2 1 0

2 1 0

Such is the relationship between man and man qua man. But between God and man there is an eternal, essential, qualitative difference, which no one without presumptuous thinking can allow to vanish in the blasphemous assertion that God and man are indeed differentiated in the transitory moment of temporal existence, so that man within this life ought to obey and worship God, but in eternity the difference must vanish in the essential equality, so that God and man would become equals, just like the king and his valet.

Thus between God and man there is and remains an eternal, essential, qualitative difference. The paradox-religious situation (which q uite rightly cannot be thought but only believed) comes to evidence when God appoints a particular man to have divine authority -

nota bene in relation to what was entrusted to him. The man thus called does not relate himself to [one must use here the literal translation of a phrase which idiomatically means " behave"] the relationship between man and man qua man, nor is he related to other men by a quantitative difference (like a genius, a man of distinguished gifts, etc. ) . No, he behaves paradoxically by reason of having a specific quality which no immanence can recall into the equality of eternity; for it is essentially paradoxical and after thinking (not before, in advance of thinking) - against thinking.

If such an elect man has a doctrine to communicate according to a divine order, and another man (let us imagine it) has found out for himself the same doctrine, then are these two nevertheless not equal; for the first is by reason of his paradoxical specific quality (the divine authority) different from every other man and from the qualification of essential likeness and equality which immanently lies at the basis of all human differences. The qualification 208

T H E BO O K ON A D L E R

" a n apostle" belongs i n the sphere of transcendence, which, quite consistently, has a qualitatively different expression for the relation of other men to an apostle: they relate themselves to him

[behave] believingly, whereas all thinking is and remains and breathes in immanence. But faith is not a transitory qualification, no more than the apostle's paradoxical qualification was transitory.

In the relationship between man and man qua man we found that no established and lasting differentium of authority was thinkable, that it was a vanishing factor. Meanwhile let us dwell for a moment upon some examples of such so-called relationships of authority between man and man qua man (which are true relationships under the conditions of temporal existence) in order to observe in them how authority is essentially to be regarded. A king is indeed assumed to have authority. Why is it then that one is almost offended at learning that a king is clever, is an artist, etc.? Surely it is because in his case one essentially accentuates the royal authority, and in comparison with this the commoner qualification of human difference is a vanishing factor, is unessential, a disturbing accident. A government board is assumed to have authority in a determinate sphere. Why is it then that one would be offended if such a board in its decrees, etc . , were really clever, witty, profound? Because one quite rightly accentuates its authority. To ask whether the king is a genius, with the implication that in such case he is to be obeyed , is really lcse maJeste, for the question contains a doubt concerning subjection to authority. To be willing to obey a board in case it is able to say witty things is at bottom to make a fool of the board .

To honor one's father because he is a distinguished pate is impiety. However, as has been said, between man and man qua man authority, if there be any, is a vanishing factor, and eternity does away with all earthly authority. But now for the sphere of transcendence? Let us take an example as simple as possible but for that reason as obvious as possible. When Christ says, "There is an eternal life," and when Theological Candidate Petersen says, "There is an eternal life" - they both say the same thing; in the first statement there is contained no more deduction, development, profundity, thoughtfulness, than in the latter; both

A D L E R ' S F O U R L A S T B O O K S

statements, aesthetically appraised, are equally good . And yet there is an eternal qualitative difference! Christ as the God- Man is in possession of the specific quality of authority which no eternity can mediate and put Christ on the same plane with the essential human equality. Christ therefore taught with authority. To ask whether Christ is profound is blasphemy and is an attempt (whether consciously or unconsciously) to annihilate Him; for in the question is contained a doubt about His authority and an attempt is made with impertinent simplicity to appraise and j udge Him as though He were up for examination and should be catechized - whereas instead of that H e is the one to whom is given all power in heaven and in earth.

Yet seldom nowadays, very seldom, do we hear a religious address which is perfectly correct. The better sort are fain to dabble a bit in what one might call unconscious and wellintentioned rioting, defending and upholding Christianity with might and main - in erroneous categories. Let us take an example, any one that comes to hand. I take i t from a German.

With that I know that nobody - not the stupidest and not the most ill-natured - will suppose that I write this concerning a matter which to my thinking is infinitely important in order to aim at some clergyman or another. Bishop Sailer of R egensburg, in a homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, preaches on John 7 :47-5 I as his text. He selects the verse: "He that is of God heareth God's word, " and "If a man keepeth my saying he shall never see death ." Then he says: " I n these words of the Lord are solved three great riddles over which men in one way or another have racked their brains since the beginning of time." There we have it. The word "riddle," and especially "three great riddles," and then the next clause, "over which men . . . have racked their brains," at once lead one's thought to the profound in the intellectual sense, to meditation, pondering, speculation. But after all how can a simple apodeictic statement be profound? -

an apodeictic statement which is what it is only by the fact that this or that man said it, a statement which does not at all demand to be understood or fathomed but only to be believed .

I n the case of a simple statement, an assertion, how can it occur to a man that an enigma had to be solved by way of profound

2 1 0

T H E BOOK O N A D L E R

pondering and fathoming?* The question simply is, Is there a n eternal life? The answer is, There i s a n eternal life. Where then in all the world is profundity to be found in this? In case Christ is not the one who said it, and in case Christ is not what He said He was, then, if the statement itself is profound, the profundity indeed has yet to be discovered. Let us take Mr. Petersen the theological candidate, who indeed also says, "There is an eternal life." Who in all the world would think of accusing him of profundity because of a plain statement? Thus the decisive point does not lie in the statement but in the fact that it is Christ who uttered it; but the confusing thing is that one, as though to entice men to believe, talks a lot about the profound and the profound .

A Christian priest, if he would speak correctly, must say quite simply, "We have Christ's word for it that there is an eternal life

- therewith the matter is decided . Here there is no question either about racking one's brains or about speculation, but about the fact that it is Christ who said it, not in the capacity of a profound thinker, but with His divine authority." Let us go further, let us assume that one believes that there is an eternal life because Christ has said it, so believingly he circumvents all the profundity and pondering and fathoming wherewith people rack their brains. On the other hand, let us take one who wants to rack his brains profoundly with the question about immortality - I wonder if he will have a right to deny that the simple assertion is a profound answer to the question? What Plato says about immortality is really profound, won by deep pondering -

but poor Plato had no authority whatsoever.

Meanwhile this is the situation: Doubt and superstition, which make faith vain, have, among other things, made men embar-

*In 1 847 (Papirer VII B 26 1 , 1 3) S K. proposed the following substitution for

.

the remainder of this paragraph which has at least the advantage of being a notable abbreviation; but perhaps, according to an adage which S . K . adopted,

"First thoughts are better than second thoughts." In this big book abbreviations are always welcome; yet perhaps I ought to have included S. K.'s first thoughts along with his second thoughts if only it could be done without making this book look pedantic.

I nstead of all this clerical twaddle about enigmas and racking the brain, Sailer ought to say: "We have Christ's word for it, and when He has said it the thing is decided . Here there is no question either of racking the brain or of enigmas, but of the one who has said that to Him is given all power in heaven and in earth ."

A D L E R ' S FOU R L A S T BOO K S

2 I I

rassed about obeying, about bowing to authority. This rebelliousness sneaks into the thinking even of the better sort of men, perhaps without their being conscious of it, and then begins all this extravagance, which at bottom is treachery, about the profound and the profound and the wondrously beauteous features which one can dimly descry, etc. If one were to describe with one single predicate the Christian religious eloquence which one now hears and reads, one would have to say that it is affected. Ordinarily when one talks about the affectation of a clergyman one thinks perhaps about how he dresses and gets himself up, talks in a sweet and languishing voice, rolls his R's like a Norwegian, wrinkles his brow, strains himself with forceful gestures and with leaps of religious enthusiasm, etc. All such things, however, are of minor importance, though it is always desirable that they should not be. But the pernicious thing is when the whole train of thought in his priestly eloquence is affected, when its orthodoxy is won by laying the accent entirely on the wrong place, when basically he requires people to believe in Christ and preaches faith in Him on grounds which cannot possibly be the object of faith. In case a son were to say, " I obey my father, not because he is my father, but because he is a genius or because his commands are always profound and clever" -

then this filial obedience is affected . The son accentuates something which is entirely beside the point, he accentuates the cleverness and profundity in a command, whereas a command is precisely indifferent with regard to this qualification. The son is willing to obey by virtue of his father's profundity and cleverness, and by virtue of this it is precisely not possible to obey, for his critical attitude with regard to the decision whether the command is profound and clever undermines obedience. And this too is affectation when there is so much about accepting Christianity and believing in Christ on account of the profundity and profundity of the doctrine. One accepts orthodoxy by accentuating something which is entirely beside the point. The whole of modern Speculation is therefore "affected" by reason of having done away with obedience on the one hand and authority on the other, and by then wanting to be orthodox. A clergyman who is entirely correct in his eloquence must speak thus in introducing a word of Christ: "This word was spoken by Him to 2 1 2

T H E BOOK ON A D L E R

whom, according t o His own statement, all power hath been given in heaven and in earth. Now, thou, my hearer, must consider by thyself whether thou wilt bow to this authority or no, receive it and believe it or no. But if thou wilt not do so, then for heaven's sake do not go off and accept the word because it is clever and profound or wondrously beautiful, for this is blasphemy, it is wanting to treat God like an aesthetic cri tic. For so soon as the dominant note of authority, of the specific paradoxical authority, is heard, then this sort of appropriation, which otherwise is permissible and desirable, is a crime and a presumption."

But now how can an apostle prove that he has authority?

Could he prove it physically, he would be no apostle. He has no other proof but his own assertion. And thus precisely it ought to be, for otherwise the believer would come into a direct relation to him, not into a paradoxical relationship. In the transitory situation of authority between man and man qua man the authority will ordinarily be recognized physically by means of force. An apostle has no other proof but his own assertion, and at the most by his willingness to suffer everything for the sake of the doctrine. With regard to that his speech will be brief: "I am called by God; do with me now as you will, scourge me, persecute me; but my last word is my first: I am called by God , and I make you eternally responsible for what you do to me." I n case it were true i n real life (let u s imagine i t ) that a n apostle had power in a worldly sense, had great influence and powerful connections by the force of which he is victorious over the opinions and judgments of men - in case he employed this power he would eo ipso have lost his cause. For by employing force he would have defined his effort as essentially identical with that of other men, and yet an apostle is what he is only by reason of his paradoxical heterogeneity, by reason of having divine authority, which he can have, absolutely unaltered, even if by men he is regarded, according to Paul's saying, as worth no more than the filth on which they tread . *

* Here ends the passage which S.K. salvaged from The Book on Adler and published as a dissertation on "The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle"; but in the published work he added the four paragraphs which for the sake of completeness are here added between brackets.

A D L E R ' S FOU R L A S T BOO K S

2 1 3

[3. The genius has only immanent teleology; the apostle is put paradoxically in an absolutely paradoxicalLy teleological position.

If any man can be said to be put in an absolutely paradoxically teleological position it is an apostle. The doctrine imparted to him is not given to him as a problem to ponder over, it is not given to him for his own sake; on the contrary he is on a mission and has to proclaim the doctrine and exercise authori ty. Just as one who is sent to town with a letter has nothing to do with the contents of the letter but only with the delivery of it; just as an ambassador who is sent to a foreign court has no responsibility for the content of the message but only for conveying it properly; so an apostle has principally the single duty of being faithful in his service, which is the performance of his mission. In this essentially consists the sacrificial character of the apostle's life , even if he were never t o be persecuted, namely, in t h e fact that

"as himself poor he makes many rich," that he never can give himself time or repose or freedom from care, in otium, in the enjoyment of "good days," to be enriched by that with which his preaching enriches others. Spiritually understood, he is like a busy housewife who herself hardly gets time to eat, so busy is she in preparing food for the many mouths. And though he at the beginning might venture to hope for a long life, yet his life until the last will remain unchanged, for there will always be new and newer people to whom the doctrine must be proclaimed .

Although a revelation is the paradoxical fact which surpasses men's understanding, one can nevertheless understand this much, which has everywhere been manifested, that a man is called by a revelation to go forth into the world to proclaim the word , to act and to suffer, called to a life of ceaseless activity as the Lord's messenger.

It is very different with genius. Genius has only immanent teleology, and as it develops itself it projects this selfdevelopment as its work in the world. That acquires importance, perhaps great importance, but it is not itself related teleologically to the world or to other men, and without taking his gifts in vain the genius can live only humoristically, self-satisfied, in a place withdrawn from the world, where without concern whether or not others profit by it, he develops himself with seriousness and diligence. The genius is for this reason by no

2 1 4

T H E BO O K ON A D L E R

means inactive, he works within himself perhaps more than ten businessmen, accomplishes perhaps a great deal, but nothing that he accomplishes has any telos outside itself. This is at once the high humanity and the pride of genius: the humanity consists in the fact that it does not define itself teleologically in relation to any other man, as though there might be someone in need of it; the pride consists in the fact that it immanently relates itself to itself. I t is modest of the nightingale that it does not require anyone to listen to it; it is proud of the nightingale that it doesn' t care whether anybody listens t o it o r no. The dialectic o f the genius will be especially offensive in our age when the multitude, the masses, the public, and other such abstractions, are bent in turning everything upside down. The "highly honored public"

and the domineering multitude want the genius to express the fact that he exists for them and for their sake; the "highly honored public" and the domineering multitude are only one side of the dialectic of the genius, they are offended by his pride and do not notice that this same thing is also modesty and humility. The "highly honored public" and the domineering multitude would also take the existence of the apostle in vain.

For it is true indeed that he exists absolutely for the sake of others, is sent forth for the sake of others, but it is not the multitude and not the masses and not the "highly honored public" and not even the "highly honored cultivated public"

that are his lord or his lords - it is God, and the apostle is he who has authority to command both the multitude and the public.

The humoristic self-satisfaction of the genius is the unity of modest resignation in the world and proud elevation above the world, of being an unnecessary superfluity and a precious ointment. If the genius is an artist, then he produces his work of art, but neither he nor his work has any telos outside itself. Or he is an author who abolishes every teleological relationship with the world about him and defines himself as a lyric poet. Lyric art has quite rightly no telos outside itself; whether one writes a page of lyric or folios of lyric, that makes no difference with regard to determining the direction of his activity. The lyrical author is concerned only about his production, enjoys the delight of producing, perhaps through pain and effort, but he has nothing to do with others, does not write in order to, in order to enlighten A D L E R ' S FOU R L A S T BOO K S

2 15

men, in order to help them along in the right way, in order to put something over - in short he does not write in order to. And so it is with every genius. No genius has an "in order to." The apostle has absolutely paradoxically an "in order to."]

Now we return again to Adler and to his transmogrification already referred to, whereby from being one called by a revelation he became a genius, still thinking that he is identical with himself. For he who is called by a revelation must eo ipso assume a teleological attitude, being precisely God's instrument which is to be used to produce an effect. I t is different with a genius, who may live humoristically withdrawn from the world in selfsatisfaction. This is pretty much the attitude Adler assumes in his last works - but Adler began by being called by a revelation, and Adler now thinks that he is in identity with himself, that is to say, he fails to notice that there is a qualitative decisive difference between his first position and his last. Although a revelation is the paradoxical fact which surpasses men's understanding, yet one can understand this much, which is everywhere in evidence, that a man is called by a revelation to go out into the world to proclaim the word, to labor and to suffer, to lead an unremittingly active life as God 's messenger. That on the contrary a man might be called to sit at ease in his own ample mansion employed in an active literary far niente in a q uiet place, to be clever from time to time, and thereupon to be publisher as well as collector of the d ubious proofs of his cleverness - is a thought almost blasphemous. Here again Adler's later attitude contains a proof against the reality and truth of his first claim, while the fact that he does not revoke his first is a proof that he is confused . At the beginning of his activity as an author he was also on another path when he shouted before all the people, "Confess! Confess! "

Now in his last books he has adopted the principle o f silence.

" Silence is genius," says he. He does not develop this thesis more in detail, as in general he seems to have abandoned himself to the habit of touching tangentially upon the most various subj ects and publishing his observations in a book - but, no, in four books at once. The significance of silence, moreover, is quite simple.

For us simple men silence is a way for the expression of inwardness, and is the way by which originality is acquired, an originality which is more than a surrogate for the originality of

2 16

T H E BOOK ON A D L E R

the genius. (A revelation lies i n a n entirely different sphere, and therefore nothing is said about it here.) By holding fast a definite expression of one's life, a definite single thought, in absolutely silent inwardness, by not wishing to open the least communication with any other man ( by which relative and comparative standards, the standards of mediocrity, are made accessible) every man will, ifin the meantime he does not lose his reason (for this danger is inescapable) , acquire originality. The converse and opposite of this situation of freedom, this slow acquisition, is the direct, immediate characteristic of genius (and hence again what lies within the paradoxical religious sphere, the fact of being called by a revelation) . The idea of silence, the whole conception of silence as the way of inwardness, which for every man leads to the highest attainment, whether originally he was a genius or no, this conception has found an adequate expression in the writings of the Pseudonyms, to which therefore, so far as this subject is concerned, I refer everyone - only not Adler, who in his thesis,

"Silence is genius," annihilates this idea of the Pseudonyms -

which is comical enough and becomes still more so when one reflects that his four last books also annihilate his first position.

Even though it be conceded that Adler is a genius, he wants, however, to be an immediate genius, and by the aid of silence it is impossible to become anything immediate, since after all it is nonsense to think of a method in relation to immediacy, which precisely is anterior to a method. *

* At this point S.K. proposed to suppress six pages of the first draft of this book and to substitute about two pages of a very different character. ( V I I B 256, 1 4-20) I have followed his proposal in the text, but the discarded pages contain something we ought to know about Adler and suggest a shrewd diagnosis of his derangement, so I have translated them in this footnote: In the four last books A. is merely a genius, a pure and genuine genius - and yet, in this opinion, presumably he is in identity with his first position. He has forgotten that those words in the preface to his Sermons were imparted to him by a revelation dictated by the Saviour; he has forgotten that the Sermons, to which A.

often refers, were written under the influence of Jesus' cooperative grace; A. as a genius has, so it seems, undertaken the whole management of affairs, presumably in distraction - in distraction, for, if it were done consciously, he must solemnly revoke his first claim. How far A. can go in distraction one can further ascertain by reading his four last books; for there one has an opportunity to observe with .

what levity (which only distraction can excuse) he deals with God and Christ, represents them as challing with one another, and he chats with them. In the last

A D L E R ' S FOC R L A S T BOO K S

2 1 7

I nstead of a man who was called by a revelation we get a genius, and one may say of Adler that by becoming a genius he is somewhat deranged, which in turn is precisely proved by the fact that he has not found himself obliged in the least degree to explain anything about the dreadful and topsy-turvy metamorphosis he has undergone, for he seems constantly to be blissful in the vain imagination that he is in identity with himself from first to last, which in fact he is as a deranged genius.

books he is poetically inventive, he represents God and Christ as talking with one another - and this surely is an invention ! Thus Adler's Attempt at a Short Exposition of Christianity begins as follows: "Before God created the world He said to Jesus, ' I can d o everything a s perfectly a s possible,' " etc. God and Jesus are introduced as speaking and conversing. But this surely was not communicated by a revelation!

But what is it then? Well, it is a little poetical effort to enliven the presentation.

But, 10, Adler later quotes the same conversation, he founds an argument upon it. He says in many passages, "as Jesus promised to let Himself be born"; that is, he talks of that conversation between God and Christ as something which actually occurred and to which one can make appeal as though these were the ipsissima verba of Jesus. I ndeed in one place Adler even says: " For finally we must remember what Jesus said to God ," etc., and thereupon he quotes several of the invented words. So first one ventures with frivolous inventions out into the sphere where one should rather leave inventions alone, and thereupon fixes his own invention so tightly in his head that he thinks it is reality. I n that way a lightminded person can easily get a revelation. He needs only to fumble for some time as a crocheteer with the fantastic notion of a revelation until this notion that he has had a revelation at last fixes itself so fast in him that he poetically conceives he has had a revelation, and then this invention fixes i tself fast as an actuality - until something new sets itself fast.

But, whereas Adler treats his own inventions as though they were realities, he treats the New Testament in an equally frivolous way, as though i t were not a reality - he who undoubtedly has many a pretty word to say about the Bible, and precisely in view of this his behavior indicates that he is in a confused state of mind. With an arbitrariness which is perfectly fantastic he lays claim to words of the Bible as his own without using quotation marks. As between one author and another that would be called plagiarism; to plagiarize from God is blasphemy.

I ndeed there are passages where in his frivolity he actually reaches the point of identifying himself with Christ. A saying begins with the words of Christ in the first person: I say unto you . These words are not quoted, there is no indication that they are Bible words, which is important especially because they are in the first person. I mmediately after these words in the first person comes the next sentence which likewise is in the first person but are the words of Adler. A reader generally must assume, as Adler leads everyone to assume, that i t is he who utters the whole saying, that the " I " in the first sentence is the same as the " I " in the second and in the third sentence. And yet the first " I " is Christ and the other " I "

i s Adler.

