Problema III
PROBLEMA III
Was it ethically defensible of Abraham to conceal his purpose from Sarah, from Eleazar, from Isaac?
The ethical is as such the universal; as the universal it is in turn the disclosed. Seen as an immediate, no more than sensate and psychic being, the individual is concealed. So his ethical task is to unwrap himself from his concealment and become disclosed in the universal. Thus whenever he wants to remain in concealment, he sins and is in a state of temptation, from which he can emerge only by disclosing himself.
We find ourselves again at the same point. Unless there is a concealment which has its basis in the single individual's being higher than the universal, then Abraham's conduct cannot be defended, since he disregarded the intermediate ethical considerations. If, however, there is such a concealment, then we face the paradox, which cannot be mediated, just because it is based on the single individual's being, in his particularity, higher than the universal, and it is precisely the universal that is the mediation. The Hegelian philosophy assumes there is no justified concealment, no justified incommensurability. It is therefore consistent in its requirement of disclosure,83 but it isn't quite fair and square in wanting to regard Abraham as the father of faith and to speak about faith. For faith is not the first immediacy but a later one. The first immediacy is the aesthetic,84 and here the Hegelian philosophy may well be right. But faith is not the aesthetic, or if it is, then faith has never existed just because it has existed always.
It will be best here to look at the whole matter in a purely aesthetic way and for that purpose embark on an aesthetic inquiry, which I would ask the reader for the time being to enter wholeheartedly into, while I for my part will adapt my presentation accordingly. The category I would like to examine a little more closely is that of the interesting, a category that especially today (just because we live in discrimine rerum [at a turning-point in human affairs]) has acquired great importance, for really it is the category of crisis. Therefore one should not, as sometimes happens, when one has been oneself enamoured of it pro virili [with all one's strength], disdain the category because it has passed one by; but neither should one be too greedy for it, for what is certain is that to become of interest, for one's life to be interesting, has nothing to do with what you can turn your hand to but is a fateful privilege which, like every privilege in the world of spirit, can only be purchased in deep pain. Thus Socrates was the most interesting person that has lived, his life the most interesting that has been led, but that existence was allotted to him by the deity, and since he had to work for it he was no stranger to trouble and pain. Taking such an existence in vain ill-becomes someone who takes life seriously, and yet such attempts are nowadays not infrequently observed. The category of the interesting is, moreover, a borderline one, it marks the boundary between the aesthetic and the ethical.85 For that reason in our inquiry we must be constantly glancing over into the territory of ethics, while to give our inquiries weight the problem must be grasped with genuine aesthetic feeling.86 These days ethics rarely considers such things. The reason is supposed to be that there is no room for them in the System. But then doing so in monographs should be all right; and besides, if one doesn't want to be long-winded about it one can achieve the same results by being brief, so long as one has the predicate in one's power; for a predicate or two can reveal a whole world. Is there no room in the System for little words like these?
Aristotle says in his immortal Poetics: ‘duo men oun tou muthou meri, peri taut’ esti, peripeteia kai anagnorisis’ (cf. Ch. 11) [‘… indeed two parts in the myth, namely sudden change of fortune [the reverse (on which the plot of a tragedy turns) ] and recognition, concern these things’]. Naturally only the second feature, anagnorisis, recognition, concerns me here. Whenever there is recognition there is eo ipso a question of prior concealment. Just as the recognition is the resolving factor, or the element of relaxation in the life of drama, so is concealment the element of tension. What Aristotle says earlier in the same chapter in respect of the consequences for the worth of tragedy of the question whether peripeteia and anagnorisis clash, as well as of the ‘single’ and ‘double’ recognition,87 I cannot go into here, even though the sincerity and quiet absorption of Aristotle's discussion have an inevitable attraction for one long since tired of the superficial omniscience of the synopticists. A general observation must suffice. In Greek tragedy concealment (and therefore recognition) is an epic survival based on a fate in which the dramatic action disappears from view, and from which it acquires its obscure and enigmatic origin. This is why the effect produced by a Greek tragedy bears a resemblance to the impression given by a marble statue that lacks the power of the eye. Greek tragedy is blind. Hence it takes a certain abstraction to appreciate it. A son murders his father, but not until later learns it is his father.88 A sister is about to sacrifice her brother, but at the decisive moment discovers that is who it is.89 Tragedy of this nature is less apt to interest our reflective age. Modern drama has given up the idea of Fate, has in dramatic respects emancipated itself; it observes, it looks in upon itself, takes fate up into its dramatic consciousness. Concealment and disclosure then become the hero's free act, for which he is responsible.
Recognition and concealment are also an essential part of modern drama. It would take us too far to give examples. I am courteous enough to assume that everyone in this so aesthetically voluptuous age, so potent and aroused that conception occurs as easily as with the partridge which, Aristotle says, needs only to hear the voice of the cock or its flight overhead90 – to assume that at the mere sound of the word ‘concealment’ everyone can easily shake a dozen romances and comedies from his sleeve. I can therefore be brief and offer straightaway a fairly broad observation. If the person doing the hiding, i.e. the one who puts the dramatic yeast into the play, hides something nonsensical, we have comedy. But if the concealer is related to the idea, he may come close to being a tragic hero. To give just one example of the comic. A man puts on make-up and wears a wig. The same man wants to have success with the fair sex, and is sure enough of conquests with the help of the make-up and wig, which there is no doubt make him irresistible. He captures a girl and is on the pinnacle of joy. But now for the point. If he can admit his deception, will he not lose all of his powers of fascination once he is revealed as a quite ordinary, in fact even bald-headed male? Doesn't he have to lose the loved one again? Concealment is his free action, for which aesthetics holds him responsible. But that discipline is no friend of bald hypocrites, and will leave him to the mercy of our laughter. Let that suffice as a hint of what I mean, since we cannot include comedy in the terms of this investigation.
My procedure here must be to let concealment pass dialectically between aesthetics and ethics, for the point is to show how absolutely different the paradox and aesthetic concealment are from one another.
A few examples. A girl is secretly in love, though neither party has openly confessed its love to the other. Her parents force her to marry another (she may even be motivated out of considerations of duty). She obeys. She hides her love ‘so as not to make the other unhappy, and no one will ever know what she suffers’. – Or a young lad is in a position, just by dropping one word, to possess the object of his craving and restless dreams. But that little word will compromise, yes, even, who knows, ruin an entire family. He nobly chooses to stay in concealment, ‘the girl must never know, so that she can perhaps find happiness with another’. What a pity that these two, both concealed from their respective loved ones, are also concealed from one another! For otherwise a remarkable higher unity might have been brought about. – Their concealment is a free act, for which even aesthetically they are responsible. However, aesthetics is a respectful and sentimental discipline which knows more ways of fixing things than any assistant house-manager. So what does it do? It does everything possible for the lovers. By means of a coincidence the respective partners in the projected marriages get wind of the other party's noble decision. Explanations follow. They get each other and as a bonus the rank of real heroes as well; for notwithstanding they have had no time even to sleep on their heroic resolutions, aesthetics sees it as if they had bravely fought for their goal over many years. For aesthetics doesn't bother much about time; it goes just as quickly whether in jest or earnest.
