Onto-conscience or Primacy of Conscience

Abstract

This study addresses the critique of the subject-centered paradigm that became prominent in modern philosophy with René Descartes, within the framework of the concepts of  “onto-conscience”  and the “primacy of conscience.”  While subject-centeredness reduces being to the constitutive activity of the subject, it is argued that this approach renders being itself invisible. Therefore, the study proposes not only an ontological return but also a reconsideration of the possibility of contact with being.  The  “onto-conscience” approach developed in this context interprets conscience not as a subjective faculty, but as the manifestation of being within the human. Conscience  is not a psychological experience; it is the mode in which being reveals itself. The “primacy of conscience,” on the other hand, refers to the dimension in which being becomes most directly visible. While this approach shows partial parallelism with Mulla Sadra’s ontology that defends the primacy of being,  it expands it through an ethical and phenomenological perspective. The study comparatively examines the thoughts of Muhammad Iqbal and Martin Heidegger. It demonstrates that both thinkers strive to overcome  Cartesian subjectivism and position the human not as the constitutive  center of being but as a field of possibility in which being is disclosed. Iqbal’s understanding  of  “khudi”  and  Heidegger’s concept  of “Dasein” offer a dynamic conception of being as an alternative to subject-centered thought [...]