End of Berlin entries
1846
The “Final Postscript”
Jan. The whole manuscript was delivered to the printer, lock, stock and barrel, circa medio Dec., 1845.—“A first and last explanation” was written down hastily on a page of the original manuscript but was put on one side to be finished and was only sent to the printer at the last moment, so as not to lie about the printer’s office. I would not allow a foot-note to a passage about the pseudonymous works to be printed simply because it was written during the printing. The falsehood, gossip and vulgarity that surround one on all sides make one’s position difficult enough at times, make me perhaps all too nervously anxious to have the truth on my side, down to the smallest details; what’s the good?
Feb. 7. My idea is now to prepare myself for Holy Orders. I have prayed to God for several months to give me further help, for it has been clear to me for a long time past that I ought not to continue any longer as an author, which I either wish to be entirely and absolutely, or not at all. For that reason I have not begun anything new while correcting the proofs, but only the little review of The Two Ages, which is, moreover, finished.22
How terrible about the man who once as a little boy, while herding sheep on the heaths of Jutland, suffering greatly, in hunger and in want, stood upon a hill and cursed God—and the man was unable to forget it even when he was eighty-two years old.
De occultis non judicat ecclesia.
Dare I conceal the guilt? And yet dare I reveal it myself? If God wishes it to be revealed, then to be sure he can do so, and this idea of informing against myself may, what is more, be playing the part of providence.
To-day an accusing memory passed by. Supposing, now, the accusation came to light. I could go far away, live in a foreign country, a new life far from the memory, far from every possibility of its being revealed. I could live hidden—No, I must remain on the spot and continue to do everything as usual, without a single prudential measure, leaving everything to God. Terrible, how it can develop a man to remain on the spot, formed only by possibility.
The new development in our age cannot be political, for politics is a dialectical relation between the individual and the community in the representative individual; but in our times the individual is in the process of becoming far too reflective to be able to be satisfied with merely being represented.
The immediate person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, the thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what HE is praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse : the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills. The immediate person, therefore, uses many words and, therefore, makes demands in his prayer; the true man of prayer only attends.
Why did Socrates compare himself to a gad-fly?
Because he only wished to have ethical significance. He did not wish to be admired as a genius standing apart from others, and fundamentally, therefore, make the lives of others easy, because they could then say, “it is all very fine for him, he is a genius.” No, he only did what every man can do, he only understood what every man can understand. Therein lies the epigram. He bit hard into the individual man, continually forcing him and irritating him with this ‘universal.’ He was a gad-fly who provoked people by means of the individual’s passion, not allowing him to admire indolently and effeminately, but demanding his self of him. If a man has ethical power people like to make him into a genius, simply to be rid of him; because his life expresses a demand.
The time will come when it will be considered just as bad taste to give results (now so much in demand and so popular) as it was at one time to point a moral. The man who cannot discover the result for himself with the help of the road never discovers it at all, he only imagines he does.
In relation to their systems most systematisers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack close by; they do not live in their own enormous systematic buildings. But spiritually that is a decisive objection. Spiritually speaking a man’s thought must be the building in which he lives—otherwise everything is topsy-turvy.
Everything depends upon making the difference between quantitative and qualitative dialectic absolute. The whole of logic is quantitative or modal dialectic, since everything is and everything is one and the same. Qualitative dialectic is concerned with existence.
The phrase “while this and that happened something else happened,” always implies that the first was something which lasted longer, and it can therefore be used so that the second thing only took a moment within the first “while.” One says: While Cicero was Consul this and that happened; while Pitt was minister, etc. And so it gave the effect of being an excellent parody when one read in the papers : while Grundtvig spoke the people from Fyen arrived. They themselves are naturally of no importance; the point lay in the idea one got of the fantastic length of Pastor Grundtvig’s speech,—while he spoke (while Cicero was Consul). For instance, one might say: while Grundtvig spoke the French fleet put to sea and conquered Algiers.