But ethics knows nothing either of this coincidence or this sentimentality. Nor does it have such a rapid concept of time. Thus the matter acquires a different complexion. You can't argue with ethics, because it uses pure categories. It doesn't appeal to experience, which of all laughable things is perhaps the most laughable and, far from making a man wise, if he knows nothing higher it will sooner make him mad. Ethics has no coincidence, so no explanations follow; it doesn't flirt with thoughts of dignity, it puts an enormous burden of responsibility on the hero's frail shoulders; it condemns as presumptuous his thought of wanting to play providence in his action, but also condemns him for wanting to do likewise with his suffering. It enjoins the belief in reality and the courage to contend with all its tribulations, rather than with those bloodless sufferings he has taken on himself by his own responsibility; it warns against putting faith in the calculating shrewdness of reason, more treacherous than the oracles of the ancients. It warns against all misplaced magnanimity. Let reality decide the occasion, that is the time to show courage. But then ethics, too, will offer every possible assistance. If something deeper had been stirring in those two, however, if there had been a seriousness to see the task, to set about it, then no doubt something would have come of them. But ethics cannot help them. Ethics is offended because they are keeping a secret from it, a secret they have incurred on their own responsibility.
Thus aesthetics called for concealment and rewarded it. Ethics called for disclosure and punished concealment.
Sometimes, however, even aesthetics calls for disclosure. When the hero held captive in the aesthetic illusion believes he can save another by his silence, aesthetics calls for silence and rewards it. But when the hero's action involves interfering in another person's life, it calls for disclosure. Now I am talking of the tragic hero. Consider for a moment Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis. Agamemnon is about to sacrifice Iphigenia. Now aesthetics calls for Agamemnon's silence, in so far as it would be unworthy of the hero to seek another's consolation, just as he should keep it quiet as long as possible for the women's sake. On the other hand the hero, to be that, has also to be tested in the terrible temptation incurred by the tears of Clytemnestra and Iphigenia. What does aesthetics do? It has a way out; it has an old servant standing by who discloses everything to Clytemnestra.91 And now everything is as it should be.
Ethics, however, has no coincidence, and no old servant standing by. The aesthetic idea contradicts itself as soon as it is applied in reality. Ethics therefore demands disclosure. The tragic hero demonstrates exactly this ethical courage by, not himself being captive to the aesthetic illusion, taking it upon himself to tell Iphigenia her fate. In this the tragic hero is the beloved son of ethics, in whom she is well pleased. If he remains silent, it may be because by doing so he makes it easier for others, or it could also be because it makes it easier for himself. But the tragic hero knows he is free of the latter incentive. In keeping silent here he would be assuming responsibility as an individual, inasmuch as he is impervious to any argument from outside. But this, as tragic hero, he cannot do; for it is just in so far as he continues to express the universal that ethics loves him. His heroic action requires courage, but part of that courage is that he shirks no argument. Now tears, certainly, are a terrible argumentum ad hominem,92 and there are no doubt those whom nothing else touches but who can still be stirred by tears. The play lets Iphigenia weep, in fact like Jephthah's daughter she should have been allowed two months to weep, not in solitude but at her father's feet, to use all her art ‘which is but tears’, and twine herself instead of the olive branch about his knees (cf. v. 1224).93
Aesthetics required disclosure but availed itself of a coincidence; ethics required disclosure and found satisfaction in the tragic hero.
For all the strictness of the ethical requirement of disclosure, it cannot be denied that secrecy and silence, as determinants of inner feeling, really make for greatness in a man. When Amor leaves Psyche he says to her, ‘You will give birth to a child who will be divine if you say nothing, but human if you betray the secret.’ The tragic hero, the darling of ethics, is a purely human being, and he is someone I can understand, someone all of whose undertakings are in the open. If I go further I always run up against the paradox, the divine and the demonic; for silence is both of these. It is the demon's lure, and the more silent one keeps the more terrible the demon becomes; but silence is also divinity's communion with the individual.
Before coming back to the story of Abraham, however, I would like to present some poetic personages. By exercising the power of dialectic over them I shall keep them at extremes, and by waving the scourge of despair over them I should prevent them from standing still, so that in their anguish they might perhaps bring something or other to light.*
Aristotle tells in his Politics of a political disturbance in Delphi, arising from a marriage. The bridegroom, for whom the augurs95 had predicted a misfortune as a result of his forthcoming marriage, at the crucial moment, when he is to fetch the bride, suddenly changes his plans – he won't go through with the wedding. That is all I need.† In Delphi this surely did not pass off without tears. If a poet took it up he could doubtless count on arousing sympathy. Is it not terrible that the love so often excluded in life should here also be deprived of the aid of heaven? Isn't the old proverb that marriages are made in heaven here put to shame? Usually it is the trials and tribulations of finitude which, like evil spirits, would separate the lovers, while love itself has heaven on its side and this holy alliance overwhelms all foes. Here it is heaven itself that separates what heaven, after all, has joined together. Who would have guessed? The young bride least of all. A moment earlier she was sitting in her room in all her beauty, and the sweet young maids had adorned her with such care that they would be prepared to justify their handiwork before the whole world, that it gave them more than happiness, it even made them envious – yes, even happy that they couldn't be even more envious, since she could not have been more beautiful. Sitting there alone in her room she was then transfigured from one beauty to another; for all that a woman's art could accomplish had been turned virtuously to the embellishment of virtue. But there still lacked something the young girl had not dreamed of, a veil, finer, lighter, and yet more concealing than the one in which the young maids had enveloped her, a bridal gown no maid had knowledge of or could help her with, even the bride herself did not know how to put it on. It was an unseen, friendly influence which takes satisfaction in adorning a bride and wraps itself around her without her knowledge, for all she saw was the bridegroom walking by on his way to the temple. She saw the door close after him, and she became even more calm and blissful, for she knew that he now belonged to her more than ever. The temple door opened, he stepped out, but demurely she turned her gaze down and so did not see that his face was troubled. Yet he saw that heaven must be jealous of the bride's loveliness and of his good fortune. The temple door opened, the young maids saw the bridegroom step out, but they did not see that his face was troubled, for they were busy about bringing the bride. Then she came forward in all her maidenly modesty, and yet like a mistress surrounded by her cortège of young maids of honour, who curtsied before her as a young maid always curtsies before a bride. Thus at the head of her lovely troupe she stood and waited – it was but a moment, for the temple was close by – and the bridegroom came, but he passed by her door.
