Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  As for man’s desire for knowledge, a desire that is claimed to be infinite, like the desire to love, and unlike the desire to act:

  1st. It is not true that it is infinite in itself but only materially, like the desire for pleasure, which is all one with self-love. And it is not true that natural man [384] is tormented by an infinite desire precisely for knowledge. This is not even the case for corrupt, modern man. He is tormented by an infinite desire for pleasure. Pleasure consists of nothing other than sensations, because when someone feels nothing, he experiences neither pleasure nor displeasure. It’s not the body that experiences these sensations but the soul, whatever is meant by the soul. For the intelligence, sensation is an act of conception. Therefore, the object of the intellectual faculty is conception (not truth, as I will explain). Man desires infinite pleasure in everything, but he cannot experience certain infinity, other than by conception, because everything that is material is limited. See p. 388 of these thoughts, end. Man therefore feels pleasure in the greatest possible extension of the act of conceiving, or, in other words, in the act of the intellective faculty. See these thoughts, p. 170, end, and pp. 178, end–179, beginning. This is independent of the truth. Man does not desire to know infinitely, but to feel infinitely. He cannot feel infinitely, except with his mental faculties in some way, and mainly with his imagination, not with science or knowledge, which instead circumscribes its objects and thus excludes the infinite. And from this it also follows that curiosity, or the desire for knowledge or, rather, for conceiving ideas, [385] derives not from an arbitrary decision of nature, which made knowledge or the conception of ideas pleasurable, but from this same unlimited desire man has for pleasure, contrary to what I was inclined to believe in my theory of pleasure. What’s more, this infinite desire for knowledge must be in essence common to the brutes as well. See p. 180, end.

  2nd. “E tanto è miser l’uomo quant’ei si reputa” [“And man is as wretched as he believes himself to be”],1 and as fortunate as he believes himself to be. Similarly, a man’s desire to know or to understand can be satisfied as much by believing that he knows something as by really knowing it, while the absolute truth is a matter of total indifference to him on this account. Instead, the infinite desire for conceiving can easily enough be, and often is, satisfied in some way by nature, by means of the imagination or false persuasions, or errors, but never by reason by means of science, or by the senses by means of real objects. For if man had this infinite tendency not toward conception but precisely toward knowing, that is toward the truth, why should nature have placed so many obstacles in the way of this knowledge, so necessary to his happiness? Why should it have sown his imagination with so many illusions that the highest civilization, and the habit of reasoning, can scarcely weed them out, and not entirely? Why should it be so difficult to discover the truth? Since man tends infinitely toward precise knowledge, no truth is indifferent to him. [386] Knowledge not just of religious, moral truths, etc., but of any sort of physical truths becomes necessary to his happiness. Now, even if you want to assume that primitive man had sufficient means to enable him to discover religious and moral truths (as would appear to be the case in our book),1 he certainly did not have enough to discover an infinite number of others, and it is certain that there are an infinite number that are still unknown and that man will never discover, and that the vast majority of men are (except in revealed religion) as ignorant as primitive man, and as children are likewise, even where religion is concerned. It is certain that however much man knows God, who is infinite, he does not and cannot know him infinitely (nor can he love him infinitely, even though our author assumes that our capacity for love is infinite, since our desire is infinite), indeed, he can do so only in the most limited way. Therefore, his knowledge is not infinite. Therefore, if his faculty of knowing is infinite, it is denied its object and thus its happiness. Therefore, man cannot be happy. Therefore, I will repeat with the author, “he is a contradictory being, because having a goal, namely perfection or happiness, he has no means of reaching it.”2 And what about the illusions that nature has so firmly planted in us all, why did it give us these? Expressly to contest man’s happiness? And if ignorance is unhappiness, why was man so inexorably unhappy when he left nature’s hands? In conclusion, [387] the absurdities are infinite when one does not wish to accept that when man left nature’s hands, he was perfect, like everything else; that absolute truth is indifferent to man (as far as his good is concerned, but not always, indeed rarely, as far as its harming him is concerned); that the aim of his intellective faculty is not knowledge, in the sense of knowledge of reality, but conception, or knowledge as opinion, whether true or false.1 What does it mean that the ignorant, far from being the unhappiest people, are obviously the happiest?

