Théodore Simon Jouffroy: Systems of necessity, mysticism and pantheism

Jouffroy has indicated that there are three philosophical stances that contradict natural right as he envisions it: firstly, denying the possibility of obligations for reasons independent of moral phenomena, secondly, denying the existence of obligations, because no such things can be found within moral phenomena, and thirdly, accepting the existence of obligations, but misunderstanding their nature. Starting with the first stance, Jouffroy finds four types of philosophical systems exemplifying it: systems of necessity, mysticism, pantheism and skepticism. I shall look in this post three of them and leave skepticism for the next post.

Joyffroy means by a system of necessity any philosophy that explicitly denies the existence of human freedom: if humans aren’t free, they cannot have any obligations. He does not attempt to give a full listing of all philosophical systems of this kind, but only mentions four prominent examples. First of these examples is Hobbesian philosophy, where the true notion of liberty is replaced, Jouffroy thinks, with a fictitious definition of liberty as the power of doing what we will. He dismisses this idea quickly, noting that this definition could make all unrestrained beings free – even rivers and wind – and that true liberty lies in our capacity to make spontaneous resolutions.

Jouffroy is equally quick with his second example or the Humean philosophy. Jouffroy reads Hume as insisting on the illusory nature of causality and thus indirectly also denying human freedom, which hinges on the possibility of humans being causes. Jouffroy’s short answer to Hume is that we do have a notion of cause and that we even can apply it in experience, because we feel ourselves as the cause of our actions.

Jouffroy takes more seriously the third example of such philosophical systems, which says that human volition is constrained by motives, so that the strongest motive inevitably determines human will. He quickly mentions Thomas Reid’s objection that there might be motiveless actions, but is not very convinced about it. Instead, Jouffroy concentrates his critique on the point that motives do not seem like constraints: even if I have a good motive for not throwing myself out of the window, I still could do it. He is especially doubtful about the notion of the strongest motive. Jouffroy reminds the reader about the three kinds of things motivating our actions – passions, motives arising from self-interest and obligations. He suggests that while we can compare the strength of two motives of the same type, we cannot quantitatively compare e.g. the strength of passions and obligations.

Jouffroy brings forward two arguments for the idea of motives determining the will. First, he notes that we often try to guess what a person will do, when we know their motives. Jouffroy admits this, but adds that such predictions are never meant to be fully certain. Secondly, he points out that we often do speak of governing human beings, as if they were just mechanical things. Jouffroy’s answer is that this a case of an analogy and that rewards and punishments used for governing people can at most influence, but never determine their behaviour.

The final example of a system of necessity Jouffroy gives is the idea of divine foreknowledge: because God knows what will happen, for instance, what we will do tomorrow, we cannot really do anything freely. Jouffroy admits that he would be more willing to reject the notion of divine foreknowledge, since the idea of free will seems more certain. Yet, he is doubtful whether the two ideas really contradict one another. Jouffroy emphasises that we should not judge divine foreknowledge by human standards and suggests that it is more like us observing past events: we know what a person has done yesterday and still what they did was freely chosen by them.

Jouffroy moves from the systems of necessity to mysticism. He describes it as an answer to the correct observations that we humans cannot achieve our absolute end in this life and that we can achieve even imperfect good only through great efforts. Mysticism explains these facts, Jouffroy notes, by introducing a Manichean figure of evil, who has ruined the current world, or by interpreting our current life as a punishment for earlier sins (he even thinks that the Christian story of fall merges these two idea by combining the notion of devil with the notion of original sin). The conclusion mysticism draws from the lousy state of the human condition is that there is no reason for us to do anything at all, except wait for a better world.

Jouffroy describes in more detail the consequences of mysticism. Mystics often distance themselves from the world that constantly nullifies all human efforts. Furthermore, he adds, they also abhor the human body, because it makes the human being suspect to the influence of the material world. Mystics also avoid all physical actions with a meaningful goal, Jouffroy notes, although they sometimes do something futile, in order to show how all actions are in vain. In addition, they avoid all human connections, preferring solitude over the affairs of any community, and even reject all scientific efforts. The only form of action they cannot deny of themselves, Jouffroy states, is the passive contemplation of things. Indeed, they even endorse contemplation as the only possible form of fulfilling human desires, holding ecstatic states in high regard.

