The contents of the authoritarian
conscience are derived from the commands and taboos of the authority; its
strength is rooted in the emotions of fear of, and admiration for, the
authority. Good conscience is consciousness of pleasing the (external and
internalized) authority; guilty conscience id the consciousness of displeasing
it. The good (authoritarian) conscience
produces a feeling of well being and security for it implies approval by, and
greater closeness to, the authority; the guilty conscience produces fear and
insecurity, because acting against the will of the authority implies the danger
of being punished and – what is worse – of being deserted by the authority.
In order to understand the
full impact of the last statement we must remember that character structure of
the authoritarian person. He has found inner security by becoming,
symbiotically, part of the authority felt to be greater and more powerful than himself. As long as he is part of that authority – at the
expense of his own integrity – he feels that he is participating in the
authority’s strength. His feeling of certainty and identity depends on this
symbiosis; to be rejected by the authority means to be thrown into a void, to
face the horror of nothingness. Anything, to the authoritarian character, is
better than this. To be sure, the love and approval of the authority give him
the greatest satisfaction; but even punishment is better than rejection. The
punishing authority is still with him, and if he has “sinned”, the punishment
is at least proof that the authority still cares.
As long as peoples
relationships to the authority remains external, without ethical sanction, we
can hardly speak of conscience; such conduct is merely expediential, regulated
by fear of punishment and hope for reward, always dependent on the presence of
these authorities, on their knowledge of what one is doing, and their alleged
or real ability to punish and to reward. Often an experience which people take
to be a feeling of guilt springing from their conscience is really nothing but
their fear of such authorities. Properly speaking, these people do not feel
guilty but afraid. In the formation of the conscience, however, such
authorities as the parents, the church, the state, public opinion are either
consciously or unconsciously accepted as ethical and moral legislators whose
laws and sanctions one adopts, thus internalizing them. The laws and sanctions
of external authority become part of oneself, as it were, and instead of
feeling responsible to something outside oneself, one feels responsible to
something inside, to ones conscience. Conscience is a more effective regulator
of conduct than fear of external authority; for while one can run from the
latter, one can not escape from the internalized authority which has become part
of oneself. While authoritarian conscience is different from fear if punishment
and hope for reward, the relationship to the authority having become
internalized, it is not very different in other essential respects. The most
important point of similarity is the fact that the prescriptions of
authoritarian conscience are not determined by one’s own value judgment but
exclusively by the fact that its commands and taboos are pronounced by
authorities .If these norms happen to be good, conscience will guide man’s
actions in the direction of the good. However, they have not become the norms
of conscience because they are good, but because they are the norms given by
authority. If they are bad, they are just as much as part of conscience. A
believer in Hitler, for instance, felt he was acting according to his
conscience when he committed acts that where humanly revolting.
The prime offense in the
authoritarian situation is rebellion against the authority’s rule. Thus,
disobedience becomes the “cardinal sin”; obedience, then cardinal virtue.
Obedience implies the recognition of the authority’s superior power and wisdom;
his right to command, to reward, and to punish according to his own fiats. The
authority demands submission not only because of the fear of its power, but out
of the conviction of its moral superiority and right. The duty of recognizing
the authority’s superiority results in several prohibitions. The most
comprehensive of these is the taboo against feeling oneself to be, or ever be
able to become, like the authority, for this would contradict the latter’s
unqualified superiority and uniqueness. The real sin of Adam and Eve is the
attempt to become like God; and it is a punishment for this challenge that they
are expelled from the Garden of Eden. In authoritarian systems the authority is
made out to be fundamentally different from his subjects. He has powers not
attainable by anyone else: magic, wisdom, strength which can never be matched
by his subjects. Whatever the authority’s prerogatives are, whether he is the
master of the universe of a unique leader send by fate, the fundamental
inequality between him and man is the basic tenet of authoritarian conscience.
One particular important aspect of the uniqueness of the authority is the
privilege of being the only one who does not follow another’s will, but who
himself wills; who is not a means but and end in himself; who creates and is
not created. In the authoritarian orientation, the power of will and creation
are the privilege of the authority. Those subjected to him are means to his end
and, consequently, his property and used by him for own purpose.
