As for the latter synthesis, it evidently is not fashioned in the same way as the former. In the former case the two factors were soul and body, and the spirit was a third term, but was a third term in such a sense that there could not properly be any question of a synthesis until the spirit was posited. T he other synthesis has only two factors: the temporal and the eternal. Where is the third term? And if there be no third term, there is really no synthesis; for a synthesis of that which is a contradiction cannot be completed as a synthesis without a third term, for the recognition that the synthesis is a contradiction is precisely the assertion that it is not a synthesis. What then is the temporal?
When time is correctly defined as infinite succession, it seems plausible to define it also as the present, the past and the future. However this distinction is incorrect, if one means by it that this is implied in time itself; for it first emerges with the relation of time to eternity and the reflection of eternity in it. If in the infinite succession of time one could in fact find a foothold, i.e. a present, which would serve as a dividing point, then this division would be quite correct. But precisely because every moment, like the sum of the moments, is a process (a going-by) no moment is a present, and in the same sense there is neither past, present, nor future. If one thinks it possible to maintain this division, it is because we spatialize a moment, but thereby the infinite succession is brought to a standstill, and that is because one introduces a visual representation, visualizing time instead of thinking it. But even so it is not correctly thought, for even in this visual representation the infinite succession of TIME 77 TIME 77 time is a present infinitely void of content. (This is the parody of the eternal.) The Hindus speak of a line of kings which has reigned for 70,000 years. 5 About the kings nothing is known, not even their names (as I assume). Taking this as an illustration of time, these 70,000 years are for thought an infinite vanishing; for visual representation they widen out spatially into an illusive view of a nothing infinitely void.* On the other hand, so soon as we let one moment succeed the other we posit the present.
The present, however, is not the concept of time, unless precisely as something infinitely void, which again is precisely the infinite vanishing. If one does not give heed to this, then, however swiftly one may let it pass, one has nevertheless posited the present, and having posited that, one lets it appear again in the definition of the past and the future.
On the contrary, the eternal is the present. For thought, the eternal is the present as an annulled [aufgehoben] succession (time was succession, going by). For visual representation, eternity is a going-forth, yet it never budges from the spot, because for visual representation it is a present infinitely rich in content. Likewise in the eternal there is not to be found any division of the past and the future, because the present is posited as the annulled succession.
So time is infinite succession. The life which is in time and is merely that of time has no present. It is true that to characterize the sensuous life it is commonly said that it is "in the instant" and only in the instant. The instant is here understood as something abstracted from the eternal, and if this is to be accounted the present, it is a parody of it. The present is the eternal, or rather the ♦Moreover, this is space. Just here the practiced reader will see the proof that my representation is right, since for abstract thinking time and space are absolutely identical (mcheinander and nebeneinander), and they become so for visual representation, and so it is with the definition of God as omnipresent.
eternal is the present, and the present is full. In this sense the Roman said of the Deity that He is praesens (praesentes dii), and in using this expression for the Deity His powerful aid was indicated at the same time.
The instant characterizes the present as having no past and no future, for in this precisely consists the imperfection of the sensuous life. The eternal also characterizes the present as having no past and no future, and this is the perfection of the eternal.
If one would now employ the instant to define time, and let the instant indicate the purely abstract exclusion of the past and the future, and by the same token of the present also, then the instant precisely is not the present, for that which in purely abstract thinking lies between the past 78 CHAPTER III and the future has no existence at all. But one sees from this that the instant is not a mere characterization of time, for what characterizes time is only that it goes by, and hence time, if it is to be defined by any of the characteristics revealed in time itself, is the passed time. On the other hand, if time and eternity are to touch one another, it must be in time — and with this we have reached the instant.
