but of being-in-the-world, of being
with, of an always already present relation. Attuned is
how you start, and end, but the terms of this relationship,
well, may not be the ones that seem pleasant.
Sometimes it is easier to keep things hidden, or distant,
or separate. That is beside the point, however. It is on
the basis of attunement that things seem anyway or
anything at all. Standing apart from the world is simply
an especially ignorant mode of attunement.

558
Heidegger, page 115
389
Works Consulted:
Aksan, Nazan, and Grazyna Kochanska. Conscience in Childhood: Old
Questions, New Answers. Developmental Psychology 41, no. 3
(May, 2005): 506-516.
Allen, R. E., Law and Justice in Platos Crito. The Journal of Philosophy
69, no. 8, Sixty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American
Philosophical Association Eastern Division (5 October, 1972): 557-
567.
Ames, Van Meter. Conscience and Calculation. International Journal of
Ethics 47, no. 2 (January, 1937): 180-192.
Anderson, Michael C., Kevin N. Ochsner, Brice Kuhl, Jeffrey Cooper, Elaine
Robertson, Susan W. Gabrieli, Gary H. Glover and John D.E.
Gabrieli. Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of
Unwanted Memories. Science 303 (9 January, 2004): 232-235.
Anderson, Wayne. How We Are Manipulated by Our Fears. University of
Missouri Peace Studies Review 1, no. 1 (Spring, 2005): 13-22.
Anton, Corey. Selfhood and Authenticity. Albany, New York: State
University of New York Press, 2001.
Aristotle. Selections. Ed. Terence Irwin and Gail Fine. Indiana: Hackett
Publishing, 1995.
Ascoli, Giorgio A. Brain and Mind at the Crossroad of Time. Cortex 41
(2005): 619-620.
Ashbrook, James B., and Carol Rausch Albright. The Humanizing Brain:
An Introduction. Zygon 34, no. 1 (March, 1999): 7-43
Astafiev, Serguei V., Christine M. Stanley, Gordon L. Shulman, and
Maurizio Corbetta. Extrastriate Body Area In Human Occipital
Cortex Responds To The Performance Of Motor Actions. Nature
Neuroscience 7, no. 5 (May, 2004): 542-548.
Atkins, Kim. Autonomy and the Subjective Character of Experience.
Journal of Applied Philosophy 17, no. 1 (2000): 71-79.
Atkins, Kim. Ricoeur on Objectivity: Between Phenomenology and the
Natural Sciences. Philosophy Today 46, no. 4 (Winter, 2002):
384-395.
390
Atkins, Kim. Narrative Identity, Practical Identity and Ethical Subjectivity.
Continental Philosophy Review 37 (2004): 341-366.
Attfield, Robin, Rousseau, Clarke, Butler, and the Critiques of Deism.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2004): 429-
443.
Aurelius, Marcus. The Meditations. Trans. George Long.
http://classics.mit.edu//Antoninus/meditations.html
Avenanti, Alessio, Domenica Bueti, Gaspare Galait, and Salvatore M.
Aglioti. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Highlights the
Sensorimotor Side of Empathy for Pain. Nature Neuroscience 8,
no. 7 (July, 2005): 955-961.
Bailey, Andrew R. The Strange Attraction of Sciousness: William James on
Consciousness, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 34,
no. 2 (1998): 414-434.
Ballard, Edward. Experienced Object, Interpretative Context, And Mythical
Investiture. Research in Phenomenology 6 (1976): 105-138.
Ballard, Edward. Principles of Interpretation. Athens, Ohio and London:
Ohio University Press, 1983.
Barbour, Ian G. Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Nature:
Theological and Philosophical Reflections. Zygon 34, no. 3
(September, 1999): 361-398.
Baum, Archie. Theories of Conscience. Ethics 75, no. 2 (January, 1965):
128-131
Begley, Sharon. Religion and the Brain. Newsweek, 7 May 2001, 50.
Beiswanger, George. The Logic of Conscience. The Journal of Philosophy
47, no. 9 (27 April, 1950): 225-37
Beitz, Charles. Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice The Journal of Ethics
9 (2005): 11-27.
Benet, Diana Trevino. Adams Evil Conscience and Satans Surrogate
Fall. Milton Quarterly 39, no. 1 (2005): 2-15.
Berry, Edward. Doing Time: Kings Letter from Birmingham Jail. Rhetoric
& Public Affairs 8, no. 1 (2005): 109-132.
391
Best, Phillip J. and Aaron M. White. Placing Hippocampal Single-Unit
Studies in Historical Context. Hippocampus 9 (1999): 346-351.
Borgmann, Albert, Cosmopolitanism and Provincialism: On Heideggers
Errors and Insights. Philosophy Today 36, no. 2 (Summer, 1992):
131-141.
Bosbach, S., Cole, J., Prinz, W. and G. Knoblich. Inferring Anothers
Expectation From Action: The Role Of Peripheral Sensation.
Nature Neuroscience 8 (2005): 1295-1297.
Boutroux, Emile. The Individual Conscience and the Law. International
Journal of Ethics 27, no. 3 (April, 1917): 317-333.
Boutroux, Emile. Liberty of Conscience. International Journal of Ethics 28,
no. 1 (October, 1917): 59-69.
Boyd, Richard. Pitys Pathologies Portrayed: Rousseau and the Limits of
Democratic Compassion. Political Theory 32, no. 4 (August,
2004): 519-546.
Brickhouse, Thomas C. and Nicholas D. Smith. Socrates and the Unity of
the Virtues. The Journal of Ethics, vol. 1 (1997): 311-324.
Budenholzer, Frank E. Some Comments on the Problem of Reductionism
in Contemporary Physical Science. Zygon 38, no. 1 (March,
2003): 61-68
Calarco, Matthew, Heideggers Secret: Alterity in the Interpretation of
Gewissen in Being and Time. International Studies in Philosophy
32, no. 1 (2000): 23-43.
Canivez, Patrice, Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Concept of People.
Philosophy and Social Criticism 30, no. 4 (2004): 393-412.
Carlson, Erik, Organic Unities, Non-Trade-Off, and the Additivity of Intrinsic
Value. The Journal of Ethics 5 (2001): 335-360.
Carmola, Kateri. Noble Lying: Justice and Intergenerational Tension in
Platos Replublic. Political Theory 31, no. 1 (February, 2003): 39-
62.
Carr, David. Moral Development: a Reply to Richmond and Cummings.
Journal of Moral Education 33, no. 2 (June, 2004): 207-210.
392
Carter, Dee. Unholy Alliance: Religion, Science, and Environment. Zygon
36, no. 2 (June, 2001): 357-372.
Carter, Jonathan A. Telling Times: History, Emplotment, and Truth.
History and Theory 42 (February, 2003): 1-27.
Childress, James F. Appeals to Conscience. Ethics 89, no. 4 (July, 1979):
315-335.
Childress, James F. Conscience and Conscientious Actions in the Context
of MCOs. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 7, no. 4 (1997):
403-411.