The necessary consequence of the mystical idea that all actions are futile, Jouffroy thinks, is that there are no moral differences between any of them. A clear result of this stance is the denial of obligations, since no action is inherently better than any other. Jouffroy notes that some mystical schools have thus decided to just engage with mere pleasure seeking, since it is inherently no better than asceticism.

Jouffroy’s argument against mysticism is that the desire to instantly jump to the absolute end of human beings is a childish desire. Indeed, he insists, if we would be instantly happy, when we are born, we would be mere things and not moral persons, with notions of merit and demerit. Thus, Jouffroy concludes, the imperfection of our current world must be explained by a need for a moral proving ground, where we can grow to become good people.

Moving on to pantheism, Jouffroy begins by studying Spinoza’s philosophy, because Joyffroy thinks Spinoza to have been the most consistent pantheist in the history of philosophy. Still, despite this consistency, Jouffroy notes in Spinoza a fundamental contradiction: Spinoza states that human souls follow the laws of necessity and are nothing but combinations of ideas, yet, he appears to hold that human souls can freely affect the ideas they consist of.

Pantheism in general, Jouffroy thinks, leads to a denial of human freedom, because it assumes that only God exists and is free, relegating human beings into mere phenomena that cannot really produce, but only transmit actions. It is thus quite understandable, he says, that pantheism often leads to passivity. Jouffroy tries to explain the lure of pantheism by noting that it is based on the tendency of our reason to regard everything from the standpoint of absolute universality that forgets the existence of individual objects. He suggests as a cure the other method of knowledge, namely, perceptions of real things before us, since they confirm very vividly that there is more to the world than mere abstract universality of being.

Ludwig Feuerbach: Thoughts concerning death and immortality (1830)

(1804 - 1872)

 If at all, Feuerbach is today remembered most often as a mere link from Hegel to Marx. This is at least so far true that the very first published writings of Feuerbach do bear the distinct mark of Hegelianism. Thus, in his dissertation De ratione, una, universali, infinita, Feuerbach contrasts in quite a Hegelian fashion individuality of sense life, where everything is distinct and separate from one another, with the universality of reason and thinking, by which any human being is inherently connected with all the other humans in a mutual act of recognition.

His next major work, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, continues in the same vein, but connects this distinction especially to the question of personal immortality. Feuerbach considers this question rather modern: ancient Greeks and Romans believed only in current life, lived in and for a community, while mediaevals merely hoped for immortality in some distant future, where everyone would be resurrected and good deeds rewarded and evil punished. It is only the protestantism and the rationalist philosophy, he insists, that suggested an individual subject to be of such importance that it deserved immortality in itself.

Yet, Feuerbach leaps to a conclusion, such an emphasis on individuals has made us forget that there is something much more important and perfect than mere individual life. This more perfect or infinite Feuerbach now calls God or spirit (again, in quite a Hegelian fashion). Just like reason in Feuerbach’s dissertation, God unites individuals, although now Feuerbach likens it more to love: in loving one another, humans lose their distinct individuality and merge into a wider community of persons. Indeed, God exists just through such a process of mortals losing their own individuality, in other words, by constant death of new human beings - God is the unity behind everything variable.

Such a pantheistic notion of God does not then leave any room for personal immortality, Feuerbach insists. Only in this particular life exists this particular human being, and when that life ends, there is nothing sensuous left of this person (thoughts about this person do remain, but these are not individual). If a person would continue to exist as an individual, it would have to exist somewhere, but where could this place be?

Feuerbach does consider the possibility that life after death would continue on other planets and stars, but ultimately refuses it. Life must have its spatial limits, in addition to temporal limits, that is, Feuerbach insists, there can be no life beyond Earth. His line of argument is very flimsy: life on other planets couldn’t be equally perfect to ours - nature shouldn’t just repeat things - but there couldn’t be life less perfect than the least perfect life on Earth - then it wouldn’t even be life - nor life more perfect than the most perfect life on Earth - what could be more perfect than thinking? Still, one cannot but laugh at Feuerbach’s idea that making stars into homes of reborn humans would just turn space into a comfortable hotel. Instead, he suggests, stars are not creations of utility, but are dreams of a still youthful nature.