Report23
March, 1846
March 9. The Final Postscript is out; the pseudonyms acknowledged; in a few days A Literary Review goes to the press. Everything is in order; now I have only to keep calm and remain silent, confident that The Corsair will support my whole undertaking negatively, just as I should like. At the present time I am situated as correctly as possible in literature from the ideological point of view, and am at the same time situated in such a way that to be an author becomes an action. The idea of breaking with The Corsair in order to prevent any direct approach, just when I had finished with authorship and, by acknowledging all the pseudonyms, ran the risk of becoming a sort of authority, was a very happy thought. [Earlier on nothing could be done, every minute of my time was taken up working for my idea. It is quite admirable that just when someone might imagine, and perhaps even rejoice maliciously, that I am acting precipitously—I am more calculating, more circumspect than ever. The best help in all action is—to pray, that is true genius; then one never goes wrong.] Furthermore, at the same moment that I come out polemically against the age, I owe it to the idea and to irony to prevent any possible confusion with the ironical bad spirits with which The Corsair attends on the dance floor of vulgarity. And here once again, as so often before, something more results which, in spite of all my reflection, is not due to me but to providence. The things which I do after the greatest possible consideration, I so often understand far better afterwards, not only their ideological significance but the fact that that was exactly what I should have done.
Nevertheless my life at the present time is exhausting; I am convinced that not a single person understands me. At the most even an admirer would grant that I bore all the gossip with a certain dignity, but he would never dream that I desired it. On the other hand if hasty, thoughtless people were to understand why I must desire it, by virtue of the idea of double reflection, they would conclude : ergo he does not suffer at all, is not touched by all these lies and expressions of vulgarity. As though one could not decide freely to take upon oneself every kind of unpleasantness, if the idea so commands.
The article against P. L. Møller was written in fear and trembling; I devoted the holidays24 to it and did not fail to go to Church, or to read my sermon in order to supply the regulating counter-balance. So too the article against The Corsair. On the other hand they were written in the right spirit, for had I shown any passion then a few people would have found a way of assuming a direct relation to me. It was amusing and psychologically capital to see how quickly P. L. Møller understood the signal and came out in The Corsair. He came forward, bowed respectfully, and then retired where he belonged.
The thing that has pained me is moreover not the vul-garity of it all, but the clandestine participation of the better people. For I might also like to make myself intelligible to a single man, to my reader. But I may not do that; I should be betraying the idea. It is precisely when I have won, when vulgarity is at its most impertinent, that I may not say so. Finally I am responsible perhaps for certain people being confused by my unshakable consistency. I cannot alter things. My duty is to remain silent.
The last two months have been rich in things for me to observe. How true, what I said in my dissertation, that irony makes things manifest. My ironic leap into The Corsair in the first place makes it quite clear that there is no idea behind The Corsair. From that point of view it is dead, even though it were to get two or three thousand more subscribers. It tries to be ironical and does not even understand irony. In fact it would have been an epigram on my life if it had ever had to be said : at the time he lived there was a blundering ironical paper, by which he was praised; no, stop—he was insulted and demanded that himself—furthermore my ironical leap into The Corsair makes the surroundings manifest in all their inconsistency. Everyone went about saying that it counted for nothing, who bothers about The Corsair, and so on. And what happens: when somebody behaves in this way he is accused of thoughtlessness, people say he deserves everything he gets (and consequently it counts for that much), because he himself was the occasion of it; they hardly dare go down the street with me—for fear of appearing in The Corsair. Moreover the self-contradiction has deeper roots; for out of Christian envy they rather want the paper to continue, each man hoping he will not be attacked. They say of the paper that it is contemptible, that it counts for nothing, while the individual attacked is awed into silence and into not being angry; ergo the paper must continue.
In the first place the public can indulge its envy and thus has the impertinent pleasure of watching the person attacked—whether he is affected or not, and then has the opportunity of lying, by saying that he is affected, that he may conceal it but is nevertheless affected. The last form of slander is the most agreeable of all. And this occurs in a small country like Denmark, where it dominates everything—and is supposed to be a mere nothing! How well cowardice and contemptibleness suit one another if united in wretchedness. And when the whole thing finally goes to pieces Goldschmidt will get the blame; and the public is exactly the same—the world has indeed become a fine place!
