Abstract

Conscience plays a crucial role in identifying, applying, and initiating actions chosen as right or wrong. In this paper, we pursue an answer to the question, Can bad conscience, as Nietzsche defines it, be overcome to form the ground for the creation of good conscience? Nietzsche identifies Christianity as the source of that which has to be overcome to help re-define human existence--overcoming self-destructive, bad conscience. To understand whether someone could (or even should) overcome and redefine his or her existence, that is create good conscience like Nietzsche's Ubermensch, it is useful to consider the struggles of Allie Fox, the hero in Peter Weir's movie Mosquito Coast (1986)