2 18

T H E BO O K ON A D L E R

He i s a deranged genius o f the instantaneous sort, and hence precisely has no conception of himself, is entirely without continuity. In the instant something grips him � then he is that.

The next instant something else grips him then he is that. His

�

existence explains nothing, as though another might be directing his life and guiding him by a foreign will; and there is no aesthetic or religious concept he has developed in such a way that it has gained new clarity or is thought out with true originality. On the other hand, he touches upon the most diverse subjects and almost everywhere confuses them. I t cannot be denied that he makes profound remarks, but he surely does not reach absolute profundity, if the explanation we gave at the very beginning of this book is right, that profundi ty is connection and continuity. And even in his profound remarks there is a certain uniformity, for in large part they are made on one last. Understanding a thought is something like being able to decline a paradigm: one can also decline all the words which come under that paradigm. If one has understood a thought, one can, by using it in many "examples," seem to make many profound remarks, and yet the many are reaily repetitions, and hence ( to refer again to the simile of the last) one is not j ustified in saying that he has learned many declensions because he has learned the many words which come under the same declension. So it is too with having understood one thought: if the repetitions are not to be tedious, there must be added a poetical factor which makes the application of the examples aesthetically worthy. But for this Adler has no time � he has (according to his own authentic interpretation, cf. I ) nothing new to contribute � he who lives in a lyrical otium! With respect to form he is at a disadvantage. He who has not and never has had anything new to contribute by way of content must strive precisely by means of the form to accomplish something. The thought which Adler especially rides is the old Hegelian notion that the concept "veers about," only that it is used rather under the qualification of the ironical. This thought is thus expressed in my master's dissertation ( "About Irony" ) : I rony makes the phenomenon evident; irony consists in the cunning that, while the opponent believes he is talking about another thing or even has grasped another thing, irony perceives that the individual has given himself away. Every idea consist-

A D L E R ' S F O U R L A S T B O O K S

2 1 9

ently carried through has eo ipso the power to require the contrary to become manifest. How this is more particularly to be understood, how it proceeds, has often been explained and exhibited by the Pseudonyms. The ironical cunning consists in transforming oneself to nothing by negative-active consistency in order to help the phenomenon to become manifest. At the first glance and for stupid men it may seem as if the ironical man were the loser. The ironical cunning consists in keeping oneself negative, thus transforming the attack into self-revelation. The attacker raises a storm and makes a great fuss; in the eyes of foolish men it seems as though he were the stronger, and yet he accomplishes nothing more - and there sits irony so cunning and on the lookout - he accomplishes nothing more than to reveal his own nature, his own paltriness or his own insignificance. Thus, for example, one may employ irony against a shrew, and her shrewishness becomes more and more manifest. So too i t is ironically correct when a man says something extraordinary about himself, for example, that he has had a revelation, then precisely to believe him ( the negative attitude, not opposing him directly as foolish men do) , in order in that way to help him to make it evident to himself that he has had no revelation. When a man really has ataraxia and self-mastery he will by negative consistency be able to make any kind of a dialectically complicated phenomenon plain; thus A. seems so awfully well pleased at the profound remark that "The law put its foot in it by condemning Christ, and thereby did away with itself. " This whole thing is neither more nor less than Hegel's "veering about" of the concept carried out with a little ironic coloring.

Hegel, it is well known, is nothing less than he is ironical; with him it is always a serious matter when the concept veers about.

Tha t iron y owes its life to a dialectic of com parison is in 1 846 not much of a discovery. Hegel believes that the concept veers about by an immanent necessity; nevertheless irony notices the transition inasmuch as it notices its drollery or its ingenuity. The qualitative dialectic is in the first place really in essential understanding with the category of the leap, a category which Adler also bungles.

Among Adler's profound remarks there are sometimes reminiscences of other writers to be found, and in view of this it may 2 2 0

T H E BOOK O N A D L E R

b e quite natural that Adler frequently recurs t o the thesis and defends the thesis that stealing in the world of spirit is entirely permissible. Well, about that every man has his own opinion. I don' t deny that I hold the opposite opinion . But the strange thing is again that it is Adler (one who has a revelation to which he can appeal) who adopts this thesis; for after all a revealed doctrine cannot have been borrowed from others, and there is surely no one up to date that has stolen anything from Adler. On the other hand, in case Adler thinks himself guilty of a theft, or innocen t of it, inasmuch as this theft according to his opinion is permissible, there results this strange and preposterous situation that he who is placed above other men by reason of a revelation should pilfer a little from poor folks. However, perhaps Adler after all does himself an injustice in suspecting himself of stealing; for in the world of spirit theft is so far from being permissible that it is impossible. For in the world of spirit, and only in the world of spirit, the security of property rights is absolute. If one leaves a manuscript lying about, another may steal it, he may publish it, but he cannot steal its thoughts, nor can he propound the thoughts contained in the stolen manuscript, in one way or another he will alter them, so that they do not remain the same thoughts.

If one regards Adler as a deranged genius (who neither as thinker nor as artist is in control of himself, who in the rapture of production touches tangentially upon the most diverse subjects) and if one would define totally and essentially the character of his genius, one may say that it is dizziness. With this it is not denied that individual utterances and remarks may even be profound. A drunken man may well utter good sayings, but the essential character of his genius is drunkenness. I shall now illustrate this dizziness by several examples from Adler's last works, while begging the reader not to forget that the principal characteristic which further illustrates his dizziness is the fact that he propounds dizzy aesthetic views which remind one strongly of paganism and the worldly view of life, though he gives himself out to be not only a believing Christian but claims even that he has had a revelation from the Saviour. It is simple dizziness to adopt a dizzy, aesthetic view, but it is dizziness raised to a higher power to wish at the same time to be a Christian in an A D L E R ' S FOU R L A S T BOO K S

2 2 1

eminent sense and to wish to help the understanding of Christian doctrine by means of aesthetics.

In a physiological sense attention has quite rightly been called to the fact that dizziness results when the eye has no fixed point on which to rest. Hence one becomes dizzy on looking down from a tower, for the glance plunging down finds no limit, no bound. For a similar reason one becomes dizzy at sea, because everything is constantly changing and so again there is no limit or bound. A physician has explained somewhere that it was seasickness the French soldiers died of in R ussia, produced by the fact that there was nothing before the eye in the endless breadth of the plain. When therefore one notices that one is becoming dizzy one may stop it by catching upon something with the eye.

I n case a man who becomes thus dizzy in driving down a steep hill will himself undertake to be coachman he will hardly become dizzy. As a coachman, the definite way he is obliged to watch the reins will prevent dizziness. So it is with physical dizziness. The dizzy is the wide, the endless, the unlimi ted, the boundless; and dizziness itself is the boundlessness of the senses.

The indefinite is the ground of dizziness, but it is also a temptation to abandon oneself to it. For surely indefiniteness is contrary to man's nature, and it is not merely science which, according to Aristotle's saying, abhors the boundlessness of vacuity, not merely ethics which abhors ambiguity, but precisely because indefiniteness is against nature it is at the same time tempting. The dialectic of dizziness has thus in itself the contradiction of willing what one does not will, what one shudders at, whereas this shudder nevertheless frightens only . . . temptingly.

The remedy for dizziness is therefore limitation; and, spiritually understood, all discipline is limitation. So then he who, physiologically, has a tendency to become dizzy does well to avoid open places for the time being and feel his way along the walls of buildings, in order that the manifold may be of help as a relative scale. So also must he who, spiritually understood, suffers from dizziness try to limit himself. The limit is not only in the Greek sense the beautiful, but in the ethical sense it is a saving power.

Spiritually understood, dizziness may have a double character. It may be occasioned by the fact that a man has so wandered astray in the infinite that nothing finite can acquire for him

2 2 2

T H E BOOK ON A D L E R

substantial existence, that h e can get n o standard o f measurement. This kind of dizziness consists rather in an excess of imagination, and, inasmuch as one might conceive of dizziness metaphorically with relation to the eye, one might perhaps call it single-sighted dizziness. The other kind of dizziness produced by an abstract dialectic, owing to the fact that it sees absolutely everything double, sees nothing at all. This kind of dizziness one might call double-sighted dizziness. Salvation from all dizziness, spiritually understood, is essentially to seek the ethical, which by qualitative dialectic disciplines and limits the individual and establishes his task.

It is especially from the first kind of dizziness that Adler suffers. As a dialectician he was first educated by Hegel, whose System has no ethic and whose dialectic, far from being an existential dialectic, is a sort of fantasy-intuition. From the dizzy height of the Hegelian metaphysic Adler plunges down headlong into the religious sphere, and now discovers, if one will, orthodoxy, but, be it noted, an orthodoxy without the ethical. When relationship to ethics is abandoned one may say that dizziness must come about by necessity.

As an example of A.'s dizziness 1* willfirst adduce his teaching about the instant, which, it is true, he nowhere lectures upon, but every instant he alludes to it. His teaching is to the following effect: Grasp the instant, everything depends upon the instant, the next instant it is too late, so you have to go through life like the Wandering Jew. Throughout Adler's last works runs a paganish despairing joy at having himself grasped the instant, and a despairing dread at the mere thought - what if he had not grasped it?! For to Adler the instant means nothing more nor less than what luck meant in paganism - only he is man enough to combine this dialectically with the Christian conception, so that he also in a lucky instant was called by a revelation from the Saviour and got a doctrine entrusted to him. The play of luck disposes not only as it did aforetime over riches, honor, power, the most beautiful maiden etc., but a revelation is also a play of luck.

·What here and in the next following I must explain briefly belongs to the problems which the Pseudonyms have explained so clearly that I can refer to them - only not for Adler, that would certainly come too late.

A D L E R ' S FOU R L A S T BOO K S

2 2 3

Regarded a s a problem, "the instant" i s undeniably a very difficult one, since it must concern itself with the dialectic between the temporal and the eternal. The eternal is infinite in content, and yet it must be made commensurable with the temporal, and the contact is in the instant. Yet this instant is nothing. Thinking here comes to a stop with the most dreadful contradiction, with the most taxing of all thoughts, which, if it were to be held for long at the highest pitch of mental exertion , must bring t h e thinker t o madness. To build card-houses on the table is not difficult, but that a huge edifice might be built upon what is smaller than the edge of a card, upon a foundation which is nothing (for the instant as such does not exist, it is merely the confine between time past and time future, it is when it has been)

- that certainly is a dreadful contradiction. If fantasy is allowed to run wild, then from this comes about the pagan doctrine of luck and fate, or the unchristian doctrine of election by grace, conceived in the despairing sense. To be saved by election in the despairing sense is dialectically entirely like fate, it is the unhappiest of all happiness. The despairing election by grace posits in mankind the most dreadful discord, and in another sense it makes all mankind unhappy. For it is unhappy to be shut out, rejected; and it is unhappy to be saved in that way. To be saved, to be happy - and to know that all others are not and cannot be saved, to know that one has not and in all eternity cannot acquire conditions in common with them, that one has no fundamental fellowship with them, to be saved and to know that one has no word to cry to others, no highest and last comfort which is common to all - yea, what human heart could endure such blessedness! If that word of the Scripture, " Call upon the Lord while He is near," were to be understood as though it said

" the second, " as though the Lord were a fleeting traveller who the next second would be far away, in case it were to be understood so enigmatically of " the second" that no one knew or could know when the second was - who could presume to preach about it? And how meaningless that once every year [anno redeuente] it is preached about! It must not be understood with a nervous dread, and it cannot be the understanding in what is written about the sick man who lay beside the Pool of Bethesda, that he who came first was saved. The Gospel recounts precisely

TH E B O O K O N A D L ER

that the sick man who for many years had come too late -

nevertheless was healed. This is the Gospel, the glad tidings, that the cruelty of fate is abolished, that first and foremost the salvation of the soul is promised, whether a man be bodily sound or no. Who must not despair if it were necessary also for the salvation of the soul to come first - if such were Christianity?

And who must not be in a desperately dizzy state in order as a Christian to bring back paganism again?

But what then can put a stop to this dizziness which comes about when a man stands still and will not seriously consider any life task for himself and therefore is like a galvanized frog which for an instant has a spasm? What can check this dizziness? What can master that desperate supertension of the instant? The ethical can. When in every moment of one's life there is a work to be done, a task, when often enough, alas, there is a serious concern for the fact that one has not attended to his work as one should - then there is no time to be fantastic or to give oneself to fantastic speculation about the instant and about the dialectic that it is all and nothing. The ethical, and the religious which has the ethical in it, resists with all its might the bringing over us again the hopelessness of paganism. And where does paganism show itself more hopeless than its theory of luck? The ethical knows nothing and will know nothing about luck, about one becoming a genius, about one having the lamp, about one coming first, about one winning the lottery. Ethics is weary of all the anecdotical twaddle, it shudders at the horror of those times when fantasy wrought havoc with the human race and played the unhappy game of luck. Ethics would only know how to speak of the universal human tasks - and therefore precisely it has power over the luck of the instant, which is a horror. Even to the most despairing, even to him who has lost most, the ethical cries: The instant still is there! The ethical does not let itself be fooled, any more than God lets Himself be mocked; by qualitative dialectic it knows well how to make the instant important as decision; but it will not alarm a man to the point of madness, nor madly make him happy with a game of hap or luck.

As an example of Adler's dizziness may next be adduced his view of Abraham, to whom he often returns in verse and prose. Here he warms up the old story about its being an evil spirit, the devil,

A D L E R 'S F O U R L AST B O O KS

225

who puts into Abraham's head the notion of sacrificing Isaac.

Now by this explanation nothing is gained, for the difficulty recurs in another place, as was shown in Fear and Trembling. I f such were t h e case, how c a n o n e explain that i t could occur to the Church to make Abraham the father of faith and the friend of God? For he must himself after all have discovered at a later moment that it was a temptation he yielded to, hence he should not have been represented as the father of faith, but perhaps as the discoverer of repentance. Adler, however, is original. He assumes, as has been said, that it was the devil who suggested to Abraham the idea; but, 10 and behold, God was so well pleased with this idea, "because it was brave and bold and great" (and suggested by the devil!) that, though He prevented it from being carried out, He made Abraham his friend and i n that way

Abraham became the father of faith. The thing is carried so far that we men presumably might not be supposed to know exactly the difference between good and evil, that the evil may become so imposing that we mistake i ts greatness for its goodness, but that God Himself sits like a fool while He is given a course of treatment such as one administers to a little girl of sixteen who wishes only that she might have a lover who does something great and even falls in love with a robber chieftain. - That his dizziness might express itself thus is only to be expected . From Hegel he had no ethics, and when he plunged down into the land of orthodoxy hitherto unknown to him, he still was without ethics. Ethics lives and moves and has its being i n the distinction between good and evil. The aesthetical, on the other h and , consists in the quantitative dizziness - the great, the astonishing

- and metaphysics consists in disinterestedness.

As an example of Adler's dizziness may finally be adduced the recklessness with which he counts that the great idea, the brave and bold idea of the individual, should be permitted to make itself heard, even though a little injustice is done thereby, even though some men thereby go to the dogs. I n defense of this view he appeals constantly to natural phenomena, to the fact that the sun remains just as glorious though it scorches several creatures, etc., quite a la Don Juan, who says to Leporello: "Thou seest me walk only i n nature's tracks," and precisely about the sun, to which he appeals as a pattern, he says: "All round the course of the sun lovers are

THE BO OK O N A D LER

dying and being born, and he heeds not the sacrifice of their corpses. " Well, naturally, for all that, Don Juan remains just as bold, and the sun remains just as glorious; for gloriousness, boldness, etc. are not exactly ethical terms. Everyone who has but a meager and commonplace conception of the ethical knows very well that nature is a very poor analogy of the ethical, and that to want to live a la nature is to want to live un ethically, as well as that by way of such analogies one will come at last to the Neronic burning of Rome - but that was a proud and glorious sight! Nature is precisely indifferent to the distinction between good and evil, which to ethics is all in all .

Ethical sobriety, which is the opposite to Adler's dizziness, consists essentially in the fact that man's effort reduplicates itself in the dialectic of the means, so that the means we use, so that the way one fights for his idea, so that the least means one allows oneself for the sake of realizing them, are equally important, absolutely equally important, as the object for which one fights and labors. Think, for example, of the strictly orthodox Church teachers, of Augustine's strict teaching about truth, that no one may save even one's own chastity by an untruth. And why not?

Because untruthfulness is more unchaste than the physical violation unaccompanied by concupiscence. Think of the scrupulousness of Pythagoras, who in ancient times was praised for his purity, who hardly dared to step upon the ground lest by his tread he might kill a living animal. But a Don Juan, a Napoleon, a Nero, in short, all headlong individuals, hail analogies from nature - and so does Adler, to whom a new doctrine was entrusted by a revelation from the Saviour. A new doctrine - but that is not the point, the important thing is that it was from the Saviour.

In his four last books then Adler is a deranged genius, and as summa summa rum of his first and last positions it remains true that he is to be regarded as confused . So when one has made good this interpretation of him, as now has been done precisely by showing the astonishing incongruity between the first position ( that of being called by a revelation and having received a new doctrine from the Saviour) and the last ( that of being a genius of sorts) , along with the fact that this incongruity has entirely escaped Adler's attention, then one can still further illustrate his

ADLE R 'S F O U R LAST BO O KS

227

confused condition by a glance at the external features of the books, which undoubtedly will suffice most readers for forming a judgment. I t cannot be denied that it gives one a queer sensation to look into the books. In an extraordinary degree he has emancipated himself from every restraint as an author, from every requirement of order, from every regard for a reader. That this might be art, a maieutic tactic, cannot without great difficulty be assumed. Moreover, I have confirmed the denial of this notion by illuminating the total confusion in essential respects. - Not rarely A. treats the reader like a child to whom one is giving a lesson. Thus he prints the selfsame Scripture passage, which is six lines long, three times as a whole on two pages. Now one cannot well deny that every word of Scripture has the admirable q uality that it always merits being read -

wherefore one certainly ought to possess a Bible and read it again and again. But to fill a big book by having the same Scripture passage printed so often in so brief a space is something after all rather strange. Also in another way he sometimes treats the reader altogether like a child . It is well known that as a task for composition in the mother tongue one sometimes uses single disconnected words from which the pupils must form a connected sentence. So it is that Adler throws out quite abruptly brief clauses, sometimes meaningless, perhaps to give the reader an opportunity of practicing the composition of connected sentences. In other places he seemed to behave quite as if the reader did not exist, that is to say, as though what he wrote were not meant to be printed, but as though from time to time it had been written in a notebook and got printed through a misunderstanding.

Naturally, however, about all such matters I desire to speak as briefly as possible. I am very little concerned about dealing aesthetically with his works; his revelation and his relation to that is the only thing that concerns me. Nevertheless, I will make one remark which belongs here and which, as J believe, characterizes Adler essentially. Upon reading his last four books one gets the impression ( and it is impossible to avoid it) , one gets a suspicion and a notion that Adler is not really a thinker, but, on the contrary, that he must have the habit of putting himself into an exalted mood; he grasps at a solitary expression, a brief

T H E BO O K ON ADLE R

saying, detaches it without thinking, neither does he put it thinkingly together with something else, but continues to repeat it until the monotonous repetition stupefies him and puts him in a state of exaltation, so that it seems to him there must be something deep in it. But he is not much concerned about what this is, he is concerned only to reach the exalted state. One cannot help thinking of him as walking to and fro on the floor, constantly repeating the same particular phrase, supporting the particular phrase by altering his voice and gesticulating, till he has bewitched himself into a sort of intoxication so that he is aware of a wondrous and solemn buzzing in his ears - but this is not thinking. In case a person wanted to put himself into a solemn mood and therefore were to walk back and forth on the floor and say incessantly: 7-14-21; 7-14-21; 7-14-21 - then would this monotonous repetition have the effect of a magical formula or of a strong drink upon a neurasthenic, it would seem to him that he had got into touch with something extraordinary.