Christoff, Kalina, Justin M. Ream, and John D. E. Gabrieli. Neural Basis of
Spontaneous Thought Processes. Cortex 40 (2004): 623-630
Clingerman, Forrest. Beyond the Flowers and the Stones: Emplacement
and the Modeling of Nature. Philosophyin the Contemporary
World 11, no. 2 (Fall-Winter, 2004): 17-24.
Coady, C.A.J. Objecting Morally. The Journal of Ethics 1 (1997): 375-397.
Cohen, G.A.. Once More into the Breach of Self-Ownership: Reply to
Narveson and Brenkert. The Journal of Ethics 2 (1998): 5796.
Cohen, Richard A. Daseins Responsibility for Being. Philosophy Today 27
(Winter, 1983): 317-325.
Cohen, Richard A. and James L. Marsh, editors. Ricoeur as Another: The
Ethics of Subjectivity. Albany, New York: State University of New
York Press, 2002.
Condic, Maureen L. and Samuel B. Condic. The Appropriate Limits of
Science in the Formation of Public Policy. Notre Dame Journal of
Law and Public Policy 17 (January, 2003): 157-179
Courtne, Jean-Francois. Voice of Conscience and the Call of Being.
Trans. Elisabeth Haar. Topoi 7 (1988): 101-109.
Critchley, Simon. Enigma Variations: An Interpretation of Heideggers Sein
und Zeit. Ratio 15, no. 2 (June 2002): 154-175.
Crowell, Steven. Subjectivity: Locating the First Person in Being and Time.
Inquiry 44 (2001): 43354.
393
Crowell, Steven. Authentic Historicality. In Space, Time, and Culture, ed.
David Carr and Cheung Chan-Fai, 57-73. Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2004.
Curzer, Howard J. Aristotles Painful Path to Virtue. Journal of the History
of Philosophy 40, no. 2 (2002): 141-162.
Dallmyr, Fred. Cosmopolitanism: Moral and Political. Political Theory 31,
no. 3 (June, 2003): 421-442.
Damasio, Antonio R. How the Brain Creates the Mind. Scientific American
281, no. 6 (December, 1999): 112-118
Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens. Orlando, Florida:
Harcourt, 1999.
Damasio, Antonio. Descartes Error. New York, New York: Harper Collins,
1995.
Dapretto, Mirella, Mari S. Davies, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, Ashley A. Scott,
Marian Sigman, Susan Y. Bookheimer, and Marco Iocoboni.
Understanding Emotions in Others: Mirror Neuron Dysfunction in
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Nature Neuroscience
9, no. 1 (January, 2006): 28-30.
Deigh, John. All Kinds of Guilt. Law and Philosophy 18 (1999): 313-325.
de Lee, Nigel. The Case of Colonel Hackworth. Journal of Military Ethics
3, no. 1 (2004): 61-67.
Delio, Ilia. Brain Science and the Biology of Belief: A Theological
Response. Zygon 38, no. 3 (September, 2003): 573-585.
Delong, Katherine A., Thomas P. Urbach, and Marta Kutas. Probabilistic
Word Pre-Activation During Language Comprehension Inferred
From Electrical Brain Activity. Nature Neuroscience 8, no. 8
(August, 2005): 1117-1121.
Depew, David, Empathy, Psychology, and Aesthetics: Reflections on a
Repair Concept. Poroi 4, no. 1 (March, 2005).
Depraz, Natalie. Empathy and Compassion as Experiential Praxis.
Confronting Phenomenological Analysis and Buddhist Teachings.
In Space, Time, and Culture, ed. David Carr and Cheung Chan-
Fai, 189-. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
394
Dewey, John. The Political Writings. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1993.
Dillon, Robin S. Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political. Ethics 107, no.
2 (January, 1997): 226-249.
Dole, Charles F. About Conscience. International Journal of Ethics 16, no.
4 (July, 1906): 418-423.
Doring, A. The Motives of Moral Conduct. The International Journal of
Ethics 5 no. 3 (April, 1895): 361-375.
Earle, William. Some Paradoxes of Private Conscience As a Political
Guide. Ethics 80, no. 4 (1970): 306-312.
Embree, Lester. Consocial Situation. In Space, Time, and Culture, ed.
David Carr and Cheung Chan-Fai, 119-134. Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2004.
Fagg, Lawrence W. Are There Intimations of Divine Transcendence in the
Physical World. Zygon 38, no. 3 (September, 2003): 559-572.
Ferrara, Alessandro. Two Notions of Humanity and the Judgement
argument for Human Rights. Political Theory 31, no. 3 (June,
2003): 392-420.
Feuer, Lewis S. The Bearing of Psychoanalyses Upon Philosophy.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 19, no. 3 (March,
1959): 323-340.
Findlay, Stephen. The Conversational Practicality of Value Judgment. The
Journal of Ethics 8 (2004): 205-223.
Fogassi, Leonardo, Pier Francesco Ferrari, Benno Gesierich, Stefano
Rozzi, Fabian Chersi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. Parietal Lobe:
From Action Organization to Intention Understanding. Science
308, no. 5722 (29 April, 2005): 662-667.
Fowles, Don and Grazyna Kochanska. Temperament As A Moderator Of
Pathways To Conscience In Children: The Contribution Of
Electrodermal Activity. Psychophysiology 37 (2000): 788795.
Frankfurt, Harry. Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility. The
Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829839.
395
Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography And Other Writings.
Ed. Ormond Seavey. New York, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
Franklin, James. On the Parallel Between Mathematics and Morals.
Philosophy 79 (2004): 97-119.
Friedman, Lawrence. Psychoanalysis and the Foundation of Ethics, The
Journal of Philosophy 53, no. 1 (5 January, 1956): 15-20.
Fuss, Peter. Conscience. Ethics 74, no. 2 (January, 1964): 111-120.
Fuster, Joaquin M. The Prefrontal Cortex: Anatomy, Physiology, and
Neuropsychology of the Frontal Lobe. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:
Lippincott-Raven, 1997.
Gall, Robert S. Interrupting Speculation: The Thinking of Heidegger and
Greek Tragedy. Continental Philosophy Review 36 (2003): 177-
194.
Gallese, Vittorio, Christian Keysers and Giacomo Rizzolatti. A Unifying
View of the Basis of Social Cognition. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 8, no. 9 (September, 2004): 396-403.
Gallese, Vittorio, and Thomas Metzinger. Motor Ontology: The
Representational Reality of Goals, Actions, and Selves.
Philosophical Psychology 16, no. 3 (2003): 365-388.
Gaustad, Edwin S. Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
Gazzaly, Adam, Jeffrey W. Clooney, Jesse Rissman, and Mark DEsposito.
Top-Down Suppression Deficit Underlies Working Memory
Impairment In Normal Aging. Nature Neuroscience 8, no. 10
(October, 2005): 1298-1301.
Gilbert, Margaret. Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings. The
Journal of Ethics 6 (2002): 115-143.