But here I break off. I am not a poet, I only practise dialectics. One should note first of all that it is at the crucial moment that the hero learns what is in store, so he is pure and blameless, hasn't bound himself irresponsibly to the loved one. Second, it is a divine utterance he has before him, or rather against him,96 so he is not ruled like those feeble lovers and sweethearts by conceit. Further, it goes without saying that this utterance makes him just as unhappy as the bride, indeed rather more so since after all he is the occasion. True, the augurs only predicted a misfortune for him, but the question is whether the misfortune is not of such a nature as to affect also their marital happiness. So what is he to do? (1) Is he to remain silent and get married and think ‘Perhaps the misfortune won't come right away, and anyway I have been true to my love and not afraid to make myself unhappy; but I must remain silent, otherwise even the brief moment is lost.’ This sounds plausible but is in fact by no means so, for in this he insults the girl. By keeping silent he has in a way made her guilty, for had she known the truth she would never have given her consent to such a union. So in the hour of need he will have to bear not only the misfortune but also the responsibility for not having said anything, as well as her righteous anger at his not having said anything. (2) Is he to remain silent and not get married? In that case he must enter into a deception in which he annihilates himself in his relation to her. Aesthetics might approve of this. The catastrophe could then be fashioned as in the real story except that at the last moment there would be explanations, though too late since aesthetically it will be necessary to let him die, unless that discipline can see its way to revoking the fateful prophecy. Yet, noble as this conduct may be, it involves an insult to the girl and the reality of her love. (3) Is he to speak? Naturally one mustn't forget that our hero is a little too poetic for the giving up of his love to have no importance except as an unsuccessful business venture. If he speaks, then the whole thing becomes an unfortunate love-story in the vein of Axel and Valborg.97 They will be a couple whom heaven itself puts asunder. Nevertheless in the present case this separation is to be conceived somewhat differently, since it, too, is also the result of the free acts of the individuals. For what is so very difficult with the dialectic in this case is that the misfortune is to affect only him. These two, then, do not find a common expression of their suffering, as do Axel and Valborg, whom heaven separates equally from each other because they are equally close to each other.* If that were the case here, a way out could be found. For since heaven uses no visible power to separate them, but leaves it to them, one could well imagine that they ended united in defiance of heaven together with its misfortune.
Ethics, however, will require him to speak. The essence of his valour in that case is to be found in his giving up his aesthetic high-mindedness, which here could hardly be thought to contain any admixture of the vanity connected with concealment, since it must be clear to him that he still makes the girl unhappy. The reality of this heroism is based, however, on its having had and cancelled its presupposition [that he genuinely loved her and kept quiet for her sake and not his – translator's addition]; for otherwise we would get heroes enough, particularly in our own time which has acquired a matchless proficiency in the forgery that does the highest by skipping over what lies in between.
But why this sketch if I nevertheless come no further than the tragic hero? Because it might still throw light on the paradox. That all depends on our hero's relationship to that utterance of the augur's, which in one way or another is going to decide the course of his life. Is this utterance publici juris [public property] or is it a privatissimum [private matter]? The scene is laid in Greece; an augur's utterance is intelligible to all – I don't mean just in the sense that the individual can grasp the content lexically, but that the individual can understand that what an augur is conveying to him is a decision of heaven's. So the augur's utterance is intelligible not just to the hero but to everyone and results in no private relation to the divine. Turn where he will, what was prophesied will happen, and neither by doing anything nor by refraining from doing anything will he come into a closer relationship with the divine, become an object either of divine mercy or of divine wrath. The outcome will be as understandable to anyone as to the hero, and there is no secret writing that only the hero can read. So should he want to speak he can perfectly well do so, for he can make himself understood; and if he wants to remain silent it is because he wants, by virtue of being the single individual, to be higher than the universal, wants to delude himself with all manner of phantasies about how she will soon forget this sorrow, etc. On the other hand, if the will of heaven had not been announced to him by an augur, if it had been made known to him in some quite private way, if it had placed itself in a quite private relationship to him, then we are with the paradox – supposing there is such a thing (since my reflections here have the form of a dilemma) – then he could not speak however much he might wish to. He would not enjoy his own silence but suffer the pain, yet for him just this would be the assurance he needed that he did right. So the reason for his silence would not be a wish to place himself as the single individual in an absolute relation to the universal, but to be placed as the single individual in an absolute relationship to the absolute. In this, so far as I can tell, he would also be able to find repose, whereas the requirements of the ethical would be constantly disturbing his high-minded silence. One only wishes that aesthetics might try to start where for so many years it has ended, with the illusion of high-mindedness. As soon as it did so it would work hand in hand with religion, for that is the only power capable of rescuing the aesthetic from its conflict with the ethical. Queen Elizabeth sacrifices to the State her love for Essex by signing his death-warrant.98 That was a deed of heroism, even if some private resentment had a hand in it because he hadn't sent her the ring. We know that he did send it, but it was held back through the malice of some lady-in-waiting. Elizabeth is said, ni fallor [if I am not mistaken], to have been informed of this, and sat for ten days with one finger in her mouth, biting it without saying a word, and then she died. That would be something for a poet who knew how to wrench open the mouth; otherwise it would be of use at best to a ballet master, with whom nowadays the poet no doubt too often confuses himself.
I now want to follow this by a sketch along the lines of the demonic. For this I shall use the legend of Agnete and the Merman.99 The merman is a seducer who rises up from concealment in the depths, and in wild desire grasps and breaks the innocent flower standing in all its charm by the shore, pensively bending its head to the ocean's roar. That is what the poets have so far made of it. Let us make a change. The merman was a seducer. He has called out to Agnete, with his smooth talk has coaxed from her her secret thoughts. She has found in the merman what she was seeking, what she gazed down to find in the depths of the sea. Agnete is willing to follow him down. The merman has taken her into his arms, Agnete twines hers about his neck trustingly and with all her soul she abandons herself to the stronger one. He is already at the sea-edge, bending over the water to dive down with his prey. Then Agnete looks at him again, not fearfully, not questioningly, not proud of her good luck, not intoxicated with desire, but in absolute faith, with absolute humility, like the humble flower she deemed herself to be; with absolute confidence she entrusts to him her entire fate. – And look! The ocean roars no more, its wild voice is stilled, nature's passion – which is the merman's strength – deserts him, the sea becomes dead calm. And still Agnete is looking at him in this way. Then the merman collapses, he is unable to resist the power of innocence, his element becomes unfaithful to him, he cannot seduce Agnete. He leads her home again, he explains to her that he only wanted to show her how beautiful the sea is when it is calm, and Agnete believes him. Then he turns back alone, and the ocean rages, but more wildly still rages the merman's despair. He can seduce Agnete, he can seduce hundreds of Agnetes, he can charm any girl – but Agnete has triumphed and the merman has lost her. Only as his prize can she become his; he cannot belong faithfully to any girl, for he is only a merman. I have allowed myself a slight modification* in the merman. In fact I have slightly altered Agnete too. In the legend Agnete is by no means guiltless – and in general it is nonsense and sheer coquetry as well as an insult to the female sex to imagine a seduction where the girl is in no way, in no way at all, to blame. In the legend Agnete is, to modernize my expression somewhat, a woman who hankers for ‘the interesting’, and one such can always be certain there is a merman in the offing; for mermen keep a weather-eye open for the likes of these and they make for them like a shark for its prey. It is therefore very foolish to suppose (or is it a rumour spread abroad by the merman?) that so-called refinement protects a girl from seduction. No, life is more just and fair; there is only one means of protection, it is innocence.
We will now give the merman a human consciousness, and let his being a merman indicate a human pre-existence in the consequences of which his life has become entangled. There is nothing to prevent his being a hero; for the step he now takes is reconciliatory. He is saved by Agnete, the seducer is crushed, he has bowed to the power of innocence, he can never seduce again. But immediately two powers claim control of him: repentance [alone] and repentance with Agnete. If repentance alone takes possession of him he remains concealed, if repentance and Agnete take possession of him he is disclosed.
