My positions on ethics have as the beginning point the belief in an internal division of our soul. I believe that our soul is divided into a bad component and into a good component. The negative component in us can be defeated only through the analysis of ourselves, through the knowledge of our nature, and through the meditation on our essence: a process of education is needed to dominate the negative components of our soul.
The negative element in our soul leads us to an attitude of hostility against other human beings: it aims to gain the dominance of other people, it is capable of crimes, and it can progressively deteriorate if it is not appropriately held under control. My belief derives from the inquiry into the history of humanity: independently of the people, of the historical epoch, of the culture, and so on, we can always observe in human history wars, massacres, exploitations, violence, and crimes. Evil is connected to our nature. We may not accuse anybody else than ourselves for the evil events which happen in the world. We are responsible for our deeds; we are guilty of the negative events which happen in society and in human history.
Despite the negative aspects which are inherent in our nature, we are not only these negative aspects. We have positive components too. The difficulty which we have is, in my opinion, that the negative components are immediately active in our soul, while the positive aspects of our soul need to be cultivated, educated, and formed. The positive elements of our soul do not come alone to maturity. The positive elements of our soul will not arise automatically. The positive elements need an appropriate education to be appropriately developed: therefore, we need and ought to initiate a process of education. Nobody can and will do the process of education for us; nobody can and will substitute us during this process. We ought to decide for ourselves whether we want to begin the process of education: we have full responsibility for the choice.
The road to education, to self-knowledge, to the analysis of our nature will be long and difficult; a continuous engagement will be necessary; moreover, nobody can ensure that we shall be successful on this road. We have no alternative but the process of education, though, if we want to put under control the negative components which we have in ourselves. The road to reason can be gone only with pain.
