April 21, 2020 | By Su Karagoz (A20)

Zachary Leveroni is from Sacramento, California. His senior essay is titled “Hegel’s Critique of Pure Morality: The Use and Abuse of Conscience.”

What’s at the heart of your argument?

My essay was an attempt to expound on a movement in G.W.F. Hegel’s system of right [in Elements of the Philosophy of Right]. Conscience is the will at its most inwardly turned and subjective—an individual’s certainty that their will is the essential one. I wanted to explore what consequences that had, which led me on a trip through some moral philosophers and to the book of Genesis.

What were some of the specific consequences that you were particularly fascinated by, and did your senior essay (and your journey through moral philosophers and Genesis) give you any more clarity?

In the system, the subjective will (will taking itself as subject, as the essential or universal will) reaches a point in its journey where it is sure about a singular thing: the good. Will is now able to moralize by simply placing things in relation to the good and judging their ‘distance’ from it. This, for Hegel, is what morality is. But there is a huge problem with this moment, which was so shocking to me that I knew I had to write on it: if an individual will, in its own certainty about the good, chooses that [certainty] above the universal idea of good, then that individual will has committed evil.

In short, one’s certainty about good is what leads to evil! Hegel puts the true good in the sphere of ethics (interpersonal truths such as laws). According to this system all moral philosophy is doomed to fall short, and runs the serious risk of actually leading one in the opposite direction that it intended to in the first place. This gave me a fresh perspective on some of the philosophy of my last four years here (particularly Kant and Aristotle), and helped me think more critically about the fall of man (it was knowledge of good and evil, after all, that got us banished from the garden).

How did your essay connect to different aspects of the Program from throughout your four years?

Moral philosophy struck me as particularly interesting throughout my whole time at St. John’s, and I always wrote my annual essay on it in some shape or form. I was always frustrated by the lofty nature of the questions I was asking, and the lack of substance in my approach to them. Hegel satisfied those frustrations by defining morality as subjective, and “good” and “evil” merely as facets of an individual’s experience. He points to their truth outside of morality entirely, in the sphere of ethics (interpersonal truth).

What was the writing process like for you?

It was more of a reading process. I spent most of my time working through Hegel’s system with my adviser Mr. Kalkavage. Once I had everything ordered, the essay wrote itself.

What is the most important lesson you learned during your time at St. John’s?

For me, nothing will ever top freshman year’s dramatic revelation that I didn’t actually know most of what I thought I knew. Socrates’s awareness of the limits of his knowledge is something I’ve been trying to emulate ever since, and a voice that will always be present in the back of my head whenever I’d like to say I know anything.