Now in so far as repentance alone grips the merman and he remains concealed, then he must certainly make Agnete unhappy; for Agnete loved him in all her innocence, she believed him that moment when even to her he seemed changed, however well he concealed it, and said he only wanted to show her the beautiful calm of the sea. However, as far as passion is concerned, the merman himself becomes even more unhappy; for he loved Agnete with a multiplicity of passions and has a new guilt to bear besides. The demonic side of repentance will now no doubt explain to him that this is precisely his punishment, and the more it torments him the better.
If he gives in to this demonic possibility, he may make one more attempt to save Agnete, in the way one can in a sense save someone by resort to evil. He knows Agnete loves him. If he can only tear this love away from her she will in a way be saved. But how to do that? The merman has too much sense to reckon that a candid confession will arouse her disgust. Then perhaps he will try to arouse all dark passions in her, scorn her, mock her, hold her love up to ridicule, if possible stir up her pride. He will spare himself no torment, for this is the deep contradiction in the demonic and in a sense there dwells infinitely more good in a demonic than in a superficial person. The more selfish Agnete is, the more easily she will be deceived (only those with very little experience think it easy to deceive innocence, life is very profound and it is the astute who find it easiest to trick one another), but all the more terribly the merman will suffer. The more ingeniously contrived his deception the less will Agnete bashfully hide her own pain from him; she will use every means, not without effect, not, that is, to shake him loose but to torment him.
By means of the demonic the merman would thus aspire to be the single individual who as the particular is higher than the universal. The demonic has that same property as the divine, that the individual can enter into an absolute relationship to it. This is the analogue, the counterpart to the paradox we are discussing. It therefore bears a certain resemblance to it that can prove misleading. Thus the merman apparently has the proof of the justification of his silence that it is because of it that he suffers all his pain. However, there is no doubt that he can speak. So he can be a tragic hero, to my mind a tragic hero on the grand scale, if he does speak. Perhaps only few will understand what the grandeur consists in.* He will then have the courage to free himself of all self-deception about being able to make Agnete happy by his art; he will have the courage to crush Agnete, humanly speaking. Here I will just add a psychological observation. The more selfish we make Agnete, the more effective the self-deception will be, indeed it is not inconceivable that with his demonic astuteness a merman might in reality not only have, humanly speaking, saved Agnete but brought something exceptional out of her. A demon knows how to torture powers out of even the weakest person, and in his way he can have the best intentions towards a human being.
The merman stands at a dialectical extremity. If he is saved from the demonic side of repentance two paths are possible. He can hold himself back, remain in hiding, but not depend on his astuteness. In that case he does not come as the single individual into an absolute relation to the demonic, but finds repose in the counter-paradox that the divine will save Agnete. (This is how the movement would have been made in the Middle Ages, for on its conception the merman has obviously dedicated himself to the monastery.101) Or else he can be saved through Agnete. Now this must not be understood as meaning that Agnete's love might save him from being a seducer in the future (that is an aesthetic rescue attempt, which always avoids the main issue, namely the continuity in the merman's life); in that respect he is already saved. He will be saved in so far as he is disclosed. So he marries Agnete. But he must still resort to the paradox. For when through his own guilt the individual has come out of the universal, he can only return to it on the strength of having come, as the particular, into an absolute relation to the absolute. Here I will insert a comment which takes us further than anything that has been said anywhere in the foregoing.* Sin is not the first immediacy, sin is a later immediacy. In sin the individual is already in terms of the demonic paradox higher than the universal, because it is a contradiction on the part of the universal to want to impose itself on someone who lacks the conditio sine qua non [the necessary condition].102 Should philosophy, amongst its other conceits, imagine that someone might actually want to follow its precepts in practice, a curious comedy would emerge. An ethics that ignores sin is an altogether futile discipline, but once it postulates sin it has eo ipso [thereby] gone beyond itself. Philosophy tells us that the immediate is to be superseded [ophævet, German aufgehoben]. True enough, but what is not true is that sin, any more than faith, is without further ado the immediate.
Everything goes smoothly so long as I move in these spheres, but in fact not even what is said here helps to explain Abraham. He did not become the single individual through sin; on the contrary he was that righteous man who is God's chosen. So any analogy with Abraham will only surface after the individual has become capable of accomplishing the universal, and now the paradox is repeated.
I can therefore understand the movements of the merman, but I cannot understand Abraham. It is to realize the universal that the merman has recourse to the paradox. If he stays hidden and dedicates himself to all the torments of repentance, he becomes a demon, and as such is brought to nothing. If he stays hidden but entertains no clever thoughts about being able to extricate Agnete at the cost of his own torment in the bondage of repentance, he will no doubt find peace but is lost to the world. If he discloses himself, lets himself be saved through Agnete, then he is the greatest human being I can imagine. It is only aesthetics which irresponsibly thinks it can praise the power of love by letting the lost man be loved by an innocent girl and saved thereby. Only aesthetics mistakes what it sees and thinks the girl rather than the merman is the hero. So the merman cannot belong to Agnete before, after making the infinite movement of repentance, he has made one more movement, that on the strength of the absurd. His own strength suffices for the movement of repentance, but it calls for absolutely all his energies, and it is therefore impossible for him by his own strength to return and grasp reality. If one lacks sufficient passion to make either movement, when one scrimps through life, repenting a little and thinking the rest will take care of itself, one has given up living in the idea once and for all, and then it is very easy to reach, and help others reach, the highest; i.e. delude oneself and others with the notion that the world of spirit is like Gnavspil [a card game], where everyone cheats. So one can amuse oneself by reflecting how strange it is that just in an age when everyone can reach the highest there should be such widespread doubt about the immortality of the soul; since even someone who has only, but genuinely, made the movement of infinity can scarcely be called a doubter. The conclusions of passion are the only reliable, i.e. the only convincing, ones. Fortunately life is in this case more kindly, more faithful, than the wise would have it. It excludes no one, not even the humblest; it tricks nobody, for in the world of spirit the only people who are tricked are those who trick themselves. It is the general opinion, and as far as I dare be my own judge, also my own, that entering the monastery is not the highest. But I by no means believe on that account that the fact that nobody goes into monasteries today means that we are all greater than those profound and earnest souls who found repose there. How many people are there now with the passion to think this thought and then judge themselves honestly? The very idea of thus taking time on one's conscience, of giving conscience time to search out with its sleepless perseverance every secret thought, so that unless one is making the movement every instant on the strength of what is noblest and most holy in a human being one can discover with anguish and horror,* and call forth by anguish itself if by nothing else, the dark passions which after all lie concealed in every human life, whereas living in society with others one so easily forgets, so easily avoids, is in so many ways held above all this, gets the chance to start again – this very idea, grasped with decent respect, I would have thought could in itself chasten many an individual in this age of ours which thinks it has already reached the highest. Yet such things worry people little in this age that thinks it has reached the heights, though no age has fallen so much victim to the comic than ours. Indeed it is hard to grasp why it hasn't already given birth, by a generatio æquivoca [spontaneous generation], to its hero, that demon who will stage without scruple that horrifying play that reduces the whole age to laughter and to unconsciousness of the fact that it is laughing at itself. Indeed what more is life worth than to be laughed at when people have already reached the highest by the time they are twenty? And yet what higher movement has the age come up with since people gave up entering monasteries? Is it not a contemptible worldliness, a circumspection and pusillanimity that sits at the head of the table, cravenly making people think they have reached the highest, and even slyly dissuading them from trying anything less? A person who has made the monastery movement has only one movement to go, that of the absurd. How many nowadays understand what the absurd is, how many live in such a way as to have renounced or gained everything, how many are even simply honest enough to know what they are and what they can and cannot do? And is it not true that if there are such, they are mostly to be found among the less educated and in part among women? Just as a demonic person always reveals himself without understanding himself, our age betrays its own defects in a kind of clairvoyance, for it is always calling for the comical. If that was really what it needed then perhaps the theatre would need a new play in which someone's dying for love was treated as comedy. Or would it not be better for our age if that were really to happen, if it were actually to witness such an occurrence, so that it might acquire the courage to believe in the power of spirit, the courage to stop abjectly stifling its better impulses, stop jealously stifling them in others – with laughter? Does the age really need a ridiculous Erscheinung [appearance, show] of an enthusiast in order to have something to laugh at? Or does it not rather need such an enthusiastic figure in reality to remind it of what it has forgotten?