Glazebrook, Trish. Heidegger on the Experiment. Philosophy Today 42,
no. 3 (Fall, 1998): 250-261.
Glazebrook, Trish. Heidegger and Scientific Realism. Continental
Philosophy Review 34 (2001): 361-401.
396
Glynn, Simon. The Freedom of the Deconstructed Postmodern Subject.
Continental Philosophy Review 35 (2002): 6176.
Goodenough, Ursula, Engaging Huston Smiths Why Religion Matters.
Zygon 36, no. 2 (June, 2001): 201-206
Goodeneough, Ursula and Terrence W. Deacon. From Biology to
Consciousness to Morality. Zygon 38, no. 4 (December, 2003):
801-820
Goodin, Robert E. Toward an International Rule of Law: Distinguishing
International Law-Breakers from Would-Be Law-Makers. The
Journal of Ethics 9 (2005): 225-246.
Gouveia, William A. An Analysis of Moral Dissent: An Army Officers Public
Protest of the Vietnam War. Journal of Military Ethics 3, no. 1
(2004): 53-60.
Gray, Jeremy R., Todd S. Braver, and Marcus E. Raichle. "Integration Of
Emotion And Cognition In The Lateral Prefrontal Cortex.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99, no. 6 (19
March, 2002): 4115-4119.
Green, Thomas F. Voices: The Educational Formation of Conscience, A
response to professors Kaufmann, Westphal, and Diller. Studies
in Philosophy and Education 22 (2003): 521-533.
Greenspan, Patricia S. Responsible Psychopaths. Philosophical
Psychology 16, no. 3, (2003): 417-429.
Greenwalt, Kent, Establishing Religious Ideas: Evolution, Creationism, and
Intelligent Design. Notre Dame Journal of Ethics and Public Policy
17 (2003): 321-397.
Gregory, Maughn. Care as a Goal of Democratic Education. Journal of
Moral Education 29, no. 4 (2000): 445-461.
Gusnard, Debra A. Being a Self: Considerations from Functional Imaging.
Consciousness and Cognition 14 (2005): 679-697.
Haila, Yro On The Semiotic Dimension of Ecological Theory: The Case of
Island Biogeography. Biology and Philosophy 1 (1986): 377-387.
Hansen, James. Earths Climate is Near the Tipping Point. New
Perspectives Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Winter, 2006). URL of this E-text:
http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2006_winter/hansen.html
397
Harman, Graham. Guerrilla Metaphysics. Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois:
Open Court Press, 2005.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York, N.Y., and London: W.W. Norton
and Company, 2004.
Harrison, Jonathan. The Logical Function of That, or Truth, Propositions
and Sentences. Philosophy 79, (2004): 67-96.
Harvey, Charles. Intersubjectivity, Intimacy, and Selfhood: Being-With-And-
Alongside-Others. Existentia 11, no. 3-4 (2001): 345-353.
Hefner, Phillip, Understanding Religion: The Challenge of E.O. Wilson.
Zygon 36, no. 2 (June, 2001): 241-248.
Hegel, G.W.F. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977.
Heidegger, Martin. The Way Back Into the Ground of Metaphysics. In
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufmann,
206-221. Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Company, 1968.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New
York, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996.
Heidegger, Martin. Pathmarks. Ed. William McNeil. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Kahl, R. ed. Selected Writings of Hermann Helmholtz. Middletown,
Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1971.
Holden, Constance. The Origin of Speech. Science 303, no. 5662 (27
February, 2004): 1316-1319.
Hume, John. Martin Luther King Celebration Speech. University of
Missouri Peace Studies Review 1, no. 1 (Spring, 2005): 11-12.
Hunter, J.F.M. Conscience. Mind 72, no. 287 (July, 1963): 309-334.
Hursthouse, Rosalind. Environmental Virtue Ethics. Paper delivered to the
University of Missouri Columbia, 2003.
Hyde, Michael J. The Rhetor as Hero and the Pursuit of Truth: The Case of
9/11. Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 1 (2005): 1-30.
398
Indick, William. Fight The Power: The Limits Of Empiricism And The Costs
Of Positivistic Rigor. The Journal of Psychology 136, no. 1
(January, 2002): 21-37.
Jackson, Frank. Epiphenomenal Qualia. Philosophical Quarterly 32
(1982): 127136.
Jackson, Michael. Socrates Soul and Our Own. The Journal of Value
Inquiry 31 (1997): 167-176.
James, William. The Principles of Psychology. 1890. URL of this E-text:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/index.htm
James, Wiliam. The Hidden Self. Scribnerss Magazine 7, no. 3 (1890):
361-374. URL of this E-text:
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-
cgi?notisid=AFR7379-0007-37
James, William. What is an Emotion? Mind 9, (1884): 188-205. URL of
this E-text:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/emotion.htm
James, William. A Definition of Habit. Manufacturer and Builder 19, no. 5
(May, 1887): 116.
URL of this E-text:
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/jdefhabit.html
James, William. Does Consciousness Exist? Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Scientific Methods 1 (1904): 477-491. URL of
this E-text:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/consciousness.htm
James, William. The Energies of Men. Science, New Series 25, no. 635
(1907): 321-332. URL of this E-text:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/energies.htm
James, William. Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking.
New York: Longman Green and Company, 1907. URL of this E-
text:
http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/James/James_1907/James_19
07_toc.html
James, William. "The Moral Equivalent of War". Lecture 11 in Memories
and Studies. New York: Longman Green and Company, 1911:
267-296.
399
Jenkins, Iredell. The Significance of Conscience. Ethics 65, no. 4 (July,
1955): 261-70.
Jefferson, Thomas. Writings. New York, New York: Viking Press, 1984.
Adams, John. The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete
Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John
Adams. Ed. Lester J. Cappon. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1987.
Kahn, Charles. The Meaning of Justice and the Theory of the Forms. The
Journal of Philosophy 69, no. 5 (October, 1972): 567-579.
Kahn, Charles. Democritus and the Origin of Moral Psychology. The
American Journal of Philology 106, no. 1 (Spring, 1985): 1-31.
Kane, Michael T. Heidegger and Aristotles Treatise on Time. American
Philosophical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1995): 295-309.
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Trans. F. Max
Mueller. New York, New York: MacMillan, 1922. URL of this E-
text:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/EBooks/Kant_0330.pdf
Kant, Immanuel. On Education (1803). Tranns. Annette Churton. Boston,
Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1900. URL of this E-
text: http://oll.libertyfund.org/EBooks/Kant_0235.pdf
Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysic of Ethics. Trans. J.W. Semple. Ed. Rev.
Henry Calderwood. Edinburgh, Scotland: T & T Clark, 1886.
URL of this E-Book:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/EBooks/Kant_0332.pdf
Kant, Immanuel. Kants Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science. Trans. Ernest Belfort Bax. London: George Bell
and Sons, 1891.
URL of this E-Book:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/EBooks/Kant_0352.pdf
Kay, Charles E. The Ultimate Tragedy of Commons. Conservation Biology
11, no. 6 (December, 1999): 1447-1448.