"The instant" [in Danish, Ojeblikket — "a glance of the eye"] is a figurative expression, and for that reason not so easy to deal with. Yet it is a pretty word to reflect upon. Nothing is so swift as a glance of the eye, and yet it is commensurable with the content and value of eternity. Thus when Ingeborg 6 gazes out over the sea to descry Frithiof, this is a picture of what the figurative word signifies. An outburst of her emotion, a sigh, a word, has, as a sound, more the character of time, as a thing that vanishes it is more like the present, and has not so much the presence of the eternal in it, and for this reason a sigh, a word, etc., has power to help the soul to get rid of the weight which oppresses it, precisely because the oppression, if only it finds utterance, begins already to become a past. A glance is therefore a designation of time, but note that this means, of time in the fateful conflict when it is touched by eternity.* What we call "the instant," Plato calls ef- at(f>vT]<i ["the sudden"]. However it may be explained etymologi- *It is noteworthy that Greek art culminates in statuary, in which it is precisely the glance that is lacking. This, however, has its deep reason in the fact that the Greeks did not in the profounder sense comprehend the concept of spirit, and therefore did not in the profoundest sense comprehend the sensuous and the temporal. How striking is the contrast that in Christianity God is pictorially represented as an eye! cally, it is related at all events to the notion of invisibility, because by the Greeks time and eternity alike were conceived abstractly, since the Greeks lacked the concept of the temporal owing to the fact that they lacked the concept of spirit. In Latin it is called momentum, which by derivation (from movere) merely expresses the vanishing of time.* Thus understood, the instant is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first effort as it were to bring time to a stop. For this reason Hellenism did not understand the instant; for even if it comprehended the atom of eternity, it did not comprehend that it was the instant, did not define it with a forward orientation but with a backward, since for Hellenism the atom of eternity was essentially eternity, and so neither time nor eternity had true justice done it.
The synthesis of the eternal and the temporal is not a second synthesis but is the expression for the first synthesis in consequence of which man TIME 79 is a synthesis of soul and body sustained bv spirit A No sooner is the spirit posited than the instant is there. For this reason it can be said reproachfully of man that he lives only in the instant, since this comes about by an arbitrary abstraction. Nature does not lie in the instant.
As it is with the sensuous, so it is also with the temporal; for the temporal seems even more imperfect, and the instant still more insignificant, than the apparently secure persistence of nature in *In the New Testament there is a poetical paraphrase of the instant. Paul says that the world will pass away "in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye" (tv driny ical iv piirjj 6<poa\fMu). By that he also expresses the thought that the instant is commensurable with eternity, because the instant of destruction expresses at the same instant eternity. Allow me to illustrate what I mean, and forgive me if there is found anything offensive in the parable I employ. Here in Copenhagen there once upon a time were two actors, who perhaps hardly reflected that a deeper significance might be found in their performance. They came on the stage, placed themselves opposite one another, and then began a pantomime representation of some passionate conflict. When the pantomimic play was in full swing, and the spectators were following the play with keen expectancy of what was to come after, the actors suddenly came to a stop and i emained motionless, as though they were petrified in the pantomimic expression of the instant. This may produce a most comical effect, because the instant becomes accidentally commensurable with the eternal. The effect of sculpture is due to the fact that the eternal expression is expressed eternally; the comic effect, on the other hand, by the fact that the accidental expression was eternalized.
time. And yet it is exactly the converse, for nature's security is due to the fact that time has no significance for it. Only in the instant does history begin. Man's sensuousness is by sin posited as sinfulness, and therefore is lower than that of the beast, and yet this is because here the higher life begins, for now begins spirit.
The instant is that ambiguous moment in which time and eternity touch one another, thereby positing the temporal, where time is constantly intersecting eternity and eternity constantly permeating time. Only now does that division we talked about acquire significance: the present, the past, and the future.
In making this division, attention is at once drawn to the fact that in a certain sense the future signifies more than the present and the past; for the future is in a sense the whole of which the past is a part, and in a sense the future may signify the whole. This is due to the fact that the eternal means first of all the future, or that the future is the incognito in which the eternal, as incommensurable for time, would nevertheless maintain its relations with time. Thus we sometimes speak of the future as identical with eternity: the future life = eternal life. Since the Greeks did not have in a deeper sense the concept of the eternal, neither did they have the concept of the future. One cannot therefore reproach the 80 CHAPTER III Greek life for losing itself in the instant, or rather we cannot even say that it was lost; for by the Greeks the temporal was conceived just as naively as was the sensuous, because the category of spirit was lacking.