Another point speaking against personal immortality, Feuerbach continues, is that individual life is always embodied. Spirit or God does live without a body - it is the process, where bodies are generated and destroyed - but an individual person cannot. Indeed, Feuerbach points out, when we think of an individual's immortality, we think of the soul as a kind of body, trapped in another body. Yet, he continues, soul is not a body nor is it even an individual thing, but an activity of living, just like fire is an activity in a burning body. And like fire stops, when a thing is burned up, soul vanishes when the body dies.

Feuerbach also relies on the Hegelian idea that a limit of something does not just end something, but also makes it what it is. In other words, mortality just is what makes us human beings what we are. This is nothing to be afraid of, he adds, since when this limit of ours or death is present, we are not. What death adds to our life is meaning, just like a melody adds meaning to fleeting sounds.

The analogue to melody in human life is the common memory of humankind, Feuerbach suggests. The first years of our life is something that we learn of only from the memories of other persons. Our own individual personality is thus something made by humanity outside us. The whole of our life is then a steady creation of more memories, which could be transmitted to other persons and thus universalised. When the process has finished, we still exist in spirit, as these idealised memories.

Günther, Anthon: Preschool to speculative theology of positive Christianity. First part: Theory of creation (1828)

 

1783 -1863

A controversy surrounding pantheism (or atheism and Spinozism, as it was first called) has been a mainstay of German philosophy since at least the time of Christian Wolff, and ever new generations of philosophers have faced the condemnation of having breached the lines of orthodox Christianity. In Anton Günther’s Vorschule zur speculativen Theologie des positiven Christenthums it is the generation of Schelling and Hegel that faces now the same accusation.

Günther’s aim is to defend Christianity and to show how the new philosophies fail to understand its basic tenets. At the same time as Günther is criticising them, he is also clearly influenced by some of the ideas of the other German philosophers, in ways that resemble Coleridge’s new reading of the idea of trinity.

Günther’s book is structured as an exchange of letters between a theology student and his uncle, who is afraid that the nephew has fallen to pantheist thinking. The evidence for this suspicion lies in certain theses reminiscent of ideas common to many of the idealist thinkers of the time. In these theses, philosophy is regarded as a single entity, developing throughout history through various relatively true philosophical systems. Furthermore, philosophy is here regarded as having essentially the same mission as religion, and in addition, as bridging two different phases of religion: an undeveloped awareness of divine in feeling would have been supplanted by Greek realistic and polytheistic philosophy and Greek philosophy would have been superseded by Christian idealistic philosophy, which would finally lead to an age of reasoned consciousness of God, where philosophy would not be needed anymore and wise humanity would rule over all nature and create a new heaven.

Nephew then defends himself that despite his conviction that philosophy will lead to a new understanding of God, he does not think that this would necessarily imply supplanting Christianity with pantheism. Indeed, he insists that theism is an equally valid way to do philosophy.

Nephew outlines his position in more detail by dividing all possible philosophical systems into two kinds: critical philosophy begins with the faculty of cognition and takes care of not overstepping its limits, while transcendent philosophy does precisely what critical warns against and starts from what is absolute. He specifies this rather Kantian division by noting that transcendent philosophy describes the relation between absolute and relative being in terms of substance and its accidental modifications. Critical philosophy, on the other hand, tries to - again in Kantian terms - leave room for faith in matters pertaining to things outside cognition.

The student makes an even more intricate division of philosophical systems, although only in a footnote. Uncle is not that impressed with it, noting that all philosophical systems are in a sense critical, because they all must begin with some facts of consciousness, and at the same time also transcendent, because absolute or God is always one of these facts of consciousness.

His own understanding of philosophy is built around several oppositions. One of them is the primary opposition between absolute and relative being, by which uncle means, effectively, God and the world. Another opposition lies within the relative being, that is, opposition of nature and spirit. A third opposition cuts across the second opposition: in both nature and spirit we can differentiate between accidental or phenomenal appearances and their substance or noumenal ground. Furthermore, he finds yet another opposition between the phenomena multiplicity and the noumenal unity: both natural and spiritual appearances can be reduced to two opposed forces. One of these forces is always passive - in case of nature, contraction, in case of spirit, receptivity - while the other is active - respectively, expansion and spontaneity.

