Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  We may divide objective honour into—

  Negative honour each one inherently possesses until he loses it; positive honour must be acquired by circumstances (birth, actions, achievements). The former denotes only the zero-point of worth; the latter positively exceeds the same. The repute of possession depends on power; that of position on power and performance; easily ossifies, however, in forms coming down from earlier times. The reputation of rank is, so far as it exceeds the reputation of the power and labour connected with rank, an artificial creation of the state, to enable it to pay low salaries. The repute of beauty must not be looked for among ourselves, but among peoples that have the sense for the beautiful (ancient Greeks). The repute of industry is proportional to the economic value of the work; that of intelligence and culture especially forms a substitute for labour, when mental work is not regarded as work (respect of peasants for scholarship). Moral honour is positive only in active love; that of justice is merely negative; likewise will and sexual honour, which latter only applies to woman.

  Subjective honour is twofold: the direct subjective honour of a man is his estimation of himself; indirect is his estimate of the estimate of himself by others, or his estimate of objective honour.

  The former is called self-estimation, self-respect, self-esteem, pride; if the estimate remains below the true value: modesty, humility; if it surpasses the true value: over-estimate of self, conceit, arrogance; the latter, on the contrary, is called vanity. Although men may refuse to allow this word in the case of noble efforts, essentially it is the same, whether a girl is vain of the report of her beauty or a poet of the fame of his works. Both parts together, thus pride and vanity, make up subjective honour, which now, according to the object of the estimation, admits of the same division as objective honour. As regards the negative part, it is called sense of honour; as regards the positive, ambition. The direct and indirect part of subjective honour may stand to one another in very different relations of intensity; commonly, however, the latter will preponderate; indeed so far preponderate that one often meets with the view, as if subjective honour only consisted in this evaluation of the valuation of others; whereas, on the contrary, this is vanity pur et simple to assign any value to the judgment of others concerning one’s own worth, whilst one at the same time denies all value to oneself, thus regarding the judgment of others as false.

  Pride, the high estimate of oneself, is an enviable quality, no matter whether the estimate is true or false, if one only regards it as correct. Certainly an inflexible pride is rare; mostly it has to sustain alternating struggles with doubt, or even despair, which cause more pain than pride itself pleasure. Pride also increases the sensitiveness to external opinion, and is on its part compelled to adopt the hypocritical mask of modesty, if it will steer clear of unpleasantnesses. All this may be considered pretty well to balance the pleasure of extreme self-esteem. But now, as for that sense of honour and ambition which rests for the most part or exclusively on vanity, although they may for our present stage of development be valuable practical instincts, yet one cannot deny that in the first place they are vain, i.e., rest on illusions, and, secondly, that they procure for him who is possessed by them a thousand times more pain than pleasure.

  Female chastity alone protects social relations from complete disorder. The citizen sense of honour restrains the as yet blameless from trespasses or crimes, from which neither the fear of temporal nor of eternal punishment could deter. Scholarly ambition spurs on the boy and youth in their arduous acquisition of the material of culture demanded by our age. The ambition to achieve something great, which, in regard of rare and considerable performances and deeds, is called lust of fame, sustains the starving artist or scholar, whose creative force would be paralysed if the impossibility of ever in the least particular satisfying his ambition or love of fame could be demonstrated to him. Thus the sense of honour prevents greater evils and ambition furthers the evolution of humanity; but apart from the circumstance that, with the higher development and power of reason, subjective honour may very well be dispensed with, and its good effect otherwise produced (one may recall the difference between the French bravery from point d’honneur and the German from sense of duty), yet at all events the individual, the instrument of the impulse, must suffer therefrom.

  The possession of negative honour can afford no pleasure, save when it has been recovered after apparent loss (e.g., through calumny); in itself it answers only to the zero-point of sensation, as it represents only the zero-point of worth. It is thus, as all similar moments, a fertile source of pain, but no source of pleasure, except through the quite special and rarely occurring interruption of displeasure.