The instant and the future posit in turn the past. If the Greek life might be supposed to define time in any sense, it is as time past, yet without defining this by its relation to the present and the future, but defining it, like the definition of time in general, as a going-by. Here the significance of the Platonic recollection 7 is evident. The Greek eternity lies behind, as the past into which one enters only backwards.* However, to say that eternity is the past is to present a perfectly abstract concept of it, whether this be further defined philosophically (by the philosophical dying to the world) 8 or historically. 9 In general, by seeing how the past, the future, the eternal are defined, one can see how the instant has been defined. If there is no instant, then the eternal appears to be behind, like the past. It is ♦Here again one must bear in mind the category I maintain, i.e. repetition, by which one enters eternity forwards.
as though I were to picture a man walking along a road but do not assume that he takes a step, then the road behind him appears to be the distance traveled. If the instant is posited, but merely as a discrimen, then the future is the eternal. If the instant is posited, so is the eternal — but also the future, which comes again like the past. This appears clearly in the Greek, the Jewish, and the Christian conceptions. The concept around which everything turns in Christianity, the concept which makes all things new, is the fullness of time, is the instant as eternity, and yet this eternity is at once the future and the past. If one does not give heed to this, one cannot save any concept from heretical and treasonable admixtures which destroy the concept. One does not get the past as a thing for itself but in simple continuity with the future — and with that the concepts of conversion, atonement, redemption, are resolved in the significance of world-history, and resolved in the individual historical development. One does not get the future as a thing for itself but in simple continuity with the present — and with that the concepts of resurrection and judgment come to naught.
Let us now picture to ourselves Adam, and then remember that every subsequent individual begins exactly the same way, only within the quantitative difference which is the consequence of the fact of generation and of the historical situation. For Adam then, just as much as for every subsequent individual, there is the instant. The synthesis of the soulish and the bodily is to be posited by spirit, but the spirit is the eternal, and therefore this is arrnrq- plished only when the spirit posits TIME 81 TIME 81 at the same time along with this the second synthesis of the eternal and the temporal So lonfr as the eternal is not posited, the instant is not, or is only as a discrimen. Therefore, seeing that in the state of innocence the spirit is characterized merely as a dreaming spirit, the eternal manifests itself as the future, for this, as I have said, is the first expression of the eternal, is its incognito, lust as in the foregoing chapter the spirit when it was about to be posited in the synthesis or rather was about to posit the synthesis, as the spirit's (freedom's) pos- sibility in the individual, expressed itself as dread, so here in turn ih e future, the possibility of the eternal (i.e. of freedom A in the A individual is dread. When then the possibility of freedom manifests itself before freedom, freedom succumbs, and the temporal now emerges in the same way as did sensuousness with the significance of sinfulness. Here again I say that this is the last psycho 82 CHAPTER III 82 CHAPTER III logical approximation to the qualitative leap. The difference between Adam and the subsequent individual is that by the latter the future is conceived more reflectively than by Adam. Psychologically speaking, this "more" may have a terrible significance, but in relation to the qualitative leap its significance is unessential. The highest maximum of difference in comparison with Adam is that the future seems to be anticipated by the past, or, in other words, it is the dread that possibility has been lost before it has been lost.
The possible corresponds precisely to the future. For freedom the possible is the future; and for time the future is the possible. Corresponding to both of these in the individual life is dread. A precise and correct linguistic usage associates therefore dread and the future. It is true that one is sometimes said to be in dread of the past, and this seems to be a contradiction. Nevertheless, upon closer inspection it appears that this manner of speaking points in one way or another to the future. The past of which I am supposed to be in dread must stand in a relation of possibility to me. If I am in dread of a past misfortune, this is not in so far as it is past, but in so far as it may be repeated, i.e. become future. If I am in dread of a past fault, it is because I have not put it in an essential relation to myself as past, and have in some way or another prevented it from being past. For in case it is really past, I cannot be in dread but only repentant. If I do not repent, then I have first taken the liberty of making my relation to it dialectical, but thereby the fault itself has become a possibility and not something completely passed. If I am in dread of punishment, it is only when this is put in a dialectical relation with the fault (otherwise I bear my punishment), and then I am in dread of the possible and the future.