Kay, J.J. A Non-equilibrium Thermodynamic Framework for Discussing
Ecosystem Integrity. Environmental Management 15, no. 4
(1991): 483-495.
400
King, Martin Luther, Jr. The Letter from the Birmingham Jail. (16 April,
1963). URL of this E-text:
http://www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence -
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam. (April,
1967). URL of this E-text:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm
Kirkland, Kyle. High-Tech Brains: A History Of Technology-Based
Analogies And Models Of Nerve And Brain Function.
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 45, no. 2 (Spring, 2002):
212-223.
Kirkman, Robert. Through the Looking-Glass: Environmentalism and the
Problem of Freedom. Journal of Value Inquiry 36 (2002): 27-41.
Klein, D.B. The Psychology of Conscience. International Journal of Ethics
40, no. 2 (January, 1930): 246-262.
Kohler, Evelyne, Christian Keysers, M. Alessandra Umilita, Leonardo
Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. Hearing
Sounds, Understanding Actions: Action Representation in Mirror
Neurons. Science 297 (2 August, 2002): 846-848.
Kubler, Itzchak. On the Possibility of a Criminal Law Defense for
Conscientious Objection. Canadian Journal of Law and
Jurisprudence 10, no. 2 (July, 1997): 387-440.
Kukla, Rebecca. The Ontology And Temporality Of Conscience.
Continental Philosophy Review 35 (2002): 1-34.
Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991.
Lansky, MR Hidden Shame. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic
Association 53, no. 3 (Summer, 2005): 865-890.
LaTour, Bruno. The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into
Democracy. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 2004.
Lau, Kwok-ying. Intersubjectivity and the Phenomenology of the Other:
Merleau-Pontys Contribution. In Space, Time, and Culture, ed.
David Carr and Cheung Chan-Fai, 135-158. Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2004.
401
Lederman, E.K. Conscience and Bodily Awareness: Disagreements with
Merleau-Ponty. Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology
13, no. 14 (October, 1982): 286-295.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There.
New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Lewin, Roger. How Did Humans Evolve Big Brains? Science 216, no.
4548 (21 May, 1982): 840-841.
Lewis, David. Forget About the Correspondence Theory of Truth. Analysis
61, no. 4 (October, 2001): 275-280.
Lewis, Thomas A. Frames of Comparison: Anthropology and Inheriting
Traditional Practices. The Journal of Religious Ethics 33, no. 2
(2005): 225-258.
Lieberman, Matthew D., Darren Schreiber, and Kevin N. Ochsner. Is
Political Science Like Riding a Bicycle? How Cognitive
Neuroscience Can Inform Research on Political Thinking. Political
Psychology 24, no. 4 (2003): 681-704.
Lovlie, Lars. Rousseaus Insight. Studies in Philosophy and Education 21
(2002): 335-341.
Luthe, Rudolf. The Development of the Concept of Concrete Subjectivity
from Kant to Neo-Kantianism. Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology 13, no. 2 (May, 1982): 154-166.
Lutz, Antoine and Evan Thompson. Neurophenomenology; Integrating
Subjective Experience and Brain Dynamics in the Neuroscience of
Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 10, no. 9-10
(2003): 31-52.
Lynch, Kathryn L. Voting Ones Conscience. Society 42, no. 4 (2005): 27-
29.
MacLennan, Ronald B. Belief-ful Realism and Scientific Realism. Zygon
36, no. 2 (2001): 309-320.
Madden, E.H. and R. Harre. In Defense of Natural Agents. The
Philosophical Quarterly 23, no. 91 (April, 1973): 117-132.
Madison, James. James Madison: Writings. Ed. Jack N. Rakove. New York,
New York: Library of America, 1999.
402
Maggini, Golfo. Movement and the Facticity of Life: On Heideggers Early
Interpretation. Philosophical Inquiry: International Quarterly 21,
no. 2 (Spring, 1999): 93-108.
Mann, Ajit K. Internarrative Identity. Maryland: University Press of America,
1999.
Mauss, Iris B. Robert W. Levenson, Loren McCarter, Frank H. Wilhelm and
James J. Gross. The Tie That Binds? Coherence Among Emotion
Experience, Behavior, and Physiology. Emotion 5, no. 2 (2005):
175-190.
Mayhew, Robert. Parts and Wholes in Aristotles Political Philosophy. The
Journal of Ethics 1 (1997): 325-340.
Mayr, Ernst. Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an
Evolutionist. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1988.
McCarthy, David. Rights, Explanations, and Risks. Ethics 107, no. 2
(January, 1997): 205-225.
McCloskey, H.J. Conscientious Disobedience of the Law: Its Necessity,
Justification, and Problems to Which It Gives Rise. Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 40, no. 4 (June, 1980): 536-557.
McGuire, Martin. On Conscience. The Journal of Philosophy 60, no. 10 (9
May, 1963): 253-263
McKenna, William. Objectivity and Inter-Cultural Experience In Space,
Time, and Culture, ed. David Carr and Cheung Chan-Fai, 111-117.
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
McKnight, Patrick, and Lee Sechrest. The Use and Misuse of the Term
Experience in Contemporary Psychology: A Reanalysis of the
Experience-Performance Relationship. Philosophical Psychology
16, no. 3 (2003): 431-460.
McNeil, William. On the Concreteness of Heideggers Thinking.
PhilosophyToday 36, no. 1 (Spring, 1992): 83-94.
Miceli, Maria and Cristiano Castelfranchi. How to Silence Ones
Conscience: Cognitive Defenses Against the Feeling of Guilt.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 28, no. 3 (1998): 287-
318.
403
Mitchell, Derek Robert. Heideggers Philosophy and Theories of the Self.
Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2001.
Mitchell, Harvey. Reclaiming the Self: The Pascal-Rousseau Connection.
Journal of the History of Ideas 54, no. 4 (October, 1993): 637-658.
Mohanty, J.N. Phenomenology and Ontology. Netherlands: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1970.
Mohanty, J.N. "Rorty, Phenomenology, and Transcendental Philosophy.
Journal for the British Society for Phenomenology 14, no. 1
(January, 1983): 91-98.
Moyers, Bill. Speech Accepting Global Environmental Citizen Award from
the Center for Health and the Global Environment delivered
Wednesday, December 1, 2004. In Solares Hill 25, no. 51 (24
December, 2004): 4-5, and 8.
Mullin, Amy. Whitmans Oceans, Nietzsches Seas. Philosophy Today 42,
no. 3 (Fall, 1998): 270-283.
Mulryan, John. Satans Headache: The Perils and Pains of Giving Birth to
a Bad Idea. Milton Quarterly 39, no. 1 (2005): 16-22.
Murchadha, Felix O. Future or Future Past: Temporality Between Praxis
and Poeisis in Heideggers Being and Time. Philosophy Today
42, no. 3 (Fall, 1998): 262-269
Musacchio, Jose M. Dissolving the Explanatory Gap: Neurobiological
Differences Between Phenomenal and Propositional Knowledge.