But man has never yet ceased
striving to produce and to create because productiveness is the source of
strength, freedom, and happiness. However, to the extent to which he feels
dependent on powers transcending him, his very productiveness, the assertion of
his free will, makes him feel guilty. This feeling of guilt, in turn, weakens
man, reduces his power, and increases his submission in order to atone for his
attempt to be his “own creator and builder.” Paradoxically, the authoritarian
guilty conscience is a result of the feeling if strength, independence,
productiveness, and pride, while the authoritarian good conscience springs from
the feeling of obedience, dependence, powerlessness, and sinfulness.
The internalization of
authority has two implications: one where man submits to the authority, the
other where man takes over the role of the authority by treating himself with
the same strictness and cruelty. Man thus becomes not only the obedient slave
but also the strict taskmaster who treats himself as his own slave. This second
implication is very important for the understanding of the psychological
mechanisms of authoritarian conscience. The authoritarian character, being more
or less crippled in his productiveness, develops a certain amount of sadism and
destructiveness. These destructive energies are discharged by taking over the
role of the authority and dominating oneself as the servant.
The dependence on
irrational authority results in a weakening of will in the dependent person
and, at the same time, whatever tends to paralyze the will makes for an
increase in dependence. Thus, a vicious circle is formed. We ignore the fact
that we too bow down to powers, not to that of a dictator and a political
bureaucracy allied with him, but to the anonymous power of the market, of
success and public opinion, of “common sense” – or rather, of common nonsense,
and of the machine whose servants we have become. Our moral problem is man’s
indifference to himself. It lies in the fact that we have lost the sense of
significance, that we have made ourselves into instruments for purposes outside
ourselves, that we experience and treat ourselves as commodities and that our
own powers have become alienated from ourselves. We have become things and our
neighbors have become things. The result is that we are powerless and despise
ourselves for our impotence. Since we do not trust our own power, we have no
faith in man, no faith in ourselves or in what our own powers can create. We
have no conscience in the humanistic sense, since we do not dare to trust our
judgment. We are a herd believing that the road we follow must lead to a goal
since everybody else is on the same road.
Again the word
“responsibility” has lost it’s original meaning and is
usually used as a synonym for duty. The authoritarian conscience is essentially
the readiness to follow the orders of the authorities to which one submits; it
is glorified obedience. The humanistic conscience is the readiness to listen to
the voice of one’s own humanity and is independent of orders given by anyone
else.
Humanistic conscience is not
the internalized voice of an authority whom we are eager to please and afraid
of displeasing; it is our own voice, present in every human being and
independent of external sanctions and rewards. What is the nature of this
voice? Why do we hear it and why can we become deaf to it? Conscience judges
our functioning as human beings; it is (as the root of the word con-scientia indicates) knowledge within oneself, knowledge of
our respective success or failure in the art of living.
Actions, thoughts, and
feelings which are conducive to the proper functioning and unfolding of our
total personality produce a feeling of inner approval, of “rightness”,
characteristic of the humanistic “good conscience.” On the other hand, acts,
thoughts, and feelings injurious to our total personality produce a feeling of
uneasiness and discomfort, characteristic of the “ guilty
conscience.” Conscience is thus a reaction a re-action of ourselves
to ourselves. It is the voice of our true selves, which summons us back to
ourselves, to live productively, to develop fully and harmoniously – that is,
to become fully what we potentially are. It is the guardian of our integrity.
It is the guardian of our
integrity; it is the “ability to guarantee one’s self with all due pride, and
also at the same time to say yes to one’s self (Nietsche,
the Genealogy of Morals).” If love can be defined as the affirmation of the
potentialities and the care for, and the respect of, the uniqueness of the
loved person, humanistic conscience can be justly called the voice of our
loving care for ourselves. Humanistic conscience represents not only the
expression of our true selves; it contains also the essence of our moral
experiences in life. In it we preserve the knowledge of our aim in life and of
the principles through which attain it; those principles which we have
discovered ourselves as well as those we have learned from others and which we
have found to be true.
