• Blogatory
  • Hannibal ad portas (Worldview)
    • Chesterton on Revolutionaries
    • The Lonely God (G.K. Chesterton)
    • Forum Question 1
  • Monsters from the Id (Film)
    • Hail, Caesar! Much Ado About Nothing.
    • Lincoln
    • The Hobbit
    • Avengers
    • The Dark Knight Rises
    • Atlas Shrugged II
    • AMERICA: IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT HER
    • Twilight Series
    • Les Misérables
    • The Dark Knight
  • Tolle Lege (Books)
    • Recommended for Worldview
  • About
    • 50 Literary (or not) Shades of Me

Graced Grit

~ for an uneasy providence

Graced Grit

Monthly Archives: May 2013

Conscience: Teacher, Judge, or Executioner Pt. 1

14 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by Barbara in Dostoevsky, Film, Literature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Great Books, Literature, Russian Literature, The Brothers Karamazov

How the Brothers Karamazov Unleashes the Furies

TBK

He [Alyosha] was beginning to understand Ivan’s illness. The anguish of a proud determination. A deep conscience! God, in Whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit.”

“Oh! He [Ivan] has a deep, deep conscience.” Katerina Ivanovna

Deep Conscience
It was said by those who knew Ivan Karamazov well that he had a deep conscience. So what is this conscience and how is it different from what we normally call conscience? It is important to distinguish the difference between deep conscience, which is
knowledge, and a more shallow or surface conscience, which is belief. The first is underived, as J. Budziszewski, author of What we Can’t Not Know describes it, and the second is derived from experience, teachers, parents, the church, religion, etc.

This surface conscience may be associated with a duty to do right, or an ethic as touched upon by Kierkegaard, or in Nietzsche’s admonition to go beyond good and evil. Both authors may have called upon the readers to find the deeper conscience which is not found in experience but in a “leap of faith,” or in the will. But “will to power” is successful only with surface conscience. The will arbitrates, negotiates, and wrangles the furies of conscience, it is powerless against what Budziszewski calls the avenger, “who punishes the soul who does wrong, but refuses to read the indictment (140).”

Deep conscience contains the moral laws that are written on the heart of every man as described in the Bible. They are not made by man, but are a priori, not derived from experience. Deep conscience is solid, it won’t be mocked and it can’t be circumvented. E. Michael Jones explains in Monsters from the Id, that even when we think that we “will” not speak of it [a wrong done], we precisely “will” speak of it because God demands it. Of Mary Shelley’s reluctance to write of the horrors of the French Revolution that she witnessed, Jones states that Shelley could not “not talk about it. The monster speaks the unspeakable for [her](Preface: x).” Thus was born Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Frodo: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Recent Posts

  • Confessions of an Unlucky Good Girl…
  • Domestic Arts and the Mundane
  • A Graced Grit Eulogy to Charles Portis’ “True Grit”
  • Grace Comes by Art…and Art Don’t Come Easy
  • Turning, Planting, and Pulling
  • Mary-Mary: The Two Revolutionaries
  • My Mother, Myself
  • Hail, Caesar! Much Ado About Nothing or Everything.
  • Surprised by Epistemology: Pt. 2
  • Greek Thoughts: Wine Dark Sea

Realms

  • A.W. Tozer
  • Apologetics
  • Art
  • Authors
  • Ayn Rand
  • Booker T. Washington
  • Books
  • Bram Stoker
  • C.S. Lewis
  • Charles Portis
  • Chesterton
  • Communism
  • Country of the Pointed Firs
  • Current Events
  • Dostoevsky
  • Dracula
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Fiction
  • Film
  • Frankenstein
  • French Revolution
  • Hamlet
  • History
  • Homer
  • How to be Unlucky
  • Islam
  • John MacArthur
  • John Newton
  • Jonathon Edwards
  • Joshua Gibbs
  • Karen Swallow Prior
  • King David
  • Literary Apologetics
  • Literature
  • Marquis de Sade
  • Marxism
  • Mary Shelley
  • Mary Wollstonecraft
  • Monsters from the Id
  • Movie Review
  • Objectivism
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Parenting
  • Politics
  • Post Modernism
  • Psychology
  • Sarah Orne Jewett
  • Shakespeare
  • Sociology
  • Tale of Two Sons
  • The Fathers
  • The Picture of Dorian Grey
  • Theology
  • True Grit
  • Twilight
  • Uncategorized
  • Voyage of the Dawn Treader
  • What We Can't Not Know
  • Worldview

Worldview

  • Introduction to a Christian Worldview

Blogroll

  • 100 Great Books List by Grade
  • Apologetics Index
  • Association of Classical and Christian Schools
  • Break Point
  • Center for Science and Culture
  • Chuck Colson
  • Credenda Agenda
  • Eagle Forum
  • Eleventary
  • Fallacy Detective
  • Grantian Florilegium
  • Great Books List
  • Leben Magazine
  • Matt Walsh Blog
  • Memoria Press

Not this day!

Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.

A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down!

But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you “stand…” Aragorn

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • September 2020
  • February 2020
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • March 2015
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012

Authors

  • Barbara

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Graced Grit
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Graced Grit
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: