On Conscience and Intellect as Inspired by Nietzsche

“The conscientious. It is more convenient to follow one’s conscience than one’s intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and so few intelligent people.”

Nietzsche ^[1]

Introduction

Before the Reader Nietzsche presents what may be deemed as the differing between people who favour conscientious living and those who favour intelligent living. Further we offer clarification in terms of such interpretation regarding Nietzsche’s thoughts. As he seemingly deems that those who seek refuge within solely their conscience seek consolation in an unfounded manner, we further propose the definitions for the sake of clarity, as well as further expansion of Nietzsche’s statement. Aiming, therefore, to find virtue within human life, we deem it possible by means of active rejection of living bounded within the horizon of conformity.

I. Conscience and Its Emotional Basis

We propose that conscience lays upon emotion, shaped by both internal tendencies and external experience over time, and that it is the means by which one can evaluate thought and action initially, as emotion is known to precede reason. While this may seem to be a knotty definition, we note that conscience is merely an emotional basis for the evaluation of “good” and “bad”. We note that it is a means of evaluation which is present within each human mind as inherent but can be shaped afterwards, and that it may largely differ from one individual to another. The Reader may not be content with such a definition. One could deem it a violent generalization, possibly, and from a certain viewpoint, even a lousy one. However, we propose that such general grasping of the human conscience as defined above is necessary, for there would be no tangible term which we could build upon reasoning on this vastly important conception, and we wish to show our reasoning to be plausible and valuable, and of necessity.

Therefore we have so far set the means by which initial evaluation of thoughts and actions occurs via emotion. Such differentiation between “good” and “bad”, if their origin points were ambivalent emotions, would therefore be purely emotivism-bounded, within non-cognitivist theories, or, simply, they would not be “good/bad”. If moral judgements arose solely from emotions, which are known to be multidimensional in terms of being “good” and/or “bad”, it would be exceedingly difficult to further shape concrete reasoning. For that matter, we propose that intellect likewise plays a great role in determining the nature and truth-aptness of thought and action, and seek refuge in cognitivist insights on morality. Such a claim could overlap with Nietzsche’s reasoning on said matter. The necessary role of both emotion and intellect may for some even seem intuitive; still, it is important to provide for it the mandatory logical foundation.

II. Nietzsche’s Critique of the Conscientious

With regards to Nietzsche’s thought, further discussion paves way to such reasoning.

We shall focus on conscientious emotional experience, that is, such emotional experience that is evaluated conscientiously. The reason why Nietzsche criticises the overabundance of thoughts and actions evaluated solely emotionally – i.e. through conscience in respect to the definition above – is because he deems that it prioritizes conformity. We deem further that conscience presents itself as a self-affirming conception and in the process of self-affirmation, it may strike against its own foundation and bring about unfavourable conclusions.

From what may seem natural, failure of any kind presents itself as instinctively uncomfortable (proven also by animal behaviour, as e.g., evading pain), as well as emotionally distressing. It is rather hard to face failure when one has aimed high in regards to the goal which they, in turn, did not achieve. Likewise, it is rather hard to face the insufficiency of every of one’s heartfelt and earnest endeavours. That is why, deems Nietzsche, people tend to emotionally justify failure. By licking their wounds with laconic phrases of self-encouragement, people tend to force failure into oblivion, or at least prioritize such emotional processes of achieving oblivion of such thoughts and actions. Those are “the conscientious” in regards to the definition we have provided. They tend to rid failure of the truth that it can be bad since it is emotionally undesirable, and work towards self-affirmation of conscience as the sole plausible foundation for evaluation of thought and action, in regards to both subjective and objective moral frames of reference^[2].

One may object, wishing upon the clear definition of the characteristics of morality at this point. However, within the scope of moral cognitivism, we are not obliged to pinpoint such characteristics of morality, as both subjective and objective cognitivist frames of reference take it moral judgements are statements which are truth-apt. As long as there is “good” or “bad” within these reference frames, reason may have knowledge on whether or not an action/thought is “good”/”bad” after further evaluation and affirmation of thought or action as “good/bad”. The relative shifting of the reference frames of cognitivist morality does not bring about change.

In light of the foregoing, one may assume that Nietzsche took it was never fulfilling for one to live disregarding failure in order to experience emotional comfort – and for that comfort to, in turn, be the definiter of one’s being –, yet that it is understandable to fail.

III. Intelligent Living and the Wholeness of Emotional Experience

Nietzsche concludes that the majority of people as we understand them prioritise emotional comfort, for comfort is convenient and desirable within the scope of emotions. He deems that there are far less people who prioritise intelligent living, for we propose that the intelligent life may be cleverly contrasted to the conscientious one, and that it cannot completely be devoid of hardship. It is possible to note that from such reasoning life in regards to intelligence might present itself as exceedingly difficult, even. Such living, it seems, would deem it necessary to avoid emotional comfort. Such living does not seem preferable, but we propose that it is based on actively knowing one’s life wholly and is therefore ‘better’, as it does not seek refuge in self-affirmation of conscience. We wish to elaborate further.