All of these opposed concepts are familiar from Kantian and post-Kantian discussions. Uncle - the probable voice of Günther himself - notes that they are also among the facts of consciousness, from which philosophy should begin. For instance, uncle notes that in our self-consciousness we are conscious of ourselves as spirit, but also of something distinct from us and spirit, that is, nature. By studying both spiritual and natural phenomena, uncle suggests, we can find the basic forces behind them. Uncle points out that this already leads us from accidental variability to more stable and substantial level; even more apparent this substance behind phenomena is to us in our experience of ourselves as a stable unity behind individual experiences. Finally, we are aware of ourselves being conditioned, which then requires the assumption of something that can exist just by itself.

Basic question of philosophy, uncle suggests, has always been to explain how these various components of experience are related to one another, and different systems have a different answer. Some of them concentrate on the relation between nature and spirit, like naturalism, which take substance of spirit be just an effect and a product of substance of nature, spiritualism, where the roles are reversed and the substance of nature emanates from the substance of spirit, hylozoism, where the two are identified, and dualism, where the two substances differ, but interact. Some philosophical systems try to settle the relation of natural and spiritual appearances, like sensualism, which takes all spiritual phenomena to be caused by natural phenomena and therefore raises the status of senses, or intellectualism, which takes the opposite stand and states that the world of experience must be a product of our representations.

The more important question in Günther’s schema concerns the question about the relationship between absolute and relative worlds, and it is here especially where the character of uncle finds evidence for his pantheism accusations. Some systems regard nature and spirit as mere accidents of divine substance: following tradition, uncle calls this acosmic pantheism, because this system denies the existence of any world distinct from God. In a sense opposed to this is what the uncle calls cosmic pantheism, where God is just the goal to be actualised through world history, which is then a process of God’s self-revelation. Further forms of pantheism the uncle mentions hold God or absolute to be spatiality (monadistic pantheism, where all becoming is mere illusion), temporality (compared to previous, all stability is here illusion), substantially identical with nature (pantheistic naturalism, where nature is revelation of divinity) or substantially identical with human spirit (here human spirit is just a limited mode of God and nature this limitation, and God is revealed through the system of finite spirits). With all of this evidence before him, uncle concludes that pantheism is a necessary result, when philosophy attempts to describe the relation of God to nature and spirit.

Nephew objects that there is still some room for a non-pantheist philosophy, where God is described as a creator of the world, creation being an external relation between God and nature. He does concede that creation cannot be handled theoretically, because it is based on God’s unconditioned, free causality, which cannot be conceptualised. Creation is still justified on practical grounds, because it is the only possible basis of ethical freedom.

The basic idea of creation, nephew says, presupposes that there is a world distinct from God and God distinct from the world. World can, he admits, be said to be in God, but only in the sense that God thinks even possible worlds. In addition to this, world still needs to receive existence, which is based on a free act of God. At the same time, nephew says, God reveals himself as the most perfect entity through the world to other, less perfect entities outside him, who are capable of knowing and loving God and so taking part in his blessedness. These less perfect entities or spirits God has created as his likeness, but not as equal to him.

Nephew also makes a Kantian distinction between the sense world and the intelligible world. The sense world is only the manner in which the intelligible world appears to finite spirits, thus, God has no real relation to the sense world. Because spatiality is the property of the sense world, God is not in any spatial relation to the real world. Still, nephew insists, God is outside the world in the sense that he is not finite.

Uncle notes that nephew’s model of creation resembles the system presented in Vorschule der Theologie (note the similarity with the name of this book), written by I. H. Fichte, son of the more famous J. G. Fichte. In Fichte’s system, as presented by Günther, absolute realises itself by giving independent existence to a difference implicit in it and forming a sort of body to itself through its self-division. Absolute retains and knows its unity in and through its division and is thus a self-conscious God only because of creation. The divisions are in the fashion of Leibnizian monadology themselves relative absolutes or self-contained universes and therefore also self-conscious personalities.

The concept of relative absolute reminds the nephew of another recent philosophical work, by Georg Friedrich Daumer. Daumer’s starting point, nephew tells, is an idea found in Schelling’s essay on freedom that God himself had a basis or ground in an ultimate, featureless indifference, on top of which divine self-consciousness was built. For Daumer, nephew says, God is always self-conscious and this indifference is more like something divinity rips out of itself - the relative absolute - and makes into a basis of finite world. In effect, this Daumerian relative absolute is a blind generating force that searches for its own self-consciousness and eventual reconciliation with God.