  “Given these premises,” says the author (the ones above on pp. 378–80) “let us consider the relationship of philosophy and Religion to happiness.”2 And he goes on to demonstrate that philosophy neither reveals nor prescribes anything except doubt with regard not only to principles and truth but to duties, while Religion does just the opposite. We agree, but what about nature? Has he forgotten nature? Is there no other teacher apart from philosophy or religion, both of which are acquired and not inherent in the nature of man? While all other living creatures, who have the same infinite desire for happiness, find the teacher, the lessons, and the means for achieving it in themselves. Does nature teach us nothing, prescribe nothing? I concede your definition of happiness, I accept the faculties of man that you accept, I say that they must work in accord [388] with each other, and with the laws that arise from their nature and are perfectly developed according to their nature, and must enjoy the objects intended for them according to their nature. The premises are true, but the application is false. You continue to deal with the absolute instead of moving on to the relative. That is, the nature of man is not what you say it is. Besides, I too know that philosophy is more contrary to nature than religion is, but it does not follow that there are no other guides than Religion or philosophy, that there is no other knowledge, other loves or actions, that is, those which nature has inspired and dictated to us; or, much less, that these are not analogous with our faculties and with the laws of our nature; or that man in his natural state is unhappy, etc. etc. etc., and that the laws of our nature are not the laws of our nature. We need to know what they are, he says, in order to conform to them. And I say that man has known them from birth, and had necessarily to know them in order not to be a contradictory being, requiring, in order to be happy, the very things that, unlike every other being, he essentially and primordially lacks. (7 Dec. 1820.)

  For p. 384. So man’s desire for love is infinite if only in the sense that man loves himself with a love that knows no limits. And consequently he wants to find [389] things that will please him, to find what is good (by good I also mean what is beautiful and everything else that affects our faculties in a pleasurable way). He therefore wants to love, that is, to be determined pleasurably toward objects. And he wants it without limit, with regard both to the number of those objects and to the extent of their goodness, lovability, pleasurability. This desire is innate, inherent, and inseparable from the nature not just of man but of all living creatures, because it is a necessary consequence of self-love, which is a necessary consequence of life. But this does not prove that the faculty of love is infinite in man, just as the infinite desire for knowledge does not prove that his faculty of knowledge is infinite. It only proves that his self-love is unlimited or infinite. And, indeed, how could we say that our ability to know or to love is infinite?—But we can know an infinite Good and love it—It would be necessary for us to be able to know it infinitely and love it infinitely. Then the consequence would be in order. But we cannot either know or love it other than very imperfectly. So our knowledge and love, although focused upon an infinite Being, are not, and never will be, [390] infinite. Therefore, our faculties of knowledge and love are essentially and effectively limite
d, just like our faculty of physical activity, because they are not capable of either infinite knowledge or infinite love, either in number or in measure, in the same way that we are incapable of unlimited physical action. (And if we did have infinite faculties, our essence would be fused with God’s.) So our infinite desire for knowledge (that is, to conceive) and love can never be satisfied by reality, that is, by our faculty of knowing and loving really possessing an infinite object insofar as it is infinite, and insofar as it can ever be possessed (otherwise its possession would not be infinite). It can be satisfied only by illusions (or false conceptions or false persuasions of knowledge and love, of possession and enjoyment) and by distractions or, rather, occupations (see pp. 168, 172–73, 175, 175 end–176 beginning), the two great instruments employed by nature for our happiness. (8 December 1820.)

  Imagining that we are the most important of nature’s beings and that the world was created for us is a natural consequence of the self-love that is necessarily intrinsic to us and necessarily unlimited. So it is natural that every species of animal should imagine, if not explicitly then certainly confusedly and fundamentally, the same thing. This happens in one species or genus with regard to every other species and genus. But, correspondingly, the same thing is visible in individuals, not just with regard to another species or genus but also with respect to other individuals of the same species.