Two things in particular occupy me : (1) that, whatever the cost, I should remain intellectually true, in the Greek sense, to my life’s idea; (2) that religiously it should be as ennobling as possible. For the second I pray to God. I have always been isolated, now I have a proper opportunity of improving myself. Indeed, my solitary secret is not a cause of grief to me, but is precisely why I have power to change what is grief into that which serves my idea, without its suspecting anything of the kind. This life is certainly satisfying, but it is also terribly exhausting. One gets to know men from such a pitiful side, and it is so sad that what looks well from a distance should always be misunderstood by contemporaries! But religion, once again, is the salvation; in religion there is sympathy with all, not a prosy sympathy with party friends and adherents, but an infinite sympathy with each one—In silence.
But it is undeniably instructive to be placed in so small a town as Copenhagen, as I am. To work with all one’s might, almost to despair, to endure all the tortures of the soul and the suffering of my inner life, to pay out money in order to publish books—and then literally not to find ten men who can read them properly, while undergraduates and other authors find it easy to make it almost ridiculous to write a large volume. And then to have a paper which everyone reads, which is privileged, as a result of being contemptible, to say everything, even the most distorted lies —which “counts for nothing,” though everyone reads it; and then all the crowds of envious people who, by saying the very opposite, help to disparage. Ever and ever again to be the one subject of conversation and interest. Even the butcher’s boy almost thinks himself justified in being offensive to me at the behest of The Corsair. Undergraduates grin and giggle and are delighted that someone prominent should be trodden down; the dons are envious and secretly sympathise with the attack, help to spread it abroad, adding of course that it is a crying shame. The slightest thing I do, even if I simply pay a visit, is lyingly distorted and repeated everywhere; if The Corsair gets to know of it then it is printed and read by the whole population. In that way the person I visit is embarrassed, is almost angry with me, and one cannot very well blame him. In the end the only thing will be to withdraw and only go about with those I dislike, for it is really a shame to go about with the others.
So it continues, and when I am dead people’s eyes will be opened, they will marvel at what I have desired, at the same time behaving in the same way to someone else, who is probably the only man who understands me.
God in heaven, if there were not deep within a man a place where all this can be completely forgotten in communion with thee, who could endure it.
But the days of my authorship are past. God be praised. I have been granted the satisfaction of bringing it to a conclusion, of myself understanding when it is fitting that I should make an end, and next after the publication of Either-Or I thank God for that. That this, once again, is not how people will see it; that I could actually prove in two words that it is so : I know quite well and find quite in order. But it has pained me; it seemed to me that I might have asked for that admission; but let it be.
If only I can manage to become a priest. However much my present life may have satisfied me I shall breathe more freely in that quiet activity, allowing myself an occasional literary work in my free time.
It is really curious how men, whom I otherwise look upon as honest, and who in other respects are not my enemies, lie monstrously, and are hardly conscious of it themselves, when they really get into a passion. Passion has an extraordinary power. How foolish, then, is the modern seeking after system upon system, as though help was to be found there; no, passion must be purified. At the present time I am incidentally experiencing expressions of it.
Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action; that is what they think interesting. In Aus meinem Leben Goethe relates that The Sorrows of Werther created a great sensation and after that time, he says, he never again knew the peace and obscurity which he had known before, because he was drawn into all kinds of relationships and friendships. How interesting and exciting small talk is! Nothing would have been easier than to have prevented that if Goethe had really had the courage, had he genuinely loved ideas more than acquaintances. Anyone with Goethe’s powers could easily have kept people away. But in fact, soft and sensitive as he was, he did not wish it—but he likes to relate it as a story. People like to hear about it because it relieves them from action. If someone were to get up and preach, saying : once, in my early youth I had faith, but then I grew busy in the world, made many acquaintances, was knighted, and since that time I have never really had time to collect my thoughts—people would find the sermon very touching and would enjoy listening to it. If one wishes to succeed, the secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented—and then do nothing.
One day Professor Molbech was visiting me. He praised my idiosyncrasy, my singular way of life, because it favoured my work. “I shall do the same,” he said. Thereupon he told me that that very day he had to go to a dinner party and “there I have to drink wine, and I cannot stand it; but one cannot avoid doing so because people begin at once saying: Oh, just a little glass, Herr Professor, it is good for you.” I answered, “Nothing is easier than to prevent that. Do not say a word about not being able to take any wine, for in that way you only egg on a prosy sympathy. Sit down at the table and when the wine is served smell it and then say or express by a look that the wine is not good. Then your host will be angry and will not fuss you.” To that Molbech answered, “No, I cannot do that, why should I quarrel with people.” I answered: “In order to get your own way; is that not reason enough?” But that is how it goes on. First of all he gossips away with me for an hour and makes a fool of me with all his hot air; then to dinner where he gossips about it—and drinks; then he goes home and feels unwell—and gossips the whole night through about it all to his wife; that is life and being interesting.
