Unification Thought
Chapter 3: Theory of the Original Human Nature
The Theory of the Original Human Nature is a study concerning the image of what the original human being, but for the human fall, would have been like. Because of the human fall, human beings have lost their original condition. They have lost not only their original selves, but also their original world. As, a result, up to the present time they have been endeavouring, sometimes even unconsciously, to restore the original human self and the original world. This means that, throughout their entire lives, human beings harbor the idea of becoming better selves and the hope of living in a better world. Yet, human history has continued, even until today, without the ideal being realized.
Fish swim freely in the water; birds fly in the sky as they please. But what would happen if they were taken out of their natural environment? If fish were taken out of the water and thrown on land, they would stiffer tremendous pain. They would desire to go back to the water, their natural habitat. Similarly, if a bird is caught and put in a cage, it feels restrained and longs to go back to the open sky.
In the same way, people ardently desire the realization of the ideal, and at the same time feel disappointed in the world as it actually is. This means that human beings have lost their original selves and the ideal world. Since that ideal, even until today, could not be realized many have lived in constant disappointment, under dire hardships and difficulties; but having no other choice, they could not but live in this world as it is. Some people, however, have never ceased to pursue the original human way of life, especially religious people and philosophers. They seriously grappled with the question, "What is the human being?" and looked for ways to recover the original way of life.
Buddha, for example, spent six years of his life in strict monasticism and asceticism, engaging in deep meditation. As a result, he came to realize that human beings originally possessed Buddhahood, but through ignorance came to be bound by worldly desires and fell into suffering. Buddha taught that the way to recover one's original nature is through a life of spiritual discipline.
Jesus, likewise, inquired deeply into the problems of human life while traveling through many places, until he started his public ministry at the age of thirty. Consequently, he preached that human beings are sinners and have a satanic blood lineage resulting from the human fall, and that everyone must be born again by believing in the Son of God, that is, in Jesus himself Socrates said, that the true way of human life is to love true knowledge. In Plato, the supreme ideal of human life is to recognize the idea of the Good. For Aristotle, reason is what makes a person human, and he said that virtue is best realized in the communal life of the polis (city-state) and that the human being is a social animal (or polis-animal). Greek philosophers, broadly speaking, held the view that reason is the essence of human nature, and that if a person's reason is allowed to operate fully, that person will become an ideal being.
In the Middle Ages, Christian theology reigned over philosophy, and the Christian view of human nature was that human beings are sinful beings and can be saved only by God's grace. In this view, reason was regarded as ineffective. In the modern period, however, currents of philosophy that believed in human reason again came to appear. Descartes considered human beings to be rational beings, but he believed that people incur error or become confused because they do not know how to make proper use of reason.
Therefore, Descartes discussed the method of how to use reason properly. Kant claimed that human beings are personal beings that obey the voice of moral obligation ordered by practical reason, and that human beings are personal beings that obey the voice of moral obligation ordered by practical reason, and that human beings should live according to reason, without succumbing to temptations or desires.
Hegel, too, regarded human beings as rational beings. Reason was something that would self-actualize in the world. Freedom, the essence of reason, was to be realized along with the development of history.
According to Hegel's theory, human beings and the world should have become rational beings with the establishment of the modern state (i.e., the national state). In reality, however, people have remained deprived of their human nature just as they always had, and the world has continued as irrational as it had been before.
Kierkegaard opposed extreme types of rationalism such as the one offered by Hegel. Kierkegaard did not agree that humankind would become increasingly rational as the world progresses, as Hegel had claimed.
In actual society, lie said, human beings are nothing but aver-age people, whose true nature has been lost.
Accordingly, only when a person carves out life independently as an individual, apart from the general public, can that person's true human nature be regained. Thus, the conceptual framework for dealing with people in actual society, who have lost their original nature, and for seeking to restore human nature independently, was subsequently developed as the thought of Existentialism. This will be further explained below.
Feuerbach, in opposition to Hegel's rationalism, regarded the human being as a sensuous being. According to Feuerbach, human beings alienated from themselves their essence as a species, objectified it, and came to revere it as a god. Therein lay the loss of human nature, lie thought. Thus, Feuerbach asserted that human beings must recover their original human nature, and that this can only be done through denying religion.
Departing from Hegel's idea of actualizing freedom, Karl Marx called for the true liberation of human beings. In the society of Marx's time, the lives of laborers were indeed miserable. They were forced to endure long hours of labor, and were given wages that barely could sustain their lives. Diseases and crime were rampant among laborers, who were deprived of their human nature. In contrast, the capitalists were living in great affluence gained from their merciless exploitation and oppression of laborers. But in Marx's view, the capitalist themselves were deprived of their own original human nature.
Determined to liberate humankind, Marx first started with Feuerbach's humanism as a way to restore human nature; later, however, he came to realize that human beings were not only species beings, but also beings engaged in productive activity -- and this led him to the view that the essence of humankind is the freedom of labor in capitalist society, laborers were deprived of all the products of their labor, and they labored not by their own will, but by the will of the capitalists. Therein, precisely, lay the laborers' loss of human nature-according to Marx.
From that, Marx concluded that in order to liberate the working class, what must be done is to overthrow capitalist society, where laborers are exploited. When such liberation occurred, the capitalists themselves would regain their own human nature, Marx thought. Furthermore, based on the materialist view, Marx concluded that human consciousness is determined by the relations of production, which are the basis of society, and that the economic system must be changed by force. Nevertheless, the Communist nations, in which revolutions took place in accordance with Marx's theory, have become dictatorial societies where freedom is suppressed and human nature is violated and neglected. Those are societies in which people have increasingly been losing their original nature. This implies that Marx was mistaken both in his grasp of the cause of human alienation and in his method for solving the problem of human alienation.
Human alienation, however, is not a problem of Communist society alone. In capitalist society as well, individualism and materialism are rampant, and a self-centered way of thinking-whereby people think they are permitted to do anything they want-has become pervasive. As a result, in capitalist society, too, human nature is quickly being lost.
In this way, numerous religious people and philosophers have developed their own views of human nature, devoting great effort to the recovery of the original human nature; yet they have been unsuccessful in actually liberating humankind. The difficult problem for everyone has always been how to determine what the human being is.
The Reverend Sun Myung Moon has trod his entire life course trying to provide fundamental solutions to such unresolved questions in human history. He has proclaimed that, originally, every human being is a child of God, even though, having lost their original nature, people have become miserable.
Human beings were created in the image of God, but due to the fall of the first human ancestors, they have become separated from God. They can restore their original nature, however, by living in accordance with God's word, thus coming to receive God's love. In this chapter, the problems of the human fall and the way to restore the original human nature will not be discussed (these topics are entrusted to Divine Principle); our focus will be on describing the original human nature itself.
From the original standpoint, each one of us is a being with Divine Image, which resembles the Image of God, and a being with Divine Character, which reflects the Character of God. We are also beings with position, which resembles the characteristic of position in the Original Image. Each of these characteristics will be discussed below.
1. A Being With Divine Image
The human being is a being with Divine Image, resembling the Image of God. The Divine Image consists of Sungsang and Hyungsang, yang and yin, and Individual Image. Resembling this Divine Image, each one of us is to become a being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang, a being of harmonious yang and yin, and a being with individuality.
A. A Being of United Sungsang and Hyungsang
There are four kinds of Sungsang and Hyungsang in human nature. First, each human being is a substantial image integrating all things. We contain in our Sungsang and Hyungsang not only the Sungsang-Hyungsang elements of the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, and mineral kingdom, but also the Sungsang-Hyungsang elements unique to human beings, namely the spirit mind and the spirit body.
Second, each person is a dual being of spirit person and physical person. Third, each human being is a being of united mind and body. And fourth, each human being is a being with a dual mind consisting of a spirit mind and a physical mind.
Now, when we consider the human being from the perspective of having lost the original human nature, the relationship between the spirit mind and the physical mind (the fourth kind of Sungsang and Hyungsang mentioned above) is especially important. Hence, let us consider this relationship in further detail. Tire function of the spirit mind is to pursue a life of truth, goodness, beauty, and love in other words, a life of values. Love is the foundation for truth, goodness, and beauty. Therefore, a life of values is a life of truth, goodness and beauty, centered on love. to be sure, a life of values includes the aspect of pursuing one's own joy by seeking spiritual values for oneself, nevertheless, a more essential aspect of a life of values is the effort to please others through realizing values. Therefore, life of values is a "for others" type of life that is, life in which one lives for family, tribe, nation, humankind, and ultimately for God. In contrast, the function of the physical mind is to pursue the life of food, clothing, shelter, and sex -- that is, material life. Material life is life centered on the individual person.
In the original order, the spirit mind and the physical mind are in the relationship of subject and object. The physical mind should obey the spirit mind. The union of the spirit mind and the physical mind constitutes the "human mind." The human mind in which tire spirit mind is subject and the physical mind is object is an "original mind." That the physical mind obeys the spirit mind means that the life of values is primary and material life is secondary. This means that the life of truth, goodness, beauty, and love is tire purpose (goal), and the life of food, clothing, shelter, and sex is the means to that goal. This is the way human beings, originally, should have lived.
In order to actualize such a relationship between the spirit mind and the physical mind, human beings should have grown in accordance with God's word. Their, they would have formed a union in give-and-receive action between the Sungsang and the Hyungsang, just as in God a union between the Original Sungsang and the Original Hyungsang, centering on Heart, is maintained.
Due to the human fall, however, human beings failed to actualize the original relationship between the spirit mind and the physical mind. As a result, the physical mind, which should have been in the object position, came to stand in the subject position; and the spirit mind, which should have been in the subject position, came to stand in the object position. Thus, the life of food, clothing, shelter, and sex became people's primary objective, whereas the life of truth, goodness, beauty, and love became a means to that end. Love for others and actions of truth, goodness, and beauty came to be carried out for such purposes as gaining wealth and obtaining position. This does not mean that there are no values in the fallen world: there are values in the fallen world, but in many cases, these values are the means for self-centered, material life.
The reason is that the physical mind has become the subject, and the spirit mind has become the object.
In this way, the original relationship between the spirit mind and the physical mind has been reversed.
Therefore, in order to recover the original state of human life, this relationship must be returned to its original state. That is why, throughout history, the various religions of the world have taught people how to win victory in the battle against their own selves. Confucius, for instance, spoke of the "return to the observance of the rites through overcoming the self." Jesus said, "If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross and follow me" (Matt. 16:24, Rsv), and "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4, RSV). In order to achieve victory over themselves, people have often chosen a monastic way of life, which includes asceticism, fasting and prayer.
Thus far, numerous monks, nuns, saints, and righteous people have indeed prevailed in their battles against their own selves, but having done that, they did not know what to do to cope with the sinful world. Thus, real society remained under the dominion of desires centered on the physical mind, and those monks nuns, and So forth, had to conduct their saintly lives separately from the rest of society.
B. A Being of Harmonious Yang and Yin
Yang and yin are attributes of the Sungsang and of the Hyungsang, Let us discuss the harmony between yang and yin as the harmony between a yang entity and a yin entity. The harmony of yang and yin in humankind refers to the harmony of man and woman, or more precisely, the harmony between husband and wife.
The problem of what husband and wife should be like and what the family should be like have been important issues since ancient times. Animals, plants, and minerals all exist and multiply through the union between yang and yin. Yet, to regard the union between yang and yin in human beings simply as the union between man and woman would be equivalent to regarding the union of husband and wife simply as a biological union. In advanced nations today, men and women easily get married and easily get divorced; as a result, the sacredness and eternalness of marriage are being lost. This is not the original way for the relationship of husband and wife. No satisfactory answers have yet been given to such questions as why men and women exist or for what purpose they get married. Hence, people many times prefer not to get married at all. To these problems, Unification Thought offers clear solutions.
First, husband and wife each, originally, represents one of God's dual characteristics; accordingly, their conjugal union, signifies the manifestation of God. When husband and wife love each other centering of God and with God's love as the vertical axis, they love each other horizontally, performing a circular movement centering on that axis. When that happens, God's love dwells in that couple.
Second, husband and wife each, originally, represents one half the universe; therefore, the unity of husband and wife signifies the completion of the creation of the universe. If Adam and Eve had not fallen away from God, the creation of the universe would have been completed by the perfection of Adam and Eve because the perfection of humankind, which was to rule over the creation, was the ultimate aim of the creation of the universe. Thus, the perfection of' husband and wife signifies the completion of the creation of the universe. Since, however, no couple has ever reached perfection, the creation of the universe has not been completed yet. For that reason, God has been conducting the dispensation of re-creation. To re-create fallen human beings means to lead them to be perfected as individuals, and further to be perfected as husband-wife couples. Human beings were created to be rulers of dominion over all things, but neither man alone nor woman alone can become ruler of dominion. Only by being perfected as a couple, that is, as husband and wife, can they become rulers over creation. Only then will the creation of the universe be completed. Third, since husband and wife each, originally, represents one half of humankind, the unity of husband and wife signifies the unity of humankind. To explain, the husband represents all the men of humankind, and the wife represents all the women of humankind. The population of the world today is approximately five billion people. Therefore, the husband and the wife, each, possess the value of representing 2.5 billion people.
Fourth, originally husband and wife, individually, are beings representing one half of the family; therefore, the union of husband and wife signifies the perfection of the family. The husband represents all the men of the family, and the wife represents all women.
From the above perspective, that husband and wife love each other signifies that they have perfected their love for all humankind through the family, and that they have become the center of the universe. The union of husband and wife is, indeed, a sacred and precious union. 2 Because of the human fall, however, Adam and Eve were not able to become husband and wife as originally intended. As a result, in fallen humankind, no husband-and-wife couple has ever been able to become united centered on God's love, and all of them have lost God. Thus, the creation of the universe has remained incomplete, humankind is divided, and discord often takes place within the family.
Today, family problems and social problems abound everywhere. The cause of all of these problems is that husband and wife do not have a proper relationship. That is why families break down, societies are in disarray, nations become disorderly, and the world is chaotic. Therefore, that husband and wife become harmoniously united is equivalent to the world becoming united. Stated differently, the union of husband and wife is the key to solving social and world problems.
C. A Being With Individuality
In creating the universe, God envisioned the individual images of the various beings to be created. He conceived the image of each human being, each animal, and each plant. The individual image of a human being is especially distinctive; with regard to other human beings, however, the lower their class is, the less distinctive their individualities are. For instance, we can hardly distinguish the individualities of bacteria or amoebae. In contrast, the faces and characteristics of human beings are clearly distinguishable from one another. God endowed human beings with such a particularized individual image so that He might obtain, from each one of them, a unique, stimulating joy. Therefore, a human being is a being with supreme value who gives supreme joy to God through a unique individuality. This individual image in another aspect of the original human nature.
The first manifestation of people's individuality is their appearance; though there are five billion people in the world, no two individuals have exactly the same face. The second manifestation of people's individuality is their behavior, which is different from person to person. If we regard appearance as the unique characteristic feature of people's Hyungsang, then behavior can be regarded as the unique characteristic feature of their Sungsang, because behavior is a direct manifestation of the mind.
The third manifestation of people's individuality is their creative expression. That does not mean only creation through art, but any activity in which one may engage oneself to express one's creativity. This expression differs from person to person.
Hence, God feels pleased by looking at the face, behavior, and creative activity of each human being with original human nature. That God becomes pleased by looking at such human beings means that they give unique beauty to God through their appearance, behavior, and creative activity. That is the beauty of a person's individuality, which includes the beauty of appearance, the beauty of behavior, and the beauty of creative activity.
When parents look at their children, they perceive each child as beautiful and lovely. In the same way, when God looks at human beings, He feels that the appearance, behavior, and creative activity of each human being are beautiful and lovely -- and He becomes pleased.
Because of the human fall, however, people's individualities have mostly been crushed or ignored. This has been especially true in dictatorial societies.
The paramount example of this is the society under Communist rule. The reason is that Communism denigrates human individuality, regarding it as a product of the environment -- a viewpoint derived from materialism. Viewed from the perspective of Unification Thought, however, human individuality is neither something accidental nor a product of the environment; rather, it is derived from the Individual Image of God -- in other words, it is something that comes from God and, therefore, is very precious.
II. A Being with Divine Character
A. A Being With Heart
Heart (or Shimjung) 3 is the emotional impulse to seek joy through love; it is the source of love and the core of God's character. Therefore, in human beings as well, the core of their original nature is Heart, and they are beings with Heart.
When human beings come to inherit God's Heart, they feel a strong desire to love everyone and everything.
Not to do so would cause their heart to feel a great deal of pain. Fallen persons find it difficult to love others, but once they become one with God's Heart, their lives are transformed into love itself. Also, if love is there, those who have many possessions cannot but share with those who have less. In this way, the gap between the haves and have-nots, the rich and the poor-in other words, the reality of exploitation in the world-comes to naturally disappear. Such would be the results of the balancing function of love. That human beings are beings with Heart means that they live a life of love. Therefore, one can conclude that the human being is Homo Antans a loving person, or a person of love.
Heart is the core of the human personality. Therefore, that human beings are beings with Heart means that they are individuals of personality. Such a person's spirit mind and physical mind engage in harmonious give-and-receive action centering on Heart, and their faculties of intellect, emotion, and will are equally developed in a balanced way, centering on Heart.
In fallen persons, the function of the spirit mind is often weak and dominated by the physical mind. For example, some people may have a well-developed reason yet lack emotional maturity or sufficient will power to do good. On the other hand, if a person inherits God's Heart and becomes a being with Heart, that person's intellect, emotion, and will develop in a well-balanced way, and the spirit mind will have dominion over the physical mind as they engage in harmonious give-and-receive action.
Furthermore, Heart is the driving force that stimulates the faculties of intellect, emotion, and will, and is the basis for the values of truth, beauty, and goodness. Intellect is the faculty to cognize, and it pursues the value of "truth"; emotion is the faculty to feel joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, and so forth, and it pursues the value of "beauty"; will is the faculty to determine one's mind, and it pursues the value of "goodness." Originally, all of these should function on the basis of motivation from Heart. If one pursues truth through intellectual activity, the result will be the knowledge of science, philosophy, and so on. If one pursues beauty through emotional activity, the result will be art. If one pursues goodness through volitional activity, the result will be morality, ethics, and so on. Politics, economics, law, the media, sports, and so on, these are the results of intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities. The totality of these intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities is culture. This is illustrated in Fig. 3-1.
In this way, Heart is the driving force of cultural activities. Therefore, culture, in its original meaning, should be culture of Heart. That is what true culture is all about. The culture of heart, which God originally intended to realize through Adam, was the "Adam culture." Since Adam and Eve fell, however, the culture of Heart was not realized; instead, cultures based on self-centeredness or cultures in which the intellect, emotion, and will are separated from one another) have been established.
For example, in economic activity until today, making money has been the supreme purpose. In the original world, however, if someone were to live in isolated affluence while others lived in poverty, that person could not but be stricken by pain in the heart. Thus, those who earned a great deal of money would naturally want to give some of it to their neighbors or to society. In other words, people would feel like actualizing God's love through their economic activities. Not only in the economy, but also in other fields, people would want to actualize God's love. Thus, the culture of heart would be established.
To date, humankind has tried in many different ways to actualize the true culture, but all attempts have failed. The reason is that people did not know what the true culture is supposed to be like, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China was one example. The leaders of that revolution attempted to build a culture based on labor, in accordance with materialistic dialectic, but their efforts resulted only in the disregard for human nature and the delay of modernization. The true culture is a culture centered on Heart. The new cultural revolution advocated by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon aims precisely at the establishment of the culture of Heart.
At this point, it may be opportune to elaborate on the concepts of culture and civilization. The sum total of the results or intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities, when considered from the material aspects of those results, is called, "civilization"; and when considered from the spiritual aspects of those results (religion, art, and so on), it is called "culture." Since, however, it is difficult clearly to distinguish the spiritual aspects from the material aspects, these two terms are generally used in the same meaning.
Therefore, in Unification Thought as well, "culture" and "civilization" are used in the same meaning.
B. A Being with Logos
The universe was created through Logos and performs its movements in accordance with Logos. Human beings, also were created through Logos, and their life must be in accordance with Logos. Thus, the human being is a being with Logos.
Logos is a multiplied body that came into being through give-and-receive action between God's Inner Sungsang and Inner Hyungsang centered on purpose. Since "reason" plays a specially important role in the Inner Sungsang and "law" plays an equally important role in the Inner Hyungsang, Logos is the unity of reason and law, hence the term "reason-law." Therefore, a being with Logos is a being with reason-law.
Since the characteristic feature of reason is freedom and the characteristic feature of law is necessity, a "being with Logos" refers to a being in which freedom and necessity are united. This means that human beings are normative beings, living according to laws (or norms), as well as rational beings, behaving according to free will.
Today it is commonly held that since human beings are free, they should not be restricted by any laws or norms. True freedom, however, consists in obeying laws or more precisely-in willingly observing laws.
Freedom that ignores laws is license and brings nothing but destruction. For example, a train, as long as it remains on the tracks, can run rapidly or move slowly, go forward or move backward. If, however, it leaves the tracks, it will not move at all. In other words, the train has freedom only insofar as it remains on the tracks. If it derails, it will destroy itself and may cause damage to people and property.
In like manner, people can enjoy freedom as long as they live in accordance with norms. Confucius said, "(At seventy) I followed my heart's desire without overstepping the line." This is indeed a description of the human being as a being with Logos, in which free will and law are united.
Since human beings are beings with Logos, their original nature is to try to follow the law. The law that we must follow is the law that operates in the entire universe-specifically, it is the Law of Give-and-Receive Action. When Logos was formed in the Original Image, it was motivated by Heart, which is the root of love. Therefore, the law of the universe, originally, is motivated by love, and the purpose of the law is die actualization of love.
As mentioned in the Ontology, the family is the miniature of the orderly system of the cosmos. Therefore, just as the universe has vertical and horizontal order, so the family, likewise, has vertical and horizontal order. The norms that correspond to these two kinds of order are the vertical norm and the horizontal norm.
The vertical norm in the family is the norm for the relationship between parents and children. The horizontal norm in the family is the norm for the relationships between brothers and sisters and between husband and wife. Furthermore, in human beings, there are norms for individuals to observe, namely, individual norms. These are the norms for perfecting the personality of each human being as an individual.
The vertical norm, horizontal norm, and individual norms will be explained in detail in "Axiology" and "Ethics." The norms of the family, as mentioned above, can be extended directly to society and nation. Ultimately, the norms of the family form the foundation for the norms to be observed on the levels of society and the nation. Because of the human fall, people have ceased to be beings with Logos. As a result, the breakdown of the family is becoming increasingly noticeable today, and society and nations are in a chaotic situation.
When people restore their original nature as beings with Logos, then families, societies, and nations will be able to return to their original, orderly status.
C. A Being with Creativity
God created the universe through creativity and gave human beings the ability to create. Through creativity, then, people have been developing science and art.
God's creativity is based on Heart. In creating the universe, God's Inner Sungsang and Inner Hyungsang engaged in give-and-receive action centering on the purpose established by Heart, and formed the Logos.
Furthermore, the Logos and the Original Hyungsang engaged in give-and-receive action centering on purpose, and formed created beings. The ability to form these two-stage developmental four-position bases, namely, the inner developmental four-position base and the outer developmental four-position base, is God's creativity.
Human beings, likewise, first establish the purpose and then make a design, or prepare a plan, to implement that purpose. Next, on the basis of that design or plan, they produce things. God endowed human beings with creativity in order for them to have dominion over the creation with Heart and love. Dominion incorporates the meaning of ruling, managing, processing, protecting, and so on. Hence, the various kinds of activities involving matter, such as primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, as well as the activities to govern society, including politics, art, and science, fall under the activities of having dominion over creation. If human beings had inherited God's creativity completely, they would have been carrying out all of these activities centering on God's Heart and love.
In its original meaning, dominion can be exercised over something only by the person who made that thing; thus, we cannot, by our own will, exercise dominion over something that has been made by someone else.
Therefore, human beings cannot, by their own will, exercise dominion over the things of the universe, since those things were created by God. In consequence, it was not possible for God unconditionally to give the things of the universe to humankind, no matter how much He might have wished to do so. In order for human beings to be able to exercise dominion over the things of the universe, they must establish the condition of having helped to create the universe, that is, the condition of having participated in the creation of the universe. When God created the universe, human beings did not exist yet; thus, it is not possible for them actually to have participated in the creation of the universe. Instead of that, God has planned for human beings to be able to participate in the creation of the universe by creating themselves by this is meant that God wanted human beings to grow and perfect themselves through their own responsibility.
Human beings are the integration of all things, a microcosm; the value of one human being is equivalent to that of the entire universe. Therefore, if human beings perfect themselves, God is prepared to accept that as a condition of the same value as if they themselves had created the universe.
That is why God directed human beings to perfect themselves, which means to perfect their personalities and to mature their spirit selves. For this, in the process of growth of Adam and Eve, God only gave them the commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil-which meant they were not to engage in sexual love before the proper time and He did not interfere with their behavior. The reason was that, if God had interfered, then Adam and Eve could never have been in the position to qualify to have dominion over things. As it happened, Adam and Eve failed to observe God's commandment, and humankind has become unable to obtain the qualifications to exercise dominion over things.
As a result, human beings have become unable to inherit God's creativity, and have come to engage in creative activities based on their reason, which has become self-centered. Thus, in relationships among individuals, people have come to place priority on personal interests; in relationships among families, each family places priority on its own family interests-, in relationships among nations, cacti nation places priority on its own national interests. Thus, for the most part, creative activities have become self-centered.
Moreover, people have also become quite unconcerned about what happens to nature. This has caused various kinds of problems, such as destruction of natural resources, pollution, and the development of weapons to destroy human beings.
In order to solve these problems, people must establish the original creativity, which is centered on Heart.
Heart, therefore must become the center of creativity, which means that creation takes place motivated by love, and that the activities of creation are performed on the basis of proper values.
Therefore, those who would become scientists, must first become persons of values, or persons of character, before becoming scientists. In other words, ethics must become die basis of natural science.
In the modern age, however, scientists have limited themselves to the pursuit of objective facts, disregarding values of any kind. The result is the miserable situation we see today. To solve this problem, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon sponsors the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS) as an attempt to inspire scientists to begin to deal with values, so that scientists can restore true creativity.
The premises of true creativity would require of scientists "to love nature, to reconsider the dignity of human beings, to seek love among all humankind, and to search for God as the origin of love
III. A Being with Position
Resembling the relationship of subject and object in the Original Image, human beings possess the positions of subject and object. When people are born, they start out in the position of objects specifically, objects to their parents. After growing, they become parents themselves and stand in the position of subject to their children. In social life, too, people start out from a lower position and gradually rise to a higher position. Therefore, human beings stand first in the object position, and then gradually grow to stand in the subject position.
A. The Object Position
God created human beings to be the objects of His love, so that He might obtain joy in relating to them.
Therefore, the primary significance of human life is to please God. In other words, human beings exist in the object position to God.
Thus, human beings, first and foremost, stand in the position of objects to God. In society, too, human beings are in the position of objects to various subjects. For example, the people of a nation are in the object position to the government of that nation; children are in the object position to their parents; students to their teachers; and subordinates to their superiors. Also, individuals are in the object position to the corporate wholes of organizations or groups to which they belong, as well as to the nation, state and humankind.
The object needs to have "object consciousness" as the mental attitude toward the subject. Object consciousness toward God is a heart of attendance and loyalty. The object consciousness toward the sovereign or chief of state is loyalty. Children's object consciousness toward their parent is filial piety.
Subordinates' object consciousness toward the whole is a heart of service. What these various types of object consciousness have in common is an attitude of living for others and a heart of meekness and humility.
In the fallen world, many dictators have appeared throughout history who took advantage of people's object consciousness by behaving as though they were true subjects to the people, and thus they came to receive people's respect and support. Hitler and Stalin were major examples of this type. Yet, though false subjects may prosper for a certain time, in the end they surely lose the support of the people. That is a fact proven by history.
Why such historical phenomena? Since human beings were created by God as God's children, they have in the depth of their hearts the object consciousness of attending and pleasing God. Therefore, when people meet a leader that appears to be a representative of' God, their latent object consciousness will seek to follow that leader, even to the point of sacrificing their very lives. But people are often mistaken about who their true subject is; thus, they have often been deceived by false subjects, such as dictators, and have often followed them blindly. Therefore, finding one's true subject is an important matter.
Object consciousness is the essential element of ethics. In today's society, however, object consciousness has become almost completely neutralized and there is a growing tendency for people to ignore the authority of the subject. As a result, society has been thrown into confusion. Therefore, in establishing an ethical society, what needs to be done, first and foremost, is to establish true object consciousness.
B. The Subject Position
As human beings grow, they come to stand in the position of a subject, or the "subject position." In the family, for example, parents are the subject to their children; in schools, teachers are the subjects to students; in business, executives are the subjects to subordinates; in a nation, the government is the subject to the people. Furthermore, the whole (e.g., humankind, the state, the nation) is the subject to the individual.
From the viewpoint of Unification Thought, the subject is in the position of God's representative to the object. Therefore, the subject should exercise dominion over the object as though doing that in place of God. The spiritual posture required of the subject toward the object is "subject consciousness." Subject consciousness requires concern, love, and authority toward the object. Let us consider each of these characteristics.
First, the subject must have concern for the object. Human alienation, which is a serious problem today, results from the fact that subjects lack concern for their objects. Lack of concern means that the subject does not assume responsibility for the object. When that happens, the object comes to distrust and to disobey the subject. Therefore, on the part of the subject, there is no room for neglecting the object.
Second, the subject must love the object. Usually, ruling over others by giving orders to them is considered the way to show subject consciousness, but in reality that is not so. Being a subject means loving the object.
As God loves humankind, which is the object of God, so must every subject love its object. As mentioned earlier, object consciousness means that the object obeys and serves the subject; in order for object consciousness to be established, however, the subject must first love the object.
Third, the subject must have authority. The subject should love the object, but if a leader is always lenient when dealing with subordinates, authority cannot be established. If' the leader has no authority, the subordinates will lose their seriousness. Therefore, it is necessary for the subject to maintain authority while loving tile object. This means that love has not only a warm aspect, like spring, but also a strict aspect, like winter. Love can be expressed in different ways, depending on the time and circumstances.
Thus the subject needs authority, and yet the subject must not be authoritarian. If authority is too strong, the subordinates will end to withdraw and lose creativity. True authority makes those in the subordinate position feel thankful, even when they are reprimanded by their superiors.
This is certainly true of God. God is a being of love, while at the same time, a being of authority. For example, when Abraham failed in his attempt to offer the heifer, ram and she-goat and doves, God ordered him to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. But when Abraham, in obedience to God's order, was about to make the offer of Isaac, God stopped him and said, "now I know that you fear God" (Gen. 22:12). Thus, God made it clear He wishes us to fear Him more precisely, God intends to be a God of authority.
As a final point, let us consider the subject position of human beings toward all things. As mentioned earlier, when human beings inherit God's Heart, they will have dominion over things by expressing creativity based on love. When that happens, human beings will stand in the subject position toward all things, in a true sense. That is in sharp contrast with the Marxist assertion that, when the means of production are nationalized and a planned economy is put into practice, then "mail ... becomes tile real, conscious Lord of Nature." 6 As we can see, from tile unsuccessful agricultural policies, industrial stagnation, and other economic problems of the former Soviet Union, China, and other Communist countries, Communism, quite to the contrary, has failed in its dominion over things. This tells us that, based on the Marxist view of human nature, people cannot, in the true sense, stand in the subject position toward the creation.
C. Connected-Body Consciousness and Democracy
Every person exists as a connected body in social life; so, everyone is both a subject and an object at the same time. In other words, human beings with the positions of both a subject and an object, or beings with a dual position. this fact can be summed up in the phrase, "human beings are in the connected-body position." For example, in a company, a person may be in the subject position to subordinates, while, at the same time, in the object position to superiors. Though someone may be in the highest possible position, still that person is in the object position to God. Therefore, human beings are always in the connected-body position. Tile spiritual posture that a connected-body should take is that of possessing both object consciousness and subject consciousness; this is called connected-body consciousness.
As mentioned earlier, people first stand in the object position, and then stand in the subject position.
Therefore, in connected-body consciousness, priority should be given to object consciousness. In other words, subject consciousness should be established on the basis of object consciousness. In the case of fallen persons, however, when they stand in the subject position, they often forget about object consciousness and give priority to subject consciousness. Dictators are typical examples of this. They consider themselves to be supreme and seek to do everything according to their own will. In contrast, in the original society, leaders should be conscious that they are always in the object position before God -- even if they may be in the highest human position-and should not forget humility.
Next, let us consider connected-body consciousness in democracy. The fundamental principles of democracy are freedom and equality-i.e., equality of rights. These principles are based on the theory of natural law proposed by John Locke (1632-1704). Contrary to Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), whose view was that the natural state of human beings is "a war of all against all" (bellum omnium conlra omnes), Locke argued that, since natural law exists in the natural state people stand in a free and equal status. He also held that in the natural state, people have natural rights-i.e., the equal rights to life, freedom and property. 7 The theory of equality of rights based on natural law derives from Christianity's idea of "equality before God" 8 Equality before God refers to the equality of all people as objects before God, the subject.
Therefore, the theory of equality of all people was originally based on object consciousness. That is to say, democracy, originally, started out on the basis of object consciousness.
In the modern period, however, religion and politics became separated, and as a result, the concept of God disappeared from the political world, leaving the concept of equality all by itself. In this way, "equality before God" turned into "equality before the law." God, the subject, was excluded from political life, and, as a result, people were elevated to the position of subjects, and the concept of equality changed into equality among people as subjects. Consequently, object consciousness was eliminated from connected-body consciousness, and subject consciousness became dominant.
In today's dramatic society, subject consciousness has become too strong. Taking little notice of the rights of others, people assert their own rights excessively, which results in unavoidable conflicts among them.
Public, destructive criticism of the government has become an everyday occurrence, and democratic society has become a society of confusion. In order to bring such a confusion under control, it often happens that dictators rise, especially in developing nations, and carry out oppressive rule. How can such problems be solved?
Democracy, before allowing this kind of confusion to exist, achieved comparatively sound development.
The reason was that people maintained object consciousness before God, due to their Christian spirit.
Today, however, Christianity has lost its vitality.
People have come to disbelieve in God, and at the same time, have lost respect for their superiors. As a result, the inherent contradiction of democracy, that is, conflicts among subjects, has surfaced, and social confusion of various kinds has arisen. for example, in the United States, a typical nation among advanced democracies, society has serious problems, such as increase in crime, decay of sexual morals, rise in divorce rate, breakdown of the family, drug abuse, expanding AIDS epidemic, and so forth. From this perspective, the contemporary world can be called a spiritual wilderness. The key to solving these problems lies in resurrecting object consciousness. In order to do that, we need to invite God to return to our midst. We must also go back to the original spirit with which modern democracy started, namely, the idea that all people are equal before God. To do that, the first and most important step is to provide reasonable proof for the existence of God, so that modern persons can accept Him. If people come to believe in God, they will come to respect their superiors in society as well. Also, those in superior positions will come to guide their subordinates with love. The government will love the people, and the people will become loyal to the government. When democracy, which has lost God, goes back to being democracy centered on God, the ills of today's democratic society will be fundamentally resolved.
Unification Thought refers to God-centered democracy as "fraternitism," because in God-centered democracy, all humankind will become loving brothers and sisters centering on God's love.
IV. Conclusion
As explained earlier, human beings, originally, are beings with Divine Image, beings with Divine Character, and beings with Position. This is the Unification Thought's answer to the question, "What is a human being?" In conclusion, the original human nature can be summarized as follows. An original human being is:
d. a being with Heart resembling the Divine Character, a person of character who practices love-in other words, Homo Amans, a loving person, or a person of love
e. a being with Logos resembling the Divine Character; a being of norms, who lives according to the way of Heaven, or the law of the universe
f. a being with creativity resembling the Divine Character; a Heart centered ruler of dominion over all things
This is the original image of the human being, as a precious, holy being, bearing great content. If one of these human characteristics were to be chosen as the most essential one, it would be that the human being is a "being with Heart." Traditionally, the human being has been portrayed as "the knower" (homo sapiens), with reason its the essence of human nature; or as "the maker" (homofabey), with the ability to use tools as the essence of human nature; and so forth. Greek philosophy and modern rationalist philosophy would hold the former view, whereas Marxism and pragmatism would hold the latter. In contrast, Unification Thought advocates the concept of the "loving being" (homo amans), asserting that the essence of human nature is Heart, or love.
V. A Unification Thought Appraisal of the Existentialist Analysis of Human Existence
It seems that the meaning of existentialism varies among existentialist philosophers. As a whole, however, existentialism can be characterized as a philosophy that searches for the essential self, or the essential human condition. According to existentialists, human beings, having become alienated from this essential self in existing society, find themselves caught in a state of despair and dread. These thinkers have seriously considered how human beings may be delivered from that despair and dread. In this section, the views of five existentialists will be briefly discussed and compared with the Unification Thought view of human nature. Through this comparative analysis, it is hoped the readers' understanding of the Unification Theory of the Original Nature will be deepened.
A. Soren Kierkegaard
1. Kierkegaard's Analysis of Human Existence
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) asked himself the question, "What is the human being?" His answer was, "a human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates to itself. 9 Then, who is it that establishes such a relation? It must be a third party, a reality other than one's own self-and that reality is none other than God Himself according to Kierkegaard. Therefore, the original self is the self that stands before God, Kierkegaard concluded.
Yet, human beings, who should thus live in a relationship with God, have become separated from God.
Kierkegaard explained the nature of that separation in his analysis of Genesis proposed in his book The Concept of Dread, as follows: In the beginning, Adam was in a state of peace and comfort, but at the same time, he was in it state of dread (or Angst). When God told Adam, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat" (Gen. 2:17, Rsv), the possibility of freedom was awakened within Adam. This possibility of freedom threw Adam into extreme dread. As Adam looked into the abyss of freedom, he became dizzy and clung to his own self. That was the precise moment when original sin came into being.
As a result, a division rose in our relationship to our own selves, and we fell into despair (Verzweifielung).
People tried to remove this despair, regarding it as something that has come from the outside. But they can never remove it that way. Only by faith, by rediscovering our relationship to God, can we restore our original relationship to ourselves and escape from despair.
Kierkegaard criticized crowds for their irresponsibility and their lack of conscience, saying, "A public is everything and nothing, the most dangerous of all powers and the most insignificant." 10 He asserted that, in order for people to actualize their true human nature, they must depart from the world of the public and stand before God all by themselves -- each as an individual. He explained the stages through which people return to their original selves in terms of three stages of existence.
The first stage is the stage of "aesthetic existence." Persons in this stage simply follow their sensual desires exactly as they are and live just as they please. The purpose of this kind of life is pleasure. The position of someone in the aesthetic existence is that of a seducer, a pursuer of erotic love. But since the moment of pleasure is not something that can be maintained continuously, persons in the aesthetic stage are trapped by fatigue and dread. They become frustrated and fall into despair-but through making a decision, they can proceed to the next stage.
The second stage is that of "ethical existence." Persons of this stage seek to live according to their conscience, with good and evil as standards of judgment. They seek to live as good citizens with a sense of responsibility and duty. Yet, no matter how hard they may try, they cannot live totally in accordance with their conscience. So, they become frustrated and fall into despair. Again, through making a decision, they can proceed to the next stage.
The third stage is that of "religious existence." Here, each pet-son stands alone with faith in the presence of God; only by doing so can someone become a true existential being. In order to enter this stage, a leap is required. Such a leap is possible if one believes in a paradox that cannot be understood with the intellect.
One can believe, for example, such an irrational statement as that the eternal God incarnated in the finite time spectrum to become a man. Only by such a leap can people truly recover their relationship to God.
Abraham's obedience to God's commandment to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, which was contrary to human ethics, was held to be the model for this kind of religious life.
This being so, when individuals who have become true existences centered on God-in other words, who have become original selves-come to love one another through the mediation of God by following Jesus' words to "love your neighbor as yourself," only then, through such "works of love," will society be established.