I n case another to whom he imparted his wisdom were to say,

"But what then is there in this 7-14-21?" he likely would reply,

" I t depends upon what voice you say it with, and that you continue to say it for a whole hour, and moreover that you gesticulate - then you will surely discover that there is something in it." In case one were to write on small scraps of paper such short phrases as, "He went out of the castle," "He drew the knife," "I must have dislocated my hip" - in case one were to hide all these scraps in a drawer, and then sometime later were to go and open the drawer, take out a single slip of paper and repeat uninterruptedly what was written on it, he would in the end find himself in a fantastic state of mind and it would seem to him that there was something extraordinarily deep in it. For the abrupt, by reason of its accidental character and by reason of the play of accidental combinations it suggests, has something about it which is enticing to the imagination. Who has not experienced it? When one in rummaging among old papers finds such short phrases the whole connection of which has long been forgotten, there is some amusement in giving oneself over to the play of imagination. When one has done that he burns the papers. Not so Adler - he publishes them. And it is also certain that, if he can get a reader to indulge in this game, he too will be able for a

ADLE R 'S F O U R LAST BO O KS

moment to amuse himself with it. But in this way one becomes an author in a very improper sense of the word . I nstead of desiring and requiring the reader to keep his mind i n repose in order to reflect upon the thought communicated, as an author commonly does, Adler must rather recommend to the reader that he put himself into a state of ecstasy; for the more tense one is, the more droll the effect of the abrupt will be. In view of this it would be quite consistent of Adler if, after the analogy of sorcerers and wizards, he were to recommend and prescribe certain ceremonies, that one should arise at the stroke of midnight, then walk three times around the chamber, then take the book and open it (as simple people read their fortunes in the Bible) , then read a single passage, first in a low voice, then raise it to its highest pitch, and then again backwards ( like Peer Degn with his sol - mi - fa) till the voice becomes quite low, then walk the length of the room seven times - and at the eighth time see if there is not something in the passage! The abrupt and fantastic effect is enhanced essentially by mimicry and pantomime; on the other hand, it is disturbed by reflection and by connection of thought. And yet in the abrupt there lies hidden as it were a deep and unfathomable profundity of riches, whereas a clear, wellthought out discourse must be quite simply what i t is. In the formulas of witches and conjurers the effect is due to the abrupt, to the enigmatical meaningless, and it is enhanced by mimic and pantomime: the witch comes riding on a broomstick, she dances around three times, etc. In case a man could make a multi tude believe that he possesses a hidden wisdom, and thereupon he were to write abrupt phrases on small scraps of paper, i n case he borrowed, moreover, the entire scenarium used i n drawing the lottery, the big tent, the wheel of fortune, a company of soldiers, a minister of chancery before whom the soldiers would presen t arms, while o n e stepped o u t on the balcony, then to the accompaniment of soft festal music mingled with a swirl of notes in a higher pitch, let the wheel turn round and the boy in festal costume draw a ticket the content of which was read out - on that occasion several women at least would lose their senses.

What is said here about Adler's passion for raising himself into a state of exaltation contains absolutely no exaggeration, as I am very far from being tempted to exaggerate about Adler. It is not

THE BO O K O N ADLE R

affirmed that his books contain such traits through and through, but there are plenty of passages which do. And inexcusable as it would be, according to my notion, were one to write something like this last and say nothing more about Adler; just as inexcusable would it be, to my thinking, if a veracious in terpretation of his confusion found no place in a rather elaborate i nvestigation of him.

As was said, his writings do not concern me directly; essentially my investigation deals only with that fact of his revelation, and with the question how he understands himself i n such a thing as he has experienced, or with the suspicion that he has not understood himself in it. I use his works only with a definite aim.

Had I to deal with them aesthetically and directly, it would give me pleasure to admit as officially as possible what my judgment is, that one really can learn something from them, or, to express myself quite explicitly, that I actually have learned one thing and another from them. A reviewer, it is true, is commonly accustomed to express his opinion with a superior air to the effect that, in spite of learning nothing himself, he can recommend the author's works to the public, for the public is not so loftily wise as he. But such is not the case here. People in general indubitably, nay, absolutely, can only be injured by reading A.'s works, for he confuses totally. But he who has what Adler lacks, dialectical clarity about the spheres and the totality, he and he alone, will in truth be able to learn something from the individual clever, lively, edifying, moving, sometimes profound sayings; and only he, secure against losing more than he gains, will find joy in what sometimes he succeeds in producing in a purely stylistic sense, though as a stylist he has no primitive merit. It is, strangely enough, a rather common opinion that it is easier to read epigrams than connected writings. And yet this is far from being the case, for to have any profit from epigrams one must be in full possession of a connected view in which one understands himself.

This it is that Adler lacks, he does not understand himself, if the demands one makes upon him are according to a proper scale.

And in this respect I cannot haggle. I do not believe that I will be taxed with clipping coins invidiously when as a reviewer I gladly pay the meed of praise to the distinguished author, but on the other hand, neither will I haggle, though I must admit with

R E C A P I T U L ATI O N

pleasure that, measured b y another scale, a slipshod requirement, Adler appears to better effect, and that appraised by a reviewer who is just as good a dialectician as he (and no more) , he naturally will be seen to stand like a victor with a palm branch in his hand .

SU P P LE M E N T T O C H A P TE R I I I R E C A P I T U LAT I O N

The reader will remember that throughout this whole work the argument is only e concessis. Nowhere is it directly denied that A.

has had a revelation: on the contrary, this is assumed, since he himself says so; and thus everything he says is assumed to be true, but thereby in turn the contradiction is made evident.

I . To illuminate the fact that confusion is present, Adler's reply to the ecclesiastical authority is employed. The dilemma may be expressed thus: either all the several answers are nonsense; or essen tially they silently imply the revocation of his first claim ( that he had a revelation and received from the Saviour a new doctrine) . If we assume the latter ( that revocation is implied i n h i s answers) , then the confusion is this: that he does n o t take seriously the matter of revocation, that he treats it as nothing, or does not himself notice anything, regards his answers as having meaning and reality, which they can only have in so far as they imply the revocation of his first claim.

Within the dilemma the argument is this: Adler so identifies himself with the first publications ( the preface to the Sermons, the Sermons themselves, and the Studies) that in the ordi nary and vulgar sense he must be regarded as the author of them; but then the doctrine was not revealed, then it was not written after Christ's dictation, he has not been merely an instrument. Adler admits authentically that he has nothing new, since like every Christian in general he holds to the Scripture, preaches Jesus, appeals to Scriptural passages as proof-texts in support of what he says - but with this he must essentially revoke all that first about the revelation, etc. - Adler hopes that later he will be able to state better the doctrine ( revealed and dictated by the Saviour) , he hopes in the perfectibility of the doctrine. But this

THE BOOK ON A D L ER

hope is entirely meaningless, nay, blasphemous, if that doctrine is not Adler's own; and if it is his own, then he has had no revelation through which the doctrine was communicated to him by the Saviour.

2. In the next place, in order to illuminate the confusion, attention was directed to Adler's four last works. I nstead of what one might be justified in expecting, in case a person did not remain in a confused condition, we find that now, occupied as he is in a literary way with all sorts of things, he has put himself to rest and settled down as an amateur lyrical genius. That he is a genius may well be conceded here where we have nothing whatever to do with such a thing. But so soon as his last four books are put side by side with the first claim in the interest of meaning and identity, then the dilemma appears: either the last four books, even though the occasional content were the most excellent, regarded as books by A. , that is to say regarded as a part oJ

his total production, are to be regarded as nonsense; or else there is silently implied in them the revocation of all his first claims. If the latter is assumed, the confusion consists in the fact that he treats this as nothing, or notices nothing, and does not take the revocation seriously. The metamorphosis from an apostle to a genius is so decisive, so qualitative, and besides that so topsyturvy, that least of all can it be ignored or treated as nothing. I n civil situations, and generally i n the world of finiteness, this may very well be done; there a person may more than once begin afresh and let the past be forgotten without more ado, there a person changes his situation in life, tries his fortune in a new career, and without more ado lets the past be bygone and forgotten. But in case a man thinks that also in the world of spirit this can be done, such an opinion is enough to prove that he is confused . In the world of finiteness it may be well enough to live haphazardly, it may be true, as the saying goes, variatio delectat; but in the world of spirit continuity is not only a joy but it is spirit itself, that is to say, continuity is spirit, not to respect continuity qualitatively is to lead one's life outside the sphere of spirit, either in worldliness or in confusion. Continuity is not monotony, in continuity too there is change, but continuity means that every change is made dialectic in relation to the foregoing. When the change is qualitative (as the change to R E C A P I T U LA T I O N

233

genius from apostle) the last expression of continuity is revocation of the first position, which again, inasmuch as one has communicated his first, ought to be made officially. I n the world of spiri t highftown romanticism is confusion, and just as much so is the distraction which does not notice that the change is a qualitative one. And to the same degree that one has ventured out, even to the point of saying that he has had a revelation, to that same degree is romanticism or distraction the more suspicious. - The confusion in the case of Adler becomes even greater by reason of the fact that he, in his position in life as an amateur lyrical genius, continues with a clever, paraphrastic exegesis, etc. to hold fast to that doctrine of his ( communicated to him, according to his first claim, by a revelation from the Saviour) . All the more clearly is his distraction and confusion manifested for the fact that he has entirely forgotten that this doctrine was communicated to him by the Saviour through a revelation .

He may revoke the first claim - then, as the author of the four last books, he confesses that he is in a confused genius. He may revoke the last and seek to array himself in the character of the first. But to let both stand is a proof that he is in a confused state of mind .

C H A PTE R IV

Psychological interpretation of Adler as a phenomenon and as a satire upon the Hegelian philosophy and our age.

PSYCHOLOGI CAL EX POSITION

The aim of this section is to pave the way for an understanding of the catastrophe, to explain several presuppositions by which the catastrophe in Adler's life might have been psychologically motivated . Undoubtedly it would be a more interesting and a more grateful labor if one might venture to operate by the aid of possibilities alone, for even the most copious reality never has the pure ideality of possibility, but constantly has along with i t something fortuitous. B u t t o poetize in this way i s n o t allowable since it is a contemporary whose life is in q uestion.

Hence the psychological exposition is limited by reality and a respect for reality which always contains an element of the fortuitous. Even the understanding and explanation of his life which Magister Adler may possess internally will contain something fortuitous, because no actual man is pure ideality, so that any particular episode in his life will have a fortuitous lack or a fortuitous redundance. And the psychological exposition which can be furnished here is limited in another sense by reality. Thus it would be possible to think that one who knew Magister Ad ler thoroughly, one who was in possession of his confidence, might know of something (an impression of his life, an occurrence, an expression , ete . ) which as a presupposition would in the highest degree be worthy of attention, but into which he as the knowledgeable person is in no wise justified in initiating others, let alone by publishing it in print. The investigation must therefore keep within more common terms, have a more universal character, making use at the most of single hints which Magister Adler himself may have given. The art consists in so putting together these qualifications that something results from 234

PSYC HOLO G I CAL EX POSI T I O N

235

it all the same. I n this way the investigation can in no wise take too great liberties with Magister Adler, for the fact that essentially it makes use of only such general characteristics as universally explain the presuppositions of the age as a whole, whereas I completely renounce every private interpretation of Magister Adler for which I have no data at all.

We may imagine then a theological candidate who has passed with credit his professional examination, he is more than commonly gifted; it may be assumed that, aesthetically understood, he has lived so much that existence will one day be able i n a decisive way to point him out. On the other hand, up to this moment he may not, either as a child or as a youth or as a theological candidate, have come into any decisive relationship with Christianity, still less with the serious question whether he himself is a Christian. In this respect it may be assumed that he has lived on, as so many do, according to the current definitions in everyday language of what it is to be a Christian: to have been baptized and confirmed as a Christian, to have legitimated his standing when he matriculated in arts, etc . , to have acquired a quantum satis of theological learning, to have become a candidate.

So now he is a theological candidate, but as one who is eminently gifted he naturally cannot conclude his studies with the ordinary examination for a pastorate. On the contrary, he now begins for the first time to study properly, and with that begins the study of the Hegelian philosophy, a philosophy which, supported by almighty opinion, is supposed to stand at the very summit of all scientific knowledge, apart from which there is no salvation but only darkness and stupidity. With enthusiasm for the hero of philosophy, following gladly the slogan, "You lack everything, study Hegel and you will have everything," likely thanking the gods in the Greek style for the privilege of being contemporary with the highest development of the human race, he sets to work on his study. He is not in possession of one single presupposition which would make him inwardly aware of the fact that this philosophy totally confuses Christianity, there is in him no deeper religious life which might restrain him from going into this philosophy; in a religious respect he is without the heavy equipment of theology or the deeper impression of religion, he is a light-armed soldier to whom it comes only too natural and too

THE BO O K O N A DLE R

easy to understand negligently what Hegel has negligently expounded, to the effect that his philosophy was the highest development of Christianity. Yea, in a religious respect he likely is so light-armed that it would hardly occur to him to q uestion this. - So then he studies, and what many vain persons do carelessly and only to be in the fashion, he ( though he too is carried away by the spirit of the age) does with zeal and interest; he even gives lectures in the university on this philosophy and publishes a popular exposition of Hegel's objective logic, but the question how the Hegelian philosophy comports with Christianity does not occur to him at all.

Magister Adler has now reached the age when one ordinarily feels an urge to conclude his student years and thereafter to teach others. This is the transition from discere to docendo discere. Also at that age, which is the critical time of maturity, there commonly develops an urge to reflect deeply upon one's own life. And again when making the transition and going farther in life one turns back to one's first recollections, to the first unforgettable impressions of one's upbringing, and tests how one now stands related to that which one then understood as a child and childishly appropriated, and tests whether one is in accord with oneself, whether and to what extent one understands oneself in understanding one's first impressions, and the concern is that one's life in a deeper sense might be a personal life essentially in agreement with oneself. One and another man surely stands at this parting of the ways, asking whether he shall let the first go, cutting down the bridge, and hold to what has been learned later, or whether he shall look back to childhood and learn conversely; for as a child he indeed learned from his elders, and now, being himself an elder, he should learn from a child , learn from his childhood .

If now it had been Adler's case that he, turning back to himself, were to be struck by one or another essential Christian recollection, by one or another decisive impression of Christianity - then the case would have been different and at the same time rather more serious. Adler, on the contrary, may likely have found it all right as a result of his life's development to remain a Hegelian.

The whole question about Christianity and Hegelian philosophy does not emerge at all .

Magister Adler seeks a place, not a s professor o f philosophy or PSYC H OLO G I C AL E X P O S I T I O N

237

of the Hegelian philosophy in particular, but as priest, as a teacher of the Christian religion, for which also he has fi tted himself . . . by studying the Hegelian philosophy. And he was called . Relying upon having passed his examination for the priesthood creditably, relying upon his general culture, relying upon his talents, he hopes to be equal to the task; relying upon his exceptional knowledge of the Hegelian philosophy, he hopes to be an exceptionally able priest. This is by no means immodest on his part, not at all. I f i t is true that the Hegelian philosophy is the highest development of Christianity, then indeed it is an advantage for a priest to know this philosophy perfectly - not as generally happens, or at least sometimes, that a man, after having with the seriousness of reflection renewed himself by his childish impressions of Christianity, being in good understanding with a strict Christian upbringing, with the Bible in his hand, enters upon his work as a clergyman; no, in reliance upon his examination, with Hegel's eighteen volumes elegantly bound, almost regarding ordination and all that as an u nwelcome interruption of his study of Hegel and writing about him

M agister Adler becomes a priest.

He does not become a pastor in the metropolis, where it would not be unthinkable that he might succeed in skulking through, yea, i n going through life proudly as a priest, as a Christian priest . . . i n Hegelian categories. Magister Adler becomes a priest in the country, and so is brought into contact and into responsible relation with simple and ordinary people who, lacking a knowledge of Hegel, have as perhaps men in the country still have, a serious though meager Christian instruction, so that, unacquainted with every volatilization of it, they simply believe in the Christian doctrine and have it before them as a present reality. For simple, believing men so deal with Christianity that they do not hold it historically at a distance of eighteen hundred years, still less fantastically at a mythical distance.

Magister Adler becomes a priest in the country and finds himself living in rural retirement. The conception he has of the Hegelian philosophy, perhaps also the conception this philosophy may give him about himself; makes it seem plausible that Magister Adler will hardly find among his clerical brethren or

TH E BOOK ON A D L ER

among his other acquaintances anyone with whom he can or really wishes to strike up an intimacy. So Magister A. finds himself living altogether isolated with his Hegelian philosophy, which after all is perhaps more appropriate for royal residences.

So it must be if the relationships are to be tightened up to the point of a catastrophe; the individual in question must first and foremost be kept in isolation or keep himself in isolation . - On the other hand, that

A. might rusticate is entirely

improbable, for that he is too highly gifted , and he is too much intellectually employed to become "a card-playing priest," or to reach the anti-apostolic climax, as sometimes happens - for the apostles were called from fishing to catch men: a man is appointed a priest to catch men and ends by fishing, hunting, ete.

The situation is now prepared : a man who is fully occupied with the Hegelian philosophy becomes a country parson in rural retirement, intellectually understood, in complete isolation. -

The simple congregation represents quite simply the Christian position, and Magister A. as pastor and spiritual guide is in duty bound to deal with them. In capitals where a Hegelian has support in distinguished and cultured circles it may perhaps be possible to defend oneself against "simplicities" proudly and with aristocratic superciliousness; but Magister Adler as a Hegelian is like a wild, strange bird in the country, entirely without support and, intellectually understood, as thoroughly out of proportion with his environment as was Gulliver among the little bits of men or among the giants, whereas Gulliver had the advantage and the consolation that he was only a casual traveller. A., on the contrary, in spite of his disproportion and unrelatedness, is essentially in relation for the fact that he was appointed pastor, and besides that he is too good a head not to perceive that after all it would be foolish to be proud of his philosophy before the simple peasants.

One cannot deny that this is a desperate situation, and yet inwardly, in the direction of responsibility, it is still more desperate. To stand in the pulpit (and so before God's face) and preach what in consequence of his culture he presumably was through with long ago, to sit by a deathbed and comfort a dying man with what he himself was through with long ago, to sit by THE C A T AST R O PHE

239

the deathbed and perhaps witness the fact that the dying man presses the hand of the priest and dies blessedly i n the faith of that which the priest by the bedside was through with. To witness how a poor but God-fearing family prepares for the Holy Communion, with what solemnity they step up to the holy place (allow them in God's name to remain stupid ! ) - and then the priest who is through with all this, and then the priest, the teacher, who, if only he gets into the mood, actually steals this from these simple people at seeing their emotion and agitation!

To be so developed that one, if he were really serious about the Hegelian philosophy, might rather feel himself obliged to pluck the simple people out of their errors - and then to be a priest, appointed to teach them the truth! And then the responsibility, that one is a priest! And then that one lacks any diversion, is without support and harmony with others; for in the metropolis one perhaps vaunts the Hegelian philosophy, but hardly in the country, and impossibly on the part of a priest.

It is well enough known that loneliness may drive a man to extremes; but Magister A.'s situation is worse than loneliness, for it is also contradiction and self-contradiction, and over all hovers the terror of responsibility. When then some time has gone by, when the contradiction and the terror hem him in closer and closer, the situation at last is this: that a Hegelian who has "gone farther" has now about reached the turning-point of decision, whether he will become a Christian - and this moment occurred in his life a )'ear after he had been well and happily installed as a Christian pastor.

2

T HE C ATA S TRO P HE IN M A GI S TER

AD LER' S L I FE

Then there came to pass an occurrence, and M agister A.'s life was changed. How this occurrence is more precisely to be understood, I naturally am unable to elucidate. The only thing I might do is to explore poetically the possibilities, but i n that way no factual elucidation is to be won. The one person from whom we might reasonably expect a precise and definite elucidation would be Magister Adler himself. But from him one seeks i t in 240

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

vain. After having i n the first place furnished a detailed description of the occurrence, which was said to have taken place at night ("when an evil sound goes through the chamber and thereupon the Saviour bade him write down the words" - write down the words which are communicated in the preface to his Sermons) , for this concrete statement he substitutes at the instance of the ecclesiastical authority the more vague and indefinite one that it was "an occurrence."

Every third party, including me and this investigation, when the desire for a more particular elucidation is checked by the confusion of Magister A. (the person directly concerned ) , may perfectly well rest satisfied with the statement that there came to pass an occurrence, and Magister A.'s life was changed, yea, even with the more meager notion that the occurrence consisted in the fact that Magister A.'s life was changed . The principal point is (and had not Magister A. originally undertaken to say more, all would have been well up to this point) that Magister A. with a qualitative leap was transportedfrom the medium of philosophy, and more particularly from the fantastic medium of the Hegelian philosophy (pure thought and pure being) , into the sphere of religious inwardness. The principal point is that Magister A.from the objectivity of abstract thinking came to himself. I t is another question whether Magister A. within the religious definition of coming to oneself may be said to have as yet come to himself, inasmuch as, though now religiously determined, yet as a person in an exalted state he is still outside himself. But in contrast to the objectivity of abstract thought he may be said to have come to himself, inasmuch as he has reached the point of being concerned about himself. This is the new factor with which hitherto his whole life development has been unacquainted, this religious impression of himself in selfconcern. - Nevertheless, as Magister A. himself says in the preface to the Sermons before he began to tell the story about the revelation, there arose before him a light, and it was not by thinking it arose but by the Spirit.

