The Severance of Existence and Ethics, the Limits of Religion, and the Declaration of Soyo's Existence Ethics

Soyo's Existence Ethics Essay

Existence and Ethics as Parallel Lines

Philosophy has long treated existence and ethics as separate domains. Ontology developed as a discipline that inquires into the origins of the world and humanity, while ethics established itself as a practical philosophy dealing with human action and norms of life. Yet these two currents, while implicitly requiring each other, ultimately never met. Plato sought to connect existence and the Good, but did not declare that existence itself is ethics. Aristotle founded ethics upon a teleological order, but did not directly affirm the nobility of existence itself. In modern times, Kant absolutized the moral law, yet excluded existence from its foundation, while Heidegger raised the fundamental question of being but remained silent on ethics.

In this separation, humanity has always wandered on two divided paths: “What am I?” and “How should I live?” These are questions that, in truth, were inseparable but were treated as separate.

The Upheavals of the 20th Century and the Silence of Philosophy

In the 20th century, humanity endured wars, massacres, the Holocaust, atomic bombings, totalitarianism, and the Cold War. Human existence was mercilessly destroyed, life reduced to numbers and statistics. Yet in this tumultuous age, philosophy failed to offer an ethical response. Foucault explored the structures of power, Derrida deconstructed language, and Deleuze examined difference and flows. But nowhere did they answer the anguished cry, “How shall we protect human existence?”

Philosophy became rich in language to describe suffering, but remained silent in its ethical responsibility to wipe away human tears. The philosophy that upheld human dignity disappeared, and human beings were instead analyzed, deconstructed, and trapped within structures. Ethics was severed from existence, no longer a testimony of life, but reduced to fragments of concepts.

The Fear of Philosophers

To unite existence and ethics is to confront the divine origin of human existence itself. Yet many modern philosophers recoiled from this task. To speak of God in their time was to risk being dismissed as engaging not in philosophy but in religion. Philosophy, under the mask of rationality and objectivity, excluded God and made the distance from religion its very identity.

As a result, philosophy lost the language to explain human eternity and the soul. Human existence was no longer a living soul but reduced to signs in discourse, subjects in power, and actors within structures. Ethics lost its divine foundation, and existence lost its ethical testimony. This became the greatest void in philosophy today.

Soyo's Proposition and the Critique of Religion

Here arises Soyo's Proposition:

“I do not believe in religion. The origin of the word itself, when analyzed in Chinese characters, points back to Buddhism and means ‘fundamental teaching’ or ‘that which is foremost.’ At its root, religion was deeply tied to honoring ancestors and seeking blessings. Yet this belongs only to the dimension of human life. Religion created doctrines, and doctrines dispersed humanity. As a result, countless forms of religion arose in our age. But all of this differs radically from the fundamental starting point that human existence was created in relation to God.”

Religion, in the dimension of wisdom, teaching, and the honoring of ancestors, may carry meaning. But such wisdom is limited to human life and does not reach the depth of existence or the eternity of the soul. When religion and philosophy have joined hands, history has more often recorded division, wars, and destruction. When religion excludes God and clings only to human wisdom and tradition, ethics dies, and human existence fractures.

Religion Without Soul, Philosophy That Ignores the Soul

Religion can speak of wisdom. But if it cannot testify to the soul, it remains only a collection of human traditions. Conversely, if philosophy excludes religion and reduces God to mere analysis and deconstruction, then philosophy itself loses ethics. Religion without soul and philosophy that ignores the soul both fail to preserve human existence.

Yet human existence transcends the realm of ancestral blessings or pragmatic wisdom. Humanity is a being with a soul, and that soul is already proven through conscience, love, suffering, and tears. The one who lives out ethics as existence itself already surpasses blessings and wisdom and embraces the universe, for they are made in the image of God.

The Response of Soyo's Existence Ethics

Soyo's Existence Ethics transcends the limitations of both religion and philosophy.

Human existence cannot be deconstructed; it is, in itself, ethics. Ethics is not a religious doctrine, but the imago Dei already testified within existence. The soul is not an inheritance of ancestral wisdom but the breath of divine creation, and this is the truth.

Soyo's Existence Ethics declares that it is not religion, but a single human existence living out faith in God’s love. That alone is true belief. Unlike human history fractured in the name of religion, Soyo's Existence Ethics testifies to God’s presence through the soul, conscience, and love.

Why did modern philosophers fail to integrate existence and ethics? They remained imprisoned in structural separations, silent before the tragedies of their age, fearful of speaking of God. But that silence must now be broken.

Existence and ethics are inseparable. Humanity is a being that must live as a soul. Not religion, but the life of a single human existence living out faith in God’s love, this is the ethic of existence proclaimed by Soyo's Existence Ethics, and the reason philosophy must return to the place where it preserves life.

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo's Existence Ethics, Author of The Silence of Existence, The Flame of Truth

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