If one wants a scenario along similar lines but more moving because the passion of repentance is not awakened, one can use a story from the Book of Tobit.103 The young Tobias wishes to marry Sarah, the daughter of Raguel and Edna. But the girl is surrounded in tragedy. She has been betrothed to seven men all of whom have died in the bride's house. For my scenario this is a flaw in the story, since there is something almost irresistibly comical in the thought of a girl's seven vain attempts to get married, although so near success, as near as a student who fails his finals seven times. The Book of Tobit places the accent elsewhere and that makes the high number important and in a certain sense even contributes to the tragic effect. It enhances the young Tobias's high-mindedness, partly because he is his parents’ only son (6.14), partly because the deterrent obtrudes the more strongly. So this feature must be omitted. Sarah, then, is a girl who has never been in love, who still nurtures a young girl's notion of bliss, her immense mortgage in life, her Vollmachtbrief zum Glücke [authorization for happiness]104 – to love a man with all her heart. And yet she is the most unhappy of all, for she knows that the evil demon that loves her will kill the bridegroom on the wedding night. I have read of much sorrow, but I doubt if anywhere there is a sorrow as deep as that residing in the life of that girl. Nevertheless when the misfortune comes from outside there is a certain consolation. If life fails to bring a person what would make him happy, it is still a comfort that he could have received it. But the unfathomable sorrow which no time can disperse, no time heal, is to know that it would be no use even if life were to do everything! A Greek author conceals so infinitely much in his crude naïveté when he says: ‘pantos gar oudeis Erota epfugen i feuksetai mechri an kallos i kai ofthalmoi Bleposin’ [‘… for certainly no one has yet altogether escaped love, and none shall so long as there is beauty and eyes to see’] (cf. Longi Pastoralia).105 Many a girl has been made unhappy in love, but she became unhappy; Sarah was so before she became it. It is hard enough that one should not find the one to whom one can devote oneself, but unspeakably hard to be unable to devote oneself. A young girl surrenders herself to someone and then she is said no longer to be free, but Sarah was never free and yet never surrendered herself to anyone. It is hard enough that a girl should surrender herself to someone and be deceived by her love, but Sarah was deceived before she surrendered herself. What world of sorrow is not contained in what follows, when at length Tobias wishes to marry Sarah! What wedding-rites, what preparations! No girl was ever cheated as Sarah. She was cheated of the most blessed of all things, the absolute wealth which even the poorest girl possesses, cheated of the secure, unbounded, unfettered, unbridled self-surrender of devotion. For first there had to be the ritual of purification by placing the heart of a fish and its liver on glowing embers. And what a mother's leave-taking of the daughter who, just as she herself has been cheated of everything, must also cheat her own mother of her most beautiful possession. One just reads the narrative.106 Edna prepared the chamber and brought Sarah into it and wept, and she received the tears of her daughter – and said to her, ‘My child, take heart. The Lord of heaven and earth may exchange your sorrow for joy. Daughter, take heart.’ And now the moment for the wedding. We read on, if we can for tears: ‘But when the door was shut and they were together, Tobias rose from the bed and said, “Rise up, sister, and we will pray that the Lord may have mercy on us” ’ (8.4).
Were a poet to read this story and use it, I wager a hundred to one he would place all the emphasis on the young Tobias. The heroism of being willing to risk his life in such obvious danger, of which the narrative reminds us once again, for the morning after the wedding Raguel says to Edna: ‘Send one of the maids to see if he is still alive, so that, if not, we can bury him and no one will know it’ (cf. 8.13) – this heroism would have been the theme for the poet. I venture to propose another. Certainly Tobias acted gallantly, resolutely, and chivalrously, but any man who lacks courage to do that is a milksop who knows neither what love is nor what it is to be a man, nor what is worth living for. He has not even grasped the little mystery that it is better to give than to receive, and has no inkling of what the great mystery is, namely that it is much harder to receive than to give, that is if one has had the courage to go without and did not prove a coward in the hour of need. No, Sarah is the heroine. Her I would like to draw close to as I have drawn close to no other girl, or been tempted to draw close in thought to anyone of whom I have read. For what love for God it takes to want to be healed when one has been crippled from the start for no fault of one's own, an unsuccessful specimen of humanity from the very beginning! What ethical maturity to take on the responsibility of allowing the loved one such an act of daring! What humility before another person! What faith in God that in the next instant she should not hate the man to whom she owed everything!
Let Sarah be a man and the demonic will not be far away. A proud and noble nature can endure everything, but one thing it cannot endure, it cannot endure pity. Pity implies an indignity that for such a person can only be inflicted from above, for in himself he can never become an object of pity. If he has sinned he can endure the punishment without despairing, but to be singled out from his mother's womb as an object of pity, a sweet fragrance in pity's nostrils, that he cannot bear. Pity has a curious dialectic; one moment it calls for guilt, the next it wants to do away with it, and so to be predestined to pity is the more dreadful the greater the individual's misfortune lies in the direction of the spiritual. But no guilt attaches to Sarah, she is thrown as a prey to every suffering and on top of that has to be tortured by human sympathy, for even I who admire her more than Tobias loves her, even I cannot mention her name without exclaiming ‘The poor girl!’ Let a man take Sarah's place, let him know that if he is to love a girl an infernal spirit will come and murder her on the wedding night, then he would certainly be likely to choose the demonic, shut himself up in himself and say in his heart, as does the demonic nature, ‘Thanks, I am no friend of ceremony and fuss, I don't at all insist on the pleasures of love, I can just as well be a Bluebeard who gets his pleasure seeing girls die on their wedding night.’ One generally hears very little about the demonic, in spite of this territory's having a peculiarly valid claim to discovery in our time, and notwithstanding that once he knows how to establish a certain rapport with the demon an observer can, at least in some respect or other, use almost anyone as an example. In this respect Shakespeare is and will always remain a hero. That horrid demon, the most demonic figure Shakespeare ever portrayed, and did so incomparably, Gloucester (later Richard III), what made him a demon? Obviously that he could not endure the pity that had been piled on him from childhood. His monologue in the first act of King Richard III is worth more than all moral systems, none of which bears a hint of the terrors of existence and of their nature.