2. A Unification Thought Appraisal of Kierkegaard's View of the Human Being
According to Kierkegaard, as people separated from God, a division rose in the relationship that relates someone to one's own self, causing people to fall into despair. From the perspective of Unification Thought, this relationship can be regarded as either the relationship between mind and body or the relationship between spirit mind and physical mind. This means that, as people separated from God, mind and body became divided. This implied that mind and body are united in the original self. This corresponds to the "being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang" referred to in the Theory of the Original Human Nature of Unification Thought. Kierkegaard said that "when someone stands before God as an individual," that person stands in an absolute relationship to the Absolute Being (or God). This corresponds to "a being with individuality" referred to in Unification Thought's Theory of the Original Human Nature. Still, why is this individual considered to be absolute? From the Unification Thought perspective, God is a being of Heart, and He seeks to obtain an irreplaceable joy from each individual being. From this, the absoluteness of a being with individuality can be established.
In this way, Kierkegaard perceived some aspects of the original nature as a being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang and as a being with individuality. Nevertheless, this is not all there is to the original human nature. The most essential aspect of the original human nature is that of a being with Heart. Moreover, a person standing before God merely as an individual would be imperfect. Only when standing before God as husband and wife can human beings become perfect. That is to say, the human being is a being of harmonious yang and yin. They are also beings with Logos and creativity. Moreover, they are beings with position, endowed with both the nature of a subject and the nature of an object. Kierkegaard's view of human beings as standing before God as individuals is a sincere but solitary and lonely view.
Why have people become separated from God? Unless the cause of this separation is clarified, it will be impossible to return to the original self, that is, to the person of the original ideal of God. Kierkegaard said that Adam fell into sin through the dread that arose from the possibility of freedom. Can that be true?
According to the Unification Principle, neither freedom nor dread was the cause of the human fall. The first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not observe God's word, but instead, followed the temptation of the Archangel, misdirecting their love. The force of the non-principled love that arose as a result, made them fall away from God. When Adam and Eve were about to deviate from the right path, in violation of the Word of God, the freedom of their original mind gave rise to their dread. Thus, freedom and dread worked, instead, in the direction of preventing them from deviating. Furthermore, as a result of the fall, humankind became separated from God, and dread and despair came into being in humans. Therefore, unless the problem of the fall is correctly solved, people's dread and despair cannot be solved.
Kierkegaard said that, in order for us to recover our authentic state we must fight against the falsity of the crowd and return to God. This reflects Kierkegaard's own path in seeking to encounter God, which he did while enduring persecution and ridicule from his contemporaries.
As the age of twenty-seven, Kierkegaard fell in love with, and became engaged to, Regina Olsen. Later, however, out of fear that he might plunge her into unhappiness through marriage, he unilaterally broke off the engagement and began looking for love of a higher level than romantic love. Because of that, he was criticized by society, but we can see that his desire was to realize true love between man and woman centered on God. The original image of the human being pursued by Kierkegaard, in terms of direction, largely in accord with the position of Unification Though. Nevertheless, the image of the human being he proposed has more than a few ambiguities.
B. Friedrich Nietzsche
1. Nietzsche's View of the Human
Being Contrary to Kierkegaard-who said that only by standing before God can people become original selves-Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) claimed that it is only when people free themselves from faith in God that they can then become original selves.
Nietzsche deplored what he saw as the leveling and demeaning of people in the European society of his time, and he attributed that to the Christian view of human nature. Christianity denied life by preaching asceticism, and placed people's value in the next world. Moreover, it preached that all people are equal before God. For Nietzsche, such views deprived human beings of their vitality, dragged strong human beings down, and leveled them.
In response, Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God" and attacked Christianity. He felt that Christian morality oppressed human life and the physical body by means of such concepts as "God" and "soul", and through a negative view of the reality of life, blocked the way to the development of stronger people. He felt that Christian morality supported only the weak and the suffering, and he called it a form of slave morality. He also rejected the Christian life of love and spirituality, wholeheartedly affirming, instead, a life based on instinct, or a way of life as desired by life itself.
For Nietzsche, life is the force to grow, or the force to develop. He argued that, behind every human act, there exists a "will to power" (wille zur Macht), which seeks to increase the individual's strength. In his words, "where I found the living, there I found will to power; and even in the will of those who serve, I found the will to be masters." 11 He thus rejected Christianity's "slave morality" and promulgated instead "master morality," which made power its standard of value. Nietzsche described the standard of good and evil as follows: What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.... The weak and the failures shall perish: first principle of our love of man. And in their perishing they shall be given every possible assistance. What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and all the weak: Christianity. 12 The ideal of human being, according to master morality, is the "superman" (Obennensch). The superman is a being that has realized the human potentiality to the widest limits, and the embodiment of the will to power. The possibility of the superman lies in the endurance of any kind of pain in life and in the absolute affirmation of life itself. The absolute affirmation of life comes about through the acceptance of the idea of "eternal recurrence," which Nietzsche expresses as, "everything goes, everything come back; eternally rolls the wheel of being." 13 This is the idea that the world repeats itself forever, without any purpose or meaning. The absolute affirmation of life means the endurance of any kind of fate. He said that this becomes possible through "regarding the inevitable its beautiful" and through "loving one's fate"; thus, he preached the "love of fate" (amorfati).
2. A Unification Thought Appraisal of Nietzsche's View of the Human Being
Nietzsche considered that Christianity's extreme emphasis on life after death made people unable to value actual life and weakened them. Nietzsche's sincere effort in endeavoring to restore the original human nature merits high esteem. His views were a critique of, and a warning to, Christianity, which he regarded as having deviated from its original spirit. Nietzsche saw the God of Christianity as a judgmental and otherworldly being, sitting on the high throne of heaven, promising resurrection after death to those who did good, and meting out punishment to those who did evil. What Nietzsche was denouncing, however, was not the teachings of Jesus himself, but rather the teachings of Paul, who had changed Jesus' teaching into a kind of teaching that placed too much emphasis on life after death. 14 From the perspective of Unification Thought, God is not an otherworldly being that denies reality, standing on a high place somewhere in heaven. God's purpose of creation is not only the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven in the world after death, but also the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. When the Kingdom of Heaven is established on earth, those who have experienced life in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth will build the Kingdom of Heaven in the spirit world. Jesus' mission, originally, was the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Therefore, Nietzsche's assertion is reasonable in that Jesus' teaching was changed by Paul into a kind of teaching that places too much emphasis on life after death. Nevertheless, it is also true that, since Jesus was crucified, as a result of the chosen people's disbelief in him, the salvation that he was able to bring became spiritual salvation, while in the real world people continue to live under the invasion of Satan, the subject of evil. Because of this, it is quite proper for Christianity to place greater emphasis on spiritual life. Therefore, it was a grave mistake for Nietzsche, beyond criticizing Paul, to go as far as denying Christianity itself, even declaring the death of God.
The next point is an examination of Nietzsche's assertion that all living beings have "will to power." According to Genesis, God blessed people to "have dominion over all things" (Gen. 1:28). In other words, God gave human beings the ability to have dominion. This implies that the desire to rule is one of the characteristics of original human nature endowed by God. It corresponds to the "subject position" among the characteristics of the original human nature, according to Unification Thought. With regard to the subject position, however-as mentioned earlier-true dominion is based on love rather than power. The condition for people's ability to exercise dominion is that they must first perfect their personality, centering on God's Heart, and practice the ethics of love in family life. Upon that basis, true dominion can be expressed. Nietzsche, however, ignored that basis and stressed the "will to power." This is precisely where his error lies. Nietzsche asserted that Christian morality is the morality of the weak, which denies the strong-but this view is false. Christianity taught true love in order for people to come to exercise true dominion. People must first fight against the evil forces coming through the instinctive desires of the physical body. The instinctive desires of the body are not evil in themselves, but if fallen people, whose spiritual level of Heart is yet imperfect, live according to the instinctive desires of their body, they tend to be dominated by evil forces. Only when the level of Heart of the spirit person is raised, whereby die spirit mind comes to have dominion over the physical mind, can the activity of the body be considered good in the true sense.
Emphasizing only the values of the body, instinct, and life, Nietzsche neglected the aspects of spirit and love. In other words, he disregarded the human spirit person. If the spirit person is disregarded, what will remain of the human being? What will remain is nothing but the animal-like physical person. This would bring people down to the position of animals. Therefore, even though Nietzsche may be calling on people to become strong, in reality he is calling on them to become beasts. That is not really the state for which God created human beings. Nietzsche's effort to try to guide people to their original image should be highly esteemed, but the method he proposed was utterly wrong. A human being is a being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang, with the Sungsang as the subject and the Hyungsang as the object. Nietzsche, however, emphasized only the Hyungsang aspect.
C. Karl Jaspers
1. Jaspers' View of the Human Being
For Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), existence is the state of being truly awakened to oneself as an individual. He says, "Existence is never objectified source of my thoughts and actions. ...It is what relates to itself, and thus to its transcendence." 15 This way of thinking is basically the same as Kierkegaard's.
An existence that is in the process of attaining the original existence, having not yet encountered Transcendence, or the Comprehensive (das Umgtwifende), is called a "possible existence." Usually, human beings are potential existences that live in various circumstances; but by acting upon the given circumstances, they can live positively. Jaspers points out however that "certain situations exist that we cannot go over or change," such as death, suffering, struggle, and guilt. These are called "boundary situations." 16 Though people may wish to live eternally, yet not a single person can escape death. For Jaspers, death is the denial of one's own existence. Also, human life involves various kinds of suffering, such as physical pains, diseases, senility, and starvation. As long as people live, struggles cannot be avoided. Moreover, people live with the unavoidable guilt that their own existence cannot but exploit others.
Under such boundary situations, people cannot but despair and become frustrated, becoming aware of their own limitations. At that moment, the way people experience that frustration will determine what will become of them. If they face their frustration head-on and endure it silently, honestly, and without trying to escape from the situation, they will come to experience the reality that "originally exists, transcending the world of existence. 17 In other words, they will come to realize that, behind nature, behind history, behind philosophy, and behind art-all of which seemed meaningless until then-there is Transcendence, or God, who embraces us and speaks to us. On that occasion, Transcendence will appear to us-not directly, but by means of coded messages. In the form of codes, Transcendence reaches out to us through nature, history, philosophy, art, and so on. Those who have experienced frustration in boundary situations will be able to read those coded messages. This is called "the reading of ciphers" (Chiffredeulung). By reading the coded messages, people come face to face with Transcendence, each one by oneself. This is what is meant by peoples "awakening to their true selves." After encountering God in this way, people engage in the practice of love in the communication with others. The original way of life for human beings is to stand in an equal position with one another, loving one another, while recognizing one another's independence. Through fellowship with others, existence is perfected. Jaspers said, "the purpose of philosophy that gives a final ground to the meaning of all purposes, that is to say, the purpose of perceiving purpose internally, elucidating love, and perfecting comfort, is only attained in communication." 18 The communication of existence is the relationship of tension and the struggle of love. 19
2. A Unification Thought Appraisal of Jaspers' View of the Human
Being Jaspers said that human beings normally are potential beings that are unable to perceive Transcendence, but that when they pass through boundary situations, they can become an existence that relates to Transcendence, that is, an original self. But why do human beings normally remain as potential beings separated from Transcendence? And why do they become connected with Transcendence when they go through a boundary? Jaspers said nothing concerning these questions. Yet, unless these questions are answered, we cannot understand what the original self is or how to go about restoring it.
According to the Unification Principle, human beings were created to fulfill the purpose of creation. The fulfillment of the purpose of creation refers to the fulfillment of the Three Great Blessings (Gen. 1:28), that is, the perfection of personality, perfection of the family, and perfection of dominion. As it turned out, however, Adam and Eve, the first human ancestors, failed to keep the Word of God during their own growth period, and while their personalities were still imperfect, they became husband and wife centered on non-principled love and gave birth to sinful children. As a result, all of humankind came to be separated from God. Therefore, the true path for recovering the original self is for people to separate themselves from non-principled love and then to fulfill the purpose of creation centering on God's love.
The original human nature is meant to manifest itself fully when people fulfill their purpose of creation.
Like Kierkegaard, Jaspers said that existence is to become a being that relates to Transcendence, while at the same time relating to oneself. In saying that, Jaspers was referring to the perfection of personality, which is only one of the Three Great Blessings. This corresponds to a "being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang" among the original human characteristics in Unification Thought. Jaspers says that we must practice love in our communication with others, but just as in Kierkegaard, his concept of love is vague.
True love is God's love manifested divisionally in the love for three objects (or children's love, conjugal love, and parental love). When this basic love for three objects is expanded, it is manifested as love expressed in the communication with others. Jaspers said that the communication among existences is a relationship of tension and a struggle of love. This contrasts with the Unification Thought viewpoint, according to which the essence of love is joy. Therefore, the original love is not Something that can be described as tension or struggle.
The next question is why human beings become connected with Transcendence by passing through boundary situations. Jaspers said that people encounter God by facing the frustration of a boundary situation head-on and by honestly accepting it. Yet, among those who indeed have faced the frustration of the boundary situation head-on and indeed have honestly accepted it, there are some who, like Nietzsche, became further separated from God and some who, like Kierkegaard, became even closer to God. Why such different results? The reason for the difference is not clarified in Jaspers' philosophy.
In contrast, Unification Thought provides a clear explanation of these different results. By failing to observe God's word, people became separated from God and fell under the dominion of Satan, the subject of evil. Because of that, they cannot go back to God unconditionally. Only by establishing some condition of compensation -- that is, some condition of indemnity -- will people be able to go back to God.
Accordingly, what Jaspers described as the despair and frustration of boundary situations corresponds to a condition of indemnity. When that condition is fulfilled, people come to be closer to God. For this, one must, while enduring the pains of the boundary situations, become humble and maintain an attitude of object consciousness by seeking the absolute subject, as is taught in the Bible, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you" (Mt. 7:7 RSV). Those who maintain an attitude of a self-centered subject consciousness, or who continue to harbor a spirit of grudge or revenge, will never encounter God, even though they may pass through such boundary situations.
Jaspers said that we can meet Transcendence by reading the cipher of mistration; but the God known through cipher-reading is merely a God of symbols. We cannot understand the true image of God through such means alone. We must learn about the human fall and God's purpose of creation, and must endeavor to realize the Three Great Blessings through a life of faith. If we do those things, we will be able to experience the Heart of God and to become a true existence.
D. Martin Heidegger
1. Heidegger's View of the Human Being
For Martin Heidegger (1899-1976), a human being is a "Dasein," but he did not regard the human being as a self facing the world in the same way as modern philosophy regarded. "Being" lives in the world, relates to other beings, attends to the environment surrounding itself, and cares for other people. This is Being's fundamental way of existence, which Heidegger described as "Being-in-the-world." Being-in-the-world means that human beings have been cast upon the world without being informed as to the origin from which they came or the destination to which they are going. This situation is called the "throwness," or "facticity." Normally, people lose their subjectivity (or independence) when they try too hard in their daily lives to adjust themselves to external circumstances and to other people's opinions. This is the situation of the "they" (das Man), who has lost the original self, according to I Heidegger. 20 Each "they," according to Heidegger, spends its daily life indulging in idle talk, distracted by curiosity, and living in peaceful ambiguity. This is called the "falling" of Dasein.
This "Dasein," which has been thrown into the world without any reason, is also in anxiety (Angst). If we inquire deeply into this anxiety, we will reach the anxiety of death. When, however, a person does not wait around, in anxiety, for a vague future, but positively accepts the fact that the human being is a "being-towards-death" and lives with a serious determination toward the future, that person can proceed toward the original self. In that way, human beings project themselves toward the future. This is called "projection". The nature of this Being is called "existentiality." At that time, based on what do people project themselves? They do so based on the "call of conscience." The call of conscience is the inner voice that calls people to abandon their fallen selves and go back to their original selves. Heidegger speaks of the call of conscience as follows: "The call undoubtedly does not come from someone else who is within me in the world. The call comes from me and yet from beyond me." Heidegger also said that the meaning of the existence of Being is temporality. When Being is seen from the aspect of casting itself, it can be grasped as "ahead-of-itself", and when seen from the aspect of having already been cast, it can be grasped as "Being-already-in"; and when seen from the aspect of tending the environment and caring for others, it can be grasped as "Being-alongside." If these aspects are seen in the light of temporality, they correspond, respectively, to the future, the past, and the present.
Human beings do not proceed toward a solitary self, separate from the world. They proceed toward the future potentiality by listening to the call of conscience, in order to save the self from present falling, while taking on the burdens of the past. This is Heidegger's view of human nature seen from temporality.