Brain and Mind 3 (2002): 331365.
Nagasawa, Yujin. Subjective Character of Experience in Medical Ethics: A
Reply to Atkins. Journal of Applied Philosophy 21, no. 2 (2004):
219-223.
Nakahara, Kiyoshi, and Miyashita Yasushi. Understanding Intentions:
Through the Looking Glass. Science 308, no. 5722 (29 April,
2005): 644-645.
Narveson, Jan. God. Reason Papers, no. 22 (Fall, 1997): 109-118.
URL of this E-text:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jan_narveson/god.html
404
Narveson, Jan. Is World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy? The
Journal of Ethics 8, (2004): 397-408.
Natsoulas, Thomas. The Sciousness Hypothesis: Part I. The Journal of
Mind and Behavior 17, no. 1 (Winter, 1996): 45-66.
Natsoulas, Thomas. The Sciousness Hypothesis - Part 2. The Journal of
Mind and Behavior 17, no. 2 (Spring, 1996): 185-206.
Nelissen, Koen, Giuseppe Luppino, Wim Vanduffel, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and
Guy A. Orban. Observing Others: Multiple Action Representation
in the Parietal Lobe. Science 310, no. 5746 (14 October, 2005):
332-336.
Newberg, Andrew. Putting the Mystical Mind Together. Zygon 36, no. 3
(September, 2001): 501-507.
Nichols, Mary. Socrates Contest with the Poets in Platos Symposium.
Political Theory 32, no. 2 (April, 2004): 186-206.
Nielsen, Kai. On Justifying Revolution. Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 37, no. 4 (June, 1977): 526-532.
Nieuwenburg, Paul. Learning to Deliberate: Aristotle on Truthfulness and
Public Deliberation. Political Theory 32, no. 4 (August, 2004):
449-467.
Nikolinakos, Drakon Derek. Anosognosia and the Unity of Consciousness.
Philosophical Studies 119 (2004): 315-342.
Noone, John B. Jr.. Rousseaus Theory of Natural Law as Conditional.
Journal of the History of Ideas 33, no. 1 (January-March, 1972):
23-42.
Norris, Rebecca Sachs. Examining the Structure and Role of Emotion:
Contributions of Neurobiology to the Study of Embodied Religious
Experience. Zygon 40, no. 1 (March, 2005): 181-200.
Nussbaum, Martha. Education for Citizenship in an Era of Global
Connection. Studies in Philosophy and Education 21 (2002): 289-
303.
Nye, Mary Jo. Michael Polanyi (1891-1976). Hyle 8, no. 2 (2002): 123-
127.
405
Oaklander, L. Nathan. Existentialist Philosophy: An Introduction. New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, New York: Penguin
Books, 1991.
Ochsner, Kevin N. and Matthew D. Lieberman. The Emergence of Social
Cognitive Neuroscience. American Psychologist 56, no. 9
(September, 2001): 717-734.
Ochsner, Kevin N. and James J. Gross. Thinking Makes It So: A Social
Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to Emotion Regulation. (1993)
URL to this E-text:
http://psychology.stanford.edu/~ochsner/pdf/Ochsner_ER-
SCN_chap.pdf
Ochsner, Kevin N., Kyle Knierim, David H. Ludlow, Josh Hanelin, Tara
Ramachandran, Gary Glover, and Sean C. Mackey. Reflecting
upon Feelings: An fMRI Study of Neural Systems Supporting the
Attribution of Emotion to Self and Other. Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience 16, no. 10 (2004): 17461772.
Ochsner, Kevin N. Current Directions in Social Cognitive Neuroscience.
Current Opinion in Neurobiology 14 (2004): 254-258.
Ochsner, Kevin and Stephen J. Kosslyn, Constraints and Convergence:
The Cognitive Neuroscience Approach. URL to this E-text:
www.columbia.edu/~ko2132/pdf/Ochsner_CNS_App.pdf
Ochsner, Kevin N., Rebecca D. Day, Jeffrey C. Cooper, Elaine R.
Robertson, Sita Chopra, John D.E. Gabrieli, and James J. Gross.
For Better or For Worse: Neural Systems Supporting the
Cognitive Down- and Up- Regulation of Negative Emotion.
NeuroImage 23 (2004): 483-499.
Ochsner, Kevin N. and James J. Gross. The Cognitive Control of Emotion.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, no. 5 (May, 2005): 242-249.
OHagan, Timothy. Rousseau. New York, New York: Routledege, 2003.
OHagan, Timothy. Taking Rousseau Seriously. History of Political
Thought 25, no. 1 (Spring, 2004): 73-85.
Okhamafe, E. Imafedia, Zarathustra and Heideggers Call of Conscience.
Journal for the British Society for Phenomenology 14, no. 1
(January, 1983): 99-103.
406
Olafson, Frederick A. Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Olson, Robert G. A Naturalistic Theory of Conscience, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 19, no. 3 (March, 1959): 306-322.
Orr, Matthew. Environmental Decline and the Rise of Religion. Zygon 38,
no. 4 (December, 2003): 895-910.
Ortega, Mariana. When Conscience Calls, Will Dasein Answer?
Heideggerian Authenticity and the Possibility of Ethical Life.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13, no. 1 (2005): 15-
34.
Oshana, Marina A. L. The Misguided Marriage of Responsibility and
Autonomy. The Journal of Ethics 6 (2002): 261280.
Paine, Thomas. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine. Ed. Philip S.
Foner. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1969.
Pally, Regina. Non-Conscious Prediction and a Role for Consciousness in
Correcting Prediction Errors. Cortex 41 (2005): 643-662.
Paluch, Stanley. The Fall of the House of Being. Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology 10, no. 2 (May, 1979): 73-77.
Parkins, E.J. Equilibration, Mind, and Brain: Toward an Integrated
Psychology. New York, New York: Praeger Publishing, 1990.
Pasupathy, Anitha and Earl K. Miller. Different Time Courses of Learning
Related Activity in the Prefrontal Cortex. Nature 433 (February,
2005): 873-876.
Pegna, Alan J., Asaid Khateb, Francois Lazeyras and Mohamed L. Segheir.
Discriminating Emotional Faces Without Primary Visual Cortices
Involves The Right Amygdala. Nature Neuroscience 8, no. 1
(January, 2005): 24-25.
Peirce, C.S. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Ed. Justus Buchler. New
York, New York: Dover Publications, 1955.
Pendras, Mark. From Local Consciousness to Global Change: Asserting
Power at the Local Scale. International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research 26, no. 4 (December, 2002): 823-833.
407
Persinger, Michael, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. New York,
New York: Praeger Publishers, 1987.
Peters, Karl E. Evolutionary and Religious Perspectives on Morality.
Zygon 34, no. 3 (September, 1999): 419-433
Peterson, Gregory R. The Matter of Religion and Science: Response to
Huston Smith. Zygon 36, no. 2 (June, 2001): 215-222
Piercey, Robert, Not Choosing Between Morality and Ethics. The
Philosophical Forum 332, no. 1 (Spring, 2001): 53-72.