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them… 107
Natures like Gloucester's cannot be saved by mediating them into an idea of society. Ethics really only makes fun of them, just as it would make a mockery of Sarah if it were to say to her, ‘Why don't you express the universal and get married?’ Such natures are aboriginally in the paradox, and they are by no means less perfect than others; it is only that they are either damned in the demonic paradox or delivered in the divine. Now people have been pleased to think from time immemorial that witches, gnomes, trolls, etc. are misshapen creatures, and it is undeniable that we all have a tendency when we see a misshapen person directly to link this idea with that of moral perversion. But what colossal injustice! It should really be the other way around. It is life itself that has corrupted them, as a stepmother makes degenerates of her stepchildren.108 To be put outside the universal from the start, by nature or by historical circumstance, that is the beginning of the demonic, and the individual can hardly be blamed for that. So Cumberland's Jew is also a demon notwithstanding his beneficence.109 Thus the demonic can also express itself in contempt for men, a contempt which it should nevertheless be noted does not make the demonic person himself act contemptuously; on the contrary his strength is his knowledge that he is better than all who pass judgement on him. – On all such matters the poets should be the first to make a stir. God knows what books our young versifiers are reading these days! Their studies are no doubt confined to learning rhymes by rote. Heaven knows what importance they have in life! Just now I couldn't honestly tell you whether they are good for anything but to give us edifying proof of the immortality of the soul, to the extent at least that one can safely say of them what Baggesen says of the city's poet, Kildevalle: ‘if he is immortal then we all are’.110 – What has been said here about Sarah, almost in the style of a poetic production, appealing therefore in effect only to the imagination, finds its full significance if out of psychological interest one probes the meaning of the old saying: ‘nullum unquam exstitit magnum ingenium sine aliqua dementia’ [‘there was never great genius without some madness’].111 For the dementia here is the genius's suffering in life, is the expression, if I may say so, of divine jealousy, while genius itself is the mark of divine favour. Thus the genius is disorientated from the start in relation to the universal and put into relation to the paradox, whether, in despair over his own limitation, which in his own eyes turns his omnipotence into impotence, he seeks a demonic reassurance and therefore will not admit the limitation to either God or man, or he reassures himself religiously in love for the divine. There are psychological topics here to which it seems to me one could happily devote a lifetime, and yet we so rarely hear a word about them. How is madness related to genius? Can the one be constructed out of the other? In what sense and to what extent is the genius master of his own madness? For it goes without saying that to some degree he is indeed its master, otherwise he would really be mad. Performing such observations requires, however, a high order of ingenuity as well as love, since performing observations on people of superior talent is extremely difficult. If one bears this in mind in reading some of those authors most celebrated for their genius, it is conceivable that one might just, once in a while, though only with great effort, find out something.
I would like to consider one more case of an individual wanting to save the universal by his concealment and silence. I shall take the legend of Faust. Faust is a doubter,* an apostate of the spirit who goes the way of the flesh. This is how the poets see it, and although it is repeated over and over again that every age has its Faust, poets still doggedly follow one another down this same beaten path. Let us make a slight change. Faust is a doubter kat'eksochen [in an eminent sense]; but he has a sympathetic nature. Even in Goethe's understanding of Faust I miss a deeper psychological insight into the secret conversations which doubt has with itself. Nowadays, when indeed all have experienced doubt, no poet has as yet made a move in this direction. I could think of offering them Royal Securities to write on, to put down ‘all’ they have experienced in this regard – for it is unlikely that what they have to say will take more than the left-hand margin.
Only when one turns Faust back in on himself in this way – only then can the doubt appear poetically, only then does he himself genuinely discover in reality all its sufferings. Then he knows it is spirit that sustains life, but he also knows that the security and happiness people live in are not supported by the power of spirit but can be readily explained as unreflective bliss. As a doubter, as the doubter, he is above all that, and if someone wants to deceive him into supposing that he had put doubt behind him, he easily sees through that. One who has made a movement in the world of spirit, hence an infinite movement, can tell at once from the spoken line whether the speaker is a man of experience or a Münchhausen. What a Tamerlane could do with his Huns,112 Faust knows he can do with his doubt – frighten people out of their wits, make the very world shake under their feet, send people scattering in every direction, and cause the cry of alarm to sound from every quarter. And if he does that he is still not a Tamerlane, for having the warrant of thought he is in a sense authorized to act in this way. But Faust has a sympathetic nature, he loves life, his soul knows no envy, he sees he would be unable to prevent the landslide that would no doubt be set in motion, he has no wish for Herostratic honour113 – he remains silent, he hides his doubt in his soul more assiduously than the girl the fruit of her sinful love beneath her heart, he tries as well as he can to walk in step with others, but as far as what goes on inside him, that he consumes internally and in this way he makes himself a sacrifice to the universal.
Sometimes, when some eccentric raises the whirlwind of doubt, one hears the complaint: ‘If only he had kept quiet.’ Faust too represents this notion. Anyone with any idea of what it means to live on spirit knows also what the hunger of doubt means, and that the doubter hungers just as much for the daily bread of life as for the sustenance of spirit. Even though all the pain Faust suffers can be a fairly good argument for its not being pride that possesses him, I shall nevertheless avail myself of a small precautionary device which is easy enough for me to come by, who, just as Gregory of Rimini was called tortor infantium because he subscribed to the damnation of infants, might be tempted to call myself tortor heroum114 – I am very inventive when it comes to torturing heroes. Faust sees Marguerite – not after he has chosen the life of pleasure, since my Faust doesn't choose pleasure at all – he sees Marguerite not in Mephistopheles's concave mirror but in all her lovable innocence, and because his soul has preserved its love for humankind he can also very well fall in love with her. But he is a doubter, his doubt has destroyed reality for him. So ideal is my Faust that he is not one of those scientific doubters who doubt for an hour every term at the lectern but can otherwise do anything, as indeed they do without the help of spirit or on its strength. He is a doubter, and the doubter hungers as much for his daily slice of joy as for the nourishment of spirit. But still he stays true to his decision, is silent, and talks to no one of his doubt, nor to Marguerite of his love.
It goes without saying that Faust is too ideal a figure to be satisfied with the tattle that if he spoke he would only set a more general discussion in motion, or that the whole affair would blow over without consequences, or perhaps this or perhaps that. (Here, as will be obvious to any poet, lies the dormant comedy in our scenario, bringing Faust into ironical relation to those slapstick fools who nowadays chase after doubt, produce an external argument, e.g. a doctor's certificate, to show that they have really doubted, or take an oath that they have doubted everything, or else prove it by the fact that on their journey they met up with a doubter – those express couriers and sprint-experts in the world of spirit who in all haste gather a little hint of doubt from this person and a little hint of faith from that, and then wirtschafte [do business] as best they may depending on whether the congregation wants fine sand or coarse sand.115) Faust is too ideal a figure to walk about in slippers. No one who lacks an infinite passion is ideal and anyone who does have an infinite passion has long since saved his soul from such rubbish. He is silent so as to offer himself – or else he talks, well knowing that he will put everything into confusion.
He is silent, so ethics condemns him. It says: ‘You must acknowledge the universal, and you do that by speaking, and you dare not take pity on the universal.’ This is something one should not forget when one sometimes judges a doubter severely for speaking. I myself am not inclined to judge such conduct leniently, but here as everywhere it is a question of the movements occurring properly. If things go wrong, then a doubter, even if by speaking he should bring all manner of misfortune upon the world, would still be far preferable to these miserable sweet-tooths who try a taste of everything and would cure doubt without being acquainted with it, and are therefore as a rule the immediate cause of outbreaks of ungoverned and unmanageable doubt. – If he speaks he confuses everything, for if nothing happens he only finds that out afterwards, and the consequence can be of no help either in the moment of acting or in questions of responsibility.