Humanistic conscience is the
expression of man’s self interest and integrity, while authoritarian conscience
is concerned with man’s obedience, self-sacrifice, duty, or his” social
adjustment.” The goal of humanistic conscience is productiveness and, therefore
happiness, since happiness is the necessary concomitant of productive living.
To cripple oneself by becoming a tool of others, no matter how dignified they
are made to appear, to be “selfless, “ unhappy,
resigned, discouraged, is in opposition to the demands of one’s conscience; any
violation of the integrity and proper functioning of our personality, with
regard to thinking as well as acting, and even with regard to such matters as
taste for food or sexual behavior is acting against one’s conscience.
But is our analysis of
conscience not contradicted by the fact that in many people its voice is so
feeble as not be heard and acted upon? Indeed, this fact is the reason for the
moral precariousness of the human situation. If conscience always spoke loudly
and distinctly enough, only a few would be mislead from their moral objective.
One answer follows from the very nature of conscience itself: since its
function is to be the guardian of man’s true self-interest, it is alive to the
extent to which the person has not lost himself entirely and become the prey of
his own indifference and destructiveness. The relation to one’s own
productiveness is one of interaction. The more productively one lives, the stronger
is one’s conscience, and , in turn furthers one’s
productiveness. The less productive one lives, the weaker become one’s
conscience; the paradoxical – and tragic – situation of man is that his
conscience is weakest when he needs it most.
Another answer to the
question of the relative ineffectiveness of consciousness is our refusal to
listen and – what is even more important – our ignorance of knowing how to
listen. People are often under the illusion that their conscience will speak
with a loud voice and its message will be clear and distinct; waiting for such
a voice, they do not hear anything. But when the voice of conscience is feeble;
it is indistinct; and one has to learn how to listen and understand it
communication in order to act accordingly.
However, learning to
understand the communications of one’s conscience is exceedingly difficult,
mainly for two reasons. In order to listen to the voice of our conscience we
must be able to listen to ourselves, and this is exactly what most people in our
culture have difficulties in doing. We listen to every voice and to everybody
but not to ourselves. We are constantly exposed to the noise of opinions and
ideas hammering at us from everywhere: motion pictures, newspapers, radio, idle chatter. If we had planned intentionally to prevent
ourselves from ever listening to ourselves, we could have done no better.
Listening to ourselves is so
difficult because this art requires another ability,
rare in modern man: that of being alone with oneself. In fact, we have
developed a phobia of being alone; we prefer the most trivial and even
obnoxious company, the meaningless activities, to being with ourselves; we seem
to be frightened at the prospect of facing ourselves. Is it because we feel we
would be such bad company? I think the fear of being alone with ourselves is
rather a feeling of embarrassment, bordering sometimes on terror at seeing a
person at once so well known and so strange; we are afraid and run away. We
thus miss the chance of listening to ourselves, and we continue to ignore our
conscience.
Listening to the feeble and
indistinct voice of our conscience is difficult also because it does not speak
to us directly and because we are often not aware that it is our conscience
which disturbs us. We may feel only anxious (or even sick) for a number of
reasons which have no apparent connection with our conscience. Perhaps the most
frequent indirect reaction of our conscience to being neglected is a vague and
unspecific feeling of guilt and uneasiness, of simply a feeling of tiredness or
listlessness. Sometimes such feelings are rationalized as guilt feelings for
not having done this or that, when actually the omission one feels guilty about
do not constitute genuine moral problems. But if the genuine though unconscious
feeling of guilt has become so strong to be silenced by superficial
rationalizations, it finds expression in deeper and more intense anxieties and
even in physical and mental sickness.
Humanistic ethics takes the
position that if man is alive he knows what is allowed; and to be alive means
to be productive, to use one’s powers not for any purpose transcending man, but
for oneself, to make sense of one’s existence, to be human. As long as anyone
believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the
clouds, in the past or in the future, he will go outside himself and seek
fulfillment where it can not be found. He will look for solutions and answers
at every point except the one where they can be found – in himself.
Please take me back
to the previous page