The catastrophe was accompanied by a symbolical action about the factual character of which there is no reason to doubt: Magister Adler burned his Hegelian manuscripts. When one has so decisively broken away from the Hegelian philosophy there is assurance that one will never more deal with it again diffusely,

T H E C A T AST R O P H E

that b y a single step one i s assured against temptation from that side and from relapse into it again . Alas, the need of giving an i nward resolution a striking outward expression is often an illusion. Perhaps it has not seldom happened that a young girl in the presence of the whole family has destroyed every reminder of the unfaithful lover, burnt all his poisonous letters, and then, without being conscious of it, longed to see the faithless man. Not rarely there is a suspicious incongruity between inward decision ( the strength of resolution, salvation, healing) and the outward signs of decision. One can hardly draw conclusions from the latter to the former, one can rather conclude conversely that the stronger the need of striking decision in an outward sense, the less the security. That the outward expression is not always the inward is true not only of the ironists who intentionally deceive others by a false outward expression, but it is true also of immediate natures who unconsciously deceive themselves, yea sometimes feel a need of self-deception. Thus in case a man hardly takes time to sleep and eat, merely for the sake of being able to preach and spread abroad a view which would be a blessing to mankind, is intent early and late to prove i ts rightness

- one might indeed believe that the man must have a firm and lively conviction. Alas, and yet it is not always so, sometimes he has no firm conviction, but feels the need that many might be in agreement with him, in order that his conviction might be convincing to himself. Strangely enough, he has a view, he has something to impart, it looks as if it were the others who had need of him and of his firm conviction - alas, it is he who has need of the other men, he wants to convince himself by convincing others. In case one were to put him, intellectually understood, in a vacuum, he would have no conviction; and, on the other hand, in the degree that many listen to him, in the same degree he is aware that he has a conviction, and in the degree that they agree with him, in the same degree - he is himself convinced . Every person of some seriousness who is accustomed to treat himself with precaution is inclined rather to avoid the striking outward exhibition of decision, or is on the watch lest it come too early. A man of some seriousness would rather hide the decision and test himself in silent inwardness in order to see whether it might not deceptively be true that he the weak one felt

T H E B O O K ON A D L E R

the need o f a strong outward expression of resolution. If a man can hold out in silent inwardness, endure to be totally changed without being changed outwardly in the least, then likely he can take the striking step. The converse is not true. If I were to imagine two drinkers who both have resolved to drink no more: one has solemnly thrown bottles and glasses out of the window and gone in for total abstinence; the other has a bottle and a full glass in sigh t - bu t he does not drink. Which of these two may be regarded as surely saved? One so easily confounds the physical with the moral. No, to be able to be precisely as usual, to be able to live on with the daily and continuous reminders of the old , and yet to be changed in the deepest ground of his nature - that indeed is the art. But if the change has really come about, then it is permissible, then one always may change little by little the outward expression, if one has quite seriously been on the watch lest the change might be bifore others in the outward, not hifore God in the inward. I will imagine two men: at a decisive moment there comes about an essential change in both of them, but one of them at once expresses the change, the other only in the course of seven years expresses the change by outward signs which correspond with the inward change he underwent in that decisive moment; his change therefore is not conspicuous to others, because it is distributed through seven years - of these two changes, which may be regarded as the most secure? - It would therefore perhaps have been wiser and more prudent of Magister A. if, instead of burning the manuscripts, he had allotted an hour or two every day to occupation with Hegel, in order to assure himself that he really was changed, for one can so easily confound the moral with the physical: the abandoning of Hegel with the burning of his manuscripts. If my memory does not deceive me, it was the celebrated Johann Arnold Kanne, whose life was acquainted with considerable spiritual altera tions, when one time he was gripped by Christian truth, he also burnt up all his mythological manuscripts - and yet relapsed once again .

Goethe also burnt his manuscripts containing his poetical works

- and when he had done that he became in a full sense a poet.

As it was with Goethe, so was it not with Adler - that after having burnt his Hegelian manuscripts he became for the first time a thoroughgoing Hegelian. But on the other hand, deceived A D L E R'S A D VA N T A G E

243

by this striking outward sign of decision, he managed to hide from himself in self-deception that he continued to be a Hegelian. Lyrically, subjectively, fully and firmly convinced that once for all and forever he had broken with the Hegelian philosophy, by burning his Hegelian manuscripts, that by a revelation he was saved forever from the prolixity of the Hegelian philosophy.

But, 10, when he then had occasion to explain what he understood by the revelation and how he understood himself in what had happened to him, he recurs to the old Hegelian volatilization. If one were to call his attention to this, it would not be unthinkable that A. would reply: "How can you come with such an absurd objection, that at bottom I might be a Hegelian? I assure you by all that is holy I burnt my Hegelian manuscripts that night. Now believe me!" I n that way Magister A. puts the Hegelian philosophy in an extremely comical situation, for the fact that one who is fully and firmly convinced that he has had a revelation uses that philosophy to volatilize this same conception. But thereby A. has the merit of making evident indirectlysatirically the contradiction in the Hegelian philosophy. For when one takes away the eighteen hundred years, the roguish trick, and puts the Hegelian philosophy in the situation of contemporaneousness, then i ts method of procedure becomes clear, that it fraudulently explains awl!)' a revelation instead of denying it openly. And the extraordinary merit of the comical is reserved for Magister Adler, to be in every way man enough for the whole thing: man enough to have a revelation, and man enough to explain it away.

3

M AG I S TER ADLER' S ADVA N TAGE

The good, the admirable quality in Magister Adler is that he is moved , is profoundly affected, that thereby his life h as acquired a very different rhythm from that of the cab-horse with which most men, religiously understood, go sluggishly through life.

Whether it be a panting press of business or a worldly interest, or whatever the distraction may be, it is certain that most men, religiously understood, go through lif� in a sort of abstraction and absent-mindedness, that never are they sensible of their own 244

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

ego, o f their pulse, of their own heart-beat, in self-concern; they live too objectively to be sensible of any such thing, and on hearing anything said about it they quiet themselves with the explanation that all such things are hysteria, hypochondria, etc.

Most men live in relation to their own self as if they were constantly out, never at home; the occurrences and undertakings of their life flutter indefinitely about this self; they sometimes perhaps shut their door ... in order to be at home, but they do not shut out the distracting thought, and so are themselves

"out." The admirable quality in Magister A. consists in the fact that in a serious and strict sense one may say that he was fetched home by a higher power; for before that he was certainly in a great sense "out" or in a foreign land, at the time when he was a Hegelian and objective. In a worldly sense, the misfortune of the Prodigal Son consists not exactly in the fact that he journeyed into a foreign land, but that he wasted his substance there: spiritually and religiously understood, perdition consists in journeying into a foreign land, in being "out," in being objective, so that one gets no impression of oneself by remaining at home with the inward self-concern of conscience.

All religiousness consists in inwardness, in enthusiasm, in strong emotion, in the qualitative tension by the springs of subjectivity. When one beholds people as they are for the most part, one cannot deny that they have some religiousness, some concern to be enlightened and instructed about religious things, but without allowing these things to affect them too closely. For, observing more nearly, one easily discovers that in their religiousness they relate themselves to their self at a certain distance; they make good resolutionsfor thefuture, but not for the present, not for the present instant, to begin right away; contemporaneously with the resolution they do not carry it out, contemporaneously with the resolution they have rather the notion that there is still some time, ifit were only half an hour, before they need to begin. They make sacred promises, they resolve ... tomorrow, etc., but what is really the decisive point, to be entirely present to themselves in selfconcern, is something with which they are totally unacquainted.

Therefore they well may have religious notions, sometimes also may find edification, yet I find no better comparison for their religiousness than the exercises in the field of maneuvers. As these

A D L E R 'S A D VA N TA G E

exercises are related t o battle o r t o being i n battle (where there is danger, which in the field of maneuvers is absent) , so is distancereligiousness related to inward religiousness.

Most men in their religiousness are present at the most in a bygone time or in a time to come, but not in a present time. They think about the religious, hear it talked about, deal with it in the medium of fantasy, have it with them in the form of the wish, of longing, of presentiment, in the form of the illusory resolu tion and purpose, but the impression of the religious, that it is to be used now, now at once, now at the very instant, they do not get.

They think about the immortality of the soul. In this consciousness they repose at a distance, but for this thought they have no use in concern and self�concern; they think about it in this wise: I t is always well to know that you are immortal, for the sake of the chance that you may die; but that, however, may be many years off. So they do not think the thought of death at the same instant with the thought of immortality, they do not reflect that every instant when one has not this consciousness of immortality one is not really immortal. They are like the man full-fed who labors for the food for the coming day, not like the famished man who at once has use for what he can scrape together. At bottom their lives are lived in other categories which give them a deceptive sense of security. While they are busied about or occupied with the religious they do not comprehend that the religious is the one thing needful, they regard it as also needful, for the sake especially of hard times; they understand very well that a man may die of hunger if he doesn't get anything to live off, but they do not comprehend that man lives by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God . When men who live thus religiously at a distance talk about religion (and priests of that quality are of course not altogether rare, indeed they are even of a better sort than card-playing parsons or horsy and newspaper parsons) one notices at once by their talk that they are not in it, just as though while existing they are not really existing, are not present to themselves. Therefore, though the hearers do not sleep through the sermon , which nowadays is rather rare, yet they are distrait, for in the discourse itself there is an interval, a space, between the need and the satisfaction of the need, between the means of salvation and the instantaneous use of them, which is

T H E BO O K O N ADL E R

the interval of illusion, of time lost, of delay. One notices in the discourse that there is not that fresh outpouring of an experienced religion which now at the moment of the discourse arises to a present life; one notices that it is not as though the speaker needed to defend himself against the wealth of past experience; against the overwhelming power of present experience; one notices rather that it is as if every time he wiped the sweat from his brow he went home and fetched a new factor, as if when he had to say anything he must go away and fetch it. He on the contrary who is present to himself in religious experience has what he is to say at hand, in his mouth and in his heart - i ndeed, just as nowadays one has in well-equipped buildings water on every floor and never needs to go down and fetch it from the courtyard but only to turn on the spigot, so has such a religious man always the essentials with him in the present.

To be entirely present to oneself is the highest thing and the highest task for the personal life, it is the power on account of which the Romans called the gods

But this thing of

being entirely present to oneself in self-concern is the highest i n religion, for only thus can it absolutely b e comprehended that one absolutely is in need of God every instant, so that everything belonging to time past or to time to come or generally to indefinite time, such as evasions, excuses, digressions, etc., grows pale and vanishes, as the other sort of jugglery, which also belongs to the indefinite time of the gloaming and the twilight, retreats and vanishes before the bright light of day. When one is not present to oneself, then one is absent in the past or in the future time, then one's religiousness is recollection of an abstract purpose, then one dwells perhaps piously in the piety of an ancient and vanisned age, or builds, religiously understood, the objective religiousness like the Tower of Babel - but this night shall thy soul be required of thee.

So it is with most men - but it is different with Magister Adler.

He truly is shaken, he is in mortal danger, he lies ( to employ an expression used by another author) * over 70,000 fathoms of water; what he discovers must be used at once, the help he cries

* How scrupulous it is of S. K. to dissociate himself thus from h is pseudonym!

A D L E R 'S ADVA N T A G E

247

for must at once be employed - or the same instant he sinks, He is absolutely subjective, inwardly wounded, and must therefore remain present to himself in his need. I ndeed, M agister A. is so far from the sure ground of indolence and illusion that rather he is so tossed out into the extremity of mortal danger that the words, " today," " tonight," " this very instant," are about to destroy him, so inwardly is he fighting in the instantaneous situation of mortal danger between the intense struggle of selfpreservation and the surrender of inwardness.

But M agister A. possesses an advantage in being thus shaken, a qualitative advantage, and verily I shall not i n envy depreciate the value of this advantage. As it is an advantage to be truly in love, to be truly enthusiastic, so also it is an advantage, religiously understood, to be shaken and therewith to have found the place of which it is said, Hie Rhodus, hie saltus. For where is that place, religiously understood? It is neither at Gerizim nor at Jerusalem, neither in thinking nor in learning, but at the most tender and subjective point of inwardness. When one is deeply affected there, then is one rightly situated at that place. And this deep experience is in turn the trading capital and the true riches. With envy I shall certainly not talk of this advantage of Magister A., but neither with curiosity. There is such a thing as cowardly, effeminate religiosity which will not itself venture out for decision upon the deep, but rather with curiosity likes to feel the shudder with which one who is himself secure sees another struggling out upon the deep. A cowardly and effeminate religiosity which itself writhes at seeing the dreadful experiences which prove what a prodigious power the religious is, but prefers to see the proof adduced by another. As the shades in the underworld sucked the blood of the living in order to live a while longer, so the cowardly and effeminate religious people, conscious that at bottom their religiosity is a hypocritical and rouged-up thing, would therefore like to try occasionally to work up some strong impressions . . . at second hand. Such religious people are not better by a hair's breadth than the idle people who long to see an execution, or a great conflagration, etc . , in order to see without danger to themselves the death struggles of men. But precisely because such religious people exist, and only too many of them, especially in our

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

effeminate, shrewd , refined Christendom, it i s necessary that the man deeply moved does not abandon himself to them in his inwardness, that in holy wrath he may know how to get behind these cowardly efIeminates in order to push them out into the current, instead of abandoning himself to be a diversion and a spectacle. But for this Magister A. lacks reflection and coolness and schooling and holy upbringing, and hence one cannot deny that, even if everything were all right with him in other respects, he nevertheless does harm, for the fact that, i nstead of helping others out into decision, he presents a diversion to the cowardly and effeminate who love voluptuous shudders. But his advantage over most men is and remains none the less something qualitative, and something to be highly regarded especially in our age. The more that culture, training, and discretion get the upper hand, and the more that men come to live comparatively, all the more common becomes a certain lawyer-like dexterity i n handling spiritual determinants. For every situation o n e knows evasions and exceptions and limitations and excuses; now audaciously, now dispiritedly, one pleads the example of others, so that one constantly avoids a decisive impression of spirit. Culture and training and discretion and life in the flock work precisely to the end of making men, religiously understood, distrait, absent-minded.

The advantage of Magister A. is recognizable also in his writings, and the good that is in them must be attributed to this advantage. And the good which is in them is precisely that there is something stirring about them. He is sometimes moving by a noble childlikeness, he alarms by a harrowing description, he sometimes aims and hits with such precision that this is identical.

What he has to say is not said by an indifferent man and not fetched from afar; no, he himself is in the hasty movement, in the danger, in the effort, or in the repose of comfort, in the hope; and what he says he has ready to hand , it is outburst, quite genuinely an outburst of feeling and emotion, and one may say that not rarely has he overwhelmed the reader with his outbursts. - I n his style therefore there is sometimes a lyrical seething which, though aesthetically appraised it is sometimes foolish, is nevertheless religiously worthy. There is in it an impatience which outbids itself in expression and then breaks off abruptly, and ADLE R 'S ADVA N T A G E

249

thereby precisely makes the impatience still more evident. At the head of a cavalry troop of predicates, each one braver than the other, he hurls himself upon the reader. Aesthetically appraised his style has no merit, and I cannot find a single expression in all his books which I can venture to recommend as correct, there is always something accidental (which lies in the fact that he is himself only in the instant of reality and that he comes, i n an anguishing sense, too close to reality) , either sometimes too much or sometimes too little, either an abundance in which he remains so to speak defeated in the sortie, or a scantiness which indicates that imagination will not stretch so far and which has the effect that one sees him struggling for breath; but religiously his presentation makes its impression. What Frater Taciturnus presumably must know very well how to do, since he, though he used a style of a very different sort, lets Quidam of the experiment express himself in this style, examples of which one finds i n wild forms i n Adler. Building rhetorically upon t h e antecedent clauses, he lets the consequent clauses be nothing, an abyss from which the reader (if he reads aloud) will shrink away and fall back as it were upon the antecedents; rushing forward on a run as though the wealth would never be exhausted, and precisely in the same second breaking off, which is like the trick of stopping a horse i n full career. Most riders fall off on that occasion, whereas ordinarily one makes a transition to a full stop, a shift in the modulation, a veering of the concepts, in one word, the u nexpected stopping, etc. Like all southern nations ( the Jews, of instance) and like the vocal organs of passionate nations, so does every passionate person speak in such a way that his voice continually breaks - so also it is possible to produce this effect stylistically.

However, this would carry me too far. And how many men are there who even have merely a notion how prose can be used lyrically, and that I engage to do, namely to produce a lyrical effect in prose better than it can be done in verse - in prose where people first learn to read and to require thought in every word, whereas verse contains always a little filling of lime. I break off, for what I have to say concerns only authors . I n this respect all the Pseudonyms have a linguistic value for the fact that they have cultivated lyrical prose. Adler has also learned something

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

from them, as i s easily seen; for it i s not true a s the flattering reviewer in the Church Times relates, that he began contemporaneously with the Pseudonyms, but he began after them, and the style in his four latest books is notably different from that in his Sermons, when he was not yet strongly under their influence. On the other hand, it is true, as this reviewer says, that one sometimes finds passages in A. (in the last four books) which strongly remind one of the Pseudonyms; but I see no merit in this, whether i n copying another, or in forgetting that one by having had a revelation has entirely different things to think about than linguistic exercises.

4

T HE F U NDA ME N TA L FA U LT I N M A G I S TE R

AD LE R W H I C H O C C A S I O N S T HE

I N C O N G R U I TY

The fundamental fault consists in the fact that Magister Adler's theological, Christian-theological culture and schooling, is defective and confused and stands in no relation to his lyrical enthusiasm, whereas, presumably led astray by his conception of what it is to be a theological candidate, a priest and a philosopher, he believes he is in a position to be able to explain something and therefore precipitates himself into literary production, instead of seeking an education and self-discipline.

If it is true that even to be beautiful is an excuse for many things, that to be in love may he urged as an excuse for much imprudence, to be enthusiastic as an excuse for much impetuosi ty, to have made a great discovery as an excuse for running through the streets of Syracuse naked - well then, so the fact of being deeply moved and shaken, religiously understood, ought to be an excuse for many imperfections, and i n relation to Magister A. a critic ought to beware of being peevish and Philistine. However, imprudence, otfense, in short, whatever has to be excused, or the fact that there is something to be excused, must not be taken to i mply that there is something wrong with respect to the good, with respect to the excellence which serves as an excuse; no, the offense must consist in something accidental which is different from this. Running naked through the streets

H I S F A U L T

o f Syracuse has thus nothing whatever t o d o with t h e discovery, which therefore remains absolutely just as good as before. H ence it is quite right that the discovery serves as an excuse for the offense, that because of that one quite forgets that Archimedes was naked, as he himself did. Only prudery could dwell long on the offensiveness of the act, and only a crazy Philistinism triumphant in a small town could turn everything round about and reach the conclusion: I t is certain that Archimedes ran naked through the streets ergo he has made no great discovery. On the

-

other hand, it would be something different if there had been doubt about Archimedes' discovery; for a misunderstanding, a mistake (instead of a great discovery) , affords no excuse for an offense. This too is really the Philistine's train of reasoning; for Philistinism has no conception of the great, the sublime, and therefore no notion of the excuse afforded by the great. Philistinism in interpreting the distinguished man would say as did the merchant Bearend, according to a well-known story, when a bird dropped something on the table: "If I had done that," said he,

"you would have heard a great row." So it is that the Philistine, too, leaves out the point: he says, " I f ! had done that" - yes, quite right, but the Philistine is no Archimedes. However, as was said, if there are any irregularities with respect to the discovery, then has Archimedes no excuse.

Now, as we have seen, it was Magister Adler's advantage that he was deeply moved , shaken in his inmost being, that hence his inwardness came into being, or he came into being in accordance with his inwardness. But to be thus profoundly moved is a very indefinite expression for something so concrete as Christian awakening or conversion, and yet one dare say nothing more of Magister A. To be shaken ( pretty much in the sense that one speaks of shaking a person to make him wake up) is the more universal foundation for all religiousness; the experience of being shaken, of being deeply moved, the coming into being of subjectivity in the inwardness of emotion, the pious pagan and the pious Jew have in common with the Christian. Upon this common basis of more universal emotion the q ualitative difference must be erected and make itself felt, for the more universal emotion has reference only to something abstract: to be moved by something higher, something eternal, by an idea. And one

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

does not become a Christian b y being moved b y something indefinitely higher, and not every outpouring of religious emotion is a Christian outpouring. That is to say: emotion which is Christian is checked by the definition of concepts, and when emotion is transposed or expressed in words in order to be communicated, this transposition must occur constantly within the definition of the concepts.

With regard to all inwardness which reflects upon the purely human, the merely human (so with regard to all inwardness within the sphere of immanence) , the fact of being deeply moved, of being shaken, is to be taken in the sense of shaking a man till he awakes. If this emotion expresses itself, breaks out in words, the transposition occurs in feeling and imagination within such concepts and definitions of concepts which every man may be said to discover in using the words; the transposition is not limited by specific, qualitative concepts which have an historical validity outside the individual and higher than every human individual and paradoxically higher than every human individual, a paradoxical historical validity. - Let us take, for example, falling in love, understood purely in an erotic sense.