If he is silent on his own responsibility, he may indeed be acting magnanimously, but to his other pains there is added a little temptation. The universal will be forever plaguing him and saying, ‘You should have spoken, how can you be certain that it wasn't after all some hidden pride that prompted your decision?’
If on the other hand the doubter can be the single individual who as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute, then he receives authorization for his silence. But then he must make guilt of his doubt. But then he is in the paradox. But then his doubt is cured, even though he can acquire another.
Even the New Testament would approve such a silence. There are passages in the New Testament even extolling irony, so long as it is the better side that it is used to conceal. However, this movement is just as much a movement of irony as any other movement based on subjectivity's being higher than reality. This is something no one nowadays wants to know; generally people want to know no more about irony than Hegel has said about it, though curiously enough he had rather little understanding of it and indeed bore a grudge against it which our age finds good reason not to give up, seeing that for it irony is simply something it must guard itself against. The Sermon on the Mount says: ‘But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast’.116 The passage gives clear testimony to subjectivity's incommensurability with reality, indeed even to its having the right to deceive. If only those people who wander about these days with vague talk of the idea of the congregation would read the New Testament, they might come upon other ideas.117
But now Abraham. How did he act? For I have not forgotten, and the reader may now be pleased to recall, that this was the point to which the whole preceding discussion was intended to lead. Not to make Abraham more intelligible thereby, but in order that his unintelligibility might be seen more in the round,118 for, as I have said, I cannot understand Abraham, I can only admire him. It was also mentioned that none of the stages described contained an analogue of Abraham, they were elaborated only so as to indicate, from the point of view of their own sphere, the boundary of the unknown land by the points of discrepancy. If there should be any question of an analogy here it would have to be the paradox of sin, but that again belongs to another sphere and cannot explain Abraham, and is itself far easier to explain than Abraham.
So Abraham did not speak. He spoke neither to Sarah, to Eleazar, nor to Isaac. He passed over these three ethical authorities. Because for Abraham the ethical had no higher expression than that of family life.
Aesthetics allowed, in fact demanded, silence of the individual when by remaining silent he could save another. This is already enough to show that Abraham does not lie within the circumference of aesthetics. His silence is not at all to save Isaac, as in general the whole task of sacrificing Isaac for his own and God's sake is an outrage aesthetically. Aesthetics can well understand that I sacrifice myself, but not that I should sacrifice another for my own sake. The aesthetic hero was silent. Ethics condemned him, however, because it was on the strength of his accidental particularity that he remained silent. His human prescience was what determined that he should be silent. This ethics cannot forgive. All such human insight is only an illusion. Ethics demands an infinite movement which requires disclosure. So the aesthetic hero can indeed speak but will not.
The genuine tragic hero sacrifices himself and everything he has for the universal; his action, every emotion in him belongs to the universal, he is revealed, and in this disclosure he is the beloved son of ethics. This does not apply to Abraham. He does nothing for the universal and he is concealed.
We are now at the paradox. Either the individual as the particular can stand in an absolute relation to the absolute, and then the ethical is not the highest, or Abraham is done for, he is neither a tragic hero nor an aesthetic hero.
Here again the paradox might seem the easiest and most convenient thing of all. However, I must repeat that anyone who remains convinced of that is not the knight of faith, for distress and anguish are the only justification conceivable, even though they cannot be conceived in general, for if they could the paradox would be cancelled.
Abraham is silent – but he cannot speak, therein lies the distress and anguish. For if when I speak I cannot make myself understood, I do not speak even if I keep talking without stop day and night. This is the case with Abraham. He can say what he will, but there is one thing he cannot say and since he cannot say it, i.e. say it in a way that another understands it, he does not speak. The relief of speech is that it translates me into the universal. Now Abraham can say the most beautiful things any language can muster about how he loves Isaac. But this is not what he has in mind, that being the deeper thought that he would have to sacrifice Isaac because it was a trial. This no one can understand, and so no one can but misunderstand the former. Of this distress the tragic hero knows nothing. In the first place he has the consolation that all counter-arguments have been done justice to, that he has been able to give Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Achilles, the Chorus, every living being, every voice from the heart of humankind, every intelligent, every anxious, every accusing, every compassionate thought an opportunity to stand up against him. He can be sure that all that it is possible to say against him has been said, unsparingly, mercilessly – and to contend with the whole world is a comfort, but to contend with oneself dreadful. – He need have no fear of having overlooked something, of later having to cry out like King Edward IV at the news of the death of Clarence:
Who sued to me for him? Who, in my wrath,
Kneeled at my feet and bid me be advised?
Who spoke of brotherhood? Who spoke of love?119
The tragic hero knows nothing of the terrible responsibility of solitude. Moreover, he has the comfort of being able to weep and wail with Clytemnestra and Iphigenia – and sobbing and crying give relief, while groans that cannot be uttered are torture. Agamemnon can rally himself quickly to the certainty that he will act, and he therefore still has time to bring comfort and courage. This Abraham cannot do. When his heart is stirred, when his words would convey a blessed consolation for the whole world, he dare not console, for would not Sarah, would not Eleazar, would not Isaac say to him, ‘Why do you want to do this, you can after all refrain’? And if in his distress he should want to unburden his feelings and embrace everything dear to him before taking the final step, then this might have the most frightful consequence that Sarah, that Eleazar, that Isaac would be offended in him and believe him a hypocrite. Talk he cannot, he speaks no human language. Though he himself understood all the tongues of the world, though the loved ones understood them too – he still could not talk – he speaks a divine tongue – he ‘speaks with tongues’.120
This distress I can well understand. I can admire Abraham. I have no fear that anyone should be tempted by this story to want irresponsibly to be the single individual. But I also confess that I myself lack the courage for that, and that I would gladly renounce any prospect of coming further if only it were possible for me to come that far, however late in the day. Abraham can refrain at any moment, he can repent the whole thing as a temptation. Then he can speak, then all will understand him – but then he is no longer Abraham.
Abraham cannot speak. What would explain everything, that it is a trial – though note, one in which the ethical is the temptation – is something he cannot say (i.e. in a way that can be understood). Anyone so placed is an emigrant from the sphere of the universal. And yet what comes next he is even less able to say. For, as was made sufficiently clear earlier, Abraham makes two movements. He makes the infinite movement of resignation and gives up his claim to Isaac, something no one can understand because it is a private undertaking. But then he further makes, and at every moment is making, the movement of faith. This is his comfort. For he says, ‘Nevertheless it won't happen, or if it does the Lord will give me a new Isaac on the strength of the absurd.’ The tragic hero does at least get to the end of the story. Iphigenia bows to her father's decision, she herself makes the infinite movement of resignation and they now understand one another. She is able to understand Agamemnon because his undertaking expresses the universal. If on the other hand Agamemnon were to say to her, ‘Even though the deity demands you as a sacrifice, it's still possible that he didn't – on the strength of the absurd’, he would instantly become unintelligible to her. If he could say it on the strength of human calculation, then Iphigenia would surely understand him. But that would mean that Agamemnon had not made the infinite movement of resignation, and then he would not be a hero, and then the seer's utterance is just a traveller's tale and the whole incident a piece of vaudeville.