So again we have reached the point where we were in Chapter I. Dread is the psychological state which precedes sin, comes as near as A osslfrfr to~'tt, J a!Tcf~iP a~sprovoggtlW~as~possiHfe~ot 3re~ad. but without el A Mffiri A sm, which breaks-Torth first in the qualitative The instant sin is posited, the temporal is sin.* We do not say * From the characterization of the temporal as sinfulness death in turn follows as punishment. This is a progression, an analogy of which, si placet, may be found in the fact that, even in relation to the external phenomenon, death is more terrible in the degree that the organism is more perfect. Thus, whereas the death and decay of a plant diffuses an odor almost more delicious than its spicy breath, the decay of an animal, on the other hand, infects the air. It is true that the temporal is sinfulness, any more than that the sensuous is sinfulness; but for the fact that sin is posited the temporal signifies sinfulness. Therefore that man sins who lives merely in the instant abstracted from the eternal. If Adam (to speak again by way of "accommodation" and to speak DEFAULT OF SPIRIT 83 foolishly) had not sinned, he would the same instant have passed over into eternity. On the other hand, so soon as sin is posited it does not avail to want to abstract oneself from the temporal, any more than it would from the sensuous.* §i Dread owing to the default of spirit Looking at life broadly, one will soon be convinced that even what has here been set forth is correct, viz. that dread is the last psychological state out of which sin breaks forth with the qualitative leap, yet nevertheless the whole of paganism and its repetition within Christianity knows of nothing but quantitative differences from which the qualitative leap of sin does not break forth. This in a deeper sense that the more highly we value man, the more terrible death appears. The beast cannot properly be said to die; but when the spirit is posited as spirit, death appears terrible. The dread of death therefore corresponds to that of childbirth, though with this I do not subscribe to what in part is said truly, in part only wittily, in part enthusiastically, in part lightly, about death being a metamorphosis. At the instant of death man finds himself at the ex- tremest point of the synthesis; the spirit cannot, as it were, be present, and yet it must wait, for the body must die. The pagan view of death — as the pagan's sensuousness was more naive and his sense of time more carefree — was milder and more attractive, but it lacked the highest element. Let one read the beautiful essay by Lessing 10 on the representation of death in classical art, and one cannot deny that one is put in a mood of pleasurable sadness by this picture of the sleeping genius, or by observing the beautiful solemnity with which the genius of death bows his head and extinguishes the torch. There is, if one will, something indescribably persuasive and alluring in the thought of trusting oneself to such a guide, who is as tranquilizing as a recollection in which nothing is recollected. But on the other hand there is in turn something uncanny in following this mute guide; for he conceals nothing, his form is no incognito, as he is, so is death, and therewith all is over. There is an unfathomable sadness in seeing this guide with his friendly figure bend over the dying man and with the breath of his last kiss extinguish the last spark of life, while all he has experienced has already vanished little by little, and death only is left, which, itself unexplained, explains that the whole of life was a game in which all, the greatest and the least, went out like tapers, one by one, and at last the soul itself. But then there is implied by it also the muteness of annihilation, because the whole thing was only a childish game, and now the game is finished.
♦ What has been set forth here might as well have found a place in Chapter I. However, I have chosen to put it here because it leads on to what is to follow. situation, however, is not the situation of innocence, but, viewed from the standpoint of the spirit, it is precisely a situation of sinfulness.
It is remarkable that Christian orthodoxy has constantly taught that paganism lies in sin, whereas the consciousness of sin was nevertheless first posited by Christianity. Orthodoxy, however, is in the right, if it would explain itself a little more precisely. By quantitative definitions paganism, so to speak, procrastinates, never gets to sin in the deepest sense — but precisely this is sin.
