In this essay I discuss conscience as analyzed by Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time from 1927. In Heidegger´s phenomenological ontology conscience is an uncanny call that comes from ourselves and is directed to ourselves; an inner foreign voice that suddenly strikes us in our everydayness and summons us to face our own being, that is: our own uncanniness. According to Heidegger to face one´s being is to face the human existence itself as essentially free, finite and historical, which in its extension means to face oneself as the conscious being one is. My question focuses on the who: who is the one that calls inside of us – who is it that we listen to? Or, to put it differently: what in our existence makes it possible for us to simultaneously be the caller and the one that is being called on? Whereas Heidegger answers by referring to the distinction between Being and being(s), which is essential in his philosophy, I choose another and extended direction of interpretation, namely one that points precisely at the uncanny – demonic – character of existence. This interpretation is developed specifically in relation to some of Heidegger´s later writings, his readings of Sophocles´ Antigone as well as his Letter on Humanism. It is my intention to show that Heidegger through his analysis on the uncanny and historical human being implicitly makes room for a demonic understanding of conscience as an ethical phenomenon that relates it not only to being and death, but also to the dead.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-29264 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Reichard, Carolina |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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