If, however, one takes the idolization of intellectuality seriously, if the individual has sufficient demonic ideality to shape his whole life according to his hypothesizing resolution, just as the married man does with respect to his good resolution—that is, in the sense that every objection, every counterargument of life is regarded as a spiritual trial—then he has done what he could to take his stand as an exception. It cannot be denied that for a period, at least, an individual can risk everything for his hypothesizing resolution; neither can it be denied that he can even risk his life for it, but he acquires no justification that way, no more than one acquires a prescriptive right to stolen goods. In a certain sense, such a person is certainly an exception; he is also an exception in the sense that he, as a demoniac, has more will power than average people, who, to speak demonically, do not go so far as to be evil.
Such a person, however, is utterly devoid of anything that could impress a judge and keep him from declaring him unjustified; he has nothing at all that could touch and move the viscera [bowels] of compassion when one sees him plunge into the abyss he has prepared for himself. In other words, pure intellectuality is a prodigious abstraction, and on the other side of abstraction there is nothing, nothing, not even the remotest hint of a religious idea. The exception is an emigrant, but of a peculiar kind, for he does not emigrate to America or to another continent on the other side of the ocean, or on the other side of the grave—no, he vanishes. We have let his negative comments be aimed at marriage in particular; to that extent it seems that he could still have many temporal interests. But this is not the case. In other words, marriage is central in temporality, and the individual personality is unable to relate directly and immediately to the idea of the state. It might be that he wanted to sacrifice himself totally to the state and for that reason does not marry. But this is a futile contradiction, in which he does not respect the consistency of his idea, to [VI 163] which, however, obedience is dearer than the fat of rams.135 If in relation to his idea he is to be justified in leaping over marriage, then his idea must be indifferent toward the idea of the state. But here as everywhere one must remember that it is not a matter of the accidental point that an individual does not marry; here it is a matter only of not willing to marry. Every individuality of rank, if I may put it that way, in the world of spirit has resolution, and the rank is in relation to the resolution.
The infinite abstraction acquires a foothold behind itself; the fervor of annihilation becomes but a small risk compared with what is to be gained as soon as the person who renounces the world and makes the votum castitatis [vow of chastity] has a religious base. Such a person does not take this step, with which he passes beyond life, for nothing. To be sure he does not stare fixedly at the reward, but still he trustfully works his way toward it; just as the rower rows toward the goal but continually turns his back to it, so he works himself out of life.
That such conduct is a religious abstraction is entirely true, but that something like this might be so obsolete that it could not recur in a repetition is less true. It is obvious that the religious has been lying fallow long enough; when it begins to move with ideal energy, it is not to be wondered at if it makes a mistake again. To find the true concretion for the religious is not easy, for the religious continually has the infinite abstraction as its presupposition and is no simple immediacy. At times, in a way that is well meant, to be sure, people may talk very beautifully and very truthfully about the religious, and at times, perhaps with a single word, retract everything without being aware of it themselves, since it appears that they are speaking of the purely immediate. I am continually aiming at marriage. To find a proper religious expression for marriage, to find precisely and categorically defined what the Middle Ages despaired of, something to which the last few centuries (which are proud enough of being far more advanced than the Middle Ages—which must be understood to mean advanced not in piety but in worldliness) have contributed very little, I still regard as a pium desiderium [pious wish]. I think it is good for a married man to ponder this and, if he wants to be something [VI 164] of an author, to write about such things; besides, everything else has been treated, even astronomy.136
Yet, from the essentially religious point of view, it cannot be denied that it makes no difference whether or not a person has been married. Here the religious opens the infinite abyss of the abstraction. And speaking with a forked tongue does not help, either. If in concern one seeks guidance in the religious discourse, one will perhaps find an ambiguity more frequently than one thinks and than the speaker himself realizes. Marriage is extolled when it is the subject of the discourse. But if someone dies unmarried, then—well, then the discourse is indeed not about marriage, and then, with an almost humorous turn, it is said that it makes no difference whether a person has been married or not. But what of the person who listens to both discourses? For when the discourse is like that, it is far and away more difficult to be a good listener who is looking for guidance and instruction than to be an orator who in every way is at your service. The importance of temporality is emphasized, its ethical importance; it is called the time of grace, the arena of conversion, the period of the decision that decides for eternity. But then a child dies and a funeral oration is delivered, or in a sermon one alludes to the troubled parents who have lost a child, and one is humoristically above all the vanity of temporality. Mention is made of the seventy years as toil and as spiritual wear and tear,137 of all the rivers running into the sea without its ever becoming full.138 Thus the Romans were more consistent in letting these infants weep in Elysium because they were not permitted to live.139 Meanwhile work is being done on the system—good Lord, compared with this prodigious effort, to demand a view of life would be already too much. This much, then, is certain; it will never do to have many beautiful discourses with meaning in all of them but not one meaning in all.140
However, even if it were so that the religious abstraction was something vanished, something antiquated, something surmounted (this last expression stems from the systematic assistance that is so good as to confuse, if I may say so, the development of an eternal generation with each generation’s repetitions of what has been experienced), suppose it were so; it could then very well find its place here as the subject of discussion. Even if it is not exactly an everyday sight to see genuine love, then it is, of course, even more rare to see a real [VI 165] marriage. Higgling and haggling is futile; it only plays the victory into the hands of chicaners, who also know how to distill a caustic substance from the religious. Even if it is an objection of the utmost chicanery, it is a mediocre defense to make light of it if one does not have a good conscience and know one is right.