It is, after all, possible that in spite of my insignificance before God, in personal humiliation at what I personally have committed, I may be “the gift of God”25 to my people. God knows they have treated me scurvily enough, like children misusing a beautiful present.
To be the greatest philosopher in Denmark is on the very border line of satire—rather like being the greatest—just think of it—the greatest of the travelling actors—in Odense; or like P. L. Møller’s praise of what I have written against Heiberg : “that it was the wittiest thing written against Heiberg.”—
This is how I have understood myself in my entire literary work.
I am in the profoundest sense an unhappy individuality which from its earliest years has been nailed fast to some suffering or other, bordering upon madness, and which must have its deeper roots in a disproportion between soul and body; for (and that is what is extraordinary) it has no relation to my mind. On the contrary, perhaps because of the strained relation between soul and body my mind has received a tensile strength that is rare.
An old man, himself prodigiously ·melancholy (wherefore I shall not write down) had a son in his old age upon whom the whole of that melancholy descended in inheritance—but at the same time he had such an elasticity of mind that he was able to conceal it, and because his mind was essentially, eminently sound his melancholy could never obtain power over him, but neither was he able to throw it off, at the most he was able to bear it.
A young girl (who with girlish pride set gigantic forces in motion, and let me suspect a way out from what was begun through a sad mistake, a way out, a way of breaking off our engagement, for at first she only let the forces be suspected as though she did not care in the least about it) put a murder on my conscience; at the most solemn moment, a troubled father solemnly repeats the assurance that it would be the girl’s death. Whether she was merely a chatterbox or not does not concern me.
From that moment on I dedicated my life with every ounce of my poor ability to the service of an idea.
Although no lover of confidants, although absolutely averse from talking with others about my inmost self, I nevertheless think and thought that it is the duty of man not to skip such a factor as that of seeking the advice of another man; only it must not become a foolish confidence, but a serious and official communication. I have therefore consulted my doctor as to whether he thought that the discord between the psychical and the physical could be resolved so that I might realise the universal. He doubted it. I asked him whether he thought that acting through my will my mind was capable of reforming and transforming that fundamental disproportion; he doubted it; he would not even advise me to set my whole will power in motion, of which he had some idea, lest I should burst everything asunder.
From that moment I made my choice. That sad discord with its attendant suffering (which without doubt would have driven most of those with sense enough to understand it to suicide) I have always looked upon as my thorn in the flesh, my limit and my cross; I have looked upon it as the high price at which Almighty God sold me an intellectual power which has found no equal among my contemporaries. That does not puff me up for I am already ground to dust; my desire has become to me a bitter pain and a daily humiliation.
Without being able to appeal to revelations or anything of the kind, I have understood myself in having to stress the universal in a botched and demoralised age, in making it lovable and accessible to all others who are capable of realising it, but who are led astray by the age to chasing after the unusual and extraordinary. I have understood my duty like the man who, being himself unhappy, so long as he loves man, desires only to help others who are capable of being happy.
But since my task was, at the same time, a humble and a pious attempt to do something good in reparation for what I have done wrong, I have been particularly observant that my effort should not serve the cause of vanity, that above all I should not serve the idea and the truth in such a way as to obtain worldly advantage from it. I am therefore certain that I have worked with true resignation.
During my work I have also constantly believed that I learnt to understand better and better God’s will in regard to me : that I bear the agony with which God laid the reins upon me and so perhaps achieve the exceptional.
My merit in literature is that I have set forth the decisive qualifications of the whole compass of existence with such dialectical clarity and so originally as has not, so far as I know, been done in any other literature; neither have I had any books to help me nor upon which to draw for advice. Secondly, the art with which I have communicated it, its form, its logical accomplishment; but no one has time to read and study seriously and to that extent my production is for the moment wasted, like putting exquisite dishes in front of peasants.