With regard to the purely erotic experience of being i n love there is no specific, qualitative difference between the experience of a Greek, a Jew, or a Christian. The lyrical outburst of love is within the merely human qualification and not within the distinction of the specific, qualitative concepts. The lyrical is appraised with regard to its ability to express the purely human, though with delicate distinctions of feeling in individuation according to race and personality, which differences nevertheless are a vanishing quantity in the immanent, eternally conceived , human equality.

It is different with the definition of a Christian awakening to a religious interest which lies in the sphere of transcendence. The emotional seizure of the individual by something higher is far from defining a Christian adequately, for by emotion may be expressed a pagan view, pagan conceptions of God . I n order to express oneself Christianly there is required, besides the more universal language of the heart, also skill and schooling in the definition of Christian concepts, while at the same time it is of course assumed that the emotion is of a specific, qualitative sort,

H I S F A U L T

253

the Christian emotion. - But since Christian thought through the centuries has gradually absorbed in a more universal way the whole world-development, its conceptual language having passed over into a volatilized traditional use (which lies on a line with being a Christian of sorts by virtue ofliving in geographical Christendom) , it may come about that one who only i n a more universal way is emotionally gripped by something higher expresses himself in the language of the Christian concepts - of course, this is a result which might well be expected . The fault or irregularity is then a double one: that a person thus moved begins to talk in a language which stands in no relation to his emotion, since the language is specifically, q ualitatively concrete, and his emotion is more universal; and that he naturally speaks this language in a confusing way. For when one is not in a stricter sense seized by a Christian emotion, and on the other hand is not familiar with, is not strictly disciplined i n the language of the concepts in which he expresses his emotion -

then he is like one who talks too fast and does not articulate clearly . . . i t is twaddle. And in the field of the Christian religion this is not only unfortunate but it is dreadful; for the danger indeed is not merely that of saying something unclear, something foolish, but unconsciously it may be blasphemous. - For a Christian awakening what is required, on the one hand, is being grasped in a Christian sense and, on the other hand , conceptual and terminological firmness and definiteness.

If then M agister A. is regarded as an awakened man i n the sense of the Christian religion, his misfortune is just this, that he is not sufficiently and thoroughly acquainted with the language of Christian concepts, that he does not have them under his control . For what chiefly seems to have secured his character as a Christian, the fact that he had had a revelation from the Saviour, seems to be something in which he is not secure, not being in agreement with himself about what is to be understood by a revelation. Since Christianity has been volatilized in the same degree that it has been spread abroad, and since the qualitative emphasis has been lost by the fact that we all of us are Christians, it occurs not so seldom that one without more ado assumes that every religious emotion in the case of an individual who lives in geographical Christendom is eo ipso a Christian

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

awakening, and from the fact that h e s o promptly uses the whole language of the Christian concepts which he was accustomed to use as a conversational language. Before he was religiously moved (in a more general sense) he had been a Christian after a sort, and precisely this is his misfortune, he is therefore not capable of testing himself rightly as to whether his emotion is really a Christian emotion, and after being gripped by emotion he uses again the Christian language of concepts as a careless conversational language. If it is factual that the language of Christian concepts has become in a volatilized sense the conversational language of the whole of Europe, it follows q uite simply that the holiest and most decisive definitions are used again and again without being united with the decisive thought. One hears indeed often enough Christian predicates used by Christian priests where the names of God and of Christ constantly appear and passages of Scripture, etc. , in discourses which nevertheless as a whole contain pagan views oflife without either the priest or the hearers being aware of it.

Hence in case Magister A. had been a layman (lawyer, physician, military officer, etc . ) , things would perhaps have gone better with him. After being moved by a mighty religious impression, in consideration that he was not a theologian, he would have sough t repose in order to become himself thoroughly conscious of what had occurred, sought schooling on the part of teachers of Christian orthodoxy, and perhaps in this way he would have succeeded in attaining the necessary sense of prop or -

tion before he began to express himself. But Magister A. was a theological candidate, he was even a priest, he was a philosopher

- must he not then long ago have been preeminently in possession of the schooling in concepts which is necessary for ability to express his emotion with assurance? So it might appear perhaps; but, alas, the knowledge acquired for the theological examination - if one does not bring along to the university what purely religiously must be held in infinite esteem, a deep veneration for the Christian faith instilled in childhood and by upbringing, so that in later moments of decision he will resolutely and frank-heartedly stand up for the choice he had made, rather forgo everything else than to alter the least tittle of the Christian faith - alas, the knowledge acq uired for the theological

H I S F A U L T

2 5 5

examination, though it might be worth ever so much regarded as knowledge, avails but little for standing fast in time of battle. As a priest he had very little opportunity for a schooling since he was so fully occupied with Hegel

and as a Hegelian he was

initiated , initiated with complete devotion and conviction, into the total confusion of the Christian faith. But to be ex animi sententia a votary of a particular philosopher and his philosophical view, to have with that and in that experienced the culmination of his life and of his life's development - that for a man is pretty much the same as love towards a woman . And certain it is that, if there has been reality in this love, it helps but little to burn all the letters "he wrote to her." He must labor methodically and slowly. If there had been reality in being a H egelian, it was of no avail to burn the Hegelian manuscripts. And that this was a reality for Magister A. I do not doubt. It would have been the saddest thing of all if even his study of Hegel had been idle talk.

I shall now show briefly how the incongruity between his subjective emotion and his imperfect education i n Christian concepts expresses itself in the decisive points of M agister A.'s appearance as an author. The incongruity naturally consists again in the fact that it is dialectical how far his awakening may be called Christian. For of this one can judge only by attending to his utterances, but these precisely are confusing for the fact that they are in the language of the Christian concepts which he has not mastered .

(a) Here we are at Magister Adler's jirst claim, the preface to his Sermons, or rather the content of it.

M agister A. is gripped by something higher, but now when he would express his condition in words, would communicate it, he confounds the subjective with the objective, his subjectively altered condition with an external event, the experience that there rose up a light before him with the notion that outside of him there came about something new, the fact that the veil fell from his tryes with the notion that he had a revelation. Subjectively his emotion reached the highest pitch, he chose the highest expression to indicate it, and by a mental deception he used the objective determinant that he had had a revelation.

To illustrate his confusion in the use of the concept revelation

T H E BO O K O N A D L E R

I shall take a n example which reflects pure humanity, a n example from the sphere of immanence. H e who i s truly in love can say also that he discovers love, and this from Harold's time

[from of yore J every lover can say. Falling in love is a determinant of pure, downright inwardness, it has no other dialectic than that which belongs to inwardness itself, it has no dialectic determinant outside itself, it is the simple identity of subjectobject. Love is falling in love, the primitivity of falling in love is the genesis of love. Love does not exist as something objective but comes into being every time a man loves, and it exists only in the lover; not only does it exist only Jor the lover but it exists only in the lover.

It is otherwise with every relation within the sphere of transcendence, and then again otherwise with the Christian concept of revelation. Christianity exists before any Christian exists, it must exist in order that one may become a Christian, it contains the determinant by which one may test whether one has become a Christian, it maintains its objective subsistence apart from all believers, while at the same time it is in the inwardness of the believer. In short, here there is no identity between the subjective and the objective. Though Christianity comes into the heart of never so many believers, every believer is conscious that it has not arisen in his heart, is conscious that the objective determinant of Christianity is not a reminiscence, as love is of the fact of falling in love, is not an apparently objective something which nevertheless is subjective, like love which as an objective something is an illusion and loving is the reality. No, even if no one had perceived that God had revealed Himself in a human form in Christ, He nevertheless has revealed Himself. Hence it is that every contemporary (simply understood ) has .a responsibility if he does not perceive it.

So Magister A. is deeply affected . That in the first moment of emotion one is easily exposed to the confusion of confounding the change within oneself with a change outside oneself, of confounding the fact that one sees everything changed with the notion that something new must have come into being, this is a thing well enough known, I do not need to dwell upon it.

Though Magister A. had for a long time been ensnared i n this confusion it would be foolish to blame him - partly because it is H I S F A U L T

257

nobody's business, partly because it is human. The question is only whether in this condition he expresses himself. If once one is ensnared in this confusion, it is only too easy to support this confusion with a plausible poetical invention and get d ramatically an occurrence, a scene, explaining how it came about. Not only every religiously awakened individual, but everyone who in a marked degree possesses inwardness, has also an inclination and dexterity for turning his monologue into a dialogue, that is, for talking to himself in such a way that this self becomes like another self which has reality apart from himself, that is so say, duplicating himself. I nstead of being content with the experience that a light suddenly rose up before him, it comes easy to say that it was as though the Saviour appeared to him and bade him, etc. The confusion is undeniably very suspicious, but the principal thing is to hold back the expression until one has come to one's senses.

If from an earlier time Magister A. had had a strict and serious schooling in the concepts, had had a veneration for the dogmatic, qualitative concept of "a revelation," he would have had something to resist with, something to hold on to, something that might prevent the precipitate utterance. But, unfortunately, Magister A. is a Hegelian. So there can be no hope that something might save him from the confusion, since the whole of his philosophic learning must precisely confirm him in the notion that altogether correctly and with philosophical precision he expresses his subjective change by the invention that he had had a revelation. By confounding the subjective with the obj ective M agister Adler is ensnared in the notion that he has had a revelation, by having had a revelation he likely thinks that he has broken entirely with the Hegelian philosophy which has in its system no room for a qualitative revelation. But, o� the other hand , how has the Hegelian philosophy treated the concept of a revelation? I t has not bluntly denied it, but it has volatilized i t so far that at last it becomes a determinant of subjectivity, the simple identity of subject-object. It is precisely i n this confusion Magister A. is, but then he has the support of the H egelian philosophy in saying of himself that he has had a revelation. The confusion is not brought to a stop, for A. has not been schooled earlier in the definition of Christian concepts, and now he gives

THE B O O K O N A D L E R

himself n o time for i t . He i s subjectively ensnared, a n d in this condition he thinks that he breaks with the Hegelian philosophy, but he has no other education in the concepts more essential than he finds in Hegel's philosophy, and the topsy-turvy, the double confusion, appears in its second power in the fact that he breaks with this philosophy - and it is precisely that which triumphs.

However, Adler spoke out the word, he proclaimed solemnly that he had had a revelation, that at night the Saviour had bade him get ete. et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum, at least a

-

greater self-conquest is required to retract what has been spoken than to refrain from speaking it.

(b) Magister Adler's answer to the ecclesiastical authority. The word spoken meets, however, with the serious opposition of the authority. Magister A. is required to explain himself more particularly, and now we have the same situation raised to the second power.

This confusion of Adler's in the situation raised to a higher power was already shown in Chapter III, § I, together with the exposition that the incongruity consists precisely i n the fact that he lacks schooling in the Christian concepts, and therefore explains and explains, substituting the qualitatively most diverse determinants in place one of another, and yet thinks that he is in identity with himself.

(c) Magister Adler's jour last books. Time and repose was what Magister A. then needed, a strict, fundamental schooling in the language of Christian concepts, in order to get the proper sense of proportion. Magister A. himself gives expression to this need:

"that with a longer time to revise the ideas quietly he will in the future find himself in a position to give them a more appropriate form" - and thereupon he begins a new, volumin�us literary productivity, in which, however, he does not seem to have got any farther along, so far as qualitative education is concerned .

The fact that he himself seems to perceive that he stands in need of a pause, the fact that instead of acting in virtue of this perception he continues his productivity, is thoroughly characteristic psychologically, and unfortunately is an indication that it will be hard enough for him to give himself time for serious reflection. The fact that a man who puts the opposite course of

H IS F A U L T

259

action into effect uses the adage that for the future he hopes to change - rather indicates that there will not likely be much of a change. The urge he might feel for a change gets no power over him, precisely because it is constantly proclaimed , so that, at last, all that remains is the urge to say it once in a while or very often - whereas he does the contrary. It is strange that Holberg has not made use of this characteristic trait in depicting " the bustling man " ; it would have been thoroughly characteristic of the bustling man to have had an adage: "It cannot be endured, the press of business; but beginning from New Year's Day I shall retire completely from business life." I t is q uite certain that this line, when the spectator by the aid of the situation must also be dramatically aware that it was an adage, would precisely characterize the incessant movement of the bustling man and prove that he was incorrigible. When a student has for a long time been reading for his professional examination it becomes with every year less probable that he will ever take it, only when it becomes an adage, " Next time I will" - it is clear enough that he will not take any examination. Trop ( the hero of the play) is precisely for this reason hopeless and given up because he possesses his hope in the form of an adage.

Magister A. hopes indeed in the future, but if one were to ask him where the last four books have a place in a sustained literary effort or in the development of a personal life, where A. now is, intellectually understood (which is something different from asking him about a particular utterance, the particular explanation of a Biblical passage, the particular study, etc . ) , then one may say that he has been productive at the wrong place, his productivity sails before a false wind. For instead of giving himself time, gaining repose, coming to his senses, going to school� i nstead of acquiring respect for what after all it means to have had a revelation, and coming to an understanding with himself and to a qualitative decision, in short, instead of keeping silent and acting and laboring, he becomes so productive in a literary way about all this, that he has not yet attained repose, that "he is fatigued, that he is shaken, pale, that he is on the point of making the leap, that with a longer time for working q uietly to revise the ideas he hopes, etc."

First and last the task is to get out of the tension, to understand himself in the fact of revelation, instead of which he becomes

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

productive literarily about his condition, and moreover deceives himself with a dreadJully grandiose means oJ diversion: a voluminous literary activity about detached particulars, individual texts from Scripture, individual thoughts, prolix productivity on detached sheets of paper.

Here we have it again : Magister A. lacks education in the definition of Christian concepts, his lyrical emotion bears no proportion to this, as is shown from the fact that he has so little respect for the concept "revelation" that he can let his declaration that he has had a revelation remain dubious, indeed it would seem that he has quite forgotten the whole story and has become literarily productive about everything else one can possibly conceive. And furthermore the incongruity is another, that he lacks ethical firmness to procure for himself repose, in order "by having a longer time to revise quietly the ideas, etc. "

Everyone who knows something about the dangers o f reflection, and about the dangerous course followed in the course of reflection, knows also that it is a suspicious circumstance when a man, instead of getting out of a tension by resolu tion and action, becomes literarily productive about his situation in the tension.

Then no work is done to get out of the situation, but the reflection fixes the situation before the eyes of reflection, and thereby fixes (in a different sense of the word) the man [in the German slang sense of reckoning on his fall] . The more abundantly thoughts and expressions proffer themselves to a writer, the more q uickly the productivity advances - i n the wrong direction - all the more dangerous it is, and all the more is it hidden from the person concerned that his labor, his most exacting labor, perhaps also, for a third person who has the total view, his very interesting labor - is a labor to get him.self deeper and deeper involved . For he does not work himself loose, he works himself fast, and makes himself interesting by reflecting about the tension. And onc notes clearly enough that M agister A. is unacquainted with, and with the use of, the innumerable prudential methods which he who is experienced upon the ocean of reflection knows very well and practices constantly, to test the direction of the productivity, to regulate the speed, to determine the place where one is, by stopping an instant, by devising quite arbitrary, trivial, and mechanical measures for determining the

H I S F A U LT

powers of the mind, by forcing reflection into an entirely opposite direction in order to see whether any illusion is in play, etc. No, Magister A. goes on producing at one speed, which q uite consistently increases the productivity with every step in advance; and so in production he is as it were far out upon the ocean of reflection, where no one can directly call out to him, where all sea-marks are dialectical, he steers at a considerable speed in the wrong direction.

�

If then Magister A. had had from an earlier time an impression of a strict ethical view, had had a serious schooling in ethics, this surely would be of advantage to him now. But M agister A.'s life-development was such that it must quite naturally culminate in Hegel's philosophy, which, as is well known, has no ethic. I t may happen t o the most serious ethicist when h e i s far o u t upon the sea of reflection that once for an instant he makes a mistake, but he will q uickly discover it, for he tests his life to see where he is. I t may happen even to the most serious ethicist that for an instant he is ensnared in an illusion, but he will soon discover it.

When a serious man says to himself, "You must give yourself time, collect yourself for reflection, in order that for the future you may be able to present the ideas in a more appropriate form," and he notices that he remains nevertheless in the same old path, then he discovers that his reflection was humbug, he takes the thing up seriously, instantly he defines the limit, that the indeterminateness of time may not deceive him, he starves himself with trivial labors in order that he may not deceive himself and waste his time upon literary productivity, which is interesting to him really because he has an apprehension that there is something else he should be doing. It is so true what Paul Moler once said as the fruit of experience: " I n almost absolute idleness one may yet escape boredom so long as a practical duty is neglected through idleness, for one is in a way preoccupied by the constant strife in which one is involved with oneself; but so soon as the duty ceases, or one has not the least remembrance of it, boredom ensues." The teacher who prescribes a lesson from hour to hour is amused so long as he is on the alert to look after his pupils, but when he has resolved to neglect the lesson hour his amusement ceases. In this instance the reminder of his conscience is something unpleasant which serves to give relish to

THE B O O K O N A D L E R

something unpleasant. A poet who i s writing a tragedy when it is part of his life-plan to study for an examination does it with greater enthusiasm than he would later when he has relinquished that plan. And so also perhaps it is the obscure consciousness he has that now instead of being literarily productive he ought to be doing something else which makes Magister A. so productive and makes his productivity interesting, while he, instead of becoming clear to himself by his productivity, rather defends himself against what ethical simplicity would bid him do.

So then Magister A. has no decisive ethical presuppositions, the Hegelian philosophy has taught him to dispense with ethics; so that there is nothing to bring him to a halt and let him see that his latest productivity, be it never so clever, is a mistake which does not lead him to understand himself more clearly in respect to what is the decisive event in his life, to have had a revelation, but rather leads him farther from it. The Hegelian philosophy, far from being able to explain this to him, must simply confirm him in the notion that the direction of his productivity is the right one.

The Hegelian philosophy has no ethics, it has therefore never dealt with the future, which is essentially the element or medium of ethics. The Hegelian philosophy contemplates the past, the six thousand years of world-history, and then is busy in pointing out every particular development as a transitory factor in the worldhistorical process. Charmant! But the late Professor Hegel of blessed memory had when he lived, as every man has or at least ought to have, an ethical rela tion to the future. Of this the Hegelian philosophy knows nothing. Hence it comes about q uite simply that every living person who by the help of the Hegelian philosophy would understand himself in his own personal life falls into the most foolish confusion. As a Hegelian he will be able to understand his life only when it is too late, when i t is past, when he is dead - but unfortunately he now is alive. With what then must he properly fill his life while he is living? With nothing; for really he must wait for the moment of death to understand with the averted glance of this moment the meaning of his past life. But when the past life was filled with nothing, what is there really left for him to understand? But suppose a

H I S F A U L T

m a n lives nevertheless, lives forward in the direction o f life's course, and thus does after all fill a section of his life with something, then as a Hegelian he must as q uickly as possible construe his past as a factor in his life, and then, so long as his glance is turned backward, he ceases for a moment to be an existing individual with an ethical direction towards the future.

Ifhe is entirely absorbed in desiring to understand his own life as a factor, then he regards himself essentially as dead .

Let us now think of Magister A. He has gone astray in reflection, he is absorbed in reflection about his situation i n a tension, instead of working out of it. Thus i ndeed an ethicist will view his productivity. But a Hegelian must confirm him in the notion that his procedure is the right one, since he is in fact engaged in construing this situation of his as a factor i n the d evelopment of his life. But to construe it as a factor is not to get out of it, and on the other hand he must be well out of it before there can be any question of construing it as a factor. In general the ethical at once inverts everything: the main thing is to act, to strive, to get out of the wrong situation - at the most there may be conceded incidentally a little half-hour to construe individual experiences of the past as a factor in one's life. Adler is ensnared in self-reflection, but then too he is so far from having anything to help him out of it that he also has within him Hegelian reminiscences which must confirm him in the notion that this after all is the profound thing and the highest wisdom.

I t is perfectly unbelievable what confusion the Hegelian philosophy has wrought as a sorry consequence of the fact that as a philosopher a man is such a hero, and in a purely personal aspect a Philistine. Among philosophers subsequent to Hegel who have appropriated the Hegelian method there are to be found astonishing examples. One such philosopher writes a new book and becomes conscious of himself as a factor within the endeavor which began with his first book; but this is not enough, for his whole endeavor (which as a whole is not yet in existence) he becomes conscious of as a factor in the whole endeavor of philosophy, and then again as a factor in Hegd, and of He gel as a factor in the world-historical process from ancient times, through China, Persia, Greece, J udaism, Christianity, the Middle Ages. This to my notion is the most inhuman whim any

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

philosopher can have, also it i s a story a l a M iinchhausen, that a poor individual man wants to make us believe he can do such things.