The religious abstraction desires to belong to God alone. For this love [Kærlighed] it is willing to refuse, renounce, sacrifice everything (these are the nuances); from this love it will not allow itself to be disturbed, diverted, captured by anything else. In relation to this love it refuses to have any duplicity in the accounting; every transaction must always take place in a pure relationship with God, who is not related to him through anything else. Pride in an abstraction of that kind can be very religiously tempered with humility in relation to God, but for the time being the abstraction must be regarded as unjustified because it relates itself altogether abstractly to that which it renounces. It does not concern itself with trying to grasp more concretely (to stick to my theme) the beautiful reality [Realitet] of falling in love and the true reality of marriage—an occupation with that would be spiritual trial. This is actually the inhumanity of this abstraction, about which one nevertheless should make a cautious judgment, and above all one should not commend railway speculation and committee foolery, and other such busyness—as if such hurly-burly or such hurry-scurry were the actual content of temporality!
Inhumanity toward human beings is also importunity toward God. To repeat, the inhumanity does not consist in willing the highest; that is not at all inhumane. And proclamations or anathemas from a
worldly affluent but at the same time spiritual poorhouse where one has status by being like the majority, and where even now the envy of ostracism and the argument of potsherds141 are continually directed against anyone who is better, mean nothing at all here. Neither does the inhumanity consist in wanting to base one’s life-view upon something accidental, whereby many are excluded, for the exception does not deny that everyone can do just as he does, and all this chatter—it is admittedly something great, but not everyone can do it, and what would become of the world in that case—comes from the poorhouse, where they cannot understand and refuse to understand that if this is correct, then they must leave the rest up to God, who certainly is competent and is not so down at the heels that he needs the assistance [VI 166] of the poorhouse. No, the inhumanity consists in his not wanting to have any concrete idea of what for most people is the reality of their lives. But this concrete idea is and remains a condition just for his being able to have the appearance of being in the right. Importunity toward God is a kind of impertinent camaraderie, even if he himself does not understand it that way. He can even be truly humble, but in the very same way, humanly speaking, a subordinate can have the most loyal enthusiasm for his king and be far superior to those who are neither hot nor cold142 but are numerus [numbers] and pecus [cattle],143 but yet when he seeks an audience with the king he can wish to be permitted to enter through a door different from the one assigned to all subjects. To me it seems that there must be something terrible about his being turned away and hearing these words: The other way, then we shall see what can be done. For the person who has actually had sufficient inwardness to comprehend that the religious is the highest love, how heartbreaking, how annihilating it must be to discover that he has allowed himself too much, that he has been too free, has grieved the spirit,144 has offended his love [Forelskelse]—alas, all the more grievously if he actually was intending to give his relationship the highest expression.
Consequently, such a religious exception will ignore the universal; he will outbid actuality’s terms. It is promptly seen thereby that he is unjustified. It becomes even more difficult when he wants to underbid. He recognizes entirely in abstracto the reality [Realitet] of temporality or, to stick to my theme, the reality of marrying. But he is unhappy, unfit for this joy, for this security in existence; he is depressed, a burden to himself, and feels he must be that to others. Do not be quick to judge—the weaker person also has his rights; and depression is something real that one does not delete with a stroke of the pen. So, then, having accounted for life in this way, he finds consolation in a religious abstraction. When the person who seeks an audience with the king in an unconventional way almost arouses sympathy, it seems to be a different story and quite appropriate that he gains a hearing.
Yet here again the dubiousness is that he speaks altogether abstractly about what he wants to give up. Precisely because he is depressed he has an abstract notion that life for others is so pleasant and happy. But what the unfamiliar is like one cannot know in abstracto. Here, too, is the fraudulence that is inseparable [VI 167] from all depression. Whatever distress the depressed person struggles with, be it ever so concrete, for him it always has an admixture of fantasy and thereby of abstraction. But if on occasion the depressed person is down in existence, it is just a minor manner, a little falsification, which still does not prevent him from participating in common affairs and being like other people, although even in the slightest thing he undertakes or suffers he receives a little admixture from imagination’s inexhaustible funds ad usus privatos [for private use]. If, however, he is allowed to gather up all existence in abstracto, then he never really finds out what it is he is giving up. The joy of life, such as he thinks others relish, becomes a burden to him, a double burden, since he already has enough to bear. Here is the comic side of depression, for the experience of the depressed person in relation to life is often like that of the journeyman tailor Hebel145 tells about. He wanted to take passage on a ship being towed up the Rhine and was bargaining about the price when the skipper said that he could come along for half price if he would walk alongside and help with the pulling. Alas, so it goes with the depressed person; by relating abstractly to life he thinks he is slipping through for half price and does not notice that he is pulling as hard as the ship’s crew and paying money to boot.
