* Perhaps the reader will now become aware of how, humanly speaking, what has been the
*Perhaps the reader will now become aware of how, humanly speaking, what has been the misfortune of all my writing, what has had the effect of coming to stand more as a superfluity than to intervene actively, is that, humanly speaking, it is too religious or the author’s existence too religious, so that the author qua author has been thoroughly weak and therefore has absolutely needed God. If the author had been less weak, therefore humanly stronger (therefore less religious), he would have summarily taken over the authorship as [XIII 557] his own. He probably would have secured for himself some confidants and friends, would have confided his aims to others in advance, sought their advice, called on them for help. And these, who can be compared to godparents, would in turn have appealed to others, and the authorship would have had an influence at the moment, would have been active at the moment—instead of being a superfluity, which in a finite sense God himself is, more than everything and everybody.
Perhaps the reader will now become aware of why day in and day out I have worked so hard and so sacrificially to keep the untruth from coming forth, the untruth that nevertheless, as it always does, would have secured for me money, honor, esteem, approval, etc., the untruth that what I had to say was “the demand of the times,” that it was submitted to the lenient judgment of a highly esteemed public, moreover, that it was owing to this same highly esteemed public, to the approval and support and acclamation of my contemporaries, that it prospered. Quite the contrary, fearing and loving God, I had to take care vigilantly that the truth would be expressed that it was solely and only God’s help, that I owe neither the public nor my contemporaries anything but the wrong it has done to me, to the truth, to the epigram of awakening, that at a time when everything was general assemblies and associations and the setting up and setting down and setting aside of committees, while nothing really happened, that at that time a frail and solitary human being was granted the ability and energy to work on a scale that was bound to foster the notion that it was the work of more than one committee—in short, it was religiously my duty that my existing and my existing as an author express the truth, which I had daily perceived and ascertained—that there is a God.
Perhaps the reader will now become aware of why I have even found it necessary in the finite sense to work against my own efforts, simply in order that the responsibility would fall completely upon me. Entirely alone, completely alone, I had to be at every moment; yes, I was obliged to eliminate assistance lest my responsibility become too light. Just one friend and collaborator, then the responsibility becomes a fraction, not to mention if one gets the help of a whole generation. But the point for me in the service of the truth was that if I went astray, if I became presumptuous, if it were untrue, Governance would then have to bear down on me absolutely, and that, facing the possibility of this examination, which hovered over me at all times, I had to keep myself awake, responsive, obedient.49
*This idea, that it is “the poet” whom one must move away from, finds its expression as early as Either/Or, even though, understood in the totality of my entire work as an author, it of course holds true that one must move away from [XIII 563] or back from “the poet” in a far deeper sense than the second part of Either/Or could explain. That this is the case in Either/Or is already noted in Concluding Postscript, p. 188, lines 21 ff.55 The transition made in Either/Or is really from a poet existence to existing ethically.
*Now one perhaps realizes what I earlier saw to be the trouble, humanly speaking, with the entire work as an author: it is too imposing; it does not fit into any moment of actuality, partly because of the enormous speed with which it was done, and partly because it covered such a crucial development as from the esthetic to the religious, the Christian. This was concealed in connection with Either/Or as the first work; no criterion had yet been established, nor was the duplexity in place. Either/Or was considered to be the fruit of many years of work.60 This illusion helped, and many other things also helped Either/Or. Therefore, that is, with the help of this illusion, the public could see the great diligence that had been expended with regard to the style—and yet Either/Or literally was written in the shortest time and in it perhaps the least diligence was expended on the style. But of course the public could also see that the first part of Either/Or was written perhaps several years before the second part; just the [XIII 570] opposite, however, was the case—the second part was written first. So it was with Either/Or. But then when the illusion was made impossible and the criterion established, there was no other way to look at it than to regard it as a botched piece of work not worth any attention—naturally, a work on which I took five years ordinarily ought to take fifteen. —Now perhaps people will also understand and agree with me that I wished to have no reviews61 because I did not dare to hope for any substantial review. In such a little country, how did I dare to count on a contemporary who would have the qualifications and also the time to assess such deliberately cunning writing—and direct communication I did not dare to impart to anyone, since I had understood silence religiously as my duty. Or I wonder if it actually occurred to anyone for a single moment, when he saw Either/Or, that its author was a religious person, or that he himself, if he were to follow my work as an author, would in two or three years speedily find himself right in the middle of the most decisive Christian writings.
*Here one will see the significance of the pseudonyms, why I had to be pseudonymous in connection with the esthetic production, because I had my own life in altogether different categories and from the very beginning understood this writing as something temporary, a deception, a necessary emptying out.
*If someone were to say (what I would call a penetrating remark), “If this is so, if the view that you are like a spy is true, then the entire work as an author is indeed a kind of misanthropic treason, a crime against being a human being”—I would answer: Ah, yes, the crime is namely this—that I have Christianly loved God. I have not with the smallest fraction of the capacities granted me striven to express (what perhaps is loving people) that the world is good, loves the true, wills the good, that the demand of the times is the truth, that the human race is the true or presumably even God, and therefore the task (Goethean and Hegelian) is to satisfy the age. On the contrary, I have tried to express that the world, if it is not evil, is mediocre, that “the demand of the times” is always foolishness and fatuousness, that in the eyes of the world the truth is a ludicrous exaggeration or an eccentric superfluity, that the good must suffer. I have tried to express that to apply the category “human race” to what it means to be a human being, especially as a term for the highest, is a misunderstanding and paganism, because the human race, humankind, is different from an “animalkind” not only by the advantages of race but by this humanness, that every individual in the human race (not just an outstanding individual, but every individual) is more than the race. This has its basis in the God-relationship (and this is Christianity, whose category the single individual is so strangely laughed to scorn by an esteemed Christian age), because to relate oneself to God is far superior to relating oneself to the race or through the race to God. This I have striven to express. I have not orated or thundered, have not lectured, but have disclosed that it is the case with the age and the contemporaries also in our time that with regard to the good and the true things are deplorable and confused. I have tried to make this manifest with all the craftiness and subtlety at my disposal. In contrast to the view and the life that merely humanly and with human self-complacency loves being human and betrays God, in contrast to that I have committed the crime of loving God and striving in every way, but indirectly, qua spy, to get this treason made manifest. On the assumption that I had always had my capacities freely at my disposal (and that it had not been the case that another power was able at every moment to force me if I would not voluntarily), then from the very beginning I could have converted all my writing into the interest of the times; I would have had it in my power (if this betrayal would not otherwise have been punished in such a way that I would [XIII 573] have been annihilated) to become what the times demanded and thus, Goethean and Hegelian, would have become one more demonstration that the world is good, that the human race is the truth and the present generation the court of authority, the public the inventor and judge of truth etc., since by this treason I would have managed to make an exceptional success in the world etc. Instead, I became (indeed, was constrained to become) a spy. There is nothing meritorious in this. I truly do not rely on this with regard to my salvation. But I do still take a childish delight in having served in this way, although in relation to God I offer this my entire work more shamefacedly and bashfully than a child who gives its parents a gift the parents have given the child. Oh, but what parents would be so cruel as to take the gift from the child and say, “Why, this is ours!” instead of smiling at the child and going along with its idea that it is a gift—so also with God; he is not that cruel when someone brings him as a gift—his own.