2. A Unification Thought Appraisal of Heidegger's View of the Human Being
Heidegger said that the human being is a being-in-the-world, as well as someone who has lost the original self; he also said that the characteristic feature of that situation is anxiety. He did not, however, clarify why human beings have lost their original selves, or what the original self is like. He spoke of projecting oneself toward the original self, but if the image of the self to be attained is not clear, there is no way we can verify that we are indeed proceeding toward the original self. Heidegger said that the call of conscience guides people to go back to their original self, but this is not a true solution to the problem. Actually, this is nothing more than a philosophical expression of the common knowledge that people should live in obedience to their conscience. In a world that does not recognize God, there can be only one of two ways of living-namely, living according to instinctive life, as Nietzsche proposed, or according to the conscience, as Heidegger proposed.
From the perspective of Unification Thought, however, it is not enough merely to live in accordance with one's conscience. Instead, people should live in accordance with their "original mind." Conscience is oriented toward what each person regards as good, and therefore, the standard of goodness varies according to each individual. Thus, when people live according to their conscience, there is no guarantee that they are indeed moving toward their original selves. Only when people live in accordance with their original mind, which possesses God as its standard, will they indeed be moving toward their original selves.
Heidegger said that human beings can be saved from anxiety when they become seriously determined to accept the future, instead of absentmindedly waiting for the future to come by. Still, how can we be saved from anxiety when the original image of the self is not clearly defined? Seen from the viewpoint of Unification Thought, the cause of anxiety lies in the separation from God's love. Therefore, when people go back to God, experience the Heart of God, whereby they themselves become beings of Heart, only then will they be delivered from anxiety and will be filled with peace and joy.
Heidegger also argued that the way for human beings to transcend the anxiety of death is for them to accept even death as part of their destiny. This, however, is not really a true Solution to the problem of the anxiety of death. Unification Thought sees human beings as a being of united spirit person and physical Person-in other words, a being of united Sungsang and Hyungsang in such a way that the maturation of the spirit person is based on the physical person. When people fulfill the purpose for which they were created, through their physical lives on earth, their perfected spirit persons, after the death of their physical person, will go on to the spirit world, where they will live eternally. Therefore, a human being is not a "being-towards-creating," but rather a "being-towards-eternal-life." Therefore, the death of the physical person corresponds merely to the phenomenon of eodysis of insects. The anxiety of death originates from the ignorance of the significance of death as well as from the feeling, either conscious or unconscious, that one is not yet perfect.
Heidegger further stated that we human beings have temporality. But why must we take on the past, must separate ourselves from the present failing, and must project ourselves toward the future? In Heidegger we will not find the reason for all this. According to the Unification Principle, ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings, in addition to inheriting in their blood the original sin, have also inherited hereditary sins committed by their ancestors and collective sins for which the nation or humankind as a whole bears responsibility, as well as committing their own personal sins. Therefore, fallen people have been given the mission to restore their original selves and the original world through establishing conditions of indemnity to pay for all those sins. Such a task is not accomplished in one generation; it is accomplished by being passed on from generation to generation. Specifically, in the present generation, we are entrusted with those conditions of indemnity that were not completed by our ancestors. We then attempt to establish those conditions in our own generation, bearing responsibility for the future of our descendents. This is the true meaning of the fact that human beings have temporality.
E. Jean-Paul Sartre
1. Sartre's View of the Human Being
Dostoevski once said, "If God didn't exist, everything would be possible." The denial of the existence of God is the very starting point of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80). In contrast to Heidegger, who asserted his existentialism without any reference to God, Sartre went further to advocate an existentialism that altogether denied God's existence. He explained that, in human beings, "existence precedes essence," as follows: What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. 22 The use or purpose of a tool, that is, the essence of that tool, is already determined by its maker even before it is produced. In this case, essence precedes existence. In the same way, if God exists, and He has created human beings based on His idea, then it can be said that, in the case of human beings, essence precedes existence as well. But Sartre denied the existence of God; therefore, for him, the essence of the human being is not determined from the very beginning. People appeared not from essence, but rather from nothing, according to him.
Moreover, Sartre says that "existence is subjectivity." Human beings are accidental beings that appeared from nothing are not defined by anyone. Therefore, people themselves plan what they will be like. They choose themselves. This is what Sartre meant by "Subjectivity." In other words, people choose what they will become whether they will be Communists or Christians; whether they will choose to marry or remain single. The fundamental feature of such an existence is "anguish," according to Sartre. People choose themselves, which means, at the same time, that "in making this choice, he also chooses all men." 23 Therefore, to choose oneself means to take the responsibility for the whole of humankind-a responsibility that incorporates anguish, according to Sartre. Anguish, however, does not keep them from acting; on the contrary, it is the very condition of their action, and it is a part of action itself.
In Sartre's view, human beings are "free" beings. Since existence precedes essence, people are not determined by anything and are allowed to do anything. Being free, however, implies that the entire responsibility for their deeds lies with themselves. In that sense, being free is a kind of burden for people, and the human being is a "being condemned to be free." 24 In other words, human beings are in anguish because they are free. Sartre explained it this way: Man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. 25 When we say that human being is subjectivity, then, in order for human beings to exercise subjectivity, there must exist an object that can receive dominion from them. Among the types of beings, there are the "being-in-itself," that is, all things; and the being-for-itself, or the being which is conscious of itself, that is, the human being. When people have a being-in-itself for their object there is no problem, but when they face another human being (i.e., a being-for-itself), problems arise. The reason is that, in such a relationship, both human beings will assert their subjectivity.
When a person faces another, human existence becomes a "being-for-others." That is, a being that is opposite to another being, according to Sartre. The fundamental structure of the being-for-another is the relationship in which one is either a "being-looking-at" or a "being-looked-at" that is, a relationship in which "the other is an object for me" or "I myself an object-for-the-other." 26 This means that human relationships are a constant conflict. As Sartre explained it, "It is therefore useless for human-reality to seek to get out of this dilemma: one must either transcend the Other or allow oneself to be transcended by him.
The essence of the relationship between consciousness is not the Mitsein [co-existence]; it is conflict. 27
2. A Unification Thought Appraisal of Sartre's View of the Human Being
Sartre said that "existence precedes essence," and that human beings create themselves. Heidegger said, in the same way, that people must project themselves toward the future-but for Heidegger, the "call of conscience," though vague, guides people toward the original self. For Sartre, however, the original self is totally denied. According to Unification Thought, the absence of the original self is a natural consequence of the fact that human beings have become totally separated from God. If, however, we were to accept Sartre's views, we would be left without any standard at all to judge between good and evil. In that situation, no matter what people did, they would always be able to rationalize it simply by saying that they had done it on their own responsibility. That necessarily would create a society without ethics.
Sartre also said that the human being is subjectivity. In contradistinction to that, Unification Thought asserts that the human being is both subjectivity and objectivity, at the same time-that is to say, a person of original nature is both in the "subject position" and in the "object position." What Sartre calls "subjectivity" refers to the fact that human beings are free to choose themselves and to objectify themselves; in contrast, what Unification Thought calls "subjectivity" refers to the fact that human beings have dominion over the object through love. In order to exercise true subjectivity, people must first establish their own objectivity.
Objectivity is the state where one feels the joy of being loved by a subject, and has it heart of gratitude toward the subject. Only when people have grown in objectivity will they be able, as subjects, to have dominion over the object through love. Furthermore, according to Sartre, the characteristic of a mutual relationship between human beings is that of a conflict between subjectivity and subjectivity, or a conflict between freedom and freedom. This is similar to Hobbes' concept of "war of all against all." Unless such mistaken views regarding subjectivity and freedom can be overcome, the confusion now existing in democratic society cannot be resolved. Only when people establish both the aspect of subjectivity and the aspect of objectivity, whereby harmonious give-and-receive action between subject and object takes place in every sphere, can the world of love and peace be actualized.
Moreover, Sartre says that human beings are "sentenced to be free." From the viewpoint of Unification Thought, however, freedom is not a sentence. Freedom cannot exist apart from the Principle, and the Principle is the norm for actualizing true love. True Freedom is freedom for actualizing true love.
Therefore, freedom, in its original meaning, is filled with joy and hope.
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