But this baleful inclination to construe has become a fixed idea by which philosophers become self-important, sometimes even adding to the confusion by indicating future factors. The ethical view of being in the future, and the metaphysical view of construing everything as a factor, contend with one another for life and death. Every living man, if he is not thoughtless and distrait, chooses decisively; but if he chooses the metaphysical view, he commits, spiritually understood, suicide.

As in general, so here, A. has indirectly a merit in satirizing Hegel unconsciously. A tame, domesticated professor, leading a still life, can skulk through better with the illusion of living backwards. He himself is No. 0, and therefore presumably is busy only with the past and with construing it as a factor. But an itinerant scholastic ( the word itinerant being used almost in the sense of confused) , a lyrically exalted dithyrambic poet - well, up to this point he may be right in saying that he has broken with Hegel, but when he goes on and gets himself stuck in reflection, and then moreover wants to be thought-conscious that his present condition is a factor in his life-development -

then he produces in the Hegeliall philosophy, quite literally, a state of flatulence, which is not at all to its advantage.

5

M AG I S TER AD LER A S A N E P I G R A M U P O N

C HRI S TEND O M O F O UR D AY

How Magister A. satirized the Hegelian philosophy indirectly by breaking with it conspicuously but nevertheless conniving with it unconsciously and then by the confusion of his life bringing the Hegelian philosophy into a situation where it must show itself to be as self-contradictory as it is, has often been demonstrated . The fact too that he is an epigram upon the Christendom of our day will also be pointed out and utilized .

Magister A. was in fact born and confirmed in geographical Christendom and belonged to it . . . so he was a Christian (as we all of us are Christians) , he was a candidate in theology . . . so he

A N E P I G R A M

was a Christian ( as w e all of u s are Christians) ; h e became a Christian priest - and then for the first time he had a curious experience: owing to a deep impression upon his life he came more seriously into contact with the decision . . . to become a Christian. Just then when he had come nearer to being a Christian than ever before during all the time he was a Christian, just then he was deposed. And his deposition was q uite proper, for then for the first time the State-Church had an opportunity to become aware how it stood with his Christianity.

But the epigram remains nevertheless that as a pagan he became a Christian priest, and that when he had undeniably come somewhat nearer to being a Christian he was deposed .

By a single occurrence of this sort one has undeniably an opportunity of acquiring an insight into what after all must be understood by the notion that we are all Christians of a sort; one gets a suspicion whether after all it is not an illusion about the many Christians in geographical Christendom. This certainly is not said by way of j udgment - far be from me all preoccupation with externals. I t is a different matter whether the individual by himself might not be able to learn something for himself from the whole business about Magister A. This certainly is my opinion; and, though I am doubtful how far one really can say that Magister A. has had a Christian awakening, it seems to me that the catastrophe of his life must be able to exert some awakening effect upon every one, whatever be the result for Magister A. At all events, it is undeniable that, while at one time in the world to become a Christian was a decision from which most men shrank, now the thing of becoming a Christian of sorts is an enchanting delight in which one is confirmed in so many ways that there well may be needed a special sort of awakening which will be able to pluck one out of the illusion, if one is ensnared in it after the example of a man who can even become a Christian priest though he is ensnared in the delusion that he is a Christian and essentially is only a pagan.

Perhaps this is not so I know nothing about it and want to

-

know nothing. But let us imagine it, that many live on in a way as Christians and really are pagans, owing to the fact that existence, the world around them, has transformed itself into a great illusion which again and again and in every way confirms

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

them in the notion that they are Christians. Let u s imagine that these many in a more advanced age constitute each of them a family. These fictitious Christians bring up i n turn their children

- what will the next generation of Christians become?

In general it is certainly characteristic of our time that the concept of upbringing, at least in the sense of former times, is vanishing more and more from man's speech and from his life. In former times men set a high value upon the significance of bringing up, understanding by this a harmonious development of that which was to support the various gifts and talents and peculiarities of personality ethically in the direction of character.

I n our times one seems to want to do away impatiently with this upbringing and therewith emphasizes instruction. One wants the young to learn quickly and as early as possible much and all sorts of things, to learn what one almost palpably can ascertain is knowledge and is something. Formal culture, the ethical culture of character, is not such a something, and yet it requires much time and much diligence. I n our time one seems to think that if only one takes pains in all ways to see that the child learns something, learns languages, mathematics, religion, etc., then for the rest the child can pretty much bring up himself. In every age and in every land this is certainly a great misunderstanding, but it is especially dreadful in Christendom. For if a person is not to be simply disappointed in Christianity, one of two things must be done: either one must keep the child from his earliest childhood, so long as he is under tutelage, far from every relationship with Christianity, one must allow him to grow up without any Christian knowledge whatsoever, in ord er that at a mature age he may get a decisive impression of Christianity and choose for hirilself; or the parents must assume responsibility for giving him from his earliest childhood by a strict Christian upbri nging a decisive impression of the Christian faith. But let him grow up from childhood with the view of his environment of what i t is to be a Christian of sorts as a matter of course, and with that one has done everything a man can possibly do to deceive him with regard to the absolutely qualitative decision in human life. He then is a Christian in about the same sense that he is a man, and as little as it could occur to him in later life to reflect seriously whether after all he really is a man, just so little will it ordinarily

AN E P I G R A M

occur t o him to make a n accounting of himself a s t o whether after all he is now really a Christian.

I will now imagine - for it is abhorrent to my soul to meddle in the God-relationship of any man, even so far as to know that there actually lives such a man as I describe - I will imagine the father of a family. He is capable in his business, not without cleverness, rather a little of everything, hospitable and sociable in his home, he is no reviler of religion (which, though it is dangerous, might perhaps be still better for the children, for it provides elasticity) , neither is he in the strictest sense indifferent, he is in a way a Christian, he would think it strange, far-fetched and remarkable to make any further fuss about the matter, either inwardly or outwardly; he is in a way a Christian, through the reading of one or another recent work he is in agreement with the view that Christianity represents the highest culture of the soul, together with the opinion that every cultured man is a Christian. I n his home life, whether there be company or no, he never has occasion to express himself religiously about religious matters. If it happens occasionally that one or another religious individual calls attention to himself and becomes the subject of the day and the subject also of conversation in the home of that paterfamilias, the judgment upon such a man and upon his conduct is not a religious judgment but an aesthetic one, i t stigmatizes such form and substance a s bad form, a s something that cannot be tolerated in cultured circles. - This man's wife is a lovable woman, free from all modern womanish whims, goodhearted as a mother and wife. She has also at a single instant in her life felt a need for deeper religious reflection. But since such matters and such concerns had never been broached between her and her husband, and since she has perhaps an exaggerated respect for the requirements of a husband so superior to her with respect to culture, she feels that it might betray a lack of culture or be offensive were she to talk about religious subjects. Therefore she keeps silent and with womanly devotion submits herself entirely to her husband , gracefully appropriating an attitude which is so becoming to her husband as a man; and these two harmonize as rarely a couple in Christendom do.

Under the eyes of these parents the children grow up. Nothing is spared to enrich them with knowledge, and while the children

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

grow Up in knowledge and information they pick up naturally the cultured manners of their parents, so that this family is really an exceedingly pleasant home to come into. It follows as a matter of course that the children are Christians, they were born in fact of Christian parents, so this is just as natural as that a person is a Jew who is born of Jewish parents* - where in all the world could the children get any other notion? That there are Jews, pagans, Mohammedans, fetish worshipers, they know well enough from history and from their scientific religious instruction, but they know it also as something with which they are entirely unconcerned .

Let us take the oldest child . He has now reached the age when he is to be confirmed . I t is a matter of course that the boy answers "Yes" to the question put to him. How in the world could anything else occur to this boy? Has anybody ever heard tell that somebody answered "No," or has the boy ever been told that he might answer "No"? On the other hand, one may perhaps have heard his father say not to answer too loudly nor too softly, but to do it in a becoming and polite way; he remembers perhaps to have heard his father say that the whispered yes was something rather affected in church. To that extent it is a matter of course that he must answer "Yes" - to the extent that, instead of having his attention called to the significance of the answer, it was called to the purely aesthetic side of the formality. So then he answers "Yes" - neither too loudly nor too softly, but with the frank and modest decorum which is so becoming to a boy. His father is somewhat more serious than

*The notion of being a Christian because one is born of Christian parents is the fundamental delusion from which a multitude of others stem. One is a Jew by being born of Jewish parents; quite right, because J udaism is essentially connected with and founded upon a natural determinant. But Christianity is a determinant of spirit, so that in it there is neither Jew nor pagan nor a born Christian, for the determinant of spirit is higher than the natural determinant.

On the other hand, one cannot well become a Jew, for one must be born a Jew.

One cannot be a Christian and yet not a Christian; on the other hand, one can be a Jew and yet not be a Jew, because the natural determinant is preponderant; for though one is not a believing Jew, he is just as fully a Jew; but a Christian who is not a believing Christian is not a Christian at all. The determinant "Christian" is precisely that of which it must be said in the most absolute terms, onc is not born to this determinant - exactly the contrary, it is precisely what onc must become.

A N E P I G R A M

usual o n the day o f confirmation, yet his seriousness has rather a festal than a religious character and therefore harmonizes with the cheerfulness which makes its appearance when they have come home from the church, where the father is not only as agreeable as ever but employs his talents to make that d ay a festival. The mother is moved, she even wept in church. But motherly tenderness and worldly concern for the child's future fate is not restricted to Christianity. The boy therefore on the day of his confirmation got a more solemn impression of his father and a more touching impression of his mother; he will remember that day with gratitude and gladness as a beautiful recollection; but he gets no decisive Christian impression. The boy gets the impression that this day must be rather a significant day in life - but not so significant as the day he becomes, for example, a university student and matriculates.

The youth is confirmed, and now little by little begins for him the busy time, since he has to get ready for his examination as an officer - we may assume that he will follow that course. So he passes his examination with distinction; he goes to the u niversity, distinguishes himself further, the parents are delighted with their son, whom now, however, they see more rarely, since he has moved away from home and is always busy. He is fortunate, at the age of twenty-six he is already captain . - Our young captain falls in love. She is a lovable and charming girl, corresponding entirely to the parents' wish, and the family, already so agreeable, acquires a new enchantment by receiving her into their circle, and by the comfortable feeling which was diffused over the home life when it was implied that the older generation is now about to be rejuvenated in the new one. The captain is really in love. But to be really in love is after all no specific determinant of Christianity; surely lovers have lived just as well in Greece as in Christendom, indeed the erotic determinant is not properly Christian. The wedding day is appointed . One finds that a church wedding is the most solemn . The captain's father holds the opinion that a church wedding, with the impression of the lofty vaulting of the church, with the tones of the organ, with the whole environment, and with having the priest in his proper environment, attunes the soul q uite otherwise than to sneak off to the priest in a carriage to be married

2 70

THE B O O K O N A D L E R

upon a silver salver. To this was added the opinion expressed by the captain's father, that over all mysteriousness there hangs a nemesis, that every unforeseen fatality acquires an almost ridiculous power over one. Thus in case the carriage goes wrong or overturns and there is a disorderly mob if the affair were

�

publicly known and official, if the unfortunates were on the way to a church wedding, well, that would always be an unpleasant dela y; but if it were secret, it ought to be secret, if it was a quiet wedding it ought to occur in perfect quietness.

So then the

�

captain stood before the al tar with his young bride a charming

�

couple. And the priest asks, "Hast thou taken counsel with God and with thine own conscience, etc." What shall the captain answer? Well, after all, it goes without saying that the captain, who, erotically understood, is really in love, doesn't wait to be asked twice whether he wants to have the girl. So he answers

"Yes" not too loudly and not too softly, but precisely with the

�

noble, self-confident yet modest tone which is so becoming to a young man. Whether this indeed might be just entirely a precise answer to the priest's question does not occur to the captain; he is fortunate in his love, he is happy, confident and honestly convinced that he will make the girl as happy as he can. So the

�

marriage couple are united . The notes of the organ roar a worldly farewell, the crowd looks wonderingly, almost enviously, at the charming couple, and everyone who can see more closely sees love shining from the captain's eyes. I ndeed, there is reason to be envious of him, reason for the family to be proud of him: he is young, happily developed, beautiful in a manly way, honest enough to be truly in love, happy in his love, faithful to a sincere resolution.

Suppose now that this had taken place in geographical Christendom who then has been more deceived in respect to

�

Christianity than precisely our captain! For one who has never heard anything about Christianity is not deceived, but one who without having the least decisive impression of Christian truth has from the first been confirmed in the notion that he is a Christian he is deceived . Where in all the world might it occur

�

to him to be concerned about how far he is a Christian, or even to be concerned about becoming that which from his earliest recollection he was in a way assured that he is? And in this AN E P I G R A M

2 7 1

assurance everything has confirmed him; his parents have said nothing about the Christian faith, they thought, "That the priest must do," and the priest thought, "To instruct the young about religion, that I can do for sure; but to give them a decisive impression, that must be the parents' affair." So he has grown up, been confirmed, become lieutenant, captain - and now a Christian husband .

I n case one who was not a priest should ask our captain whether he were a Christian, the captain undoubtedly would smile. There would be nothing rude or offensive in this smile, as though by the smile he would give the questioner to understand what a stupid person he was; no, for this the captain is too cultured , for he really is a cultured young man. But he would smile i nvoluntarily, because the question would seem to him just as strange as though somebody were to ask him whether he were a man. In case that evening at the tea-table i n our captain's house the story was told about Socrates, that he is reported to have said that he did not know definitely whether he was a man, our captain would perhaps say, "That undoubtedly is very ironical, and one cannot help smiling at it; but on the other hand there is something whimsical in expressing such a doubt which concerns the very first and simplest and most necessary presuppositions in life; thus today there was a man who asked me seriously whether I were a Christian."

Let us imagine the opposite: that one by a strict Christian upbri nging has already received as a child a decisive impression of Christianity. If this is to come about, the parents themselves must be essentially Christians, so that the child gets the constant impression of how his parents for daily use lead a religious life, concerning themselves with Christianity both for their own edification and in order to express it by their conduct. So then the child grows up, and during the age which is most receptive and in which memory is most faithful the decisive impressions of Christianity are imprinted indelibly upon his soul and Karu.

DVva/LH' modify his character. For, as was said, might not the observation that one nowadays so rarely meets a man of strong character have some connection with the fact that people have no conception what upbringing is, that they confound it with learning [discere] , confound learning with learning to obey, to

T H E B O O K O N A D L E R

bow before the mighty and daily impression o f ethics and religion?

And now that such a child, because he had had a serious Christian upbringing, must be a Christian, would again be an illusion; and next to the notion of being a Christian because one is born of Christian parents, comes the erroneous inference: his parents were pious Christians, ergo he is a Christian. No, the unforgettable and profound impression due to upbringing is only a presupposition.

Then this child too goes out into the world . U ndeniably he has presuppositions with respect to becoming a Christian; humanly speaking, everything has been done for him that was humanly possible. But there is not yet a decision; for even though his

"Yes" on the day of confirmation was the result of upbringing, it still is not the decisive act.

Now in the course of years entirely different sides of life, entirely different factors of the soul, will presumably advance their claims; the young man will be sensible of impressions which are quite unknown to him. For the strict Christian upbringing is a presupposition, and such a one as he must grow up in order properly to accept it. As parents at an age when the children are growing most rapidly have their clothes made a little larger, made to grow up to, so one may say seriously of one who has received a strict Christian upbringing that his parents have given him a garment which is made to grow up to, but also a garment which no one can outgrow. He will now make acquaintance with the world, and then perhaps for a time it will seem to him as though his parents had deceived him; for what he gets to see now that he makes his appearance youthfully upon the dancing-floor of youth, all the joy of life, this lightheartedthis his parents had as it were hidden from him. He will stand wondering and confused : with the grave conception due to a strict Christian upbringing of what it means to be a man, he stands now in the midst of this worldliness - and in the main it seems good to him. Yes, he will undoubtedly feel as one who has been deceived . As for the captain, he presumably will never discover that he was deceived; he precisely was initiated and educated into that medium in which he permanently belongs.

But the other, he as a child has heard nothing about the glory the

A N E P I G R A M

world has t o ofIer, o r h e has heard of it only a s a strict admonition against it; with the presuppositions of his strict Christian upbringing he stands as a stranger, indeed, as one deceived, in all this worldliness, which now when he must examine it himself seems quite different from the description given him as a child .

Yet, humanly speaking, for this young man was done everything that could be done: his life must so lie before him that he cannot avoid a catastrophe, he must come to a decision whether he will become a Christian, or actually give up Christianity. And ifit is true as Socrates says that the most frightful thing of all is to live in error, then must that young man be accounted fortunate.

I n every Christian land where Christianity has so permeated all relationships that everyone as a matter of course (i.e. without the decision of inwardness) is in a way a Christian, i t is important first and last to pose the problem . . . of becoming a Christian, and that the problem be not confused by theological debates.

However, on this subject I can refer to The Concluding Postscript by Johannes Climacus.

Whether it is a pure illusion for a man to imagine he is a Christian, or whether it may rather be that by a strict Christian upbringing he has got a decisive impression of Christianity, he faces exactly the same problem: to become a Christian. To this intent cautions and admonitions may well be needed i n a Christian land. But such an admonition is contained precisely in Magister A.'s life. What difficulties lie in the way of becoming a Christian; in what sense a Christian upbringing is after all only a presupposition; how precarious such an upbringing may be; what responsibility the parents assume in undertaking it, but also conversely by not undertaking it - about all such things one finds of course no illumination in Magister A.'s life or in the catastrophe involved in it. He quite gives the impression of a pagan who has suddenly come into touch with Christianity. But precisely for this reason his life is an admonition for many, or may be; for in fact he was a Christian of a sort, as all men are Christians, he was confirmed, became a theological candidate, a Christian priest in geographical Christendom - and yet the catastrophe revealed how his being a Christian is to be understood . Here it is an occurrence which is the admonition, and also 274

THE BOOK ON ADLER

the admonition is indirect, it depends upon the individual whether he for himself will allow himself to be admonished; it is not as when a religiously exalted person thunders and condemns, which so easily may exasperate men instead of profiting them.

No, Magister A. exerts an effect by his life, and he exerts also an indirect effect. His significance for our time will surely not consist so much in what he became through the catastrophe, or in the literary productivity which derives from it, as in the fact that by the catastrophe he indirectly reveals how in geographical Christendom one may in a way become a Christian, and even a Christian priest, without having the least impression of Christianity in the way of . . . becoming a Christian.

POSTSCR I P T

This treatise was written before the events which have now altered the shape of Europe. If in reference to a time long gone by one might say justly that as a whole it lacked action, it may seem that now on the contrary we have got only too much action. But this only seems so. Everyone who has a welldeveloped notion of what it is to act will on closer inspection easily see that in all of Europe almost nothing at all is done that can be called action, that everything that comes to pass resolves itself into a mere occurrence, or that something comes about, something prodigious, but without there being any active personality who knows definitely beforehand what he wills, so that afterwards he can say definitely whether what came about was what he would or no. So in France - a republic of that sort does not properly belong to history, nor does it come absolutely under the rubric action; it finds its place more properly in a newspaper under the heading: Advertisement. In the greater part of Europe it is just the same. Everywhere and altogether what comes to pass is an occurrence, in many places an imitation, which not even regarded as imitation is action, for there is no individual who imitates a foreign institution and then in the situation of his country is after all active. No, imitation consists precisely in the fact that there comes about, God knows how, a sort of commotion - and so nothing really comes about. But there is nobody that rules, nobody that acts, nobody that could say with truth, It is this and this I willed, and now there has come about what I willed, or it has not come about. Hence the introduction of a change or a nnvelty must, at the moment when it is introduced, begin with an untruth, it must take several days for people to imagine and make others imagine that what had come about was what one willed. Since for the single individual there is something insipid in finding that "one fair morning," God knows how, he has become something or another - therefore one must try to help oneself out with divers untruths, that what he has now become he willed to be from his earliest childhood, etc.,

THE BOOK ON ADLER

etc. As in the case of a man who in an exalted moment at a ball falls in love with a girl he is not acquainted with and knows hardly who she is - he feels the need or the temptation for shame's sake to begin with a little untruth about having loved her from his earliest childhood, about already having once before made love to her, etc., etc. So the race also falls into the embarrassment of having to help itself out with a little untruth, in order to get the story started again. Yet one still has a little recollection of what it must be to be a free rational being. To secure this conception one must poetize that what has come about is what one willed - unless one assumes with Hegel that it came about by necessity. But that a revolution of affairs came about in such a way (i.e. by necessity) is again the same old evil tendency to shove off from oneself the responsibility - in this case indeed it is raised to so high a degree, carried out on such a scale, that in the end existence must acknowledge the paternity of what comes to pass in the world of free rational beings, pretty much as in nature, so that these meaningless and inhuman revolutions are to be regarded as natural phenomena, so that revolutions simply are and republics come into existence in the same sense that there is cholera. *

If one were to say that then the extraordinarius begins with an untruth, indeed makes God a party to the untruth, it may be replied that all true communication of truth must always begin with an untruth. In part, this has its ground in the fact that it is indeed impossible to tell the whole truth in one minute or even a shorter time; on the contrary a long, long time may perhaps be needed for it. In part, this first untruth is merely reduplication, that the true communication of truth is cautious and aware of the fact that it might indeed be possible that the recipient of the communication was in the untruth, in which case the direct communication of the truth would be untruth. This is "reflection," the critical moment in the communication of truth. Thus the ignorance of Socrates was in fact untruth; but it was only for the sake of truth, i.e. it is precisely reduplication's expression for the fact that he truly would communicate truth, that he was

*The following paragraph (which is to be found in Papirer IX BI 3 b) was written at the same time as the Postscript, evidently with the intention of adding it to the text. The translator can find no place for it more appropriate than this.