  Ambition, however, is certainly a positive impulse, and indeed one of those “which, like salt water, makes one the more thirsty the more one drinks.”

  Wherever one listens one hears the stereotype lamentations of Government functionaries and officers at neglect and tardy promotion, the wailings of artists and scholars at suppression by envy and cabals, everywhere vexation at the undeserved favouring of others. For a hundred mortifications of ambition there is hardly one satisfaction; the former are bitterly felt, the latter received as long-deserved tribute of justice, if not with the repining, that they did not come earlier. The general over-estimate of self causes every individual to raise extravagant claims; the universal mutual envy and disparagement of merit causes the refusal of even just claims. Every satisfaction of ambition only serves to screw up one’s claims more highly, and in consequence it must be a triumph outdoing all former ones that can produce a fresh satisfaction, whilst each of the former ones does not obtain equal recognition on account of this deficit of pain.

  Take the case of a young public singer she rises step by step to a certain elevation in the favour of the public; the triumphs connected with this rise of favour she claims as her right; life in them is to her as the air which she breathes; she is amazed if ever they are wanting. But a younger rival comes at last, and thrusts her into the second rank, as she her predecessors; and the fall from her height is a thousand times more painful to her than its converse was pleasurable, whilst she hardly felt as happiness the actual tenure of the same.

  As in this instance, so with all ambition and lust of fame; even when the achievements or works remain, they do not always maintain the same interest for the public.

  But now, in addition to all this, ambition is vain, i.e., rests on illusion. Even the estimate of worth, as it obtains in objective honour, depends in part on illusion. I need only mention the artificially inflated honour of rank and nobility derived from the Middle Ages, but among us already almost extinct in its old significance. And even where the value that objective honour prizes is no illusory one, yet its estimate is far too often false. The vox populi vox dei only holds in questions that are vital questions for the development of the people, and where, in consequence, the Unconscious instinctively guides the judgment of the masses. In all other things the vox populi is so blind, dazzled by outward show, misled by claquers, given over to commonplace, and without understanding for the good, true, and beautiful, that one rather may be almost sure it is on a wrong tack. (Comp. Schopenhauer, “Parerga,” ii. chap. xx.) In all cases that are not vital questions of development or finally settled by science, one may be confident, a priori, that the majority are wrong and the minority right; nay, a joint judgment is even so difficult, that, when a number of clever people agree, they almost certainly perpetrate some folly.

  To such a judgment that man surrenders his life-happiness who makes ambition his guiding star. Even in small matters certainly no one would continue to concern himself about the opinions of mankind, before whom could be laid all the calumnies and adverse judgments uttered by friends and acquaintances behind his back. And now as to the ambition which fishes for orders, dignities, and titles! Every one knows that they are not apportioned to merit, but in the best case to him who is favoured by fortune, or to length of service; to those who happen to ha
ve influential relatives or advocates, to the cringer and flatterer, or even as reward for services not of the cleanest; and yet—incredible to relate—the world is greedy for them!

  But now suppose the object of objective honour had a value, and the judgment of those in whose judgment objective honour consists were correct, still ambition would be empty; for what sort of value can it have for a man what others think and judge of him? None whatever, except so far as the character of their action towards him is at the same time determined by their judgment on him. In this, however, the opinion, as such, is quite indifferent, and is only regarded as means of thereby attaining a particular kind of action. This is, therefore, no ambition in the ordinary sense, as little as we call him covetous who strives to get money, but who also spends all that he gets; it is the assigning a value to objective honour as such that makes ambition and the sense of honour, and the circumstance that with the objective honour partially also the conduct of men towards the honoured one becomes different and more advantageous to him, is only a gladly accepted accidental consequence.

  For the most part, indeed, the modification of action will be limited to this, that the behaviour becomes more deferential, thus to an expression of adjudgment of objective honour, which, to a sensible man, must be just as indifferent as the opinion itself. True utility hardly flows at all from positive objective honour, only harm from injured subjective honour, so that finally all the significance of objective honour consists in this, that one has to guard against harm through injury to negative honour. All the subjective value of an objective honour as such rests, however, manifestly on imagination, for the theatre of my joys and sorrows is still my head and not the head of others; thus it can neither add to nor take away from my weal and woe what other people think of me, therefore their opinion as such can have no effective value for me, consequently ambition is vain. The sense of honour which, according to our explanation, relates to negative honour, is indeed abstractedly just as insignificant; but this much can, at any rate, be said for it, that if one once lives among men, one must at least act as if one had some regard for objective honour, because otherwise the world would fall on one as the crows on the owl in daylight.

  If herewith I declare the sense of honour and ambition to be empty and illusory, by no means is any judgment pronounced on the value of the objects of honour; I have even to a certain extent the greatest regard for the same, e.g., for morality. But if such objects have a value, they have it not because they are objects of honour, as the wrong-headed might think, but because they are directly felicific. Most distinctly is this so with posthumous fame; Spinoza can indeed not be the better for it that Collegian N. says, “That was a clever fellow;” but that he was able to think such thoughts, therein lay his satisfaction. Undoubtedly what renders me happy may lie in this, that I am conscious of doing or accomplishing something for the good of others; but that is still always the sympathetic joy in a real happiness, whereas, on the coutrary, the recognition of the value of my deeds or performances procures these others by no means pleasure, but rather displeasure. The difference is the same as when I bestow something on a beggar; do I rejoice that through my gift his distress is momentarily relieved, my joy has a real object; do I watch for his “Thank you, sir,” or “God bless you,” in order to relish the recognition, I am a vain, foolish man.

  Thus has also the desire of honour appeared to be, if a useful, yet also an illusory instinct, causing more pain than pleasure. (Comp. Schopenhauer, “Parerga,” i.; “Aphorisms on Worldly Wisdom,” chaps, i., ii., and especially iv.)

  With the lust of power it is just the same. So far as it is a mere endeavour after freedom, it is not yet a positive impulse; so far as the power of ruling is only sought to procure for one’s self more enjoyments by its help is it mere means to alien ends, and must be measured by the value of those enjoyments. There is, however, also a passion for commanding and ruling as such. It is clear that this is possible only at the expense of infringing the same impulse, and, moreover, the impulse for liberty in the ruled. Further, however, the same holds good of it as of ambition and loss of fame: the more one drinks of it, the thirstier one becomes. The accustomed power is no longer enjoyed, but without doubt all resistance to the same most painfully felt, and the greatest additional sacrifices made for its removal. On the whole, and with regard to the consequences for others, then, the love of power is a far more pernicious passion than ambition.

  6. Religious Edification. —Already in Chap. ix. B. we mentioned that the exaltation of religious feeling in devotion and edification, which is always more or less of a mystical nature, is able to afford so great a bliss that it carries its subject above all earthly sorrows. But in the first place, these high degrees of exaltation are rare, for as they are essentially of a mystical nature, they cannot be acquired by industry and trouble, but presuppose a disposition, a peculiar talent, as much as art-enjoyment; and, secondly, they are, like all pleasure, not to be had without a characteristic displeasure.

  One comes to see this best when one considers the life of penitents and saints. The highest degrees of religious exaltation are hardly conceivable without a prolonged mortification of the “flesh,” i.e., not only of sensual appetites, but of all secular pleasures. Rarely is this renunciation supported by the consciousness of the illusory nature of earthly pleasure and the predominance of the pain simultaneously arising from earthly longings, for that requires philosophy, but for the most part the foregoing of earthly felicity is felt as a true sacrifice, whereby the higher mystical religious felicity is to be purchased, so that the subject of it properly speaking never frees himself from the lamentation on the loss of earthly happiness itself. But however that be, the long-suppressed natural impulses surge up from time to time only the more mightily, and the violence of the struggles which the renouncers, certainly in ever rarer but ever more powerful relapses, have to sustain testifies to the magnitude of the torments experienced by them for the sake of the heavenly kingdom, until at last habit and bodily infirmity gradually induce a more equable state.—Of the bodily pains and privations of Asceticism itself I shall be silent, since it is, if decidedly a very effective, yet not indispensable means to the attainment of the religious mystical exaltation.

