Stages on Life’s Way
Page 51
508One safeguards the religious, as well as the esthetic, by a result—but my imaginary construction is not completed. Consequently there is no result.—“I ask my esteemed thinking [VI 411] public to consider what it means to publish a book without a result. Fortunately no one reads it, since it is by an obscure author”—this is what a reviewer will say, even though I have implored him to refrain, not to refrain from saying this, for if he ultimately has to say something, it can surely make no difference what he says. Consequently, the result, which any busybody reader in all fairness could demand in advance, does not come at all. Would, however, that these comments might make some amends for that.
Poetry consists in the commensuration of the outer and the inner, and it therefore shows a visible result. The result is plain and easy to grasp. However, a little circumspection does no harm, for the result has the same dialectic as the ideality. The religious lies in the internal. Here the result cannot be shown in the external. But what does the speaker do? He guarantees the result. Such a security must in every way be regarded as reassuring—for the serious and positive.
The esthetic result is in the external and can be shown. With the aid of opera glasses, it can be shown and seen even by the myopic that the hero conquers, that the magnanimous man falls in the battle and is carried in dead (of course not simultaneously) etc. This is precisely the imperfection of the esthetic. 509—The ethical result is less capable of being shown, or, more correctly, it is actually demanded with such speed that one does not have time to look around before it is there. For example, if I exclude every other thought and think only of the ethical, I demand with ethical sanction to see the good triumph with a boundless speed, to see the evil punished with boundless speed. Now, this cannot be depicted, least of all in five acts, and therefore the esthetic and the ethical have been combined. The total thought of the ethical has been retained and the boundless speed has been slowed down by esthetic categories (fate, chance), and now at the end one sees in the total thought of the ethical a world order, a Governance, providence. This result is esthetic-ethical and therefore can be shown in the external to a certain degree. But there is a dubiousness about this result, for the ethical cannot regard the esthetic in any other way than to regard a direct union with it as a misalliance. (No doubt this is why Boethius is so indignant [VI 412] about poet productions, I, p. 9;510 no doubt this is why Solon forbade plays as deception;511 no doubt this is why Plato wanted to ban poets from his state.512) The ethical asks only about guilty or not guilty, is itself man enough to be a match for men, has no need for anything external and visible, to say nothing of something as ambiguously dialectical as fate and chance or the tangibility of some verdict document. The ethical is proud and declares: When I have judged, then nothing more is needed. This means that the ethical wants to be separated from the esthetic and the externality that is the latter’s imperfection; it desires to enter into a more glorious alliance, and this is with the religious.
The religious then plays the same role as the esthetic, but as the superior; it spaces out the limitless speed of the ethical, and development takes place. But the scene is in the internal, in thoughts and dispositions that cannot be seen, not even with a night telescope. The principle of the spirit is that the external and the visible (the world’s gloriousness or its miserableness for the existing person, a result in the external or the lack of it for the one acting) exist to try faith, consequently not to deceive but in order that the spirit can be tested by placing it in the realm of the indifferent and taking itself back again. The external makes no difference—and, first of all, the result lies in the internal and, second, is continually postponed.
The esthetic outcome is in the external, and the external is the guarantee that the outcome is there; we see that the hero has triumphed, has conquered that country, and now we are finished. The religious outcome, indifferent toward the external, is assured only in the internal, that is, in faith. Indifferent toward the externality, which the esthetic needs (there must be great men, great subject matter, great events; so it becomes comic if there are small folk or petty cash), the religious is commensurate with the greatest man who has ever lived and with the most wretched, and equally commensurate, commensurate with the prosperity of nations and with a farthing, and equally commensurate. The religious is simply and solely qualitatively dialectic and disdains quantity, in which esthetics has its task. Indifferent toward the externals, which the esthetic needs in the result, the religious disdains anything like that and proclaims, jointly and individually, that the person [VI 413] who believes he has finished (that is, fancies that he has, for such things cannot be believed because faith is expressly the infinite)—has lost.
And now for the speaker who handles results—what does he do? He does precisely what is possible for him to do in order to deceive his listeners. But the speaker is positive. Entirely correct, he also accepts money for what he says, and this already inspires listeners to have a certain confidence in him, for if a person lost his money or lost his reputation in order to speak truthfully, what confidence could people have in him; after all, he refutes himself, for would anything that did not bring a person money, esteem, and anything such as that be the truth!
If someone were to declare that swimming is lying on dry land and threshing around, everyone presumably would consider him mad. But believing is just like swimming, and instead of helping one ashore the speaker should help one out into the deep. Consequently, if someone were to say that believing is lying on dry land and threshing around certain of result, he is saying the same thing, but perhaps people are not aware of it.