  [391] Good is not absolute but relative. It is not absolute, either primarily and absolutely, or secondarily and relatively. Not absolutely, because the nature of things could have been quite different from what it is. Not relatively, because, in nature as it exists now, what is good for this thing is not good for that, what is bad for this one is good for that, that is, is appropriate for it. Appropriateness is what constitutes the good. The abstract concept of appropriateness might be thought of as the only absolute idea, and the only basis of things in any order and nature. But the concrete idea of appropriateness is relative. You cannot say that one being is better than another, that is, that it has or contains a greater quantity or sum of goodness, what is good is good only to the extent that it is appropriate to the nature of the respective beings. But then you can say this about an individual with respect to other individuals of the same species. Every species, therefore, and every individual to the extent that it conforms to the nature of its species, is perfect, and possesses perfection (relative perfection, that is: since there is no such thing as absolute perfection or a paradigm of perfection, no one being or species is more perfect than another). It possesses all the good that is good for [392] it, because everything else would not be good. It is as good as it can be, because for it there is nothing good that is outside its nature. Indeed, outside of that everything is bad, because there is no absolute good. All this is true in both physical and moral terms. (8 December 1820.) I believe this is the system (Leibniz’s, if I am not mistaken) known as Optimism.1

  In addition to the progress of exact knowledge, the study and imitation of both national and ancient sources, the standardization of the language, and the reduction of writing and poetry to an art, etc., another great cause of the rapid extinction of true originality and the creative faculty in Italian literature—an originality that ended with Dante and Petrarch, that is, just after the birth of that literature—may be the extinction of liberty and the transition from the republican style of government to a monarchical one, which forces the spirit, hampered and crushed or restricted in ideas and things, to turn to words. In the sixteenth century, you could say, all the governments in Italy and elsewhere were monarchies. And Italian letters awoke from that fifteenth-century slumber under Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, who founded the Tuscan monarchy and destroyed the republic. In this revival (and then under Leo X),2 literature took on a regular form, quite different from that of the fourteenth century, and (what’s more) from what a literature customarily takes on during its revival [393] or birth. Italian literature has never really been original and inventive since then. Alfieri is an exception, owing to his free spirit, which went against his times and the nature of the governments under which he lived. (8 December 1820.)

  With reference to what I said on pp. 175, end–176, beginning, look at what I said on p. 153, paragraph 1. Children talk out loud to themselves about what they are going to do, the hopes they have, they talk about what they have done or seen, about what has happened to them, they boast, congratulate themselves, they are always admiring and commenting aloud on what they are doing, and, as far as they are concerned, there is no solitude or physical activity, however great, that is not filled with company and conversation and spiritual activity: not in some languid, fleeting way but energetically, fully present, as if it were real, accompanied by physical movements and gestures and movements of all kinds, nonstop and inexhaustible. (9 Dec. 1820.)

  My system1 of regarding man and everything else as entirely, or almost entirely, the work of nature, and scarcely or not at all the result of reason, or the work of man or any other creature, is not incompatible with Christianity.

  1st. Nature is the same as God. The more I attribute to nature, the more I attribute to God; the more I take away from reason, the more I take away from God’s creatures. The more [394] I exalt and preach nature, the more I exalt God. By judging the work of nature to be perfect, I do the same for the work of God. I condemn the presumption of man’s attempt to improve on the work of the creator, I maintain that any alteration made to God’s work once it left his hands can be nothing but corruption. Whereas those who think they are the true friends of religion, attributing everything, or almost everything, to reason, make the largest and most important part of human and universal order depend upon the faculties of one part of the creature. By maintaining the perfectibility of man, they maintain that the work of nature, in other words of God, was imperfect; that man can be made perfect, not by God but by himself; and consequently that the perfection or happiness of the first among the creatures on earth must derive from himself, and not from God.