  When we pass to the lower stages of edification which come into contact with secular life, an item of pain not mentioned above becomes especially important: fear of one’s own unworthiness, doubt of the divine grace, anxiety concerning the future judgment, the fear of the burden of past sins, however small the latter may appear in the eyes of others. Taken all in all, pleasure and pain will weigh tolerably equally even in religious feeling; but should really an excess of pleasure be the result, the possibility of which I should more readily admit in this sphere than in any other (with the exception of art and science), the other consideration must also be taken into account, that this pleasure also is illusory. We have already laid bare this illusion in Chap. ix. B.; it briefly consists in this, that the endeavour immediately to grasp and to enjoy in conscious feeling the identity of the one Unconscious with the conscious subject, which exists in reality and may easily be comprehended by the understanding as rational truth, must in its nature of necessity remain without result, since consciousness cannot possibly transgress its own limits, thus cannot apprehend the Unconscious as such, therefore, also, not the unity of the Unconscious and the conscious individual.

  If the awakening and delivering from illusion is with the progressive evolution of humanity inevitable in any sphere, it is in the religious. One cannot say that the present time of unbelief is just as transitional as, e.g., that of the cultured ancient world at the birth of Christ; although more religious periods than the present may recur, yet a similar era of faith to that of the Catholic Middle Ages has been for ever rendered impossible by the universal modern mental culture. Even the Middle Ages were only possible because classical culture had been buried beneath ruins, and this we have now no more to fear. The more nations cultivate their ra
tional tendencies, the more they come to stand and advance on their own feet, i.e., on their consciousness, the more they lose their mystical talent; this is the provisional talent of youth, the maturity of conscious understanding attends the manhood of nations. We may analogically conclude from the gradual destruction of religious illusions that also the destruction of other illusions will assuredly be in time accomplished, as soon as they are no longer needed as springs of progress, whether they be superseded by other powerful impulses (reason), or the goal be attained in the direction of their special efficiency. So far as the delight of religion consists in the hope of transcendent felicity after death, it will be dealt with later on.

  7. Immorality .—Immoral action or wrong-doing proceeds from the egoism inevitably attending individualism, and consists originally in this, that in order to procure a gratification or to avoid a pain, I inflict on one or several other individuals a greater pain. All other forms of wrong-doing are derived from this original one. It is therefore clear that the essence of wrong or the immoral consists in this, to alter the proportion of pleasure and pain in the world unfavourably to pleasure, since the pain of suffering wrong is greater than the pleasure (or the spared pain) of doing wrong. It follows from this, the greater the immorality the greater the sufferings of the world. (To apply the idea of justice to this proportion is, as has been shown above, altogether inadmissible.) Suppose, then, pleasure and pain were perfectly balanced in the world (which case truly, as one among infinitely many possible proportions, has a priori an infinitely small probability), the existence of immorality would immediately induce the preponderance of pain. In an intrinsically evil world, however, it will cause the cup of misery to overflow the more, as no harm imposed by Fate pains so acutely as that which one’s fellow-beings have inflicted. As regards the vileness, worthlessness, malice, and meanness of mankind, Schopenhauer indulges in vivid descriptions, which can hardly be pronounced overdrawn, and the repetition of which I must here dispense with. Only one thing I will here add, namely, that the imprudence of man often produces the same effect as malignity, in that it is often the cause of the bitterest torments to one’s neighbours, without bringing any advantage or enjoyment, as wickedness manifestly does.