What is expressed here about the lack of a result in the religious, I can also say in this way: the negative is higher than the positive. How lucky to be an obscure author when one imaginatively constructs with such thoughts. An esteemed author would be in an awkward situation, for by reason of his esteem the positive people probably would quickly perceive that he had arrived at a positive result, and his positive esteem would become even greater. Positives or, to use the definite article even more definitely in order to show what I mean, the positives have a positive infinity. Quite correct, a positive is finished, and once one has heard it, one is also quickly finished. Here is result in overabundance. If one seeks enlightenment from the master, Hegel, about what a positive infinity means,513 one learns a great deal; one takes the trouble, and one does understand him. The only thing a latecomer perhaps does not understand is how a living human being or a human being during his lifetime becomes such a being that he can be calmed and reassured in this positive infinity, which usually is reserved for the deity and eternity and the deceased. As far as that goes, I cannot understand anything else than that a result is missing here, which the negatives, who are not finished, [VI 414] might en passant very eagerly look forward to see whether or not, long after the system is finished, astrology might succeed in finding on those distant planets higher beings who would be able to use it. The rest must be left up to the higher beings, but it is up to us human beings to be careful not to become all too positive, for this would really mean being fooled by life. Life is perfidious and has many charms and spells with which it tries to capture the adventurer, and the person who is captured, yes, the person who is captured—well, what is made out of him is not exactly some higher being.514
For a finite being, and that, after all, is what human beings are as long as they live in temporality (see Balle’s Lærebog515), the negative infinity is the higher, and the positive is a dubious reassurance. Spiritual existence, especially the religious, is not easy; the believer continually lies out on the deep, has 70,000 fathoms516 of water beneath him. However long he lies out there, this still does not mean that he will gradually end up lying and relaxing onshore. He can become more calm, more experienced, find a confidence that loves jest and a cheerful temperament—but until the very last he lies out on 70,000 fathoms of water. If immediacy is supposed to go, which indeed everyone calls for, then this enters in. Ther
e will be difficulties enough in life for all. Let the poor feel the hard stress of poverty and the cares of making a living. The person who chooses spiritual existence by virtue of the religious will have the consolation, which I can understand he needs, that he, too, suffers in life and that before God there is no respect of persons.517 For to become positive does not procure for one personal esteem in God’s eyes, even though this has become wisdom ever since the time when speculation took religion under its wing by taking away its life.
This I have understood very well, although I myself am not religious, but neither do I arrogate to myself the desire to take it by force,518 but with the pleasure of observation I only want to understand it by imaginatively constructing. The religious seeks no foothold in the historical, does not seek it, even less and for a higher reason than the comic does. It presupposes the unity of the tragic and the comic in passion, and with a new passion or with the same one it chooses the tragic, and this relation in turn makes every historical foothold meaningless. It is never finished, at least not in time, and therefore can [VI 415] be represented as such only by a deception. If, then, a man who had been regularly listening to a speaker discoursing on religious matters were to go to him and say, “Now that I have listened to you so regularly, do you not think that I now have faith?” the speaker, in a fit of what one calls good nature, concerned sympathy (for which one inserts a card of thanks in the newspapers), answers, “Why, of course, that is my opinion, set your mind at ease; just don’t miss my discourses, and feel free to come to me if you ever have any doubts again etc.” My constructing scrutiny, devoid of all good nature and concerned sympathy, is of the opinion that he would have done better to answer, “My dear fellow, are you making fun of me? I do not even dare vouch for my wife—indeed, not even for myself, for I am lying out on 70,000 fathoms of water.”
Now, if only no one tempts me, perhaps promises me the moon and the stars, the favor of young maidens and the applause of the reviewers, but then demands an answer to the question whether my imaginary construction is a real-life story, whether it is based on something actual. Yes, certainly it is based on something actual, namely, on the categories. But for an unknown author the temptation is presumably minor. Everyone will readily see that the whole thing is a child’s prank, which, however, it is not, for it is an imaginary construction. The tragic has the interest of actuality, the comic metaphysical disinterestedness, but the construction lies in the invisible unity of jest and earnestness. The dialectical tension between form and content and content and form prevents every immediate relation to it, and in this tension the construction evades the formidable handshake of earnestness and jest’s fellowship with jolly companions. The construction always addresses the reader with the formal De [instead of the familiar du]. The poetic hero wants to inspire by his victory, wants to depress by his suffering (have the interest of actuality); the comic hero wants to provoke laughter, but Quidam519 [Someone] of the “imaginary construction” wants nothing at all, without any claim whatsoever is at your service in every way; he cannot inconvenience anyone, for in this respect, too, he is at your service, so that you can ignore him without any risk at all, so much the more since it is absolutely indeterminable whether anyone who paid attention to him gained something thereby or was harmed by it.
4.
Repentance Dialectically Prevented
from Constituting Itself;
the Last Frontier between the Esthetic and
the Religious Lies in the Psychological [VI 416]
Poetry cannot use repentance; as soon as it is assumed, the scene is internal. Naturally the system cannot use it either; for the system, after all, has to be finished, the sooner the better, and not until it is finished has it nothing to repent, and in order to become finished it sees to it that it is free of repentance. The systematic abbreviation of the pathological elements of life is sheer ludicrousness the moment it wants to have anything but a metaphysical significance. Thus the system is exclusively metaphysics, and as such that is quite in order, but it is not a system that embraces existence, for then the ethical must be included, and to abbreviate the ethical is to make a fool of it.
