• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / Tai Ji Men

“Zeno’s Conscience” and the Conscience of Tai Ji Men

04/12/2022Massimo Introvigne |

A well-known Italian novel calls our attention on the problems created when the role of conscience as moral compass is denied.

by Massimo Introvigne*

*A paper presented at the webinar “A Question of Conscience: The Tai Ji Men Case,” co-organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on April 5, 2022, International Day of Conscience.

Nino Spagnoli (1920–2006), statue of Italo Svevo, Trieste, Italy.
Nino Spagnoli (1920–2006), statue of Italo Svevo, Trieste, Italy. Credits.

Since the United Nations, largely thanks to the efforts of Dr. Hong Tao-Tze, the leader of Tai Ji Men, added the International Day of Conscience to their days of observance in 2019, I am considering how this day connects to the fact that what is perhaps the most important Italian novel of the 20th century has the word “conscience” in its title.

In 1923, Italo Svevo (1861–1928) published “La coscienza di Zeno,” “Zeno’s Conscience.” Svevo’s real name was Aron Hector Schmitz. He was a Jew from the cosmopolitan city of Trieste, which at his birth was part of the Austrian Empire. However, he regarded himself as Italian as evidenced by the choice of “Italo” as the first name in his literary pseudonym.

To understand the novel, one should consider that Svevo’s original mother tongue was German, and he was aware of the ambiguity of the Italian word “coscienza,” which translates both the English “conscience” and “consciousness.” In German, the corresponding words do not resemble each other. “Conscience” is “Gewissen” and “consciousness” is “Bewusstsein.” Interestingly, different editions of Svevo’s novel in German translated the title as “Zenos Gewissen” and “Zenos Bewusstsein.”

The novel is also a match of sort between Svevo and Sigmund Freud’s (1856–1939) psychoanalysis, a theory by which the novelist was both fascinated and repelled. Freud both established limits for our consciousness (Bewusstsein), claiming that most of what influences us lies behind consciousness, in the unconscious (Unbewusste), and cast suspicion on the conscience (Gewissen), claiming it is not a natural moral compass but simply a repository of the moral theories, which may be highly objectionable, inculcated in each of us by our parents and society.

Zeno's Conscience: The first edition of “La coscienza di Zeno”(1923).
The first edition of “La coscienza di Zeno” (1923).

It is difficult to understand what Svevo really thought about all this, because he used the literary technique of the unreliable narrator. In his literary fiction, the book is edited by an imaginary unscrupulous psychoanalyst who has asked the main character, Zeno, to write down the story of his life and, rather than keeping the text confidential, publishes it as a vengeance against a patient who has interrupted the therapy and is no longer paying him. But he also warns that the text written by Zeno may be full of lies.

What makes the book a masterpiece is that it is both a flow of elements, real or imaginary, that comes to Zeno’s consciousness from the unconscious, very much in the style of Irish novelist James Joyce (1882–1941), who was a great friend of Svevo and had published his “Ulysses” only one year before “Zeno’s Conscience,” and a testament to the fact that Zeno’s conscience fails to work as a moral compass.

Although he achieves, or pretends he has achieved—remember, he may be lying for the benefit of the doctor—, some material success, in fact Zeno acts without a real moral conscience in the four fields the novel is about—health, tobacco addiction, love, and business—and for this reason he fails.

James Joyce (left) and Italo Svevo (right). Source: Premio Letterario Giovanni Comisso.
James Joyce (left) and Italo Svevo (right). Source: Premio Letterario Giovanni Comisso.

I believe that Dr. Hong, who has made himself heard about conscience all over the world, will be remembered for having rescued conscience from the problems Svevo was immersed in when he published his novel. Conscience had been assaulted not only by Freud, but before him by Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). They all suggested that rather than being something natural or native conscience has been artificially created inside us by social forces not particularly well intentioned.

Svevo’s Zeno, with his complicate relationship with psychoanalysis, is an unforgettable embodiment of the situation of the 20th century humans who have been persuaded by ideologies that they should not listen to conscience. They may believe they are very modern and sophisticated, but in the end they are not able to impose order on the chaos of consciousness and their lives end up in moral bankruptcy.

