Volodymyr Denyssenko’s film, Conscience
(1968), is set in a small Ukrainian village under Nazi occupation during
World War II. Vasyl, a Ukrainian man, kills a German soldier, and the chief
German stationed there gives the villagers an ultimatum: Turn in the culprit or
the entire village will be liquidated; all of the villagers will be executed.
The film is all about this ethical dilemma. According to Jeremy Bentham’s ethic
of utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number should prevail;
any villager would be ethically justified in bringing Vasyl to the Germans to
be executed so that the villagers can be spared. The ongoing pleasure of 100
people outweighs the ongoing pleasure of one person. But the film doesn’t
follow this logic, and can thus be looked at as a critique of Bentham’s ethical
theory. This is not to say that deontology, operating as an ethical constraint
on utilitarianism, is entirely without risk. If I have just lost you, my dear liebe
reader, consider this: Going beyond ethical constraints on an otherwise ethical
theory, what if, as in the film, a political (or religious) cause is allowed to
upend ethical considerations altogether, or at least to eclipse them? I contend that the villagers do this in the
film, for they sacrifice themselves as a matter of conscience to protect a
murderer because they value his political cause, which is resistance to the Nazi
occupation. At what cost? If in relegating the ethical level our species opens
the floodgates to committing atrocities by good intentions, what might people
like the Nazi occupiers in the film do without a conscience and external
ethical constraints?
The full essay is at "Conscience."