Plato. The Dialogues of Plato (in Five Volumes). 3rd edition revised and
corrected. Trans. by Benjamin Jowett. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1892. URL of this e-text:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0204
Plato. Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1997.
Polanyi, John. Science and Conscience. New Perspectives Quarterly 18,
no. 3 (Summer, 2001). URL of this E-text:
http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2001_summer/science.htm
Pope, Stephen. Engaging E.O. Wilson: Twenty-Five Years of
Sociobiology. Zygon 36, no. 2 (2001): 231-240.
Pribram, Karl H. A Paradigm Shift in the Brain and Behavioral Sciences.
Cortex 41 (2005): 731-734.
Prigonine, Ilya. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of
Nature. New York, New York: The Free Press, 1996.
Ramachandran, V.S. A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness. New York,
New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004.
Ramadan, Tariq. The Global Ideology of Fear. New Perspectives
Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Winter, 2006). URL of this E-text:
http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2006_winter/ramadan.html
Ratcliffe, Matthew. Heideggers Attunement and the Neuropsychology of
Emotion. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1, no. 3
(September, 2002): 287-312.
408
Ratcliffe, Matthew. Husserl and Nagel on Subjectivity and the Limits of
Physical Objectivity. Continental Philosophy Review 35 (2002):
353-377.
Reid, Mark D. Memory as Initial Experiencing of the Past. Philosophical
Psychology 18, no. 6 (December, 2005): 671-698.
Richards, Jane M., Emily A. Butler and James J. Gross. Emotion
Regulation in Romantic Relationships: The Cognitive
Consequences of Concealing Feelings. Journal of Social and
Personal Relationships 20, no. 5 (2003): 599-620.
Richardson, William J. Heideggers Fall. American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1995): 229-253.
Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago,
Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Rizzolatti, Giacomo and Michael A. Arbib. Language Within Our Grasp.
Trends in Neuroscience 21 (1998): 188-194.
Rizzolatti G., L. Fogassi and V. Gallese. Neurophysiological Mechanisms
Underlying the Understanding and Imitation of Action. Nature
Reviews Neuroscience 2 (2001): 661-670.
Roberts, Richard, The Problem of Conscience. International Journal of
Ethics 29, no. 3 (April, 1919): 332-338.
Rosenkranz, Sven. Pragmatism, Semantics, and the Unknowable.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81, no. 3 (September, 2003):
340-354.
Rolston, Holmes. Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural
World. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1988.
Royce, Josiah. On Certain Aspects of Moral Training. International Journal
of Ethics 3, no. 4 (1893): 413-436.
Rotshtein, Pia, Richard N. A. Henson, Alessandro Treves, Jon Driver and
Raymond J. Dolan, Morphing Marilyn Into Maggie Dissociates
Physical And Identity Face Representations In The Brain. Nature
Neuroscience 8, no. 1 (January, 2005): 107-113.
Rushdie, Salman. Inside the Mind of Jihadists. New Perspectives
Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Winter, 2006). URL of this E-text:
http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2006_winter/rushdie.html
409
Ruse, Michael. Evolutionary Ethics: What Can We Learn from the Past?
Zygon 34, no. 3 (September, 1999): 435-451
Russon, John. Reading Hegels Phenomenology. Bloomington Indiana:
Indiana University Press, 2004.
Sallis, John. Speaking of Light and Shining. Continental Philosophy
Review 35 (2002): 97102.
Samburskey, Shmuel. Physics of the Stoics. London: Hutchinson and
Company, 1971.
Samsonovich, Alexei V. and Giorgio A. Ascoli. The Conscious Self:
Ontology, Epistemology, and the Mirror Quest. Cortex 41 (2005):
621-636.
Sandvik, Hanno. On Human Population Growth, Natural Selection, and the
Tragedy of the Commons. Conservation Biology 13, no. 2 (April,
1999): 447-449.
Schallow, Frank. Time as an Afterthought: Differing Views on Imagination.
PhilosophyToday 36, no. 1 (Spring, 1992): 71-82.
Schallow, Frank. Language and the Social Roots of Conscience:
Heideggers Less Traveled Path. Human Studies 21 (1998): 145-
156.
Schallow, Frank. The Topography of Heideggers Concept of Conscience.
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1995): 255-
273.
Schwartz, Barry. George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol.
New York, New York: The Free Press, 1987.
Seldes, George ed. The Great Quotations. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel
Press, 1983.
Sheehan, Thomas. How (Not) to Read Heidegger. American Philosophical
Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1995): 275-294.
Sheehan, Thomas. The Original Form of Sein Und Zeit: Heideggers Der
Bergriff Der Zeit (1924). Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology 10, no. 2 (May, 1979): 78-83.
410
Sherover, Charles M. From Kant to Royce to Heidegger. Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2003.
Sherover, Charles M. Time, Freedom, and the Common Good. Albany,
New York: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Singer, Tania and Chris Frith. The Painful Side Of Empathy. Nature
Neuroscience 8, no. 7 (July, 2005): 845-846.
Smith, Barry and Leo Zaibert. The Metaphysics of Real Estate. Topoi 20
(2001): 161172.
Smith, Donald F. Functional Salutogenic Mechanisms of the Brain.
Perspectives of Biology and Medicine 45, no. 3 (Summer, 2002):
319-328.
Smith, Huston. Huston Smith Replies to Barbour, Goodenough, and
Peterson. Zygon 36, no. 2 (June, 2001): 223-231
Smith, P. Christopher. Nietzsche and Gadamer: From Strife to
Understanding, Achilles/Agamemnon to Achilles/Priam.
Continental Philosophy Review 35 (2002): 379-396.
Smith, Quentin. On Husserls Theory of Consciousness in the Fifth Logical
Investigation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37,
no. 4 (June, 1977): 482-497.
Smith, T.V. Oughtness and Order. International Journal of Ethics 44, no. 1
(October, 1933): 106-128.
Smith, Stephen G. Worthy Actions. The Journal of Ethics 5 (2001): 315-
333.
Speigleberg, Herbert. Wittgenstein Calls His Philosophy Phenomenology:
One More Supplement to The Puzzle of Wittgensteins
Phanomenologie. Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology 13, no. 3 (October, 1982): 296-299.
Stalnaker, Aaron. Comparative Religious Ethics and the Problem of
Human Nature. Journal of Religious Ethics 33, no. 2 (2005):
187-224.
Stanglin, Keith D. The Historical Connection Between the Golden Rule and
the Second Greatest Love Command. Journal of Religious Ethics
33, no. 2 (2005): 357-371.
411
Steel, Carlos. The Moral Purpose of the Human Body: A Reading of the
Timaeus 69-72. Phronesis 46, no. 2 (May, 2001): 105-128.
Sterba, James. Global Justice for Humans or for All Living Beings and
What Difference that Makes. The Journal of Ethics 9 (2005): 283
300.