  2nd. I accept, in fact I am convinced of, man’s corruption and his fall from a primitive state of happiness, just as Christianity maintains. When I say that man was corrupted by the abuse of reason, by knowledge and society, these are the means, or the secondary causes, of his corruption, and do not alter the fact that the primary cause was sin. I do not believe that any true and sound argument of faith can prove infused knowledge in Adam. If he immediately had a form of language, it can be assumed, and is quite likely, that so too did other animals, sufficient to [395] meet their need for society, much like what would have been necessary for man in his primitive state and serves for animals that are still in this state; that which God meant (and only this) when he said “Non est bonum esse hominem solum: faciamus ei adiutorium simile sibi” [“It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.”] (Genesis 2:18); about which society I have said enough elsewhere [→Z 370]. And despite all that, animals were not endowed with infused knowledge, and there is nothing in Genesis to imply this with respect to Adam, quite the contrary, in fact. So that in whatever way you interpret the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it is obvious that the only command God gave to man after having placed him “in paradiso voluptatis” [“in a paradise of pleasure”] (Genesis 2:8, 15, 23, 24)1 (meaning earthly enjoyment and happiness, contrary to what is usually maintained, that man is destined only for spiritual happiness in the afterlife) was “De ligno autem scientiae bono et mali ne comedas, in quocumque enim die comederis ex eo, morte morieris” [“But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death”]. (Genesis 2:17.) Is not this a clear command to man not to seek knowledge, a wish to place above all other things (for this was the sole command or injunction) an obstacle to the growth of reason, as that which God recognized as being, by its very nature, and bound to be the destroyer of the happiness, and true perfection [396] of that creature, as he had made him, and as he meant him to
be? The serpent said to the woman “Scit enim Deus quod in quocumque die comederitis ex eo, aperientur oculi vestri, et eritis sicut dii, scientes bonum et malum” [“For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil”]. (Genesis 3:5.) In this way, God clearly showed that the only test to which he wished to expose the first of his creatures, in order to give him the happiness ordained for him, was precisely that of seeing whether he would be able to restrain his reason by abstaining from that science, that knowledge, in which they claim human happiness consists, and on which they want it to depend: it was precisely that of seeing whether he would be able to preserve the happiness destined for him and overcome the only obstacle or danger he faced, that of reason and knowledge. This was the test to which God wished to subject man, even if he did so in a material way or a mysterious way.1 What is this all about? Is curiosity or the desire to distinguish between good and evil (which is saying knowledge, in short) intrinsically absurd or wicked? According to you apologists for Religion, it is not. But to the author of Religion it seems that it was, because man already knew enough by nature, that is, as a result of God’s own, immediate, and original doing, all that he needed to know. Man’s fault was to want to know by his own works, that is, no longer [397] by nature, but by reason, and consequently to know more than was fitting for him, that is to use his own faculties to enter the fields of the knowable, and thus, no longer relying on the laws of his own nature as to knowledge, to discover that which it was against the laws of his nature that he should discover. This, and nothing else, was the sin of pride of which the sacred writers accuse our first parents, the sin of pride in wanting to know what they should not know, and in using a tool and work of their own, namely reason, in this search for knowledge, instead of instinct, which was the means and action provided immediately by God, the sin of pride which it seems to me is being committed again in exactly the same way by those who maintain the perfectibility of man. Our first parents, in the end, sinned precisely in having dreamed of this perfectibility and in looking for this perfection that was fake or which they themselves had inferred. Their sin, their pride consisted in nothing other than reason, absolute reason, reason in the absolute sense, not employed wrongly, because all they were seeking was the knowledge of good and evil. Now, this in itself was pride and a sin. And after God had condemned the woman and the man, he said “Ecce Adam quasi unus ex nobis factus [398] est, sciens bonum et malum” [“Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil”]. (Genesis 3:22.) And he did not add anything else to this. So he did not take away that additional part of human reason which man had wrongly added to what he already had. And, therefore, man remained truly similar to God because of his reason, he remained much more knowledgeable than he was at his creation. Thus, the fall of man consisted not in a loss of reason but rather in an increase. See p. 433, paragraph 1. And although man obtained exactly what the serpent had promised Eve, the knowledge of good and evil, this did not increase his happiness but destroyed it. This argument seems to me to be conclusive, not a far-fetched rationalization, but a sound and natural deduction deriving from a clear understanding of the words and spirit of the Mosaic narrative, from which one can readily conclude that the aim of the narrative is formally to attribute man’s corruption and decadence to the development of his reason and the acquisition of knowledge; to consider how reason and knowledge worked this corruption; in what way they were the direct cause of corruption, because the primary cause was man’s disobedience. But it was disobedience of an injunction that explicitly forbade him to take possession of, and employ, this source of corruption and unhappiness.