The Much-Maligned and Misunderstood Eternal Consciousness

The primary purpose of this paper is to defend three controversial claims that arise out of T.H. Green’s arguments in the first two books of the Prolegomena to Ethics. The first claim—which I defend in §1—is that one should not try to separate the aspects of Green’s metaphysical theory that are set out in book one of the Prolegomena from the theory of the will he developed in book two. The second claim—defended in §2—is that it is possible for an atheist to accept Green’s arguments for the existence of an eternal consciousness. The third claim—again, defended in §2—is that the eternal consciousness is a potential of every individual mind, rather than being some type of mystical ‘super-person’ of which any particular human consciousness is a mere adjunct.