Stevens, Jacqueline. On the Morals of Genealogy. Political Theory 31, no.
4 (August, 2003): 558-588.
Strawser, Michael J. How Did Socrates Become a Christian: Irony and a
Postmodern Christian Non-Ethic. Philosophy Today 36, no. 3
(Fall, 1992): 256-264.
Stryker, Michael P., Helen Sherk, Audie G. Leventhal and Helmut V.B.
Hirsch. Physiological Consequences for the Cats Visual Cortex of
Effectively Restricting Early Visual Experience With Oriented
Contours. Journal of Neurophysiology 41, no. 4 (July, 1978): 896-
909.
Sun, Ron. The Duality of Mind: A Bottom-Up Approach to Cognition.
Mahwah, New Jersey: L. Erlbaum and Associates, 2002.
Surmeir, D. James and Robert Foehring. A Mechanism For Homeostatic
Plasticity. Nature Neuroscience 7, no. 7 (July, 2004): 691-692.
Sussman, Robert W. The Myth of Man the Hunter, Man the Killer and the
Evolution of Human Morality. Zygon 34, no. 3 (September, 1999):
453-471.
Teehan, John. Kantian Ethics: After Darwin. Zygon 38, no. 1 (March,
2003): 49-60.
Temkin, Larry. Thinking About the Needy: A Reprise. The Journal of
Ethics 8, (2004): 409-458.
Thilly, Frank. Conscience. Philosophy Review 9, no. 1 (January, 1900):
18-29.
Thompson, Paul. Evolutionary Ethics: Its Origins and Contemporary Face.
Zygon 34, no. 3 (1999): 473-484.
Umilta, M.A., E. Kohler, V. Gallese, L. Forgassi, L. Fadiga, C. Keysers and
G. Rizzolatti. I Know What You Are Doing: A Neurophysiological
Approach. Neuron 31 (19 July, 2001): 155-165.
412
UN Millennium Project 2005. Environment and Human Well-being: A
Practical Strategy. Summary version of the report of the Task
Force on Environmental Sustainability. New York, New York: The
Earth Institute at Columbia University. URl of this E-text:
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/reports2.htm#09
Van Duijn, Mark, and Sacha Bem. On the Alleged Illusion of Conscious
Will. Philosophical Psychology 18, no. 6 (December, 2005): 699-
714.
Velkey, Richard L. Speech, Imagination, Origins: Rousseau and the
Political Animal. In The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern
Philosophy, ed. Riccardo Pozzo, 148-172. Washington D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2004.
Velleman, J. David. The Voice of Conscience. Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society 99 (1999): 57-76.
Vetlesen, Arne Johan. Hannah Arendt on Conscience and Evil.
Philosophy and Social Criticism 27, no. 5 (2001): 1-33.
Ward, Bernard. The Content and Function of Conscience. The Journal of
Philosophy 58, no. 24 (23 November, 1961): 765-772.
Westphal, Merold. The Search for a Postmodern Ethics. Research in
Phenomenology 32 (2002): 249-257.
White, Carol J. Dasein, Existence, and Death. Philosophy Today 28
(Spring, 1984): 52-65.
Wicclair, Mark R. Conscientious Objection in Medicine. Bioethics 14, no. 3
(July, 2000): 205-227.
Wicker, Bruno, Christian Keysers, Jane Plailly, Jean-Pierre Royet, Vittorio
Gallese and Giacomo Rizzolatti. Both of Us Disgusted in My
Insula: The Common Neural Basis of Seeing and Feeling Disgust.
Neuron 40 (30 October, 2003): 655-664.
Wiener, Norbert. The Highest Good. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology
and Scientific Method 11, no. 19 (10 September, 1914): 512-20.
Wildes, Kevin. Institutional Identity, Integrity, and Conscience. Kennedy
Institute of Ethics Journal 7, no. 4 (1997): 413-419.
Wilkins, Burleigh T. A Third Principle of Justice. The Journal of Ethics 1
(1997): 355-374.
413
Wilson, David Sloan, Eric Dietrich and Anne B. Clark. On the Inappropriate
Use of the Naturalistic Fallacy in Evolutionary Psychology.
Biology and Philosophy 18 (2003): 669-682.
Wilson, E.O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York, New York:
Random House, 1998.
Wilson, E.O. E.O. Wilson, Stephen Pope and Philip Hefner: A
Conversation. Zygon 36, no. 2 (June, 2001): 246-253.
Wilson, Stephen M., A. Pinar Saygun, Martin I. Sereno and Marco Iacoboni.
Listening To Speech Activates Motor Areas Involved In Speech
Production. Nature Neuroscience 7, no. 7 (July, 2004): 701-702.
Wirt, Cliff Engle. The Concept of the Ecstasis. Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology 14, no. 1 (January, 1983): 79-90.
Wood, Robert E. Six Heideggerian Figures. American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1995): 311-331.
Woolley, Sarah M.N., Thane E. Fremouw, Anne Hsu and Frederic E.
Theunissen. Tuning for Spectro-temporal Modulation: A
Mechanism for Auditory Discrimination of Natural Sounds. Nature
Neuroscience 8, no. (10 October, 2005): 1371-1380.
Wright, William K. Conscience as Reason and Emotion, Philosophy
Review 25, no. 5 (September, 1916): 676-691.
Yantis, Steven How Visual Salience Wins The Battle For Awareness.
Nature Neuroscience 8, no. 8 (August, 2005): 975-977.
