The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  Hegel levelled against Schelling the (justified) reproach that he had projected the Absolute into the world “as if it were a bullet from a pistol.” But that applies with equal force to the concept of value projected by Hegelian and post-Hegelian philosophy. Simply to project a concept, of value into history and summarily to describe as “values” all that history has preserved may be permissible at a pinch for the purely æsthetic values of the creative arts, but is otherwise so sweepingly false that it drives one in contradiction to maintain that history is a conglomeration of non-values, and to deny outright that there is any value-reality in history.

  First Thesis:

  history is composed of values, since life can be comprehended only in the category of value—yet these values cannot be introduced into reality as absolutes, but can only be thought of in reference to an ethically-motived value-positing subject. Hegel’s absolute and objectified “world spirit” was such a subject introduced into reality, but the all-embracing absoluteness of its operation could not but result in a reductio ad absurdum. (This is another example of the impassable limits imposed on deductive thinking.) These values are not absolutes, but only finite postulates. Where a concrete and a priori finite subject comes into question, that is to say, an actual person, the relativity of values, their dependence on the subject, becomes immediately clear; the biography of any person is composed of all the value-contents which have been important to him. In himself he may be a person of no value, even a destroyer of values, such as a bandit leader or a deserter, but as the centre of his own system of values he is yet a ripe subject for biography and history. And the same is true of the fictive centres of value such as a state, or a club, or a nation, or the German Hanseatic League, historically considered; indeed, even the histories of inanimate objects, as for instance the architectural history of a house, are made up from a selection of those facts which would have been important to the respective subjects if they had had a will to create values. An event without a value-positing centre dissolves into nebulosity—the battle of Kunersdorf consists not of an army list of the Grenadiers who took part in it, but of the reality-formations which were determined by the plans of the commander. Every historical unity depends on an effective or fictive centre of value; the “style” of an epoch would not be discernible unless a unifying principle of selection were assumed at its centre, or a “spirit of the age” which serves as a standard for judging the value-positing and style-creating forces in operation. Or, to fall back on a hackneyed expression, culture is a value-formation, culture can be conceived of only in terms of style, and in order to be conceivable at all it needs the assumption of a style- and value-producing “culture-spirit” at the centre of that circle of values which it represents.

  Does this mean that all values are made relative? That one must abandon all hope of the logical Absolute ever manifesting itself in reality through the unifying of thought and being? that one must abandon all hope of ever even drawing near to the path that leads to the self-liberation of the spirit and of humanity?

  Second Thesis:

  the ripeness for history or for biography of the value-positing action is conditioned by the absoluteness of the Logos. For the actual or fictive value-positing subject can be imagined only in the isolation of its selfhood, in that inevitable, complete, and Platonic isolation whose pride it is to depend exclusively on the precepts of logic, and whose compulsion it is to state all activity in terms of logical plausibility; but this means that one must postulate, in the complete Kantian sense, not only the good will which shapes the work for the work’s sake, but also the rule that all consequences must be drawn from the autonomous code of the Self, so that the work, uninfluenced by any dogma, shall spring from the pure originality of the Self and of its law. In other words, whatever does not arise purely in accordance with its own laws vanishes out of history. But however contemporary this individual force of law may be in any age, that is to say, however it may be conditioned by the spirit and style of its age, it can never be anything else than a reflection of the superposed Logos, of that Logos which is active to-day and which is thought itself, a merely earthly reflection, it is true, even in our day, but a reflection through which there gleams that which has a lasting claim to transcend all ages and alone makes it possible for stylized thinking to be projected into another ego. And this formal ultimate unity is continuously and with complete clearness revealed again and again in the narrower sphere of created work and of generally applied æsthetics, for instance in all art, but most obviously in the undying persistence of art forms.

  From this we can draw the following comprehensive conclusion, the

  Third Thesis:

  the world is a product1 of the intelligible Self, for the Platonic idea has never been abandoned nor ever can be. But this product is not projected “like a bullet from a pistol,” for nothing can be posited but value-making subjects, which in their turn reflect the structure of the intelligible Self and in their turn fashion their own value-products, their own world-formations: the world is not an immediate but a mediate product of the Self, it is “a product of products,” “a product of products of products,” and so on in infinite iteration. This process, the positing of “products of products,” provides the world with its methodological organization and hierarchy, a relative organization, certainly, but yet absolute in form, since the ethical imperative postulated for the effective or fictive value-positing subjects remains undiminished in its force, together with the immanent validity of the Logos within the created product: the logic of things remains unshaken. And even though the logical advance of history must be arrested time and again whenever it reaches the limits of infinity inherent in its metaphysical construction, and though the Platonic view of the world must time and again make way for a positivistic examination of data, yet the reality of the Platonic idea remains invincible, for with every access of Positivism it merely touches its mother earth again to rise anew, upborne by the bathos of experience.