End of Report
Berlin, May 5-13, 1846.
A providence is no easier to understand (to grasp) than the redemption : both can only be believed. The idea of a providence is that God is concerned about the individual and for what is most individual in him, which can at the very most be grasped imaginatively (in the abstract) as an eternal immanent congruence between the finite and the infinite—but not in becoming. The Redemption is the continued providence that God will care for the individual in him in spite of the fact that he has lost everything. Nevertheless the redemption is a transition ε
ς αλλo γενoς and to that extent it is also dialectical because of the sign by which it is known; for providence is not known from a sign in the same way that the death of Christ is the sign (the sign of the cross).
Providence and redemption are the categories of despair : I should have to despair if I dared not, if indeed I ought not, to believe. They are not what one despairs over, but what keeps despair away.
The historicity of the redemption must be certain in the same sense as any other historical thing, but not more so, for otherwise the different spheres are confused. The so-called historical factual certainty would have to be either the autopsy of some contemporary person, or of some later person who has it from a dependable man; but if that is valued too highly the essence of faith becomes enervated. In relation to providence there is nothing to which I can cling physically, nor is there any man upon whom I may depend, and moreover I have all the troubled view of existence with all that it knows of the wretchedness of existence, against me: so I believe in a providence. The historical factual assumption necessary for the redemption must only be as certain as all other historical facts, but the passion of faith must decide the matter in the same way as with providence.
The redemptive belief in the forgiveness of sins takes away the intermediary state of dread from the troubled and afflicted, so that his relation to God should be entirely through the intermediary of punishment.
Father in Heaven! Well do we know that thou art everywhere present; and that should anyone at this moment call upon thee from his bed of sickness, or one in great need upon the ocean cry out to thee, or one in still greater need in sin, that thou art near to hear him. But thou art also near in thy house where thy community is gathered together, some perhaps flying from heavy thoughts, or followed by heavy thoughts, but some too coming from a quiet daily life of contentment, and some perhaps with a satisfied longing hidden in a thankful heart enveloped in joyous thoughts—and yet all drawn by the desire to seek God, the friend of the thankful in blessed trust; consolation of the weak in strengthening communion; refuge of the anxious in secret comfort; confident of the afflicted as thou doest count their tears; last comfort of the dying as thou doest receive their souls. So let thyself be found also in this hour; thou who art the father of all let thyself be found with a good gift for everyone who needs it, that the happy may find courage to rejoice at thy good gifts, that the sorrowful may find courage to accept thy perfect gifts. For to men there is a difference in these things, the difference of joy and of sorrow, but for thee O Lord there is no difference in these things : everything that comes from thee is a good and perfect gift.
Immanently (in the fantastic medium of abstraction) God does not exist, he only is—God only exists for an existing man i.e. he can only exist in faith. Providence, atonement, etc. only exist for an existing man. When all things are accomplished providence rests in consummation, when all things are accomplished the atonement comes to rest in equilibrium, but they do not exist. Faith is therefore the anticipation of the eternal which holds the factors together, the cleavages of existence. When an existing individual has not got faith God is not, neither does God exist, although understood from an eternal point of view God is eternally.
End of Berlin entries
Report
Result
Sept. 7. Wherein lies the annoyance, the vexation? Not, of course in what is said (for I have often enough said the same things about myself jokingly) but to whom it is said, and because it has produced a street riot, which has landed me in a crowd with whom I can having nothing in common. In company with Jewish commercial-travellers, shop-workers, prostitutes, school-boys, butcher-boys, etc. I really cannot laugh at the things which I can very well laugh at in company with Carl Weiss for example. When I laugh with him at my thin legs I thereby presuppose a common intellectual basis. But to laugh over that with the plebs would be to admit to having a basis in common with them. —And just because that is the case, it has come about in a curious way that the only person here, who can really handle such dialectical problems with irony and satiric ability, cannot take the responsibility of doing so—and that person is myself. I am ready to bind myself to write amusing articles about myself and my legs of a very different kind from Goldschmidt’s; but in that case the plebs would not understand them.
Pascal says : it is so difficult to believe because it is so difficult to suffer.