Zahavi, Dan. Natural Realism, Anti-Reductionism, and Intentionality: The
Phenomenology of Hilary Putnam. In Space, Time, and Culture,
ed. David Carr and Cheung Chan-Fai, 235-251. Netherlands:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
414
INDEX:
4
4 day old cole slaw 316
A
Absolute Unitary Being 218
ACTWith lxxvii, 54, 56, 57, 58,
59, 62, 65, 67, 76, 83, 87,
124, 160, 330
Adams, John 355, 361
American democracy 353
Angst 184, 185, 186, 193, 271
anxiety 174, 181, 182, 183
Anytus 263
Apocalypse 300, 366
artificial intelligence 63
atheist 347
Athens xviii, 119
attunement vii, 182, 209, 388
B
bathtub experiment 157, 333
beating heart of conscience 85,
89, 327, 336
beer lx
Blair, Tony 343
Buddhism xli
C
Callicles 113, 119
cancer 322, 323
categorical imperative 133, 134,
135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141,
142
Chang, Ruth 31
chaos 196
Childress, James 94
Christ, Jesus 101, 362, 363,
365
classical logic 286
compassion 57
con-science 158
conscientious objection. 93
conscientious objector 99, 100,
341, 371, 375
conscientiousness 32, 33
consciousness 6, 8, 9, 11, 21,
136, 269
contradiction 84, 86, 135, 136,
142, 143, 215, 257, 271
corpse 87
415
Count of Monte Cristo 235, 236
courage 188, 249, 259
Crito 258
Cynics 153, 156
D
Damasio, Antonio 21, 103
death 101, 115, 185, 194, 258
democracy xvi
Descartes 158
de-termination 18
de-termines 59
Diogenes 153
disgust 141, 142, 166, 167,
169, 271
drink 52, 153, 159, 161
E
Earth 310, 316
economic growth 319, 320
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 97
empirical will 130
emplotment 234
enculturated 232
enculturation 248
F
Fifth Amendment 95
freedom viii, xxviii, li, 186, 195,
200, 217, 225, 244, 250, 272,
317, 335, 341, 342, 351, 366
freedom of religion 371
G
gap xxxviii, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52,
86, 109, 181
global environment 312
global warming xxxvii
globalization 325
God 348
good will 141, 142, 144, 145
Gorgias 111, 112, 113
H
habit 79
Harris, Sam xl, 359
have a conscience 93
Heidegger 171, 174, 378, 388
hero 98, 124, 190, 235, 240,
246, 363
history xxiv, 343
416
I
identity 216, 225, 235, 250
individuation 100
infant lix, 1, 87
injustice 28, 357
intension 45, 47, 49
internet 279
intrinsic good 321
introspection 10, 103, 110
irony xviii, 28, 226, 268, 269,
270, 271, 312, 315, 326, 335
Israel 292
J
jail 27, 28, 30, 97, 130, 258
James, William 8, 217
Jefferson, Thomas 354, 361,
362, 364, 366, 369
just man 28, 119, 124, 267, 339
justice 114, 122, 125, 262, 355,
365
K
kairos 36, 39, 40, 41, 43, 52,
253, 254
Kant lvii, 129, 133, 143
Kant, Immanuel 348
King, Martin Luther 25, 27, 30,
31, 84, 85, 101, 188, 257,
258, 268
L
laughter 269
law 130, 286, 287
law of god 303
Law of Gravity 287
law of nature 286, 287, 288
Law of the Excluded Middle 286
Law of the Included Extremes
297
leadership x, 127
leadership, the true art of 122
Letter from the Birmingham Jail
27, 28, 268
Lewis, David 379
life story 235, 238
linguistic signifier 247
logos 37, 254
love 62
M
Madison, James 97
maxim 133
417
McKenna, William 202
meaning of life xxv, lxx, 56, 169,
172, 226, 244
Metaphysics of Ethics 141
metastatic globalization 322
Middle East 292
Miller, Arthur 95
mitdasein 178, 191
Moment 38, 191
moral law 141, 143
moral theory 128, 129
musician 125, 127
MySpace 283
N
narrative identity 234, 247
narrative structure 238, 239,
240, 242, 247
natural world vii, xxx, 278, 324
O
objective 86, 134, 183
obstacle lxxv, 19, 31, 161, 175,
177, 193, 195, 210, 215, 242,
294, 377
Ochsner, Kevin 103
Oedipus 225, 271
old religions xxxvii, xxxviii
P
Palestine 292
Parks, Rosa 98
peace 93, 205
Pericles 120, 122
phenomenology 19, 205, 207,
378
Philebus 103
phronesis 123
politicians 128
potato game 54, 327, 328
practical wisdom xv, 7, 35, 37,
38, 51, 70, 87, 108, 123, 252,
254, 256, 264
promised land 314
psychology 10
R
Ramachandran, V.S. 219
rational will 130
reconcile 84, 205, 225, 226,
258, 271
reconciliation 204, 210, 215,
257, 269
religion vii, 342, 346, 350, 362,
365, 384
religious stories xxxvii
418
repetition 238, 248, 249, 250,
347, 372
reverence 141, 143, 146, 147,
164, 165, 271, 346
right action xvii, 43
S
Saul 216, 217, 219, 220, 222,
223, 224
Science 314
sciousness 8, 9, 10, 21
self vii, 12, 13, 20, 21, 42, 76,
86, 87, 89, 93, 94, 95, 104,
109, 140, 173, 177, 179, 183,
193, 199, 247
self-change 199, 200, 217, 225,
231
self-determination 118, 187,
200, 351
situated objectivity 202, 204,
211, 213, 214, 222
Smith, Adam 57, 60, 85
Socrates x, 47, 51, 52, 101,
103, 104, 123, 128, 241, 258,
263
Socratic irony 268
Socratic leisure 51
sophist 127
sophistry 111, 127
Sophists 112, 266
spring 46, 47, 140, 143, 146,
150, 151, 152
stitching ones self into the world
87, 89, 125, 327
subject 238
subjective 86
subjectivity 86
Sun, Ron 11, 63
Surgeon in the Sky 324
SUV 134, 136, 322
sympathy 57
Symposium 269
T
technology 312
tension 27, 28, 29, 46, 47, 48,
49, 52, 155, 159, 160, 163,
164, 183, 258, 267, 306
The End of Faith 359
The Republic xvi, 84
Thoreau, Henry David 97
Tiananmen Square 99
Tillman, Pat 338
Tower of Babel 325
tragedy 226, 269, 314
transcendence xliv, xlv, xlvi, li,
lxxvii, 87, 206
true art of politics 119
419
true north 132
truth 174, 379
turbulence viii
tyrant 79, 330, 332
U
universal 139
universal law 133, 141
universal moral law 145
V
Velleman, David 136
violence xxiii, xxxviii, 360
virtual world 275, 276, 281
virtue xv, 1, 35
voice of conscience 7, 8, 89,
91, 97, 100, 133, 191, 265,
266, 327
W
weather vii, 36, 302, 308, 310
What would Jesus do? 371, 375
wisdom viii, xi, xii, 61, 74, 263,
265, 269, 270, 365, 370
work function 48, 152
420
Further, there can be no doubt that a work
is spoilt when not done at the right time?
-- Socrates
559
Now, if it is deemed necessary that I
should forfeit my life for the furtherance of
the ends of justice, and mingle my blood
further with the blood of my children and
with the blood of millions in this slave
country whose rights are disregarded by
wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I
submit; so let it be done!
-- John Brown
560
www.controlmonkey.com

559
Republic. Book 2, just before he explains that injustice arises when
wants are not adequate to the situation, but exceed them.
560
John Brown, November 2, 1859, upon being found guilty of treason for
attempting to force an end to the cruelty shown fellow human beings
unjustly indentured or enslaved for the selfish, though at the time legal,
enrichment of the propertied elite who also, it must be noted, composed,
administered, and finally executed the law, justice, even as federal forces
and public finances enforced it. Brown was executed one month later. His
arrest was orchestrated by Col. Robert E. Lee. Lee led a bloody war to
perpetuate human slavery shortly after Brown was hung, and was allowed
a peaceful retirement upon his eventual surrender. For an honest portrait of
Browns heroism, see Henry David Thoreaus The Last Days of John
Brown. For an honest look at why all too often doing the right thing is
punished, and doing the wrong thing pardoned, see my next effort, The
Ethics of Inquiry.

Вам также может понравиться