Nephew uses the Daumerian idea to solve a fault he finds in Fichte’s system, where there appears to be no place for nature outside self-conscious subjects. Nephew notes that most post-Kantian philosophers have taken nature as a dynamic whole and thus something real. If Fichte were right, nature would then also form a self-conscious subject and would be on the same level as human spirits, which the nephew cannot accept. His own idea was to take nature as a mere shadow of true reality, but now Daumer has given him a new idea - if nature is just this blind relative absolute, humanity is still on a higher level, because it does not just strive, but can also reach back to God. The only worry nephew now has is that it seems to restrict God’s omnipotence, if he can never create something truly different from himself, but only modifications of divinity - when God creates, he should not be just positing his own essence.

It is time for the uncle to lead the student away from the quagmire he has got himself into. The first target of uncle’s criticism is nephew’s Kantianism, evident especially in latter’s insistence that spatial sense world was nothing real and that God had nothing to do with it. Günther goes into more detail with Kant’s idea of space and time as a priori forms of experience in an appendix, where he balances Kantianism with Aristotle’s objective notion of space and time and both with Augustine’s manner of grounding space and time to God. In the main book, uncle merely notes that while it was right to say that worldly and therefore spatial relations do not concern God, it is wrong to insist that no relation holds between God and the spatial world. He also adds that Kant’s attempt to make room for faith actually managed to just set faith aside somewhere where it could be forgotten.

Uncle also notes that Fichte’s system is essentially another form of pantheism, because - as the nephew had feared - in it God just multiplies itself or posits other absolutes similar to itself. He also notes, making fun of the idea mentioned in the beginning about apparently different philosophies being just phases in the development of one philosophy, that pantheism, as exemplified by Fichte’s system, and Kant-inspired criticism, as exemplified by nephew’s system, are more like eternal rivals, neither of which can be seen as development of the other. Ultimately, the decision between the two systems boils down to the question whether facts of self-consciousness should weigh more than demands of reason. Human self-consciousness is inevitably bound to a consciousness of something else limiting us - nature - and thus to an inevitable dualism between finite or relative and infinite or absolute being. Then again, our reason strives to reduce everything into a unified whole and to envision the relative world as a revelation of absolute. Although not yet spelling it out, uncle hints of a possibility of a third option more satisfying than either criticism or pantheism.

Uncle also makes short shrift of Daumer’s position. At first, he quickly dismisses Schelling’s essay of freedom, which influences Daumer, by noting that Schelling introduces without any justification dualism within absolute, thus, making it into relative being. Daumer himself, uncle continues, makes again the pantheistic assumption that God can only posit something similar to itself (relative absolute) and that God needs the world for its own self-consciousness.

We then get an interlude with nephew’s letter, where he notes the similarity of his time with the time of Neoplatonists and Church Fathers. He suggests that just like Neoplatonism was a syncretist hodgepodge of various mystery religions and mythologies covered with magical superstition, modern idealism is also a similar confusion of oriental pantheism with mysticism of intellectual intuition. Furthermore, nephew insists that whereas Church Fathers appropriated from Neoplatonism all that was worthwhile (especially the notion of supersensuous world above the world of senses) and added solid historical background in the form of Bible, the task now ahead is to take what is useful in modern pantheistic idealism and give it again a solid grounding in Christianity.

Uncle takes up this challenge by picking as the important result of modern idealism the analysis of self-consciousness. Consciousness as such unites two distinct moments: what is represented and what represents. Self-consciousness is a form of consciousness, in which representing subject makes itself its own object. Immediately subject can know only its activities or interactions with some objects, while it can know its substance or essence only through the mediation of these activities: in the words of a common analogy, eye can see or be aware of itself only through the seeing of other things.

God, the uncle continues, should also have self-consciousness, although it is one of a peculiar kind, because it is absolute. Still, even God must have something as its object, before being capable of self-consciousness. Unlike human consciousness, God can simply posit its own essence as its own object. At the same time, it must posit a common substance for God as subject and God as object. In a manner very reminiscent of Coleridge uncle states that this threefold structure of divine self-consciousness is what Christianity has called trinity. In other words, God necessarily emanates three persons from himself in order to know itself.