On the systematic “roller coaster,” as Quidam of the imaginary construction says, it goes as follows: ¶17, Repentance; ¶18, Atonement; ¶ , the system finished, with some concluding suggestions to the bookbinder with regard to the binding. That is, bound in half-leather it is metaphysics; bound in full calf it is the system.520 Consequently one does not stop with repentance. One cannot say that, since a paragraph is no eternity, not even for the person who has extremely urgent business. I, however, aim to pause for a little moment at repentance—a composer of imaginary constructions can afford the time.
The demonic in Quidam of the construction is actually this, that he is unable to take himself back in repentance, that at the extreme point he becomes suspended in a dialectical relation to actuality (see above). 521Juno, as is known, sent a gadfly to torment Latona so that she could not give birth;522 similarly a girl’s actuality is a gadfly, a “perhaps” that teases him, a nemesis of actuality, an envy of life that will not let him slip out and thereby absolutely into the religious.
When repentance is less systematically, that is, more thoroughly, developed, one ordinarily has one’s eyes opened particularly in order to emphasize the Atonement. This can be [VI 417] very fine, but there are also existence-difficulties elsewhere. When repentance is posited, guilt must be assumed as clearly and certainly substantiated. But the difficulty arises precisely when this becomes dialectical. That is why I said previously that if Quidam of the construction had had an actual sin, it would have been far easier to clear him of it, for then the dialectical would have been avoided.
Whether such things are found only rarely in actual life or not found at all makes no difference to the imaginary construction. Yet presumably it is possible that the dialectical is found most frequently but amounts to nothing at all; for the perfectly normal perhaps is found simply and solely in handbooks and in lectures by men who do not exist in themselves at all or know how to spy on life and on others.
The imaginary construction has made the situation for the existing person as dialectical as possible. He can have a murder on his conscience; the whole thing can be a gust of wind. He has it because the girl lays it upon him, and if it was just a bit of nonsense, then he has no murder. What will decide this? Actuality will. But actuality takes a little time, and when I am composing an imaginary construction I do not care for paragraph-haste. Consequently, how does he exist during that time? For repentance it is something to despair over. For me it is another matter, for I sit elated with my reckonings and look simultaneously at the comic and the tragic. The tragic girl who dies and the comic sinner who becomes a murderer, the tragic sinner who suffers and the comic girl who goes on living. A word is a word, and a man is a man—this applies only to men, who therefore ought to be cautious about talk of death. What a now dead and departed person said about death is certainly true: It recognizes no rank and no age, but nothing follows from that in advance.
A dialectical reader will promptly become aware of a difficulty here, to which Quidam of the construction pays no attention or not enough. By a deception he wants to trick out of the girl every impression she may have of him. He carries out the deception, but then he forgets to reckon it. He has strength to defy the terrors of actuality, but in relation to himself he does not have the strength to stick to it. He is higher than actuality; this he shows in the deception when he shuns no argument but sees it through. However, because of the deception the argument becomes something different from what it otherwise would be. The moment the deception is carried [VI 418] out with certainty, he is indeed misleading the girl and goading her to express herself unsympathetically. She has no inkling that he himself is suffering; she must assume that he is merely determined to see an end to the relationship and then exult. Thus there is nothing that can curb her expressions. To this extent he himself is to blame tha
t the consternation is as it is. But it must be remembered that he tried a more lenient way before resorting to the deception. But for me it is very important in the imaginary construction that he himself through the deception contributes to making everything more terrible for himself; that consequently he does not through the deception create an advantage for himself but a defeat. In an external sense he has conquered, the force with which actuality stands up to him is capable of nothing against him—but then a half year later he begins again within himself, wounded by that event, and now he has to give up. This throws light precisely on the religious. The religiousness that derives directly from actuality is a dubious religiousness; it can very well be esthetic categories that are used and worldly wisdom that is gained; but when actuality has not been capable of shattering and the individual succumbs by his own hand, then the religious is more distinct.
Again I see the unity of the comic and the tragic in something to which he himself does not pay sufficient attention; that is, the comic is not that he is a swaggering braggart, for then it would have to be actuality that inevitably made short work of him, but that he survives the crisis of actuality and then succumbs by his own hand. It is a task for the esthetic to have someone who fancies that he is something be shown up in actuality in his nothingness, but if the esthetic has first acknowledged that in actuality he is great, then the esthetic has no superior power over him and must acknowledge him as a hero, but then the religious says: Wait a minute, let us look at this a bit closer and see how he is in himself. This engrosses me in a purely Greek way. I imagine the blissful gods creating such a human being in order to have the enjoyment of the dialectical delight in it. They give him powers in the realm of actuality so that he is victor there, but then they give him an inwardness in which he himself goes astray. He is really capable of something great, but as soon as he has done it the event duplicates itself within him and he topples. And I imagine the gods saying to each other, “We really ought to have something for ourselves, and this is not even for the goddesses, who do not understand it, and if they did understand it would not be without compassion. This is not a laughing matter like the fabrications of poets, which we honor with the reward of our laughter; and it is not a crying matter, which we also are willing to reward with tears if it deserves it, but this is festive dialectical enjoyment of equilibrium. He cannot [VI 419] complain about us, for we have, after all, made him great, and actually it is only we gods who simultaneously see his nothingness.”