Rotation of Crops." If Constantine were really to feel himself flattered by enjoying in this instance the rare honor which brings him into an undeniably elect company — then to my way of thinking, since it was he who wrote the book, he must have become stark mad. But if on the other hand an author like him, who writes in order to be misunderstood, were so far to forget himself and had not ataraxia enough to account it to his credit that Professor Heiberg had not understood him — then again he must be stark mad. And this I have no need to fear, for the circumstance that hitherto he has not replied to Professor Heiberg indicates that he has adequately understood himself With dogmatics begins the science which, in contrast to that science of ethics which can strictly be called ideal, starts with reality. It begins with the real in order to raise it up into the ideality. It does not deny the presence of sin, on the contrary, it assumes it, and explains it by assuming original sin. However, since dogmatics is very seldom treated purely, one will often find original sin drawn into its domain in such a way that the impression of the heterogeneous originality of dogmatics does not strike the eye but is obscured, which happens also when one finds in it a dogma about angels, 18 about the Holy Scripture, etc. Dogmatics therefore should not explain original sin but expound it by assuming it, like that vortex the Greeks 19 talked so much about, a some- thing originating movement, upon which no science can lay its hand.
That such is the case with dogmatics will readily be admitted when one finds leisure to understand for a second time Schleier- macher's immortal services 20 to this science. People long ago deserted him when 18 INTRODUCTION they chose Hegel, and yet Schleiermacher was in the beautiful Greek sense a thinker who could talk of what he has known, whereas Hegel, in spite of his remarkable and colossal learning, reminds us nevertheless again and again by his performance that he was in the German sense a professor of philosophy on a big scale, who a tout prix must explain all things.
The new science then begins with dogmatics, in the same sense that the immanent science begins with metaphysics. Here ethics finds its place again as the science which has the dogmatic consciousness of reality as a task for reality. This ethic does not ignore sin, and its ideality does not consist in making ideal requirements, but its ideality consists in the penetrating consciousness of reality, of the reality of sin, yet not, be it observed, with metaphysical frivolity or psychological concupiscence.
One readily sees the difference of the movement, and that the ethic of which we are now speaking belongs to another order. The first ethic foundered upon the sinfulness of the individual. So far from being able to explain this, the difficulty had to become still greater and ethically more enigmatic, for the fact that the sin of the individual widens out and becomes the sin of the whole race. At this juncture came dogmatics and helped by the doctrine of original sin. The new ethics presupposes dogmatics and along with that original sin, and by this it now explains the sin of the individual, while at the same time it presents ideality as a task, not however by a movement from above down, but from below up.
It is well known that Aristotle 21 used the name TrpdiTrj <f>i\o<ro- (f>ia [the first philosophy] and denoted by that more especially meta- physics, although he included also a part of what to our notion belongs to theology. It is entirely natural that in paganism theology should be treated in this place; it evinces the same lack of infinite penetrating reflection which accounts for the fact that in paganism the theater had reality as a sort of divine worship. If now one will waive the objection to this ambiguity, we might retain this name and understand by np<oTy) <f)i\ocro<f>ia* the totality of science, we might describe it as ethnic, the nature of it being immanence, or use the Greek term "recollection"; and understand by secunda philosophia that of which the nature is transcendence or "repetition."!
The concept of sin does not properly belong in any science; only the second ethics can deal with its apparition but not with its origin. If any other science were to discuss it, the concept would be confused. For example, coming closer to our theme, if psychology were to do so.
INTRODUCTION 19 INTRODUCTION 19 What psychology has to deal with must be something in repose, something which abides in a mobile state of quiet, not with an unquiet thing which constantly reproduces itself or is repressed. But the abiding state, that out of which sin constantly becomes (comes into being), not by necessity, for a becoming by necessity is simply a state of being (as is for example the entire history of the plant), but by freedom — in this abiding state, I say, which is the predisposing assumption, the real possibility of sin, we have a subject for the interest of psychology. That which can concern psychology and with which it can concern itself is the question how sin can come into existence, not the fact that it exists. In its interest in its object psychology carries the thing so far that it is as if sin were there; but the next thing, the fact that it is there, Schelling 12 recalled this Aristotelian name to favor his distinction between negative and positive philosophy. By negative philosophy he understood "logic," that was clear enough; on the other hand it was not so clear to me what he really understood by "positive," except in so far as it remained indubitable that positive philosophy was that which he himself provided. However, it is not feasible to go into that, since I have nothing to hold on to except my own interpretation. # fOf this Constantine Constantius has reminded us by pointing out that im- manence founders upon "interest." It is in fact with this concept that reality first comes into view.
20 INTRODUCTION is qualitatively different from this. To show then that this pre- supposition for the careful observation of psychology turns out to be more and more comprehensive is the interest of psychology; yea, psychology is willing to abandon itself to the illusion that hereby sin is really posited. But this last illusion betrays the impotence of psychology and shows that it has served its turn.
That human nature must be such that it makes sin possible, is, psychologically speaking, perfectly true; but to want to let this possibility of sin become its reality is shocking to ethics and sounds to dogmatics like blasphemy; for freedom is never possible; as soon as it is, it is actual, in the same sense in which it has been said by an earlier philosophy 23 that when God's existence is possible it is necessary.
As soon as sin is really posited, ethics is on the spot and follows every step it takes. How it came into being does not concern ethics, except in so far as it is certain that sin came into the world as sin. But still less than with the genesis of sin is ethics concerned with the still life of its possibility.
If one would ask more particularly in what sense and to what extent psychology pursues the object of its investigation, it is clear from the foregoing and in itself that every observation of the reality of sin as an object of thought is irrelevant to it, nor as the object of observation does it belong to ethics either, for ethics never acts as observer, but accuses, condemns, acts. In the next place, it follows from the foregoing and is evident in itself that psychology has nothing to do with the details of empirical actuality, except in so far as they are outside of sin. As a science, psychology can never have anything to do empirically with the detail which underlies it, and yet this detail may receive its scientific representation in proportion as psychology becomes more and more concrete. In our age this science, which above all others has leave to in- toxicate itself, one might almost say, with the foaming multifariousness of life, has become as spare in its diet and as ascetic as any anchorite. This is not the fault of the science but of its devotees. In relation to sin, on the other hand, this whole content of reality is properly denied to it, only the possibility of it still belongs to it. To ethics of course the possibility of sin never presents itself, and ethics never lets itself be fooled into wasting its time upon such reflections. Psychology, on the other hand, loves them; it sits sketching the contours and measuring the angles of possibility, INTRODUCTION 21 and no more would let itself be disturbed than would Archimedes. 24 But while psychology thus delves into the possibility of sin, it is without knowing it in the service of another science, which is only waiting for it to be finished in order to begin for its part and help psychology to an explanation. This other science is not ethics, for ethics has nothing whatsoever to do with this possibility. No, it is dogmatics, and here in turn the problem of original sin emerges. While psychology is fathoming the real possibility of sin, dogmatics explains original sin, which is the ideal possibility of sin. On the other hand, the second ethics has nothing to do with the possibility of sin nor with original sin. The first ethics ignores sin, the second ethics has the reality of sin in its province, and here only by a misunderstanding can psychology intrude.
If what has been here expounded is correct, one will easily see with what justification I have called this book a psychological deliberation, and will see also how this deliberation, in so far as it brings to consciousness its relation to science in general, properly belongs to psychology and leads in turn to dogmatics. Psychology has been called the doctrine of the subjective spirit. 25 If one will pursue this science a little more precisely, one will see how, when it comes to the problem of sin, it must change suddenly into the doctrine of the Absolute Spirit. Here is the place of dogmatics. The first ethics presupposes metaphysics, and the second dogmatics; but it also completes it in such a way that here as everywhere the presupposition comes to evidence.
This was the task of the introduction. The introduction may be correct while the deliberation itself dealing with the concept of dread may be entirely incorrect. That remains to be seen.
CHAPTER I Dread as the presupposition of original sin and as explaining it retrogressively by going back to its origin §i Historical indications relative to the concept of original sin s this concept identical with the concept of the first sin, Adam's sin, the Fall? So it has sometimes been understood, and consequently the T task proposed was to explain in an identical way original sin and the sin of Adam. Since thought here stumbles upon difficulties, theologians sought a way out. In order at least to explain something they introduced a fantastic assumption, a state which by its loss involved the Fall. They gained thus the advantage that everybody would be willing to concede that such a state as that described is not found in the world, but they forgot that the doubt was a different one, namely, whether it ever had existed — and that was pretty clearly necessary if one were to lose it. The history of the human race acquires a fantastic beginning, Adam was fantastically put outside, pious sentiment and fantasy got what it desired, a godly prelude, but thought got nothing. In a double way Adam was kept fantastically outside. The assumption was a dialectic-fantastic one, especially in Catholicism (Adam lost donum divinitus datum supranaturale et admirabile)} It was historically fantastic, especially in the Covenant Theology, 2 which lost itself dramatically in an imaginary notion of Adam acting as plenipotentiary representative of the whole race. Of course both explanations explain nothing, since the one explains away what it had itself poetically interpolated, and the other merely introduced poetry which explains nothing.
Is the concept of original sin so different from the concept of the first sin that the individual participates in it only through his relation to Adam and not through his primordial relation to sin? If so, then Adam is again fantastically placed outside history. Adam's 24 CHAPTER I sin is then more than passed (plus quam perfectum). Original sin is present, it is sinfulness, and Adam was the only one in whom this was not, since it came into being by means of him. They were not attempting therefore to explain Adam's sin, but would explain original sin by its consequences. The explanation, however, was not meant for thought. Hence one can understand very well that a symbolical document affirms the impossibility of an explanation, and that this affirmation is made without contradicting the explanation. The Articles of Smalkald teach expressly: peccatum haereditarium tarn profunda et tetra est corruptio naturae, ut nullius hominis ratione intelligi possit, sed ex scripturae patefactione ag- noscenda et credenda sit. This affirmation is perfectly compatible with the explanations; for in them we have not thought-defmi- tions as such, but here pious feelings (in the direction of the ethical) give vent to their indignation at original sin, assume the role of prosecutor, and then, with an almost feminine passion, with the exaltation of a young girl in love, they are solely concerned to make sinfulness more and more odious, oneself included, so that no word is hard enough to denounce the participation of the individual in this sinfulness. If with this in mind one will survey the various confessions, one will discover a gradation in which the profound Protestant piety comes off victorious. The Greek Church calls original sin a/iapTT)fia TrpoiTOTraTopiKov [the sin of the first father]. It has not even a concept, for this term is only a historical statement, which does not like a concept indicate a present condition but only the historically concluded fact. Vitmm origmis [a sin of origin] (Tertullian) is indeed a concept, but nevertheless the form of the language allows one to conceive the historical factor as predominant. Peccatum originate (quia originaliter tradatur) (Augustine) states the concept, which becomes even more clearly defined by the distinction between peccatum originans and originatum. Protestantism rejects Scholastic definitions (carentia imaginis dei, defectus justitiae originalis), as it does also the notion that sin might be poena 3 (concupiscentiam poenam esse non peccatum, disputant adversarii, Apol. A.C.); and now begins the enthusiastic climax: vitium, peccatum, reatus, culpa. One cares only for the eloquence of the contrite soul, and therefore may sometimes let a perfectly contradictory thought slip into the discourse about original sin (nunc quoque afferens iram dei iis, qui secundum exemplum Adami peccarunt). Or that troubled elo- HISTORICAL INDICATIONS 25 quence is utterly careless of thought but affirms terrific things about original sin (quo fit ut omnes propter inobedientiam Adae et Hevae in odio apud deum simus, says the Formula Concordiae, which nevertheless is prudent enough to protest against thinking this, for if one were to think it, sin, as it says, would become man's substance).* As soon as the exaltation of faith and contrition has vanished one can no longer be helped by such definitions, which only make it easy for cunning common sense to escape the recognition of sin. But to need other definitions is a dubious proof of the perfection of our age, quite in the same sense as is our need of other than Draconian laws.
The same fantastic effect so evident here is repeated again at another point in dogmatics, the Atonement. It is affirmed that Christ made satisfaction for original sin. But how was it then with Adam? He in fact brought original sin into the world. Was not then original sin an actual sin in him? Or does original sin signify the same thing for Adam as for every man in the race? If so, then the concept is annulled. Or was Adam's whole life original sin? Did not the first sin engender in him other sins, i.e. actual sins? The defect in the previous theory is here more evident; for Adam now finds himself so fantastically outside that he is the only one who is excluded from the Atonement.
*The fact that the Form. Cone, forbade one to think this definition must nevertheless be extolled as a proof of the energetic passion with which it knew how to let thought stumble against the unthinkable, an energy which is very admirable in contrast with modern thought which is only too loosely strung. [I have been told (but too late to add anything to the notes at the end of the volume) that I ought to translate for the unlearned all the phrases in Latin etc. which S. K. uses so frequently. I must tuck in here all that refers to the paragraph preceding this note. The article of Smalkald states that "hereditary sin is so deep and dreadful a corruption of nature that it cannot be understood by the reason of any man but must be recognized and believed by the revelation of Scripture." The phrase ascribed to Augustine (which has not been traced to its source) means, "original sin, so called because it was handed down from the origin of the race"; and the distinction between frecatum originans etc. expresses the difference between original sin as productive of subsequent sins, and the sin thus produced. The Protestants are said to reject the notion that "original sin is deprivation of the image of God, a loss of original righteousness," and to deny that "concupiscence is punishment, not sin." What is here called a "climax" is fault, sin, culpability, guilt. Nunc quoque means: "now bringing down also God's wrath upon them that sinned after the example of Adam," and quo fit etc. means: "wherefore on account of the disobedience of Adam and Eve we are all the objects of God's hate."]
26 CHAPTER I However one may state the problem, as soon as Adam finds himself fantastically outside, everything is confused. To explain Adam's sin is therefore to explain original sin, and no explanation is of any avail which explains original sin and does not explain Adam. The deepest reason for this is to be discovered in the essential characteristic of human existence, that man is an individual and as such is at once himself and the whole race, in such wise that the whole race has part in the individual, and the individual has part in the whole race.* If one does not hold fast to this, one either gets into the singularity of Pelagianism, Socinianism, or philanthropy, or else falls into the fantastic. The prose of common sense is that the race is resolved numerically into a "one times one." The fantastic is that Adam enjoys the well-meant honor of being more than the whole race, or the ambiguous honor of standing outside the race.
The fact is that at every moment the individual is himself and the race. This is man's perfection, regarded as a state. At the same time it is a contradiction; but a contradiction is always the expression for a task; but a task is movement; but a movement towards that same thing as a task which first was given up as an enigma is a historical movement. Hence the individual has a history; but if the individual has a history, so has also the race. Every individual has the same perfection; precisely for this cause the individuals do not fall away from one another numerically, any more than does the concept of the race become a phantom. Every individual is essentially interested in the history of all other individuals, yea, just as essentially as in his own. Perfection in oneself means therefore the perfect participation in the whole. No individual is indifferent to the history of the race, any more than is the race to that of any individual. While the history of the race goes on, the individual regularly begins afresh, because he is himself and the race, and hence in turn his is the history of the race.
Adam is the first man; he is at once himself and the race. It is not by virtue of the aesthetically beautiful that we adhere to him; it is not by virtue of a magnanimous sentiment that we attach *If an individual could fall away from the race entirely, his falling away would involve a modification of the race, whereas on the contrary, if a beast were to fall away from the species, the species would be entirely unaffected. ourselves to him, in order not to leave him so to say in the lurch as one who was to blame for everything; it is not by virtue of the enthusiasm of sympathy and the persuasiveness of piety that we resolve to share this guilt with him, as the child wishes to be guilty along with the father; it is not by virtue of a forced compassion which teaches us to put up with what we THE FIRST SIN 27 cannot mend; but it is by virtue of thought we hold fast to him. Therefore every effort to explain Adam's significance for the race as caput generis humani naturale, seminale, foederale 4 (to recall the dogmatic expressions), confuses everything. He is not essentially different from the race, for in that case there is no race; he is not the race, for in that case there is no race: he is himself and the race. Therefore what explains Adam explains the race, and vice versa.
§2 The concept of the first sin According to traditional conceptions, the difference between Adam's first sin and the first sin of every man is this: Adam's sin conditions sinfulness as a consequence; the other first sin assumes sinfulness as a condition. If that were so, then Adam would really be outside the race, and the race did not begin with him but had a beginning outside itself, and this runs contrary to every concept.
It is easy to see that the first sin signifies something different from a sin (i.e. a sin like several others), something different from one sin (i.e. No. I in relation to No. 2). The first sin is a determinant of quality, the first sin is the sin. This is the secret of "the first," and the scandal of it for abstract intelligence, which thinks that once is nothing much, but that many times is something, a notion which is altogether preposterous, inasmuch as each of the many times either signifies as much as the first time, or all of them taken together not nearly so much. It is therefore a superstition to affirm in logic that by a continued quantitative progression a new quality is produced; it is an unpardonable reticence when one does not indeed conceal the fact that things do not go on quite in this way but conceals the consequence of this for the whole logical immanence by inserting it in the midst of the logical movement as Hegel does.* The new quality appears with the first, with the leap, with the suddenness of the enigmatic.
If the first sin signifies numerically one sin, then no history results from it, and sin has no history either in the individual or in the race; for the condition for both is the same, even though the history of the race is not for this reason the history of the individual, any more than the history of the individual is that of the race, except in so far as the contradiction constantly expresses the task.
With the first sin came sin into the world. Exactly in the same way is 28 CHAPTER I this true of every subsequent first sin of man, that with it sin comes into the world. The fact that it was not there before Adam's first sin is (in relation to sin itself) an altogether accidental and irrelevant reflection which has altogether no significance, and is no justification for making Adam's sin greater or the first sin of every other man less. It is really a logical and ethical heresy to give the impression that sinfulness in a man goes on determining itself quantitatively for so long a time that at last by a generatio aequivoca it produces the first sin in man. This does not come to pass. It did not come to pass that Trop, 9 who yet was a master in quantitative determination, got the degree of candidate in law by the aid of it. Let the mathematicians and astronomers help themselves out if they can with infinitely small magnitudes; in everyday life this does not help one to get one's certificate as candidate, and still less to explain spirit. If the first sin of every subsequent man were to issue in this way out of sinfulness, his first sin is only unessentially defined when we call it "the first," but would be essentially defined by its serial number (if we can think of such a thing) in the general sinking *After all, this thesis about the relation between the quantitative determination and the new quality has a long history. In effect, the whole Greek sophistic consisted in affirming a quantitative definition, and hence for it the highest ex- pression of diversity is likeness and unlikeness. In modern philosophy Schelling 5 first wanted to help himself out with a merely quantitative determinant to explain all diversity; subsequently he censured this same thing in Eschenmayer 8 (in his doctoral dissertation). Hegel 7 affirmed the leap, but affirmed it in logic. Rosenkrantz (in his Psychology) admires Hegel for this. In the latest work of Rosenkrantz 8 that has been published (about Schelling) he censures this and praises Hegel. But Hegel's misfortune is precisely this, that he wants to assert the new quality and yet does not want to, since he wants to do it in logic, which, no sooner than this is recognized, must acquire a different consciousness of itself and of its significance. fund of the race. But thus it is not, and it is equally foolish, illogical, unethical, un-Christian, to want to sue for the honor of being the first discoverer, and to want to slink away from something by not being willing to think anything by saying that one has not done anything else but what all the others have done. The presence of sinfulness in a man, the power of example, etc., are only quantitative determinants which explain* nothing, unless it is assumed that one individual is the whole race, instead of every individual being himself and the whole race.