Self-revelation of absolute, which reason required for completing its demands, happens then already at the level where only God exists, because God posits its own essence as a new object. Question is why God would still create something other beyond himself and his persons. Uncle concludes that God’s goal must have been to reveal himself to someone else who is not God.

Within the created realm, uncle continues, nature and spirit share similarities, but on a more substantial level they differ and oppose one another. Thus, both nature and spirit are based on a pair of opposed forces and their underlying unity, but with nature these two forces are necessarily related (action and reaction), while with spirit spontaneity need not correspond with the receptive side of human mind, and thus, spirit can freely rise above what it senses. Spirit and nature cannot then be reduced to one another and also not to any indifferent substance underlying them. Their opposition is also not based on their combination, which is just as finite and relative as both of them, namely, humanity as a combination of spirit and body. Their existence, uncle concludes, can then be based only on something third above them, which has created them.

God is then something completely different from both nature and spirit, uncle says, and completely incommensurable with them. In a sense, God is even opposed to finite creatures. God has a unified essence and substance, which appears in three essential forms. World, on the other hand, contains three different kinds of substances (nature, spirit and their combination or humanity), but they all share the same form of revealing their substance through a dualism of basic forces. Still, uncle points out, both the world as a whole and individual created beings can be regarded as God’s images - individual creatures are relative absolutes, since they have life principles that work as a foundation of a sum of appearances, while the world as a whole is a trinity of substances.

Nephew’s final letter starts by recounting traditional properties of God, such as his omnipotence, omniscience and love, all of which are essential reasons why God created the world and how he could do it. He notes that some philosophers deem such properties too anthropomorphic, while only accepting spirit as God's characterisation. Nephew points out that it would be actually better to distinguish spirit as a finite entity from God as absolute - although God is not necessary, like nature, he is also not free in the sense of finite spirit.

He then turns to the question, whether human reason can by itself know that God exists. He notes that philosophers have had two positions on the topic. First position insists that reason has in its own self-consciousness also an immediate mystical awareness of divinity. Nephew cannot accept this position, because it is an obvious fallback to the pantheist position, where humans and God are identified. The second position, on the other hand, accepts that we have only mediate knowledge of God, but suggests that this is possible only if God comes and directly interacts with us. Nephew is skeptical, whether knowledge requires such a direct interaction with its object - we can deduce the existence of absolute even from the awareness of ourselves as conditioned entities.

A related problem concerns the role of faith in getting to know absolute. The prominent opinion, as the nephew points out, was that faith had at least something to do with it. One party, endorsing the idea of reason having a immediate connection to God, identified this immediate connection with faith and insisted that only this immediate cognition or faith was required, while understanding as mediate cognition was dependent on immediate cognition and could only be of use in the multiplicity of the sense world. Understanding and its traditional proofs of God’s existence could still enliven faith in us, even if they really couldn’t prove anything. The opposing party insisted that understanding has something to do with cognition of divine: faith was created in us by God’s interaction with us and understanding was required for refining it into cognition through traditional proofs of God’s existence. Nephew points out that both parties have tried to find an immediate connection with God, one through its own self-consciousness, other through God’s interaction with us. Yet, both must admit that understanding and its mediate, conceptual thinking is required for knowing God, since immediately we can know only our own states, but not what produces them.

In the concluding letter of the book, uncle congratulates the nephew for endorsing two controversial ideas. First of these is the idea that God is properly speaking not a spirit. True, God has similarities to spirits: both are non-material and have self-consciousness. Still, they both have widely different essences, just like animals and humans do not share their essence, although both have the capacities to sense and imagine.

The second controversial position is that we can know God even without direct connection to him. The opponents of this idea insist that only similarities between the knower and the known make knowing possible. Uncle points out that this would make it impossible for us to ever know things of nature, which have a different essence from us. He points out the possible objection that humans can know nature through their bodily side, but rejects it instantly by noting that it ignores the unity of human self-consciousness - it is not the eye that sees, but the self-conscious human using the eye.

Uncle notes that the principle of similars knowing similars has a true kernel: we must know something similar to ourselves, that is, we must be conscious of ourselves, before we can know anything else. Still, this does not mean that we have to turn in something else in order to know its existence. Furthermore, the knowledge of God provided by our knowing the conditionedness of ourselves is only theoretical knowledge of absolute. If we truly want to know God as God or his personality, uncle concludes, we must know him also through hearing him speak to us through our conscience.