Dr. Hong told us a simple truth, that we should forget ideologies and come back to conscience as the moral compass. Ideologies, as we know from the tragedies of the 20th century and are experiencing again in the 21st century, by obfuscating conscience create war and destruction. Only those who recognize the central role of conscience can build a civilization of peace and love.

Zeno lives in an era of turmoil, and ultimately does not succeed in recovering his conscience. However, he has his opportunities to understand that, notwithstanding what the psychoanalyst tells him, only conscience can impose the needed order to what is otherwise a chaotic flow of disconnected pieces of consciousness. These opportunities come when he is confronted with suffering and the world’s injustice, although neither he nor the other main characters in the novel profit of them.

There is a lesson in this, and one relevant for the Tai Ji Men case. The modern Western world has somewhat lost the notion of conscience because it has been incapable to answer the question what conscience is. But to define a notion we need to understand its contrary. We know what “hot” means because we also have a notion of “cold.” To understand “conscience” we should have an idea, and an experience, of “lack of conscience.”

Nagarjuna in contemplation as painted by Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947).
Nagarjuna in contemplation as painted by Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947). Credits.

Dr. Hong and his dizi had a very painful experience of what the “lack of conscience” is. The lack of conscience of corrupted bureaucrats and officers created the Tai Ji Men case. The great Buddhist sage Nagarjuna (150–250) wrote in his “Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom” that the greatest master is the one capable of “changing poison into medicine.” It is because they experienced the poison of the lack of conscience that Dr. Hong and his dizi were able to administer to the world the medicine of conscience. That we celebrate today the International Day of Conscience proves that the medicine has been effective.

Tagged With: Tai Ji Men, Taiwan

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

Related articles

  • Black Magic, False “Victims,” and “Religious Fraud”: Parallels Between the Cases of the Unification Church in Japan and Tai Ji Men in Taiwan

    Black Magic, False “Victims,” and “Religious Fraud”: Parallels Between the Cases of the Unification Church in Japan and Tai Ji Men in Taiwan

  • Living Together in Peace and the Tai Ji Men Case

    Living Together in Peace and the Tai Ji Men Case

  • Tai Ji Men—and Their Case—Go to Australia

    Tai Ji Men—and Their Case—Go to Australia

  • Tai Ji Men’s Work for Peace, Conscience, and Human Rights

    Tai Ji Men’s Work for Peace, Conscience, and Human Rights

Keep Reading

  • Peace for Tai Ji Men Means Peace for All Taiwan
    Peace for Tai Ji Men Means Peace for All Taiwan

    Peace is the most important expression of human sociality, and always goes hand in hand with justice. Peace in Taiwan needs a solution of the Tai Ji Men case.

  • How Repression of Religious Freedom Affects Social Justice: The Tai Ji Men Case in Taiwan
    How Repression of Religious Freedom Affects Social Justice: The Tai Ji Men Case in Taiwan

    An overview of the long-lasting case and some comments based on the author’s peculiar experience as a firefighter.

  • A Conscience-Based Citizen Diplomacy to Solve the Tai Ji Men Case
    A Conscience-Based Citizen Diplomacy to Solve the Tai Ji Men Case

    Celebrating the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy, scholars and witnesses from three different continents discussed how the long-lasting case may be finally solved.

  • Spirituality, World Peace, and Tai Ji Men: The Long Road of Transcultural Dialogue
    Spirituality, World Peace, and Tai Ji Men: The Long Road of Transcultural Dialogue

    Since the 19th century, Theosophy and other spiritual organizations have promoted universal brotherhood. So does today Tai Ji Men.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • Hui Muslims Clash with Police Over Mosque’s “Sinicization” by Ma Guangyao
  • Chinese Muslims Told Mosques Should Preach Communism Too by Ma Wenyan
  • Hong-Kong-Style National Security Law Comes to Macau by Gladys Kwok
  • Pakistan: Bishops’ Patience Exhausted After Killings at Catholic School by Daniela Bovolenta
  • Hebei: Friends Pray in Your Home, the CCP Cuts Off Your Water and Electricity by Lai Mingxia
  • Russia: Two Evangelical Pastors Prosecuted, Falsely Accused of Raising Money for the Ukrainian Army by Massimo Introvigne
  • Pakistan: Hindu Mother Killed While Trying to Protect Daughter from Abduction by Marco Respinti

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY