But the more of dread and sensuousness which every later individual has in comparison with Adam may of course in the particular individual signify a more or a less. This is the ground of the differences which in truth are so terrible that surely no one ventures to think of them in a deeper sense, that is, with genuine human sympathy, unless with a firmness which nothing can shake he is convinced that never is there found in this world, nor ever shall be found, such a "more" that by a simple transition it transforms the quantitative into the qualitative. What the Scripture teaches, that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, life itself proclaims in a loud enough voice. To want to chatter oneself away from this terrible fact by the explanation that this saying is a Jewish doctrine is of no avail. Christianity has never subscribed to the notion that every particular individual is in an outward sense privileged to begin from scratch. Every individual begins in a historical nexus, and the consequences of natural law are still as valid as ever. The difference now consists only in this, that Christianity teaches us to lift ourselves above that "more," and condemns him who does not do so as not willing to do so.
Precisely because sensuousness is here defined as a "more." the dread of the spirit in assuming responsibility for this "more" becomes a greater dread. There is implied here as a maximum the terrible fact that dread of sin produces sin. If one represents that evil desires, concupiscence, etc., are innate in the individual, one does not get the ambiguity in which the individual becomes both guilty and innocent. In the impotence of dread the individual sue- cumbs, but precisely for this reason he is both guilty and innocent.
I will not adduce detailed examples of this infinitely fluctuating more and less. If such examples are to have any significance, they demand a vast aesthetic-psychological treatment.
A. CONSEQUENCE OF THE HISTORICAL SITUATION 66 CHAPTER I If here I had to express in a single sentence the meaning of that "more" which characterizes every later individual in comparison with Adam, I would say: It consists in the fact that sensuousness may signify sin, that is, it may signify that obscure knowledge of sin which we have, as well as an obscure knowledge of what sin may signify in a broader reference, along with a misunderstood historical application of the historical refrain, De te fabula nar- retur, whereby the point, the originality of the individual, is left out, and the individual simply confounds himself with the race and its history. We do not say that sensuousness is sinfulness, but that sin makes it sinful. If now we picture to ourselves the later individual, we see that everyone has a historical environment in which it may eventuate that the sensuous may signify sin. For the individual himself it does not have this significance, but this general knowledge bestows upon dread a "more." The spirit then is placed not only in relation to the contradiction of sensuousness, but to that of sinfulness. It goes without saying that the innocent individual does not yet understand this knowledge, for it is only to be understood qualitatively, but nevertheless this knowledge is again a new possibility,. of such a sort that freedom, related in its possibility to the sensuous, falls into even greater dread.
That this common "more" may for the particular individual signify a more or a less, goes without saying. For example, to call attention at once to a difference of immense importance, after Christianity had come into the world and redemption was posited, sensuousness was seen in a new light, the light of contradiction, as it was not seen in paganism; and this serves precisely to confirm the proposition that sensuousness is sinfulness.
Within the Christian difference this "more" may again signify a more and a less. This is due to the relation of each particular innocent individual to his environment. In this respect the most diverse causes may produce the same effect. The possibility of freedom announces itself in dread. An admonition may now cause the SUBJECTIVE DREAD * individual to succumb in dread (it is to be remembered that I am constantly speaking psychologically and never annul the qualitative leap), and this in spite of the fact that the admonition was of course meant to produce the opposite effect. The sight of the sinful may save one individual and hurl down another. A jest may have the same effect as seriousness, and vice versa. Speech and silence may produce an effect which is the opposite to that which was intended. To this there are no limits, and hence one perceives here again the correctness of the definition, that this is a quantitative more and less; for the quantitative is precisely the infinite limit.
I will not carry out here any further this experimenting observation, for it delays us. Life, however, is rich enough in examples, if only one understands how to see; one need not journey to Paris and London — and that is of no avail when one cannot see.
Moreover, dread has here again the same ambiguity it always has. At this point a maximum may be reached which corresponds to that mentioned above, when it was said that the individual in dread of sin produces sin. Here the formula is: The individual in dread, not of becoming guilty, but of being regarded as guilty, becomes guilty.
Moreover, the utmost "more" in this direction is, that this individual from his earliest awaking is so placed and influenced that for him sensuousness has become identical with sin, and this utmost "more" will appear in the most painful form of collisions, when in the whole surrounding world he finds absolutely nothing that affords him support. If to this extremest "more" is added the confusion that the individual confounds himself with his historical knowledge of sin, and in the pallor of dread subsumes himself qua individual under the same category, forgetting the category of freedom which says: "If thou doest likewise" — then the very extremest "more" is reached.
What has here been so briefly suggested that it requires a pretty rich experience to understand that much has been said, and said definitely and clearly, is commonly spoken of as the power of example. Undeniably (though not precisely in these superphilosophi- cal times) a great deal has been very well said about this subject; but often there is lacking the psychological middle term which explains how it is that the example produces an effect. In this sphere moreover they have sometimes treated the matter a little 68 CHAPTER I too carelessly and have not noticed that a single little mistake is capable of throwing life's prodigious balance sheet into confusion. The attention of psychology is fixed exclusively upon particulars and has not at the same time ready at hand its eternal categories, and is not circumspect enough when saving mankind to save each individual of the race, cost what it may. Example is supposed to have had its effect upon the child. The child is represented as a regular little angel, but the depraved environment cast it into perdition. One keeps on relating and relating how bad the environment was — and so, and so the child became depraved. But if this comes about by a simple quantitative process, every concept is annulled. This fact is not noticed. Or the child is represented as so fundamentally wicked that the good example can do it no good. But take heed that this child does not become so wicked that it acquires the power not merely to make fools of its parents but of all human speech and thought, just as a rana paradoxa 16 mocks and defies the naturalist's classification of frogs. There are many men who understand, to be sure, how to look at the particular, but are not capable of having at the same time the totality in mente; but every such way of looking at things, though in other respects it is meritorious, can only occasion confusion. — Or the child was, as most children are, neither good nor bad, but then it fell into good company and became good, or into bad company and became bad. But the middle terms! the middle terms! Let someone introduce a middle term which has the ambiguity that it rescues the thought (without which indeed the child's salvation is an illusion) that the child, in whatever "how" it was, can become both guilty and innocent. If one has not the middle term at hand promptly and clearly, then the concepts of original sin, of sin, of the race, of the individual, are lost, and the child along with them.
Sensuousness then is not sinfulness, but by the fact that sin was posited, and by the fact that it continues to be posited, sensuousness becomes sinful. It goes without saying that sinfulness now signifies something else, but we have nothing to do here with what else it may signify where properly we are employed in scrutinizing psychologically the state which precedes sin and which, psychologically speaking, predisposes to sin more or less.
By eating the fruit of knowledge the distinction between good and evil came into the world, but with that also the sexual distinction as a propensity. No science can explain how. Psychology comes nearest to doing so and explains the last step in the approximation, which is freedom's apparition before itself in the dread of possibility, or in the nothingness of possibility, or in the nothing of dread. If the object of SUBJECTIVE DREAD 69 SUBJECTIVE DREAD 69 dread is a something, then there is no leap, but a quantitative transition. The later individual has a "more" in comparison with Adam, and again a more or a less in comparison with other men, but nevertheless it holds good that the object of dread is a nothing. If its object is a something of such a sort that viewed essentially, i.e. in relation to freedom, it signifies something, there is no leap, but only a quantitative transition which confuses every concept. Even when I say that for an individual before he makes the leap sensuousness is posited as sinfulness, it holds good nevertheless that it is not essentially posited as such, for essentially he does not posit it nor understand it. Even when I say that in the procreated individual there is posited a "more" of sensuousness, nevertheless this "more" is, so far as the leap is concerned, an invalid "more."
If science has any other psychological middle term which dog- matically, ethically and psychologically possesses the advantage dread has, then one is free to prefer it.
Moreover, it is easy to see that what has been expounded can perfectly well be brought into accord with the explanation commonly given of sin as selfishness or egoism. But when one is absorbed in this definition, one does not undertake at all to explain the precedent psychological difficulty; and moreover this defines sin too pneumatically, not paying sufficient attention to the fact that sin by being posited posits sensuousness just as much as it does a spiritual consequence.
Seeing that in modern philosophy 17 sin has so often been explained as egoism, it is incomprehensible that no one has perceived that precisely in this consists the impossibility of finding a place for sin in any science. For the egoistic is precisely the particular (Enkelte), and only the particular individual can know it, as a particular individual, since when viewed under general categories it can signify everything, in such wise that this everything signifies nothing at all. Therefore the definition of sin as egoism may be quite correct, precisely when at the same time one holds fast the fact that, scientifically speaking, it is so empty of content that it means nothing at all. Finally, in this definition, that sin is selfishness, no account is taken of the distinction between sin and original sin, nor of the sense in which one explains the other, sin explaining original sin, and original sin explaining sin.
As soon as one begins to talk scientifically about this egoism, everything is dissolved into tautology, or else one resorts to esprit, whereby everything is brought to confusion. Who can forget that natural philosophy has found this egoism in the whole creation, found it in the 70 CHAPTER I movement of the stars, which nevertheless are bound to obedience under the law of the universe? They have found that the centrifugal force in nature is egoism. When a concept has been carried so far, it may well go to bed, in order if possible to sleep off its drunkenness and become sober again. Here our age has been indefatigable in getting everything to signify all things. We have seen how briskly and pertinaciously some spirituel mystagogue 18 or another will prostitute a whole mythology in order by his falcon eye to make every single myth a fantasy for his jew's-harp. Sometimes one sees a whole Christian terminology brought to degeneration and perdition by the ostentatious use one speculator or another makes of it.
If one does not first make clear to oneself what "self means, there is not much use in saying of sin that it is selfishness. But "self signifies precisely the contradiction of positing the general as the particular (Enkelte). Only when the concept of the particular individual (Enkelte) is given can there be any question of the selfish. But although there have lived countless millions of such "selves," no science can state what the self is, without stating it in perfectly general terms.* And this is the wonderful thing about life, that every man who gives heed to himself knows what no science knows, since he knows what he himself is; and this is the profundity of the Greek saying, yv&di aeavrov (know thyself), f * It is worth while reflecting upon this, for precisely at this point it must become evident to what extent the new principle that thought and being are one is adequate, when we do not spoil it by misunderstandings which are inept and in part stupid, but on the other hand do not wish to have a highest principle which involves us in thoughtlessness. The general is only by the fact that it is thought or can be thought (not only in imaginary experiments — for what all cannot a man think!) and is as that which can be thought. The point in the particular is its negative, its repellent relationship to the general; but as soon as this is thought away, individuality is annulled, and as soon as it is thought it is transformed in such a way that either one does not think it but only imagines one is thinking it, or does think it and only imagines that it is included in the process of thought.
fThe Latin saying, unum noris omnes [if you know one, you know all], expresses light-mindedly the same thing, and expresses it really if by unum one SUBJECTIVE DREAD • ' which so long has been understood in the German way 19 as v pure self- consciousness, the airiness of idealism. Surely it is high time to try to understand it in the Greek way, and then again in such a way as the Greeks would have understood it if they had had Christian presuppositions. But the real "self is first posited by the qualitative leap. In the situation preceding this there can be no question of such a thing. Therefore when one would explain sin by selfishness, one becomes involved in confusions, since on the contrary it is true that by sin and in sin selfishness comes into being. If it were to be said that selfishness was the occasion of Adam's sin, then this explanation is a game in which the interpreter finds what he himself had first hidden. If it were to be said that selfishness was the cause of Adam's sin, then the intervening state has been leapt over and the interpretation has been accomplished with suspicious ease. Moreover, in this way one learns nothing about the significance of the sexual. Here I am back again at the old point. The sexual is not sinfulness, but (if for an instant I may speak by way of "accommodation" and speak foolishly) supposing Adam had not sinned, then the sexual would never have been posited as a propensity. A perfect spirit cannot be conceived as sexually differentiated. This is in harmony with the doctrine of the Church concerning the character of the resurrection," in harmony with its notion of angels, 21 in harmony with the dogmatic definitions of the person of Christ. T ust as a suggestion I note that whereas Christ was subjected to all human trials, there is nothing said of any temptation in this respect, which may be explained precisely by the consideration that he withstood all temptations.
Sensuousness is not sinfulness. Sensuousness in the state of innocence is not sinfulness, and yet sensuousness is present, Adam indeed was in need of food and drink, etc. The generic difference is posited in innocence but is not posited as such. Only at the instant when sin is posited is the generic difference also posited as propensity [Drift ].
Here as usual I must deprecate every mistaken conclusion, as if, for example, it now ought to be the true task to ignore the sensual, i.e. in an external sense to reduce it to naught. Once the sexual understands the thinker himself, and then does not inquisitively go scouting after the omnes, but seriously holds fast to this one, which really is all. Generally men do not believe this, and they even think that it is too proud. Surely the reason is that they are too cowardly and indolent to venture to understand and to earn the understanding of true pride.
72 CHAPTER I is posited as the extreme point of the synthesis, it is no use ignoring it. The task is of course to win it into conformity with the destiny of the spirit. (Here lie all the moral problems of the erotic.) The realization of this task is the triumph of love in a man in whom the spirit has triumphed in such a way that the sexual is forgotten and only remembered in forgetfulness. When this has come about, then sensuousness is transfigured into spirit and dread driven out.
If now one will compare this view (call it Christian or what you will) with the Greek view, I believe that more has been won than has been lost. True, there has indeed been lost something of that melancholy erotic Heitcrkeit, 22 but there has also been gained a spiritual quality unknown to Hellenism. The only men who truly lose are the many who go on living continually as if it were 6000 years ago sin came into the world, as if it were a curiosity which did not concern them. For they do not win the Greek Heiter- keit, which is precisely a thing which cannot be won, but only lose it, nor do they win the eternal meed of spirit.
CHAPTER HI Dread as the Consequence of that Sin which is the Default of the Consciousness of Sin n the foregoing chapters it was constantly affirmed that man is a synthesis of soul and body which is* constituted and sus A tained by T spirit. Dread — to use a term which says the same thing that was said il the foregoing discussion but points forward to what is to follow — dread was the instant in the individual life.
There is a category which is constantly used in modern philosophy — no less in logic than in historico-philosophical investigations — and that is "transition." What it means more precisely we are never told. It is employed without more ado, and while Hegel and the Hegelian School startle the world by the mighty thought of the presuppositionless beginning of philosophy, or that nothing must precede philosophy but the most complete absence of presuppositions, no embarrassment is felt in employing the terms "transition," "negation" and "mediation," i.e. the principles of movement in Hegelian thought, in such a way that no place is definitely assigned to them in the systematic progression. If this is not a presupposition, I do not know what a presupposition is; for to employ something which is nowhere explained is in effect to presuppose it. One might think that the System must have such marvelous transparency and introspectiveness that like the omphalopscychoi 1 it would gaze immovably at the central Nothing for so long a time that everything would explain itself and its whole content would of its own accord come into existence. This openness to public inspection the System surely must have. Such, however, is not the case, and the Systematic thought seems to be vowed to secretiveness with respect to its inmost motions and emotions. Negation, transition, mediation, are three masked men of suspicious appearance, the secret agents (agenda), which provoke all movements. Hegel would hardly call them "hot heads," for it is by his sovereign permission they carry on their game so brazenly that even in logic terms and expressions are employed which are drawn from the observation of transition in time: "thereupon," "when," "this is like being," "this is like becoming."
But let that be as it will, and let logic tend to its own affairs.
74 CHAPTER III The word "transition" cannot be anything but a witty conceit in logic. It belongs in the sphere of historical freedom, for transition is a state, and it is actual.* Plato clearly enough perceived the difficulty of introducing transition into pure metaphysics, and for this reason the category of "the instant"! cost him so much effort.
* Therefore when Aristotle says that the transition from possibility to actuality is a Klvy]<rn, this is not to be understood logically but with reference to the his. torical freedom.
f By Plato the instant was conceived in a purely abstract way. To orient oneself in its dialectic one must take into account the fact that the instant is nonbeing under the category of time. Non-being (to m ev. * &w, of the Pythagoreans) preoccupied the ancient philosophers much more than it does the modern ones. Non-being was conceived ontologically by the Eleatic philosophers, to the effect that what is affirmed about it can only be affirmed in contradictions, that only being is. If one would follow this further, one will see that it recurs in all spheres. In metaphysical propaedeutics the proposition is expressed thus: He who affirms non-being says nothing at all. (This misunderstanding was combatted in the Sophist, and in a more mimic way it was combatted already in an earlier work, Gorgias). Finally, in the practical spheres the Sophists made use of non-being in such a way that they annulled all moral concepts: non-being is not, ergo everything is true, ergo everything is good, ergo a deceit, etc., does not exist. Socrates combats this in several dialogues. Plato, however, dealt with it principally in the Sophist, which, like all Plato's dialogues, elucidates at the same time by art the doctrine it teaches formally; for the Sophist, whose definition and concept the dialogue is seeking to discover while it follows its principal theme of non-being, is himself a non-being, and thus both the concept and this example of it come into existence at the same time in the course of the argument in which the Sophist is attacked and which ends with his not being annihilated but brought into existence, which was the worst thing that could befall him, seeing that in spite of his sophistic which, like the armor of Mars, is able to make him invisible, he must come out openly. Modern philosophy has not yet got any further in the apprehension of non- being, in spite of its pretense to be Christian. Greek philosophy and modern philosophy alike take the position that everything depends upon getting non-being to come into existence! for to do away with it and cause it to vanish seems to them too easy. The Christian view takes the position that non-being is everywhere present as the Nothing out of which all is created, as appearance and vanity, as sin, as sensuousness divorced from the spirit, as the temporal forgotten by eternity! wherefore the whole point is to do away with it and get being in its stead. Only with this orientation does the concept of atonement receive an historically correct interpretation, in the sense in which Christianity brought it into the world. If the interpretation is carried out in the opposite sense (the starting point of the movement being derived from the conception that non-being does not exist), then the Atonement is volatilized and turned inside out. — It is in Parmenides Plato propounds "the instant." This dialogue is engaged in showing the contradiction within the concepts themselves, and Socrates expresses this with such precision that it does not exactly redound to the discredit of that beautiful old Greek philosophy, but may well serve to put to shame a new and boastful philosophy which does not make, like the Greek, great demands upon itself, but upon men and their admiration. Socrates remarks that it would not be wonderful if a man were able to demonstrate the contradictoriness (rd ivarrlov) To ignore the difficulty is certainly not to "go further" than Plato; to TIME 75 ignore it by a pious fraud against thought in order to get speculation afloat and start movement agoing is to treat speculation as a rather finite affair. I remember, however, once hearing a speculator say 2 that one ought not to think too much about difficulties beforehand, for with that one would never get to the point of involved in a particular thing which is made up of diversities, but if one were able to show the contradiction in the concepts themselves, that would be something to wonder at (dXX' el 6 ienv tv, airrb toOto iroXXd airo8el£ei K<xi aC tA iroXXd tv, tovto $57] davfidffo/juit. ical irepl ruv AWuv airdrrwv uffairus. §129 B.C.). The method as usual is that of experimental dialectics. It is assumed that unity ( t6 tv) is and is not, and then it is shown what the consequence will be for it and for the rest. The instant appears now to be that strange being (Arorov — the Greek word is admirably chosen) which lies between movement and repose, without occupying any time; and to this and out of this "the moving" passes over into rest, and "the reposing" into movement. The instant therefore becomes the general category of transition (~«ra/3oXD); for Plato shows that the instant is related in the same way to the transition from unity to plurality and from plurality to unity, from likeness to unlikeness, etc., it is the instant in which there is neither tv nor iroWd, neither discrimination nor integration ( oCrt dia- Kpiverai oCrt tvyKpiverat, §157, A). Now with all this Plato has the merit of making the difficulty clear, but nevertheless the instant remains a mute atomistic abstraction, which is not any further explained when one ignores it. Now if logic is willing to affirm that there is no transition in it (and if it has this category, it surely must have its place assigned to it in the System, seeing that in fact it is already operative there), then it will become clearer that the historical sphere and all the knowledge which reposes upon a historical presupposition has the category of the instant. This category is of great importance as a barrier against the philosophy of paganism and the equally pagan philosophy in Christianity. Another passage in the dialogue Parmenides makes evident the consequence of the fact that the instant is such an abstraction [in Plato's conception of it]. It is shown then how under the category of time there emerges the contradiction that unity (rd tv) becomes younger and older than itself and than plurality (tA ToXXd), and then in turn, that it is neither younger nor older than itself and plurality (§151, E). Unity nevertheless must exist; it is said, and now it is defined thus; participation in a being or an essence in the present (rdSietvai aXXo rl ion 7} p.ede£ls ovaias fiera xpovov toO irapovros §151, E). In the further development of the contradiction it then appears that the present m wy> wavers between meaning the present, the eternal, the instant. This "now" (rd vw> lies between "was" and "will be," and unity, as it strives forward from the past to the future, cannot leap by this "now." So then it comes to a stop with the "now," does not become older but is older. In modern philosophy the abstraction culmi- nates in "pure being"; but pure being is the most abstract expression for eternity, and in turn, like "nothing," it is the instant. Here it is evident again how important "the instant" is, because only by this category can one succeed in giving eternity its proper significance. Eternity and the instant are the extreme terms of the contradiction, whereas otherwise conceived the dialectical witchcraft makes eternity and the instant signify the same thing. It is only with Christianity that the sensuous, the temporal, the instant, are to be understood, precisely because it is only with it the eternal becomes essential.
speculating. If the important thing is merely to begin to speculate, and not that one's speculation might really become speculation, then it was said with a fine spirit of resolution that one must merely try to get to the point of speculating, just as it would be laudable in a man who had not the 76 CHAPTER III means to drive to the Deer Park 3 in his own carriage to say, "One ought not to be troubled by such things, one can quite well ride in the charabanc. 4 " Quite true. It is to be hoped that both conveyances will reach the Deer Park. On the other hand, that man will hardly reach speculation who was so firmly resolved not to trouble himself about the mode of conveyance, if only he could barely get to the point of speculating.
In the sphere of historical freedom transition is a state. However, in order to understand this affirmation one must not forget that the new situation comes about by the leap. For if this is not kept in mind, transition acquires a quantitative preponderance over the elasticity of the leap.
So then, man was said to be a synthesis of soul and body; but he is at the same time a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. I have no objection to recognizing that this has often been said; I have no wish to discover novelties, but rather it is my joy and my darling occupation to think upon things which seem perfectly simple.