84 CHAPTER III 84 CHAPTER III It is easy to show that such is the case in paganism. In the case of paganism within Christianity the situation is different. The life of Christian paganism is neither guilty nor not guilty. Strictly speaking, it makes no distinction between present, past, future, eternal. Its life and its history go on like the writing in those old days when people used no marks of punctuation but crabbedly -traced on the paper one word, one sentence, after another. Aesthetically regarded, this is very comical. For while it is pretty to hear a brook run through life with a purling sound, it is comical that a sum of rational creatures are transformed into a perpetual murmur without meaning. Whether philosophy can make use of this plebs as a category by employing it as a substratum for something greater, like the vegetative muddle which gradually becomes solid ground, first peat, and finally soil — that I do not know. Viewed from the standpoint of the spirit, such an existence is sin, and the least one can do for it is by declaring this fact to demand of it spirit.
What I have just said does not apply to paganism. Such an existence is only to be found within Christianity. The reason is that the more highly spirit is posited, the baser appears exclusion from it; and the more lofty the good that is lost, the more miserable in their base contentment are "those who have ceased to grieve" (the ainfK A KOTet, as Paul calls them in Ephesians 4:19). If one will compare the blissfulness of spirit-lessness with the condition of slaves in paganism, it will appear that after all there was some sense in slavery, for in itself it was nothing. On the other hand, to be lost in spirit-lessness is the most terrible thing, of all; for precisely this is its misfortune, that it has a relation to spirit which proves not to be a relation. Spirit-lessness may therefore to a certain degree possess the whole content of spirit — not as spirit, be it noted, but as jest, galimatias, phrase, etc. It may possess truth — not as truth, be it noted, but as rumor and old wives* tales. Aesthetically viewed, this is the profoundly comical aspect of spirit-lessness, an aspect which is not generally noticed A because he who presents it on the stage or in fiction is himself more or less insecure when it comes to the question of spirit. Therefore in representing spirit-lessness one commonly puts into the mouth of the character sheer twaddle, for the reason that one has not the. courage to attribute to the spirit-less man the same words one uses oneself. This is what I mean by insecurity. In fact, spirit-lessness can utter the same words the richest spirit has uttered, only.it.does not utter them bv virtue of spirit. Man when he is characterized as spirit-less has become a talking-machine, and there is nothing to prevent him from learning a philosophical rigmaroje just as easily as a confession of faith and a DEFAULT OF SPIRIT 85 political recitative repeated by rote. Is it not remarkable that the only ironist and the greatest humorist 11 agreed with one another in saying what seems the simplest thing of all, that one must distinguish between what one understands and what one does not understand? And what is there to prevent the most spirit-less man from saying this same thing verbatim? There is only one attestation of spirit, and that is the attes - tation of the spirit within oneself. Anyone who requires another proof may perhaps stumble upon proofs in superabundance, but nevertheless he is already classified as spirit-less! A In spirit-lessness there is no dread. It is too happ y and content. for that, and too spirit-less. But this is a pitiful reason, and in this respect paganism differs from spirit-lessness for th e fact that it is oriented in the direction towards spirit, the other in the direc tion away from it. Paganism therefore, if you p lease, is absence of, spirit, and as such it is very different from spirit-lessness. To that extent paganism is much to be preferred. Spirit-lessness is stagnation of the spirit and the caricature of ideality. Hence spirit-lessness is not, properly speaking, dumb when it is a question of rigmarole, but it is dumb in the sense of which it is said of salt, "When salt becomes dumb, 12 wherewith can it be salted?" Precisely in this consists its perdition, but also its sense of security, namely, that it uiv derstands nothing spiritually, takes hold of nothing as a task, even if it is able to fumble at everything with its feeble clamminess. If on a particular occasion it is moved bv spirit, and commences for an instant to kick like the galvanized leg of a frog, we have there.a phenomenon which corresponds exactly to pagan fetishism. Spirit 86 CHAPTER III lessness knows no authority, for it knows that over spirit there is no authority, but since unfortunately it is itself not spirit, it is in spite of its knowledge a complete idolater. It worships a dunce and a hero with the same adoration, but above all a charlatan is its real fetish.