POSTSCRIPT

profoundly aware that those who were to receive the communication were possibly in the untruth of delusions of all sorts, so that it would not do to communicate truth quite directly, expectorating it cheerfully or declaiming it or lecturing it. To mention the highest instance, Christ's own life shows this; for when one is God it is indeed an untruth (in the sense that truth is merely direct) to come in the form of a lowly servant; and, viewed from the other side (since he had come for the sake of suffering and dying), it would have been an untruth to accept for one sole instant the favor of the people and occasion this misunderstanding. However, I shall carry this out no farther.

But in the case of the extraordinarius precisely this must be a part of his dreadful responsibility, that in a stricter sense he has to begin with an untruth. And an untruth to begin with is in the case of the extraordinarius not to be avoided. Dialectically this lies in the nature of the case. If this untruth is not present, then the extraordinarius is not the extraordinarius, this title is then taken in vain, it is a direct superlative in contrast to the ordinary. But this is an altogether undialectical definition of the extraordinary.

As for the present treatise, the reader, I hope, will constantly get from reading it the impression that it is ethico-religious and has nothing to do with politics, that it investigates ethicoreligiously how it comes about that a new point of departure is created in relation to the established order; that it comes about by the fact that the point of departure is FROM ABovE,jrom God, and the formula is this paradox that an individual is employed. Humanly understood, an individual, according to all reason, is infinitely nothing in comparison with the established order (the universal), so it is a paradox that the individual is the stronger. This can be explained only by the fact that it is God who makes use of him, God who stands behind him; but just for this reason one sees God again, just because the situation is a paradox. When there are hundreds of men, what comes to pass is explained simply by the activity of the hundreds of men, but the paradox compels us (in so far as freedom can be compelled) to take notice of God, that He is taking part in it.

Politically the whole thing, even when it comes to decision, goes far more easily: the less paradox, the simpler it is. Politically one has nothing to do with God, suffers no inconvenience from

THE BOOK ON ADLER

the thought that He takes part: the starting-point is FROM BELOW, from that which is lower than the established order; for even the most mediocre "establishment" is preferable to and higher than the vaguest of all vague conceptions, "the multitude," which, if you please, accounts for the fact that nowadays this absurdity finds a place in the State, that there exists a monster of fairyland with many heads, or, more correctly and truly, with a thousand legs, or, according to circumstances, with a hundred thousand:

"the multitude," an absurd monster or a monstrous absurdity, which nevertheless is physically in possession of power, of outcries and of noise, and besides that has an extraordinary virtuosity in making everything commensurable for the decision of the hands upraised to vote or the fists upraised to fight. This abstraction is an inhuman something, the power of which is, to be sure, prodigious, but it is a prodigious power which cannot be defined in human terms, but more properly as one defines the power of a machine, calling it so and so many horsepower: the power of the multitude is always horsepower.

This abstraction, whether you will call it the public or the multitude or the majority or the senseless people - this abstraction is used politically to bring about movement. Just as in whist or other social games there is some stake for which men play, so is this abstraction the stake for which men play politically. Truth and such like things, God in heaven, etc., death, judgment and more of this sort, the politician regards in about the same way as when one finds it tiresome to play cards for nothing. No, cards must be played for money, and politically the game must be played for the multitude, as to whether one can a tout prix get the most on his side, or the most who go over to his side with their many legs. So when one of the players sees that he has got the most he hurries to put himself at the head to lead this monster -

or rather there is not even any player, this is rather too much a characterization of personality; the whole thing is like a game where there is no player, or like a speech where yet there is no speaker, as in ventriloquism. But certain it is that in an evening hour, or possibly for several evenings in succession, there is a monstrous multitude on its legs, which for the organism of the State is certainly a very suspicious situation which can only be likened to wind. This human mass becomes at last enraged by POSTSCRIPT

279

friction, and now demands - or rather it demands nothing, it does not itself know what it wills, it takes the threatening attitude only in the hope that something after all will come to pass, in the hope that the weaker side (the established government, the ruler) will perhaps become so much alarmed that it will go ahead and do something which neither the multitude nor those at the head of it, the stronger ones, the courageous ones (if there be any such), have the courage to speak out in definite words. The fact of being the stronger therefore does not mean to act, but by an abstract possibility, by a sound of nature (such as is heard in Ceylon), to frigh ten the weaker in to doing something

- as Louis Philippe went off in alarm and by running away gave France a republic, or brought France into a situation out of which (who ever would have thought of it!) a republic came abou t. In alarm the king goes off and does something - and what the king does, that the human multitude then adores, maintaining that it had done it.

While the individual who truly connects himself with a religious movement must watch out and be ready to fight lest the dreadful thing should come to pass that this monstrous abstraction should wish to help him by going over with its legs to his side (for to conquer by the help of this is, religiously, to help untruth to conquer); while the religious individual must suffer indescribably under the weight of his responsibility and of doubly reflected contention in loneliness (for he contends alone - but at the same time contends for life and death to be permitted to be alone), it goes far easier for the political hero, and easiest of all for one who is not so much as a political hero. But if there be such a hero, he only takes care to assure himself of these thousands before venturing anything, and when he is assured of them he ventures - that is, he does not in fact venture anything, for physically he is by far the stronger, and he contends physically.

But for this reason also almost every political movement, instead of being an advance to the rational, is a retrogression to the irrational. Even a poor government which yet is organic is better than the senseless situation when such an abstraction rules the State. The existence of this abstraction in the State (like an unwholesome fluid in the blood) puts finally an end to the rational State. Wherever this abstraction is set upon the throne

THE BOOK ON ADLER

there really is no government. One is obedient only to the man whom he himself has boosted up, pretty much as the idolater worships and serves the god he himself has made, i.e. one obeys himself. With the discontinuance of the rational State the art of statesmanship will become a game. Everything will turn upon getting the multitude pollinated, and after that getting them to vote on his side, with noise, with torches and with weapons, indifferent, absolutely indifferent, as to whether they understand anything or no.

Since such is the case and since everything in these times is politics, I do not wonder that many may find that the present treatise deals with nothing, is concerned with difficulties which absolutely do not exist. Well - be it so then, it deals in fact with God and with the God-relationship in the individual.

APPENDIX

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES TO

"FEAR AND TRE M BL IN G"

(I am indebted for most of these notes to the editors of the Danish edition of S.K.'s Complete Works.)

1 The motto recalls the well-known story of old Rome, which relates that when the son of Tarquinius Superbus had craftily gained the confidence of the people of Gabii he secretly sent a message to his father in Rome, asking what he should do next. The father, not willing to trust the messenger, took him into the field where as he walked he struck off with his cane the heads of the tallest poppies. The son understood that he was to bring about the death of the most eminent men in the city and proceeded to do so.

2 The Preface is aimed especially at Martensen's review of]. L.

Heiberg's "Introductory Lectures to Speculative Logic,"

Danske Maanedskrift, No. 16 for 1836, pp. SISff.

3 Descartes is mentioned here because Martensen made appeal to him in the article mentioned in the preceding note.

4 Remembering, however, as I have already said, that the natural light is to be trusted only in so far as nothing to the contrary is revealed by God Himself. . . . Moreover, it must be fixed in one's memory as the highest rule, that what has been revealed to us by God is to be believed as the most certain of all things; and even though the light of reason should seem most clearly to suggest something else, we must nevertheless give credence to the divine authority only, rather than to our own judgment. (Principia philosophiae, pars prima 28 and 76.)

S Let no one think that I am here about to propound a method which everyone ought to follow in order to govern his reason aright; for I have merely the intention of expounding the method I myself have followed. . . . But no sooner had I finished the course of study at the conclusion of which one is ordinarily adopted into the ranks of the learned, than I began to think of something very different from that. For I became aware that I was involved in so many doubts, so many errors, that all efforts to learn were, as I saw it, of no

APPEND IX

other help to me than that I might more and more discover my ignorance (Dissertatio de methodo, pp. 2 and 3).

6 Martensen gave such "promises" in the article referred to in notes 2 and 3.

7 S.K.'s contemptuous way of referring to the Berlingske Tidende, a newspaper owned and edited by his bite noire, the wholesale merchant Nathanson. This advertisement attracted particular attention because the enterprising young gardener accompanied it with a sketch of himself in the ingratiating attitude here described.

8 In J. L. Heiberg's The Reviewer and the Beast, Trop tears his own tragedy, The Destruction rifthe Human Race, into two equal pieces, remarking, "Since it doesn't cost more to preserve good taste, why shouldn't we do it?"

9 Only three years before this the first omnibus was seen in Copenhagen.

10 One might blamelessly be in doubt how to translate this title (as the four translators into German, French and English have been) had not S.K. himself indicated (IV B 8 I) that he here uses the word Stemning in the sense of npoOlllzov, the Greek word which gives us proem. I have preferred to use the word prelude because it will be more commonly understood.

Cf. IV A 93.

I I Genesis, Chapter 22 .

12 J udith 10: I I. S.K. quotes this passage in the Postscript. Cr.

IIIA I97·

13 Alluding to various passages in Homer (e.g. Iliad III 38 I) where a divinity saves a hero by enveloping him in a cloud and carrying him away. We discover additional pathos in this picture of the "lover" when we remember that at the end of The Point oJ View (pp. 62f and 100ff.) S.K. looks for the coming of his poet, his lover.

14 It is evident from the sequel that Jeremiah is meant.

15 Here we have a glimpse of "repetition."

16 Cf. Plato's Phaedrus, 22 and 37.

17 In Oelenschlager's play Aladdin the hero is contrasted with Noureddin the representative of darkness.

18 Isaiah 26: 18.

19 Themistocles, as related in Plutarch's Themistocles, 3, 3·

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

20 Eleven months later (with only one pseudonymous work intervening) S.K. published The Concept oJ Dread, and this remained one of his most distinctive categories. Although all have agreed to use the word "dread," no one can think it adequate as a translation of Angst. For though it denotes the presentiment of evil it does not sufficiently emphasize the anguish of the experience.

21 The connection requires a masculine pronoun, but Regine is meant, and she must have known it, for such were her words when she refused to give Kierkegaard back his freedom.

22 As Professor Martensen had claimed to do (Danske Maanedskrift, No. 16 referred to in note 2 above. Cf. I A 328, p. 130).

But Sibbern too claimed for Heiberg that he "goes beyond Hegel" (the same review, No. 10, year 1838, p. 292).

23 Quoted from Horace's Letters, I. 18, 84: "It's your affair when the neighbor's house is afire."

24 The reader may need to be apprised thatJohannes de silentio is in that religious stage which by Johannes Climacus in the Postscript is called "religiousness A," the basis of all religiousness, but therefore not the distinctively Christian position, which here is called "religiousness B," or the paradoxical religiousness which is characterized by faith in the strictest sense.

25 This is decidedly autobiographical.

26 S.K. attributed his spinal curvature to a fall from a tree when he was a child.

2 7 The reader who has not heard or has not heeded S.K.'s warning not to attribute to him personally a single word the Pseudonyms say may need here to be reminded that it is not S.K. who reiterates so insistently that he cannot understand Abraham. It is Johannes de silentio who says this, and the purpose of it is to emphasize the fact that the paradoxical religiousness (religiousness B) is and remains a paradox to everyone who stands on a lower plane, even to one who has got so high as to be able to make the movement of infinite resignation, so long as his religion is in the sphere of Immanence.

28 Introduced about 1840 in Copenhagen.

29 The "princess" is of course the most obvious analogue to Regine, and one which she could not fail to discover; but

APPEND IX

every other reader may need the hint that in this whole paragraph S.K. describes his own act of resignation.

30 At the time of his engagement S.K. registered in his Journal the observation that certain insects die the instant they fertilize their mate, and he repeated this in the sixth Diapsalm of Either/Or.

3 I "A blissful leap into eternity."

32 Cf. what is said in Repetition about the young man who

"recollects" his love as soon as he is engaged. It is quoted in my Kierkegaard, p. 2 12.

33 It seems clear enough that this passage was written after S.K.

learned of Regine's engagement, and the tone of it suggests that he had had time to repent of the very different language he used when he rewrote Repetition. I t is therefore an additional argument for the view that this book was written later than the other.

34 "The pre-established harmony" was a fundamental concept of Leibniz's philosophy.

35 See Magyarische Sagen by Johan Graf Mailath (Stuttgart u.

Tiibingen 1838), Vo!. 11, p. 18. Cf. Journal 11 A 449.

36 An entry in the Journal (IV A 107) dated May 17 [1843], at the time, that is, when he was composing these two works in Berlin. S.K. says: "If I had had faith, I would have remained with Regine." He was then only a knight of infinite resignation, but he was in the way of becoming a knight of faith.

37 It would have been well had I remarked earlier that the Danish words resignere and Resignation have a more active sense than we attach to the word "resignation," that they imply an act rather than a passive endurance of a situation, and therefore could be translated by "renounce," "renunciation" - yet it would not do to dub our knight the knight of renunciation.

38 See Rosenkranz, Erinnerungen an Karl Daub (Berlin 1837), p. 2. Cf. Journal IV A 92.

39 S.K. liked to be called "Master of Irony" in view of the big book on The Concept of Irony by which he won his degree of Master of Arts.

40 A Greek word meaning end or goal- which S.K. writes with Greek letters but I transliterate because it is of such common

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

occurrence, and also because it is in the way of becoming an English word.

4 I This is the conception of the ethical which is stressed in the Second Part of Either/Or. Perhaps Schrempf is right in affirming that what caused S.K. unnecessary agony was his acceptance of the Hegelian notion of the relation between the universal and the particular.

42 Cf. Philosophie des Rechts, 2nd ed. (1840) §§ I 29- I 4 I and Table of Contents p. xix.

43 The Trojan war. When the Greek fleet was unable to set sail from Aulis because of an adverse wind the seer Calchas announced that King Agamemnon had offended Artemis and that the goddess demanded his daughter Iphigenia as a sacrifice of expiation.

44 See Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, v. 448 in Wilster's translation. Agamemnon says, "How lucky to be born in lowly station where one may be allowed to weep." The confidants mentioned below are Menelaus, Calchas and Ulysses. Cr. v.

107.

45 Jephtha. Judges 11:30-40.

46 The sons of Brut us, while their father was Consul, took part in a conspiracy to restore the king Rome had expelled, and Brutus ordered them to be put to death.

47 This is temptation in the sense we ordinarily attach to the word. For temptation in a higher sense [ Anfaegtelse] I have in the translation of other books used the phrase "trial of temptation." Professor Swenson, in an important passage in the Postscript, preferred to use the German word Anfechtung.

In this work I have used "temptation" and added the German word in brackets. The distinction between the two sorts of temptation is plainly indicated by S.K. in this paragraph.

48 This is the Scriptural word which we translate by "offense"

or "stumbling block." Only Mr. Dru has preferred to use the identical word "scandal."

49 Docertts and Privatdocents (both of them German titles for subordinate teachers in the universities) were very frequently the objects ofS.K.'s satire. He spoke more frequently of "the professor" after Martensen had attained that title.

APPEND IX

50 It would be interesting and edifying to make an anthology of the passages in which S.K. speaks of the Blessed Virgin; for surely no Protestant was ever so much engrossed in this theme, and perhaps no Catholic has appreciated more profoundly the unique position of Mary.

51 In AusZiige aus den Literatur-Briifen, 81st letter, in Maltzahn's ed. Vol. VI, pp. 205ff.

52 E.g. Hegel's Logik, ii, Book 2, Sect. 3, Cap. C (Werke IV, pp.

I 77ff.; Encyclopedie I §140 (Werke VI, pp. 2 75ff.).

53 It appears from the Journal (I A 2 73) that S.K. had in mind Schleiermacher's "Theology of Feeling," and also (with not so obvious a justification) the dogmatists of the Hegelian school. The Danish editors refer to Marheineke, Dogmatik, 2nd ed. §§70, 7 I, 86.

54 Unexpected.

55 In this particular instance S.K. could define precisely what he understood by Isaac, that is, Regine; and the formlessness of this sentence was intentional - it is a smoke-screen.

56 The Danish editors refer to Bretschneider's Lexicon; but no language lacks "exegetical aids" which serve the purpose of emasculating the New Testament. In this instance the absolute word "hate" is weakened successively by each term used to define it: "feel dislike," "love less," "put in a subordinate place," "show no reverence," "regard as naught."

57 The Hebrew consonants yodh and vav originally indicated vowel sounds, and when the vowel sounds came to be written below the consonants these letters became superfluous in this respect and were said to repose [hvile] in the vowel. So S.K.

understood the situation in his Journal II A 406, but here he has inverted it.

58 Fabius Maximus, who in 2 I 7 B.C. conducted the war against Hannibal and received the appellation of Cunctator for his successful strategy of delay or procrastination.

59 Public property.

60 A play by Olussen, which in Act 11, Scene 10 and elsewhere speaks of "two witnesses" but not of beadles [Stokkemtlmdene]

i.e. four men appointed to attend legal proceedings as witnesses.

6 I The corresponding passages are Deut. I 3:6f. and 33:9; Matt.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

289

10:37; 19:29. In the manuscript 1 Cor. 7: 11 is spoken of as a

"similar" passage, but not with good reason.

62 Two parts of the myth, viz. change and recognition, have to do with this [about which he has been talking].

63 The word is literally "carrom." The Danish editors explain that it means here to coincide at the same instant. Thus Oedipus by "recognizing" who he is brings about a

"change" in his fortune.

64 Oedipus in Sophocles' tragedy of that name.

65 Iphigenia in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris.

66 In his Natural History, V, 4, 7. cr Journal IV A 36.

67 Book viii (5), Cap. 3, 3·

68 Title of a Roman priesthood, which S.K. (I know not for what reason) applies here to the Greek soothsayers.

69 Vo!. I, §§ I and 2 - p. 10 in Maltzahn's ed.

70 Theology of pilgrims - contrasted with theologia beatorum, an ancient division no longer in vogue.

71 It is to be remembered that S.K. believed his marriage was prohibited by a "divine veto." Hence the prospective bridegroom of Delphi presents the closest analogy to his situation.

In fact, the Journal shows that every line of conduct contemplated in this passage was seriously considered by S.K. - even the possibility of a "romantic union" without marriage. But it was the second line of conduct he chose.

72 Axel and Valborg are the pair of unhappy lovers most celebrated in Danish literature. Because of their close consanguinity the Church forbade their marriage.

73 This in tact was S.K.'s position.

74 cr Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Vo!. I, art. 22 (in Maltzahn's ed. VII, p. 96).

75 Nowhere, not even in the Journal, has S.K. so perfectly described the modest confidence with which Regine committed herself to him.

76 It is found in the fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast"

(Molbeck, No. 7) , but not in the legend of "Agnes and the Merman."

77 cr the Stages, pp. 1 93ff.

78 S.K. uses here the word "emotion," but it is clear that he has in mind what a modern psychology has called libido.

APPENDIX

79 Letter of credit on happiness. See Schiller's "Resignation,"

3rd strophe (Gedichte, 2fe Periode) .

80 For no one ever has escaped from love or ever will so long as there be beauty and eyes to see with. Longus, Daphnis and Chloi!. Introduction, §4. Cr. Journal IV A 30.

81 Unfortunately the Danish word bedrage means to defraud as well as to deceive. I seek to straddle both meanings (imperfectly) by using the word "cheat."

82 So it was S.K. was accustomed to think of himself. How ingenious of him to make this story fit his case by the device of "supposing" Sarah was a man!

83 The Jew, a play by Cumberland which was many times presented at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen 1795 and 1834 and was published in a Danish translation in 1796. Scheva the Jew every one regarded as a miser and a usurer, but in secret he did great works of beneficence.

84 In Kirkegaarden in Sobradise (Danske V <erker, I, p. 282).

85 There never was great genius without some madness. As quoted by Scneca (de tranquilitate animi, 1 7, 10) from Aristotle the phrase is: sine mixtura dementiae. S.K. quoted it in his Journal (IV A 148) at a time when he was anxiously inquiring whether his state of mind might not be close to madness.