  Every conceptually comprehensible unity in the world is “product of a product,” every concept, every thing; and this methodological function of knowledge, of knowledge as an integrator that can comprehend a thing only by regarding it as an autonomous and value-positing subject, probably extends right into mathematics, thus abolishing the distinction between mathematical scientific abstraction and empirical abstraction. For, methodologically regarded, to define a thing as the “product of a product” is nothing else than to introduce the ideal observer into the field of observation, as has been already done long since by the empirical sciences (by physics, for example, in the Theory of Relativity) quite independently of epistemological considerations: and further, research into mathematical first principles, pursuing the questions “what is number?” and “what is unity?” has reached a point at which it has found itself compelled to accept intuition as the only way out of its difficulties: now the principle of “product of a product” provides intuition with its logical legitimation, for the infiltration of the Self into a hypostatized value-positing subject can be justifiably termed the methodological structure of the act of intuition.

  That this principle has been so long unrecognized may perhaps be explained by its obviousness, even its primitiveness. For it is indeed primitive. And the pride of man seems to find insuperable difficulty in admitting the validity of a primitive attitude. For even though this view of everything as the “product of a product” guarantees the presence of the intelligible self in every object throughout the world, yet, if one ignores for a moment this Platonic background, it amounts to a kind of animism that reanimates the whole of nature, nay, the whole of the world in its totality, an animism that introduces a value-subject into everything, into every concept however abstract, and that can be compared only to the animism of primitive peoples: it seems as if the development of logic has an ontogenesis of its own that keeps alive, even in the most highly developed logical structures, all previous and apparently obsolete thought-formations, inclu
ding that of the simple animism which shortened to one link all chains of plausibility; an ontogenesis that preserves in every new advance of thought the form if not the content of primitive metaphysics—indubitably a stumbling-block for the rationalists, but a consolation to pantheistic feeling.

  And yet there is consolation even for the rationalists. For if the principle of “product of products” in its dependence on the governing Logos may be interpreted as the logical structure of the intuitive act, it may also be regarded as the “condition of possible experience” for the otherwise inexplicable fact of the mutual understanding between man and man, between one isolated self and another; so it provides not only an epistemological structure that accounts for the translatableness of all languages, be they ever so different from each other, but far beyond that, infinitely far, it provides in the unity of thought a common denominator for all human speech, a warrant for the unity of mankind and of a humanity that even in its self-laceration remains the image of God—for in every thought and in every unity that man creates, the Logos, mirror of himself, shines out upon him, the Word of God shines out as the measure of all things. And even if all that is created in this world were to be annihilated, if all its æsthetic values were abolished and resolved into a function, dissolved in scepticism of all law, nay more, in the imperative duty to question and to doubt, there would yet survive untouched the unity of thought, the ethical postulate, the rigorous operation of ethical value as pure function, the real duty of its most strict observance: all these would survive and with them a continuing unity of the world, a unity of mankind, illuminating all things, still surviving and imperishable through all eternities of space and time.

  1Product = Setzung.

  CHAPTER LXXIV

  Dr Flurschütz was helping Jaretzki to fit on his artificial arm. Sister Mathilde too was in attendance.

  Jaretzki was jerking at the straps:

  “Well, Flurschütz, aren’t you heart-broken that I’m leaving you so soon … not to speak of Sister Mathilde!”

  “Do you know, Jaretzki, I would really like to keep you here for a while longer under observation … you’re at a highly questionable stage of your development.”

  “Can’t say … wait a minute,” Jaretzki endeavoured to wedge a cigarette between the fingers of the artificial hand, “… wait a minute, how would it do if we added a kind of cigarette-receiver to this … or a permanent cigarette-holder … that would be quite an ingenious idea …?”

  “Stand still just for a minute, Jaretzki,” Flurschütz fastened the straps, “… there, how do you feel?”

  “Like a newly-born machine … a machine at a fine stage of development … if the cigarettes were better it would be still finer.”

  “Couldn’t you let this smoking of yours alone altogether … and the other thing too, of course.”

  “Love? Oh yes, like a shot.”

  Sister Mathilde said quite superfluously:

  “No, Dr Flurschütz meant that you should give up drinking.”

  “Oh, I see, I didn’t understand … when one is sober, it’s so hard to understand things.… I’m surprised that that has never struck you, Flurschütz: it’s only when people are drunk that they can understand one another.”

  “That’s a daring attempt at self-justification!”

  “But just cast your mind back, Flurschütz, and remember how gloriously drunk we all were in August 1914 … it seems to me as though that was the first and the last time that people felt a real sense of fellowship.”