So Abraham did not speak. Only one word of his has been preserved, his only reply to Isaac, which we can take to be sufficient evidence that he had not spoken previously. Isaac asks Abraham where the lamb is for the burnt offering. ‘And Abraham said: My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.’121
This last word of Abraham's I shall consider here a little more closely. If it had not occurred the whole incident would lack something. If it had been a different word everything might dissolve in confusion.
I have often pondered on how far a tragic hero, whether suffering or action provides the consummation of his heroism, ought to have a final remark. So far as I can see it depends on what sphere of life he belongs to, on the extent to which his life has intellectual significance, on how far his suffering or action stand in relation to spirit.
It goes without saying that at the moment of consummation the tragic hero, like anyone else, is capable of a few words, even a few appropriate words. But the question is whether it is appropriate for him to say them. If the significance of his life consists in an outward act, then he has nothing to say, since everything he says is essentially idle chat which can only weaken the impact he makes, while the rites of tragedy require on the contrary that he fulfil his task in silence, whether in action or suffering. So as not to go too far afield I shall simply draw on our nearest example. If Agamemnon himself, and not Calchas [the seer], had had to draw the knife on Iphigenia he would only have demeaned himself by wanting to say a few words at the last moment. Everyone knew the significance of his deed, the whole process of piety, pity, feeling, and tears was done with, and besides, his life had no relation to spirit, i.e. he was not a teacher or a witness to the spirit. If on the other hand the significance of the hero's life tends towards spirit, the lack of a remark will weaken the impact he makes. It is not something appropriate he should be saying, not some bit of rhetoric, but something that will convey that he is consummating himself in the decisive moment. An intellectual tragic hero of this kind should allow himself what people often aspire to frivolously, namely having and keeping the last word. We expect of him the same exalted bearing as becomes any tragic hero, but on top of that we expect some word. So if an intellectual tragic hero consummates his heroism in suffering (in death), in this final word he will become immortal before he dies, while the ordinary tragic hero only becomes immortal after his death.
Socrates can be used as an example. He was an intellectual tragic hero. He hears his death-sentence. That instant he dies. Unless you grasp that it requires all the strength of spirit to die, that the hero always dies before his death, you will not come particularly far in your observations on life. So as a hero Socrates is required to stay calm and at ease, but as an intellectual hero he is required to have sufficient spiritual strength at the final moment to fulfil himself. So he cannot, like the ordinary tragic hero, concentrate on keeping himself face to face with death; he has to make this latter movement so quickly that in the same instant he is consciously above that conflict and continues to assert himself. Had Socrates been silent in the crisis of death he would have weakened the effect of his life, aroused a suspicion that the resilience of irony was not, in him, a primitive strength, but only a game whose flexibility he had to exploit in the decisive moment, according to an opposite standard, pathetically to sustain himself.*
What I have been briefly hinting at here doesn't really apply to Abraham, to the extent that one supposes one might find by analogy some appropriate word for Abraham; but it applies to the extent that one sees the necessity of Abraham's fulfilling himself at the final moment not by drawing the knife silently but by having something to say, seeing that as the father of faith he has absolute significance in terms of spirit. As to what he is to say, I can form no idea in advance. Once he has said it I can no doubt understand it, even in a sense understand Abraham in what is said, yet without thereby coming any nearer him than in the foregoing. If we'd had no remark from Socrates I could have put myself into his position and made one, and if I couldn't do that myself, a poet would have managed. But no poet can reach Abraham.
Before going on to consider Abraham's last word more closely, I must first draw attention to the difficulty of Abraham's coming to say anything at all. The distress and anguish in the paradox consisted, as explained above, precisely in the silence; Abraham cannot speak.* To that extent then it is self-contradictory to demand that he should speak, unless one wants him out of the paradox again, so that in the decisive moment he suspends it, whereby he ceases to be Abraham and brings to naught all that went before. Were Abraham, at the decisive moment, to say to Isaac, ‘It is you who are to be sacrificed’, this would only be a weakness. For if he could speak at all he should have done so long before, and the weakness then consists in his not having the maturity of spirit and concentration to imagine the whole of the pain beforehand but having pushed some of it aside so that the actual pain proves greater than the imagined one. Besides, with talk of this kind he would fall out of the paradox, and if he really wanted to talk to Isaac he would have to transform his own situation into that of a temptation. Otherwise, after all, he could say nothing and if he does so transform his situation he isn't even a tragic hero.
Nevertheless a last word of Abraham's has been preserved, and so far as I can understand the paradox I can also understand Abraham's total presence in that word. First and foremost he doesn't say anything, and that is his way of saying what he has to say. His answer to Isaac has the form of irony, for it is always irony to say something and yet not say it. Isaac asks Abraham because he assumes Abraham knows. Now if Abraham had replied, ‘I know nothing’, he would have uttered an untruth. He cannot say anything, since what he knows he cannot say. So he replies, ‘My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.’ Here one sees the double movement in Abraham's soul, as it has been described in the foregoing. Had Abraham simply renounced his claim to Isaac and done no more, he would have uttered an untruth. He knows that God demands the sacrifice of Isaac, and he knows that precisely at this moment he himself is ready to sacrifice him. So, after having made this movement Abraham has at every instant been performing the next, making the movement on the strength of the absurd. To that extent he utters no untruth, for on the strength of the absurd it is after all possible that God might do something quite different. He utters no untruth then, but neither does he say anything, for he speaks in a foreign tongue. This becomes still more obvious when we consider that it was Abraham himself who was to sacrifice Isaac. If the task had been a different one, if the Lord had commanded Abraham to take Isaac out on the mountain in Moriah, and then let his own lightning strike Isaac and take him as a sacrifice in that way, Abraham would in a straightforward sense be right to talk as enigmatically as he did, for in that case he himself could not have known what would happen. But as the task is given to Abraham, it is he who must act, so he must know at the decisive moment what he is about to do, and accordingly must know that Isaac is to be sacrificed. If he doesn't definitely know that, he hasn't made the infinite movement of resignation, in which case his words are not indeed untrue, but then at the same time he is very far from being Abraham, he is less significant than a tragic hero, he is in fact an irresolute man who can resolve to do neither one thing nor the other, and who will therefore always come to talk in riddles. But such a Haesitator [waverer] is simply a parody of the knight of faith.
Here too it can appear that one can understand Abraham, but only as one understands the paradox. For my part I can in a way understand Abraham, but I see very well that I lack the courage to speak in this way, as much as I lack the courage to act like Abraham. But I do not at all say that what he did is inconsiderable on that account, since on the contrary it is the one and only marvel.
And what did contemporaries think of the tragic hero? That he was great, and they looked up to him. And that noble assembly of worthies, the jury that every generation appoints to pass judgement on its predecessor, came to the same verdict. But none could understand Abraham. And yet think what he achieved! To remain true to his love. But he who loves God has no need of tears, needs no admiration, and forgets his suffering in love, indeed forgets so completely that afterwards not the least hint of his pain would remain were God himself not to remember it; for God sees in secret and knows the distress and counts the tears and forgets nothing.
So either there is a paradox, that the single individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute, or Abraham is done for.