While one who lives within the bounds of emotional comfort is prioritizing “good” emotional experience for example, the other, who does not operate in a biased manner, prioritizes all emotional experience, i.e. prioritizes emotional experience equally and reasons on such experience. From such emotional experience the latter – reason – is able to draw conclusions which aim to make such experience into a whole, as well as make the one who experiences to be whole. While it does not imply that he cannot be in the wrong in his reasoning, indeed, for one’s reason may be tainted by the “evil demon” Descartes illustrates in his work, we propose that he nevertheless is closer to truth (or, simply, that which is deemed as true in one’s life) than the other (the one who excludes negative emotional experience, for example).

As an illustrative point, one may envision a circle in which there are positive emotional experiences written and appended to each point within the circle. Those are the emotional experiences of the latter, the one who excludes negative emotional experiences. Now envision a far larger circle containing the one constructed before; that is the circle which retains emotional experiences of the person who does not carefully select which ought to be true in his life. We deem that, while such wholeness of emotional experience does not imply direct way to truthfulness or contentedness, it possesses more disposition to be true, as all the necessary steps towards one’s truthfulness and contentedness is presented.

Here, however, we seem to propose a quantitative argument. One may oppose such a quantitative approach as emotional experiences are not mere pebbles, but one would have to be aware of its implications; if the man with the larger envelopment of emotional experience (man 1) were to be qualitatively wrong at the same time the man with less envelopment (man 2) is wrong, both would, of course, be in the wrong. However, we take it that the emotional perspective coupled with reason of man 1 still is of more quality than of man 2, as he retains and nourishes all the largely differing emotional experiences. One may see how that implies man 1 is more inclined to, but not in any way obliged to, achieve truthfulness and contentedness once again, though there is no possibility of providing an unifying answer to such a question of quality – merely statistical plausibility based, again, on quantitative propositions.

The aforementioned emotional wholeness coupled with intellect is what paves way to authentic truths within one’s life and therefore authentic living. Be it authentic living in a Kierkegaardian manner relying on authentic belief in the Christian God or not, we have presented that it is of vast importance to live through emotional experiences wholly and later on run them through the filter of reason, i.e. intellect, that is, ponder upon them further and aim to evaluate them through reason, possibly bringing about the decision to append experience truth-aptness.

Conclusion

Within the scope of the statement presented by Nietzsche, we have aspired to discern those who live “conscientiously” and are deprived of “intelligent” living, inspired by Nietzsche’s reasoning. It is important to note that reasonings offered above are inspired by the initial statement of Nietzsche’s and might not fully correlate to the latter reasonings he provides in “Beyond Good and Evil”.

As we have compared the downsides of living solely though regarding desirable emotional experience to the benefits of coupling reason in evaluation, we wished to illustrate the exceeding importance of one’s intellect. While we incline towards moral cognitivism, which states that moral judgements are propositions and are of truth-aptness, we presented earlier that our arguments stay consistent in both objectivist and subjectivist cognitivst moral frames of reference. Further ponderings may include the encapsulation of other meta-ethical frames of reference by which morality is regarded, as it would certainly bring about valuable conclusions.

This essay strived to emphasize on the importance of retentiveness of the wholeness of emotional experience.

We have illustrated how the prioritization of certain, carefully picked emotional experience strips one from the possibility of living wholly, as life is comprised of all sorts of emotional experiences, be it the ones which are imposed on one or which one imposes on oneself. The wholeness of emotional experience and reasoning through such experience is what paves way to authentic living, which is regarded as a highly favourable state one can achieve, for there is more disposition for truthfulness and contentedness thereupon. Loosely paraphrasing Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, “if there are as many minds as there are heads, there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts” and one should seek the means by which the fulfilment of authenticity is possible, for we deem that each man possesses such potentiality, and such living is truthful to oneself and may be unbiased, in turn.

Even though all known life converges to decadence due to finiteness within the physical Cosmos, if one were to accept such reasoning by coupling conscientious (emotion-driven) and intelligent (reason-driven) living, one would subtly be experiencing all there is for man to experience; for experiencing, and feeling and reasoning upon experience without immanent self-affirmation of conscience, is that which man is able to do. And as there is more inclination towards truth in life which experiences emotional wholeness and reasons through it, one should incline to such living. For there is nothing other than living for man, he should strive not to guide his being onto fallacious paths, even if such endeavours ascribe to one’s living more hardship.