Nov. 5. Perhaps—I do not say more, for I know how difficult it is to judge oneself in abstracto if one is to judge truthfully—perhaps I should have succeeded in breaking off my literary work so as to concentrate upon taking an official position, if everything had been as it should have been and it had been clear that I was free when I made my decision. Now that is no longer possible. There is a great difficulty in the way of my becoming a priest. If I undertook it I should certainly run the danger of coming to grief as I did over my engagement. On the other hand it has been made difficult for me to live entirely and peacefully withdrawn in the country, for I am all the same somewhat embittered and as a result I need the enchantment of literary composition in order to be able to forget all the crude trivialities of life.
It becomes more and more clear to me that, constituted as I am, I am never successful in fulfilling my ideals whilst in another sense I become, humanly speaking, more than those ideals. Most people’s ideals are great and extraordinary things which they never achieve. I am altogether too melancholy to have such ideals. Other people would laugh at my ideals. For example it is perfectly true to say that my ideal was to marry and simply live for marriage. Then, by despairing of being able to achieve so much, I became an author, and perhaps an author of importance. My other ideal is to be a country parson, to live quietly in the country and devote my life to the little circle of those around me—and then, because I despair of success, it is quite possible that I shall achieve something which seems much greater.
When Bishop Mynster advises me to be a country parson he evidently does not understand me. It is perfectly true that that is what I desire, but our premisses are completely at variance. He imagines that, in some way or other, I want to go further along that road, that I want to be something, and that is the whole point, I want to be as little as possible; that is precisely the idea of my melancholy. For that very reason it has pleased me to be looked upon as half mad, though that is only a negative way of being something unusual. Yet it is still possible that that should really be my form of existence, in which case I shall never achieve the lovely quiet and calm existence of being something quite little.
What I have always known within myself, and the reason why I have never spoken with any other man about my real concerns, has proved true again in my conversation with Mynster : it leads to nothing, for since I cannot and dare not speak of what entirely and essentially constitutes my inmost life, my conversations with others are almost a deceit on my part. In relation to Mynster I feel the real sadness of it all because I honour him so highly.
The whole question of God’s goodness and omnipotence and its relation to evil (instead of distinguishing and saying that while he works good he only permits evil) can perhaps be explained quite simply in this way. The greatest good which can be done to any being, greater than any end to which it can be created, is to make it free. In order to be able to do that omnipotence is necessary. That will sound curious, since of all things omnipotence, so at least it would seem, should make things dependent. But if we rightly consider omnipotence, then clearly it must have the quality of so taking itself back in the very manifestation of its all-powerfulness that the results of this act of the omnipotent can be independent. That is why one man cannot make another man quite free, because the one who has the power is imprisoned in it and consequently always has a false relation to him whom he wishes to free. That is why there is a finite self-love in all finite power (talent and so forth). Omnipotence alone can take itself back while giving, and this relationship is nothing else but the independence of the recipient. God’s omnipotence is therefore his goodness. For goodness means to give absolutely, yet in such a way that by taking oneself back one makes the recipient independent. From finite power comes only dependence, and omnipotence alone can make something independent, can create something out of nothing which endures of itself, because omnipotence is always taking itself back. Omnipotence is not involved in a relation to the other; since there is nothing to which it has any relation, it can give without giving away the very least of its powers : it can make the other independent. And that is what is inconceivable; omnipotence can not only bring forth the most imposing of all things, the world in its visible totality, but it can create the most delicate of all things, a creature independent of it. Omnipotence which can lay its hand so heavily upon the world can also make its touch so light that the creature receives independence. It is only a miserable and worldly picture of the dialectic of power to say that it becomes greater in proportion as it can compel and make things dependent. Socrates knew better; the art of using power is “to make free.” But between men that can never happen, though it may always be necessary to stress that it is the greatest good; only omnipotence can do so in truth. If, therefore, man had even the least independent existence (in regard to materia) then God could not make him free. Creation out of nothing is once again the expression of omnipotence for being able to make things independent. It is to him who made me independent, while he nevertheless retained everything, that I owe all things. If in order to create man God had lost any of his power, then he could not have made man independent.
But let us never forget that not everyone who has not lost his senses thereby proves conclusively that he is in possession of them.