  “Scheler says something like that.…”

  “Who?”

  “Scheler. The Genius of War … not much of a book.”

  “Oh, I see, a book … that doesn’t count … but I tell you this, Flurschütz, and I say it in all seriousness: give me some other, some new drunkenness, it doesn’t matter what as far as I’m concerned, morphia or patriotism or communism or anything else that makes a man drunk … give me something to make me feel we’re all comrades again, and I’ll give up drinking … to-morrow.”

  Flurschütz reflected; then he said:

  “There’s something in what you say … but if you must have intoxication and fellowship, there’s a simple enough remedy: fall in love.”

  “Under doctor’s orders, certainly … have you ever fallen in love under doctor’s orders, Sister?”

  Sister Mathilde blushed; two red patches appeared amid the freckles that covered her neck.

  Jaretzki averted his eyes:

  “A bad stage of development for falling in love … it seems to me we’re all in a bad way … even love’s no more use …” he tested the joints of the artificial arm, “… we should really be given instructions for using this thing … there must surely be a special joint for cuddling somewhere in it.”

  Flurschütz strangely enough felt shocked. Perhaps because Sister Mathilde was present. Sister Mathilde blushed still more deeply:

  “What ideas you have, Herr Jaretzki!”

  “How? they’re quite good ideas … artificial limbs for making love … yes, quite a splendid idea, special models for staff officers, from colonels upwards … I’ll set up a factory.”

  Flurschütz said:

  “Must you always play the enfant terrible?”

  “Not at all, I simply have ideas for the armament industry … now let’s take it off.” Jaretzki began to undo the straps; Sister Mathilde helped him. He straightened the joints of the metallic fingers: “There, now it only needs a glove … little finger, ring finger and that’s the thumb that picks out the plum.”

  Flurschütz examined the scars on the naked arm stump.

  “I think it fits quite all right, only be careful at the beginning that it doesn’t rub your arm sore.”

  “Let the good charwomen rub and scrub … this one picks out the plums.”

  “Well, Jaretzki, as far as you’re concerned at any rate, there really seems no hope of common understanding.”

  CHAPTER LXXV

  Huguenau’s dodging Esch at the dinner-hour had of course availed nothing. That very same evening there was a violent scene. Nevertheless Esch was soon disarmed, for Huguenau not only took his stand in his documented rights as a publisher, which fully authorized him to insert any article that he liked, but he also employed Esch’s own arguments: “My dear friend,” he jeered, “you’ve complained often enough about people queering your pitch when you wanted to unmask public abuses … but when someone else has the courage actually to do it you draw in your horns … of course one doesn’t fling away the favour of a high and mighty Town Commandant in a hurry … must always trim your coat to suit the fashion, what?” Yes, Esch had to listen to things like that, and although it was a vile and cowardly attack with which the fellow had taken him in the rear, he could find nothing better as a retort but guttersnipe abuse, and after that had held his tongue.

  But Huguenau had thereupon adroitly changed his tactics. He had gone to Frau Esch and complained bitterly that her husband had treated abominably a conscientious partner, simply because said partner had conscientiously and selflessly tried to do his duty. That had not been without its effect, and when next day Esch came up to his dinner he found a sulky and offended Huguenau and a wife who with conciliating words spoke up for Herr Huguenau’s innocence, so that before they knew where they were they were reconciled and all supped their soup in peace together, much to the satisfaction of Frau Esch, who was anxious not to lose a patron so generous with his praise.

  But perhaps Esch too was actually glad that he had avoided having to show Huguenau the door: one couldn’t tell what attacks against the Major this fellow might still have in mind … it was best in any case not to let him out of one’s sight. So Huguenau stayed where he was, although these meals were none too sociable, especially as Esch now took to glaring at Huguenau across the dishes, mustering him with suspicious eyes.

  To Huguenau’s credit it must be said that he did his best to brighten matters: but his efforts met with scant success. Even a week later
Esch was still in his most bearish mood. And to the hesitant inquiries of his spouse he replied only in a growl: “Emigrate to America.…” After which nothing more was said. Finally, however, Huguenau leant back satiated, and broke the uncomfortable silence with these auspicious words:

  “Mother Esch,” he said, lifting one finger, “Mother Esch, I’ve hunted up a farmer who will deliver flour to us, maybe a gammon occasionally too.”

  “Indeed?” said Esch mistrustfully, “where have you picked him up?”

  Of course this farmer was non-existent, but what is non-existent may one day come to life, and Huguenau was annoyed that his good will was never recognized. Yet he did not want to get into a squabble with Esch so soon again, on the contrary he wanted to say something conciliatory:

  “We must lighten things a little for Mother Esch if we can … four mouths … I’m surprised that she manages it at all … for one must count in the kid as well.”