86 If before the beginning of this century S.K. had been widely known in Europe, we would trace to him rather than to Dostoevski or any other the modern preoccupation with such topics.

87 It is to be remembered that in his university days S.K. was absorbingly interested in the legends ofFaust, Don Juan, and Ahsverus (the Wandering Jew), which he took to be typical of doubt, sensuality and despair. The following footnote deals with other themes which interested him at the same time. He wrote a big book (his dissertation for the master's degree) on The Concept of Irony, and he made preparation for a work on satire.

88 In one financial crisis S.K.'s father increased his fortune by investing in bonds issued by the Crown (i.e. on the credit of the absolute sovereign), and in a later crisis S.K. lost much of his by investing in the same security.

89 The honor of destroying. Herostratus, to make his name

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

immortal, burnt the temple of Artemis at Ephesus in the year 356B.c.

90 Executioner of infants. This name was given to this Augustinian monk (who was Professor in the University of Paris and died in 1358) because he maintained the view that unbaptized infants went to hell - instead of the limbo to which the common Catholic view consigned them. Tartar heroum means torturer (executioner) of heroes.

91 Holberg's Erasmus Montanus, Act i, Scene 3: Peter Deacon says (a bou t bargaining for the price of a grave), "I can say to a peasant, 'Will you have fine sand or simple earth?' "

92 Werke (2nd ed.), VIII, pp. I95ff; X, I, pp. 84ff.; XlV. pp.

53ff.; XVI, pp. 486ff.

93 Adherents of Grundtvig who advocated his doctrine of the Church.

94 This is S.K.'s word, and here it means, leaping from one point to another so as to illuminate the subject from all sides, or in order that the unintelligibility might be broken down into its several parts.

95 Shakespeare's King Richard Ill, Act 11, Scene I.

96 Plato's Apology, Cap. 25. The best texts now read "thirty votes," but in the older editions "three" was commonly read.

97 "The Tailor in Heaven," one of the brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales. But according to the Grimms the tailor was really dead (2nd German ed., I, p. 177).

98 Cf. the Journal, IV A 58.

S. K.'S PREFACES TO "THE BOOK ON ADLER"

S.K.'S PREFACE AS AUTHOR OF "THE BOOK ON ADLER"

Essentially this book can be read only by theologians, and among these again it essentially can interest only the individual in so far as he, instead perhaps of becoming self-important and setting himself up as my judge (with the objection, How could it ever occur to me to write so big a book about Magister Adler!), undertakes the labor of reading and then perceives in what sense A. is the subject of this book, and in what sense he is used to throw light upon the age and to defend dogmatic concepts, in what sense there is just as much attention paid to the age as to Adler.

January 1847.

S. Kierkegaard.

S.K.'S PREFACE AS ED ITOR OF

"THE CONFUSION OF THE PRESEN T AGE"

I myself perceive only too well how obvious is the objection and how much there is in it, against writing such a big book dealing in a certain sense with Magister Adler. But truly it is only in a certain sense it deals with him, and I simply beg the reader not to let himself be disturbed by the plausibility of the first impression. If he will read the book as I have read it, and if at the same time he is a theologian, I venture to vouch that from it he will get a clarity about certain dogmatic concepts and an ability to use them which otherwise is not easily to be had. Furthermore I am confident that, if the reader will read attentively and at the same time possesses the theological equipment which enables him to pass judgment, he will agree with me that what the author accomplishes, and what perhaps it was important for our age that he should accomplish, could be accomplished in no S. K.'S PREFACES

293

other way. For much as I deplore the confusion of Magister Adler, and what at least for the time being we have lost in him, however seriously and slowly I have pondered over publishing this book, which for a year and a day has lain before me completely finished, I count that the author of it may be jealous of his good fortune, for Magister Adler was just what he neededwithout him he could not have given his presentation the liveliness and the ironical tension it now has, nor the satirical background which now is to be had gratis. No physician can be better pleased with the normal development of a sickness than the author is with Magister Adler and his abnormal development; and perhaps never has a man by going astray come so opportunely into the hands of Petrus Minor.

The whole book is essentially an ethical investigation of the concept of revelation; about what it means to be called by a revelation; about how he who has had a revelation is related to the race, the universal, and we others to him; about the confusion from which the concept of revelation suffers in our confused age. Or, what comes to the same thing, the whole book is an investigation of the concept of authority, about the confusion involved in the fact that the concept of authority has been entirely forgotten in our confused age. Now the author might have dealt with the subject thus: he might have shown that this concept (revelation) lent itself to confusion (the possibilities), describing also how it has been confused, and he might seek to describe the whole age and its confusion. But upon the reader this perhaps would make the impression that the confusion described was after all only a possibility which did not actually exist, something the author had hit upon just to find something to do, so that after all he was only fighting the air.

How very differently he proceeded, if not by Adler's aid, at least by the fact that Adler exhibits almost all possible confusions with respect to this concept, and at the same time declares that he has had a revelation.

Thus it is that by careful reading and rereading I have understood the author, and I wish that the reader would understand him in the same way. It can hardly be supposed that the author has found any special pleasure in reading Magister Adler's many books. Yet he had done that, presumably, because 294

APPENDIX

he had assured himself that it might serve his purpose; and likely in the course of his work he became more and more clearly conscious of his purpose, and so of the expediency of his plan. He has used Magister Adler as a foundation or made him a transparent medium for seeing the confusion of our age. Even where the treatise seems to concern itself merely with Adler's writings like a literary review, he has perhaps succeeded in adverting to some little trait which is characteristic of our age, or to a little quirk in the confusion which, even though it is misleading, serves to illuminate the concept more thoroughly.

By this plan he has made it possible for the whole monograph to gain liveliness by having constantly the appearance of being a clinic, and besides that to gain an ironic duplication for the fact that Magister Adler, who admirably satirizes the whole age, is precisely one who has broken with the whole modern age, so that he satirizes himself without knowing it; and finally to gain the advantage of a contemporary instance. And as a good dish can be spoiled entirely by being served cold when it should be served hot, so it is in the spiritual sphere. A confusion always has the most interest in presenti and here everything is in jiagranti.

-

In case one should wish to affirm that Magister Adler, inasmuch as he has claimed a revelation, stands entirely outside this present age or is entirely isolated in it, I would reply: By no means. Precisely this confusion lies closer to our age than one might be disposed to believe, and Magister Adler, so understood, is, I could almost say, just as much in rapport with our age as Strauss, Feuerbach, etc., were with theirs. Without religion no generation can endure. But when the first rank, the levies which would abolish Christianity (by no means the most dangerous enemies), are through with their attack, there comes another rank of the missionaries of confusion, those which either will have a new religion or be themselves apostles. These are the most dangerous, precisely because they are under religious influence and are religiously confused, but also because they stand in relation to the deeper things in man, while the first enemies were irreligiously possessed. For the misfortune of our age - in the political as well as in the religious sphere, and in all things - is disobedience, unwillingness to obey. And one deceives oneself and others by wishing to make us imagine that it is doubt. No, it

S. K .'S PREFACES

295

is insubordination: it is not doubt of religious truth but insubordination against religious authority which is the f;;lUlt in our misfortune and the cause of it. But, dialectically, insubordination has two forms: either wishing to cast down the ruler or wishing to be the ruler - and so religiously: either wishing to be a Feuerbach or wishing willfully to be an apostle. Disobedience is the secret of the religious confusion of our age. This same spirit of disobedience is also, as the np6rov t/lf.ubos (but rather hidden and unconsciously), at the basis of that which is the fundamental evil of modern Speculation, the fact that men have confused the spheres, confounded profundity of mind with authority, the intellectual and the ethical, the notion of being a genius and the notion of being an apostle. This book, though to many this affirmation will appear strange, is real!y an edifying book . . . for one who has the predisposition to let himself be edified by a reading which is in other respects laborious.

And herewith I would recommend this book, begging the reader to read slowly, in consideration of the fact that the author has often been obliged to take a step backward to get the point of view. I could wish that for once I might experience the good fortune of getting a good book well read. As editor it would have been easy enough to separate the whole into smaller parts, into little treatises at 4 farthings apiece; but against this the author has protested as though his life depended upon it - and that is reasonable enough. For my part too I have reflected that a regular plan is made impossible by a dismemberment, and that our little land is not well served by letting the rubric literature vanish entirely, so that Denmark would have only pamphlets and newspapers.

"My reader," may I simply beg you to read this book, for it is important for my main effort, wherefore I am minded to recommend it.

Of this I have assured myself in a peculiar way. For various reasons I have let this manuscript lie on my table. Then after having in the meanwhile written "discourses," I wanted to write a more dogmatic work. But precisely then I perceived that I was constantly obliged to presuppose this book. Therefore I resolved to publish it.

So now I part with this book. It is, what to many will seem

APPENDIX

strange, an edifying book - for him who understands it. And, what to many may seem stranger still, I could desire nothing better, for the sake of the small renown I have as an author, than to have written this book. For in relation to it there is an element of good luck which is rarely presented to one, for perhaps rarely has a man by going astray come so opportunely to hand as has Magister Adler to me.

s. Kierkegaard.

3

S.K.'S PREFACE AS AUTHOR OF "A CYCLE OF

ETH ICO-REL IG IOUS TREATISES"

This whole work was written before, in part a long while before, the European war, the world-historical catastrophe of the present year, which shows and confirms catastrophically the yawning difference between a negative and positive reckoning of time.

Yet by the catastrophe this work is not antiquated but is brought within the present age, not put negatively outside but positively inside the time-reckoning, it has not lost but gained by the help of the catastrophe, which makes its publication still more evidently a duty. In its time it was afraid lest by publication it might come too early, now on the contrary it fears that it may come too late.

In order that for once I may signalize a bit with regard to what he who has been able and willing to see doubtless must have seen lying at the basis of my activity as an author totally understood, in regard, ut ita dicam, to my program as an author (which, it is true, comes not first as usual, but last) - this was and is my unaltered reckoning and aim; the catastrophe has only helped me to understand it better, while it also will help me to be better understood, or at least to be more passionately misunderstood. The question is not about one or two chambers, nor about the seating of committees or the unseating of ministers. For sure enough there is question about these subjects, again and again these questions are raised by thousands, there is really no

S. K.'S PREFACES

297

question about anything else; but, behold, all this is what the age requires, not in the deepest sense what the age needs; it is simply unfortunate that the age requires what it doesn't need, what therefore is foolishness and a waste of time: in part, at least in certain instances, it is a lust for pleasure. No, ideally and essentially viewed, there is a question, or the question about Christianity; about Christianity, as to whether that is what men need; about Christianity, whether that is what men have abolished, whether a so-called Christendom, or rather a fallen Christendom, openly or more hiddenly, now by attack, now by defense, has abolished Christianity. Divine governance has lost patience, will not put up with it any longer, but will, as thoroughgoing as is its teaching, thoroughly make it evident how self-contradictory all this is, that men in general assembly or by casting their votes, or by handshaking, shall be, if you please, a surrogate for religiousness.

And therefore even the catastrophe, as hitherto it has manifested itself, is only an introduction, it belongs among rough drafts, not finished books; for only when one has got so far that he knows what the question is about, only then begins a new time reckoning. Throughout Europe people have in a worldly way, with ever-increasing velocity of passion, lost themselves in problems which can be solved only in a godly way, which only Christianity can solve, and has solved long ago. With amendments to the Constitution, with the fourth estate, with all men wishing to solve the problem of likeness and equality between man and man in the medium of worldliness, i.e. in the medium the nature of which is difference and inequality. Though all travel in Europe must stop because one must wade in blood, and though all ministers were to remain sleepless for ruminating, and though every day ten ministers were to lose their reason, and every next day ten new ministers were to begin where the others left off, only to lose their reason in turn - with all this not one step forward is made, an obstacle to it is sternly fixed, and the bounds set by eternity deride all human efforts, deride all presumption against its exalted and lordly privilege, with the pretense that the temporal will explain in time what in time must remain a riddle, which only Christianity can or will explain. The problem is a religious, a Christian problem, and, as

APPENDIX

I have said, it has already been solved. For give us eternity, a prospect of eternity every instant, its seriousness and its blessedness, its relief; give eternity again to every individual - then no more blood-shedding will be needed, and the ministers may be allowed to retain their respective reasons. Ah, but to get the conflagration quenched, the spontaneous combustion brought about by the friction of worldliness, i.e. to get eternity again -

bloodshed may be needed and bombardments, item that many ministers shall lose their reason.

How long a time the merely convulsive period may last no man indeed can know. But one need not be a great psychologist to know how difficult it is to get the better of the situation with man's worldly and earthly understanding when, as now is the case with the whole generation, one has a superstitious belief in the saving and beatifying power of the understanding, how difficult it is therefore, and how long drawn out the transition may be before one lets the understanding go and makes a leap into the religious. The worldly understanding is established all too firmly in the worldly man, or he in it. It is like a wisdom tooth - it may take many efforts and violent ones to rock it loose and to take the life ou i of a thing so tenacious of life. N ei ther does it require a man of great dialectic power to discover that for worldly passion the notion may seem very deceptive and alluring that after all it must be possible finally, if one keeps on calculating and calculating, to bring about likeness and equality between man and man in worldliness. In any case the finite dialectic will be able to construct an incredible multitude of combinations. The oft-repeated refrain will be: Treachery, treachery; no, when one does it in another way, when one takes a little more from here and puts a little more there, and then distributes that more evenly, without forgetting the difference in the harmony with the here and there, and here and here and yonder and up and down - then one must necessarily succeed in finding the likeness, the common divisor, the stencil, for man's likeness and equality in worldliness (i.e. in difference), likeness for the worldly human likeness and equality - i.e. likeness for the different. The System [i.e. Hegel's system] sought the "pure"

man, and now this age must seek the "equal" (or straight) man, for in worldliness we are crooked, or crookedness, i.e. relativities.

S. K.'S PREFACES

299

Worldliness is a prodigiously variegated complex of more and less, a little more and a little less, much, something, little, etc.; that is, worldliness is differentiation. But the understanding in the service of worldly passion will constantly imagine that it can reckon this out and get likeness and equality in worldliness.

Every new construction becomes then - yes, in the now antiquated style it becomes a paragraph with the appropriate signit now has become, stili novi, a new ministry. And then when the new ministry goes out, or is convulsively thrust out, has one then reached the conclusion that the misfortune did not lie in the accidental mistakes or defects of the combination but in the fact that what was needed was something entirely different, namely, religiousness? No, this conclusion one will not draw. There will immediately be a new combination and a new ministry in the offing, which having shaken the relativities kaleidoscopically in a somewhat different way imagines that it has found what it sought. And one will say almost quite systematically, "Well, no, in the way the former ministry wanted to do it it cannot be done, but if only one reckons rightly it must come out all right" - and there comes the new ministry which does less for the beer-sellers, more for the candle-makers, and then you take more from landowners and bring the proletariat more to the fore, equalize priests and deacons, and above all make a humpback watchman and a bowl egged blacksmith's apprentice into straight and equal men. The age would recall in many ways the age of Socrates (only that it is far more passionate and violent, for it is the sophistic of violence and of palpability) , but it would be nothing that might recall Socrates.

With all this curriculum of §§ or the curriculum of ministers the human race has become more and more confused, like a drunken man, who, the more he rushes about, the more drunken he becomes, even if he gets no more to drink. And then when this provisional convulsive phase has been passed through, and the political ministers are gone, the race will be so tired out with sufferings and loss of blood that this thing of eternity might get permission at least to be taken into consideration, as to whether it might not, from the very first, heat passion anew and give it new powers. The reaction (conversely to that of the Reformation) will transfigure what seemed to be, and imagined itself to 300

APPENDIX

be, politics into a religious movement. To get eternity again requires blood, but blood of a different sort, not the blood of thousands of warriors, no, the precious blood of martyrs, of the individuals - the blood of martyrs, those mighty dead who are able to do what no living man can do who lets men be cut down by thousands, what these mighty dead themselves could not do while they lived but are able to do only as dead men: to constrain to obedience a furious mob, just because this furious mob in disobedience took the liberty of slaying the martyrs. For the proverb says, "He laughs best who laughs last"; but truly he conquers best who conquers last - so not he who conquers by slaughter - oh, dubious conquest! - but he who conquers by being put to death - an eternally certain conquest! And this sacrifice is the sacrifice of obedience, wherefore God looks with delight upon him, the obedient man, who offers himself as a sacrifice, whereas he gathers his wrath against disobedience which slays the sacrifice - this sacrifice, the victor, is the martyr; for not every one who is put to death is a martyr.

For tyrants (in the form of emperors, kings, popes, Jesuits, generals, diplomats) have hitherto in a decisive moment been able to rule and direct the world; but from the time the fourth estate has come into the picture - when it has had time to settle itself in such a way that it is rightly understood - it will be seen that in the decisive moment only martyrs are able to rule the world. That is, no man will be able to rule the human race in such a moment, only the Deity can do it with the help of absolutely obedient men who at the same time are willing to suffer - but such a man is the martyr. And when in an elder formation the decisive moment was overcome, then the ordinary worldly government took over; but from the moment the fourth estate came into the picture it will be seen that even when the crisis has been overcome it is not possible to govern in a worldly way. To rule in a worldly way, to be a ruler in the worldly sense, however much labor and responsibility is involved in it, is a pleasure, and therefore is posited upon the possibility that by far the greater number of men are not aware that they have no part in the life of the state or else are godfearing enough not to bother about it. So soon as the fourth estate comes into the picture it is possible to rule only in a godly way, religiously. But to rule

S. K.'S PREFACES

301

religiously, to be religiously the ruler, is to be the sufferer, ruling religiously is suffering. These sufferers (the rulers), in case they are allowed to follow their own counsel, will naturally wish many a time that they were far away and could say good-bye to the human race, either to lead their own lives in the solitude of contemplation or to enjoy life. But they do not venture to do so when in fear and trembling they bethink themselves of their responsibility before God. To be selected to be the ruler in a worldly sense is regarded as good fortune, but to be selected to serve as a ruler in a religious sense is, humanly speaking, rather like a punishment, in any case, humanly speaking, it is suffering, humanly speaking, it is the opposite of an advantage.

Discontented, unsatisfied, with the State, with the Church and with everything related to them (art, learning, etc., etc.), the human race, if allowed to follow its own devices, would resolve itself into a world of

whereby nevertheless this

progress will be made that now God will Himself come directly into relation with the single individuals, not through abstractions, neither through representative persons, but God will Himself, so to speak, undertake to educate the countless individuals of the generation, to become Himself the schoolmaster who looks after all, everyone in particular. Here thought comes to a stop. The form of the world would be like - well, I know not with what I should liken it. It would resemble an enormous version of the town of Christenfeld [an example of Christian Communism J, and so there would be present the two greatest possible contrasts, striving with one another about the interpretation of this phenomenon. On the one hand communism, which would say, This is the correct worldly way, there must not be the slightest difference between man and man; riches, art, learning, rule, etc., etc., are of the evil one, all men ought to be equal like laborers in a factory, like cattle in a barnyard, partake of the same food, be washed in one common tub at the same stroke of the clock, be of the same dimensions, etc., etc. On the other hand pietism, which would say, This is the right Christian way, that one make no difference between man and man, we ought to be brothers and sisters, have all in common; riches, art, learning, etc., etc., are of the evil one; all men should be equal as it was once in little Christenfeld, all dressed alike, all pray at fixed

APPEND I X

times, marry by casting lots, go to bed at the stroke of the clock, partake of the same food, out of one dish, at the same time, etc., ete.

Ideally and essentially viewed, everyone who knows with God that he in truth believes in Christ, has "more than conquered,"

in spite of all the confusion and uproar of the world. He recognizes only one superior power, that of him who is able to pray more inwardly, with more fear and trembling, than he does; but such a superior is not his enemy but his mighty ally.

Every opposition - that of power, talents, numbers - ideally viewed, is already overcome, even though accidentally he has experienced or may experience suffering for it. Accidentally, for in a worldly sense one makes a fuss over sufferings, one suffers in order to conquer - and then perhaps he doesn't conquer after all. In a Christian sense he has already more than conquered in advance, so that he does not suffer in order to conquer, but rather because he has conquered, which simply gives him pleasure in putting up with everything and exalts him above sufferings, for since one has conquered he can surely put up with a bit of suffering. In a worldly sense one must wait in the tension of uncertainty to see what follows after suffering, whether victory follows. In a Christian sense there is nothing to wait for, victory was long ago placed in one's hands by faith. This one learns from the Pattern. His last word in His suffering was not, Only wait a little and you will surely see that my cause triumphs. No, He said, "It is finished." What was finished? Suffering. But then He didn't talk at all about conquering? No, how could that occur to Him - He knew indeed from eternity that He had conquered.

This is my interpretation of our age, the reflection of a lowly man who has in his nature something of a poet, who moreover is a thinker, but - ah, how often have I repeated this which for me is so important and decisive, my first utterance about myself -

"without authority."

S. Kierkegaard.

↑ Back to top