Conscience, Morality and Creativity

Abstract

This paper offers, through a critical analysis of the phenomenon of conscience or, more precisely, moral conscience, a comparative study of Heidegger’s conception of Dasein and the Confucian conception of human nature. To be sure, in his Being and Time Heidegger gives only an analysis of conscience and takes it in the nonmoral sense.¹ He seems to regard as secondary any moral significance that goes with our ordinary sense of conscience. Even worse, Heidegger hints that this latter kind of interpretation of conscience passes conscience itself off, and is a fleeing in the face of conscience. It reflects more or less the fallen state of Dasein in its everydayness. Moral conscience is at best something ontical, and has no bearing upon the ontological structure of Dasein.