Introduction
1INTRODUCTION [XIII 517]
A point has been reached in my authorship where it is feasible, where I feel a need and therefore regard it now as my duty: once and for all to explain as directly and openly and specifically as possible what is what, what I say I am as an author.2 The moment, however unfavorable in another sense, has come, partly because, as stated, this point has been reached, and partly because I now will meet for the second time my first work in literature, the second edition of Either/Or,3 which I previously was unwilling to allow to be published.
There is a time to be silent and a time to speak.4 As long as I religiously considered the strictest silence as my duty, I strove in every way to preserve it. Nor have I hesitated—as is consistent with silence and mysteriousness and doubleness—in a finite sense to work against my effort. What I have done in this regard has been misunderstood, interpreted as pride, arrogance, and God knows what. Since I have religiously considered silence as my duty, I have not done the least thing to remove this misunderstanding. But I considered silence as my duty, because the authorship was not yet at hand in its totality and thus the understanding could be only a misunderstanding.
The content, then, of this little book is: what I in truth am as an author, that I am and was a religious author, that my whole authorship pertains to Christianity, to the issue: becoming a [XIII 518] Christian, with direct and indirect polemical aim at that enormous illusion, Christendom, or the illusion that in such a country all are Christians of sorts.
I request everyone who truly has the cause of Christianity at heart, and I request more urgently him who has it at heart more earnestly, to become acquainted with this little book, not inquisitively, but thoughtfully, as one reads a religious book. Because I am a religious author, it of course is on the whole a matter of indifference to me whether a so-called esthetic public has found or would be able to find some enjoyment through reading the esthetic works, or through reading the esthetic in the works, which is the incognito and the deception in the service of Christianity. If it is assumed that such a reader perfectly understands and judges the particular esthetic work, he totally misunderstands me, since he does not understand it in the religious totality of my work as an author. If, however, it is assumed that someone who understands my work as an author in its religious totality perhaps does not understand a particular esthetic work, then this misunderstanding is only incidental.
What I write here is for orientation and attestation—it is not a defense or an apologetics. If in nothing else, on this point I truly believe that I have something in common with Socrates. Just as the daimon of Socrates, when Socrates was accused and about to be sentenced by “the crowd,” he who felt himself to be a divine gift,5 forbade him to defend himself6—indeed, what an impropriety and self-contradiction it would have been!—so also there is in me and in the dialectical nature of my relationship something that makes it impossible for me and impossible in itself to conduct a “defense” of my authorship. I have put up with a great deal; I hope—yet who knows, the future may be more gentle than the past—to be able to put up with more without losing myself. The only thing I could not put up with and could not do without losing myself and the dialectical in my relationship (which is precisely what I could not put up with) is to defend myself qua author. It would be an untruth, which even if it meaninglessly helped me to gain the whole world7 would [XIII 519] eternally become my downfall.
Humble before God, also before people, I know very well what offenses I personally may have committed. But I also know with God that precisely my work as an author was the prompting of an irresistible inner need, the only possibility for a depressed person, an honest indemnifying attempt by one deeply humbled, a penitent, to make up, if possible, for something by means of every sacrifice and effort in the service of the truth. Therefore I know with God, before whose eyes the undertaking found and finds favor as it rejoices in his assistance, that in connection with my authorship I am not one who must defend myself before my contemporaries, because, if I am anything in this regard, I am not the guilty party, nor counsel for the defense, but counsel for the prosecution.
Yet neither do I accuse my contemporaries, just because I have religiously understood it as my duty to serve the truth this way in self-denial, that it was my task in every way to keep from becoming the esteemed, the beloved. Only the one who personally understands what true self-denial is, only he can solve my riddle and see that it is self-denial. The one who does not personally understand it may rather call my conduct self-love, pride, eccentricity, madness, for all of which I, consistently, do not indict him, because in my service of self-denial I myself have indeed contributed to it. There is unconditionally one thing that can be understood neither by a noisy assembly nor by an esteemed public, nor in a half-hour, and that is: what Christian self-denial is. In order to understand this, much fear and trembling, quiet solitude, are required, and for a long time.
That I have understood the truth I am presenting—of that I am absolutely convinced. I am just as convinced that my contemporaries, insofar as they do not understand the same thing, will be forced by fair or foul means to understand it when in eternity they have been freed from many of the disturbing worries and hardships from which I have been freed and in eternity they have found the stillness of earnestness, solitude, and time enough to think. Therefore, however much misunderstanding I have suffered (from this it does not follow that because I voluntarily exposed myself to it I cannot actually suffer, for in that case all true Christian suffering, which is voluntary, is annulled; nor from this does it follow summarily and plainly that “the others” have no guilt; then surely it is true that I am suffering this in the service of truth), I cannot do anything else than to thank God—not because I am suffering in this way, but for what infinitely occupies me—that he allows me to understand the truth.
And then just one more thing. It is self-evident that I cannot [XIII 520] present completely an explanation of my work as an author, that is, with the purely personal inwardness in which I possess the explanation. In part it is because I cannot make my God-relationship public in this way, since it is neither more nor less than the universally human inwardness, which every human being can have without any special call, which it would be a crime to suppress and a duty to stress, and to which I could not lay claim or make an appeal. In part it is because I cannot wish (and no one, I am sure, could desire that I do so) to press upon anyone something that pertains solely to my private character, which of course for me contains much of the explanation of my author-character.8