Even though in spirit-lessness there is no dread, because this is excluded just as spirit is, yet dread i s there, nevertheless, only it is waiting. One can imagine that a debtor has the luck to slip away from his creditor, to hold him off with mere talk; but one creditor there is who never had the worst of it, and that is the spirit. Viewed from the standpoint of the spirit, dread is present also in spirit-lessness, but hidden and masked. Even the onlooker shudders at the sight of it; for as the figure of dread, if one would let the imagination portray such a thing, is terrible to behold, its figure would terrify still more at such time as it finds it necessary to disguise itself in order not to appear to be what it is, although it is that all the same. When death appears in its true form as the lean and joyless reaper, one does not behold it without terror; but when, to mock men who imagine they can mock it, it comes upon the scene disguised, when only the spectator sees that this is death, this unknown figure which captivates all by his courtesy and causes all to exult in the wild abandonment of pleasure — then a profound horror seizes him.
§2 §2 Dread dialectically determined in view of fate Generally we are accustomed to say that paganism lies in sin, perhaps it might be better to say that it lies in dread. Paganism upon the whole is sensuousness, but this is a sensuousness which has a relation to spirit, although the spirit in the deepest sense is not yet posited as spirit. But precisely this possibility is dread.
If then we ask further what is the object of dread, the answer as usual must be that it is nothing. Dread and nothing regularly correspond to one another. So soon as the actuality of freedom and of the spirit is posited, dread is annulled (aufgehoben). But what then is signified more particularly by the nothing of dread? It is fate.
Fate is a relation to spirit as something external, it is a relation between a spirit and another which is not spirit, and with which nevertheless it has to stand in a spiritual relationship. F ate may mean two things exactly opposite, since it is a unity of necessity and chance. This has not always been pointed out. Much has been said about the pagan fatum (this being in turn variously modified in the Oriental and in the FATE 87 FATE 87 Greek interpretation) as if it were necessity. A vestige of this necessity has been suffered to remain in the Christian view, where it came to mean fate, i.e. the accidental which cannot be made commensurable with providence. That, however, is not the true sense, for fate is precisely the unity of necessity and chance. This is ingeniously expressed by representing fate as blind, for that which walks forward blindly walks just as much by necessity as' by chance. A necessity which is not conscious of itself is eo ipso, in relation to the next instant, chance. Fate then is the nothing of dread. It is nothing, for so soon as the spirit is posited dread is annulled; but fate is too, for thereby providence also is posited. One can say therefore of fate as Paul says of an idol, that "it is nothing in the world" — but the idol nevertheless is the object of the pagan's religiousness.
So in fate the dread of the pagan has its object, its nothing. The pagan cannot come into relation with fate, for one instant it is necessity, the next instant it is chance. And yet he is in relation to it, and this relation is dread. Nearer to fate than this the pagan cannot come. The attempt paganism made was penetrating enough to cast a new light upon it. He who has to explain fate must be just as ambiguous as fate is. And this too the oracle was. But in turn the oracle might mean exactly the opposite. So the relation of the pagan to the oracle is again dread. In this fact lies the profound and inexplicable tragic of paganism. The tragic, however, does not lie in the fact that the utterance of the oracle is ambiguous, but in the fact that the pagan could not forbear to take counsel of it. He is in relation to it and dare not refrain from consulting it. Even at the moment of taking counsel he is in an ambiguous relation to it (sympathetic and antipathetic). And think then of the explanations given by the oracle!
The concept of guilt and sin does not in the deepest sense emerge in paganism. If it had emerged, paganism would have foundered upon the contradiction that one might become guilty by fate. This indeed is the supreme contradiction, and in this contradiction Christianity breaks forth. Paganism does not comprehend it; for that it is too frivolous in its definition of the concept of guilt.