The account of the first sin in Genesis has, especially in our age, been regarded rather carelessly as a myth. There is some reason for this, inasmuch as what one put in place of it was indeed a myth, and a poor one at that. For when the understanding takes to mythology there seldom comes out of it anything but twaddle. That account in Genesis is the only dialectically consistent account. Really its whole substance is concentrated THE FIRST SIN 29 THE FIRST SIN 29 in the clause: Sin came into the world by a sin. If this were not so, then sin would have come in as something accidental, which man would do well not to try to explain. The difficulty for the understanding is precisely the triumph of the explanation, its profound consistency in representing that sin presupposes itself, that it so came into the world that by the fact that it is, it is presupposed. Sin comes in as the sudden, i.e. with the leap; but this leap posits at the same time the quality; but when the quality was posited, the leap that same instant tur ned into the quality and was presupposed by the quality, and the quality by the leap. This is a stumbling block to the understanding, ergo it is a myth. In requital the understanding composes poetically a myth which denies the leap, construes the circle as a straight line, and then everything goes on as a matter of course. It paints a fantastic picture of how man was before the Fall, and gradually, as the understanding chatters about it, the assumed innocence becomes little by little, in the course of the twaddle, sinfulness — and so there it is. The discourse of the understanding in this instance may aptly be compared with the infantile rigmarole in which childhood takes delight: "One nis ball," "two nis balls," "three nis balls," etc., up to "nine nis balls" and "tennis balls" — here it is, and elicited quite naturally by the foregoing. If there *What significance they may have in other regards, as concomitants in the history of the race, as the run preparatory to the leap, which does not, however, explain the leap, is another question.
might be anything in this myth invented by the understanding, it would be that sinfulness precedes sin. But if this is true in the sense that sinfulness has come in by any other way but by sin, then the concept is annulled. But if it has come in by sin, then sin has preceded it. This contradiction is the only dialectically consistent statement, which is able to do justice to both the leap and immanence (i.e. the subsequent immanence).
So by Adam's sin sin came into the world. This statement, which is the common one, implies however a reflection which is entirely external, and this doubtless has contributed much to the rise of the vague misunderstanding. That sin came into the world is quite true, but this statement as it stands does not concern Adam. To express the situation quite sharply and accurately one must say that by the first sin sinfulness came into Adam. It would not occur to anybody to say of any subsequent man that by his first sin sinfulness came into the world, and yet it comes through him in like manner (i.e. in a manner which is not essentially different) into the world; for, sharply and accurately expressed, sinfulness is in the world only in so far as it comes in through sin.
30 CHAPTER I The fact that Adam has been interpreted differently is due solely to the consideration that the consequences of Adam's fantastic relation to the race must be everywhere made evident. His sin is original sin. Nothing else is known of him. But original sin as seen in Adam is only that first sin. Is Adam the only individual who has no history? Then indeed the race has to begin with an individual who is not an individual, whereby both the concept of the race and that of the individual are annulled. If any other in- dividual in the race can by his history have significance in the history of the race, Adam has it, too; if Adam has significance only by reason of that first sin, then the concept of history is annulled, that is to say, history was finished the same instant it began.* Owing to the fact that the race does not begin afresh with every *The point is to get Adam back into the human race, exactly in the same sense in which every other individual is. This the theologians ought to look after, especially for the sake of the Atonement. The doctrine that Adam and Christ correspond to one another 1 " explains nothing at all, but confuses everything. There may be an analogy, but the analogy is in the concept incomplete. Only Christ is an individual who is more than an individual: but for this reason he did not come in the beginning but in the fullness of time.
THE FIRST SIN 31 individual* the sinfulness of the race acquires a history. This however proceeds by quantitative determinants, while the individual by the qualitative leap participates in it. The race therefore does not begin afresh with every individual, for in that way the race would be no race, but every individual begins afresh with the race.