Conscience

Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) sees conscience as a manifestation of the “disunited” man after the fall. Instead of finding knowledge in union with God, conscience draws us to ourselves. We want to know the truth and the good by reference to ourselves as the origin. Conscience “derives the relation to God and to men from the relation of man to himself. Conscience pretends to be the voice of God and the standard for the relation to other men.” From this “right relation to himself,” the conscientious man wants to “recover the right relation to God and to other men. In short, “this good, which consists in the unity of man with himself, is now to be the origin of all good.” Self-knowledge becomes the measure and goal of life.

The result is only further fragmentation: “Knowledge now means the establishment of the relationship to oneself; it means the recognition in all things of oneself and of oneself in all things. And thus, for man who is in disunion with God, all things are in disunion, what is and what should be, life and law, knowledge and action, idea and reality, reason and instinct, duty and inclination, conviction and advantage, necessity and freedom, exertion and genius, universal and concrete, individual and collective; even truth, justice, beauty and love come into opposition with one another, just as do pleasure and displeasure, happiness and sorrow.”