What these two forms of exception lack is obvious: having experienced. From this it is easy to perceive that no one can become a justified exception on his own. First of all something has to happen. Incidentally, I am speaking, as stated before, theoretically, for I do not know whether there is or ever has been a justified exception, but I shall come as close as possible to it. It must happen in a different way; it must be someone who has been living on in a secure understanding with life and then suddenly is halted. Therefore, he must experience falling in love, real falling in love. True, there is an old saying that one cannot resist the god of erotic love,146 but the person who from the beginning resolutely takes his stand against actuality will always have the power to drive off the inspiration of erotic love or to slay it at birth. Face to face with an immediate [VI 168] existence, erotic love is the stronger force, but face to face with a resolution armed in advance against it, it is not.
First of all, then, I require him to be really in love. 147A broken love affair is enough for a person, but if the lover must himself break it, then this breaking is a double-edged sword in his hand, a sword without a hilt, although he still must hold it. Then this operation pains just as deeply autopathetically as sympathetically. Someone may say, “If falling in love is assumed first of all, then it is impossible to find the exception along this road, because in falling in love everything is at stake, it is playing for high stakes. And in love everything is at stake for the beloved, it is a doubling of the highest stake. How impossible, then, to back out of it, to be willing to lose everything, honor as well; it is impossible if he really loves.”
Well, if he does not really love, then it is impossible for him to become the exception, provided there is such a one, but the other is not impossible. It is terrible, a horror, but so it has to be. The person who wants to break with actuality must at least know what it is he is breaking with. I am far from being cruel; I am no more cruel here than I am cruel when I am calmly sitting in an inquiring capacity and conjure up all sorts of horrors in order to frighten back within the peaceful enclosure of law and justice. The person who in falling in love has bent the branch of happiness down to the ground may cut it off and himself be hurled by its force into deadly torment, just as the poor fellow condemned to death suffers even more because he also rends asunder his beloved. When he is sailing along secure in his happiness, it is possible to descend and bore a hole in the ship and bring himself and another into distress at sea. It is possible for him to do it if he is really in love; if he is not, it is impossible for him to be the exception, provided there is such a one. It is terrible to put a sword in the hand of one who is in a frenzy, but it is just as terrible that happiness is placed in his hands when he is the way he is, for he does not have to be demented as yet. What motivates him, I shall not go into here; I shall only depict the psychological presuppositions, the psychical conditions that must be present if there is to be any question at all of a justified exception.
Next, I require him to be a married man. There is something more terrible to lose than to lose honor, and the crying of fatherless children calls out more loudly than all the disgrace of dishonor; even more terrible than the loneliness of the betrayed girl is the thousand-tongued misery of the deserted wife and mother. “It is impossible,” someone says. “If he is [VI 169] actually bound to life this way, then it is impossible to break off.” Well, if he is not so bound, it is impossible for him to become an exception, provided there is such a one. The other, however, is not impossible, even if it is so terrible that it freezes the soul and suffocates the emotions. Yet the person who is sitting in an inquiring capacity must not be moved from the truth, not by any t
error, must not defraud justice of a farthing; and the exemption must not purchase justification for a round sum but must pay to the last penny.148 If it is doubtful whether falling in love is from God, if falling in love does not even need to presuppose a religious view, marriage is unconditionally of religious origin. Thus the person who breaks it not only makes himself and those whom he loves totally miserable, but he places life in contradiction with itself, he places God in contradiction with himself. It is not impossible for one who is in a frenzy, and yet he does not have to be demented. I shall not propose or try to propose here what possibly may motivate him—I only expound the psychological presuppositions. If these are not present in all their horror, then he does not become the justified exception.
Now, then, the break has occurred; I continue. I require that after this he is to love life; if he becomes inimical to life, he is unjustified, because being an exception does not make less beautiful that from which he is excepted. That with which he broke he must love with an enthusiasm exceeding anyone else’s, and in this enthusiasm he must find each beautiful thing even more lovely and delightful than does the person who rejoices in happiness, because the one who wills to reject something universal has to be better informed about it than the person who is peacefully living in it. You see, if such a person, provided there is such a one, would speak about marriage, he would have a glow that scarcely any married man has—at least I yield to him. He would speak with an intimate knowledge of all its quiet joy such as no married man has, for the torment of the broken responsibility is bound to keep his soul vigilant and diligent in the contemplation of what he destroyed, and the new responsibility requires first and foremost that he know what he did. If such a person, provided there is such a person, would speak about the justification of the exceptions, then my role is only that of a subordinate compared with that of him who is a general inspector, for he must indeed know every hiding place, every nook and corner, every wrong turn where no one imagines there is even a road; he [VI 170] must be able to see the irregularities in the dark where someone else assumes there is nothing at all to separate him from justification.
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