RESPONSIBILITY

     Both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy meditated frequently and painfully on Napoleon. They always tried to understand how Napoleon could take upon himself the responsibility for all the sufferings and miseries he brought into the world. Their reasoning was something like this: if we happen to sin against someone or do him some injury, we can no longer sleep peacefully; how then could Napoleon, who almost every day destroyed thousands of people and at every moment risked the existence of his own nation as well as that of other nations, sleep in peace? They believed that all men are constructed in the same way, that if their consciences tormented them, Napoleon ought to suffer much more still.

     Now men are not at all constructed in the same way, and moral conscience does not exist among all and everywhere. In the final analysis, even the conscience of Dostoevsky very little resembled that of Tolstoy; it differed from it quite as much as their lives differed from each other. For Napoleon the question of responsibility did not arise at all; he acted and lived "according to nature," as the Stoics demanded.

     Do you recall the story Pushkin puts into the mouth of Pougachev? The eagle lives thirty years and the raven three hundred. The raven feeds on carrion, the eagle devours living prey. And the eagle cannot understand the raven, just as the raven cannot understand the eagle. Darwin taught us to believe that species change and transform themselves one into another. And Darwin had proofs, crushing proofs! Nevertheless, he was wrong, and even more wrong were the Darwinists who generalized his thought and wished to bring all living beings under a single concept. Not only will the raven and the eagle never be reconciled, but it is only rarely that two men even mutually understand each other. The Biblical story about the confusion of tongues is not a fairy tale or myth, as learned people in their arrogance imagine. Even when men pronounce the same words, they each mean and see different things. Two orthodox Moslems swear in the name of two different Allahs. And I would say more: every Moslem today worships a completely other Allah than the one for whom he risked his life yesterday. The principle of identity applies only in logic. And to one who thinks that responsibility is the consciousness of a moral principle that lives in the heart of each of us, it is not given to "understand" Napoleon; the latter, even though he knew the word "responsibility," did not understand it, or he understood it in such a way that in the mind, let us say of Dostoevsky, it would have been expressed by a completely different term, by "irresponsibility," for example.

     The majority of men of action, if not all, have been irresponsible; for one who takes upon himself responsibility, if he be not God but a man, paralyzes in himself the nerve of action and condemns himself to idleness and reflection. All men ought to remember this, and especially those who think, that is, philosophic minds. For philosophers are also at times men of action and even very important. It is not only the soldier's truncheon that leaves traces in history; the word also acts. But the philosophers, insofar as they act, are likewise irresponsible; that is, they never know and cannot know what will come of their deeds, even in empirical reality. And in super-empirical reality? There the word is more effective than anything else, there the word creates and destroys worlds. If the philosophers who speak so much of responsibility knew what consequences their expressed and even unexpressed thoughts could have in the noumenal world, they would certainly take a vow of silence and forbid themselves even to think. But even this would not help them. "There" the vow of silence also leaves certain traces, and it may be - who knows - that silence, a word that has not been spoken, a thought that has not been fully developed, acquire a special significance there, where things are evaluated by a completely different standard than here.

     So then... But here precisely is the end of all "so then." To obtain "so then" it is necessary to go to quite other places and, thank heaven, there are enough of these on our earth.

PRO DOMO MEA

[in defence of my home]      People take it amiss when I express two contradictory judgments at the same time. They demand that I renounce one of them or that, at least for propriety's sake, I do not express them at the same moment. But between these people and myself there is only this difference - that I speak of my contradictions openly while they prefer to hide them from themselves, and when others perceive their faults and point them out they pretend to see nothing. Contradictions seem to them the pudenda of the human mind, just as certain organs are the pudenda of the body. Thus, the demands of logic finally have for their source simply a deep-rooted human prejudice.

     Furthermore, people feel very offended by the fact that when I express some judgment I do not say that I shall never renounce it. As if they themselves never renounced any of their judgments, and as if the judgments of a poor mortal could and should be immortal! Why do men think this? Why do they accept the idea that Plato, Aristotle, or Spinoza became victims of death but feel themselves seized with horror at the thought that the same fate threatens the doctrines of these great men? I should think that what ought to plunge us into horror is that death has taken away from us the divine Plato and not his ideas! But even the disciples of Plato observed without anguish the head of their venerated master becoming white, and they accepted the necessity of interring or burning his dead body, while they could not bear the thought that his ideas about the best republic or about rearing human beings could one day become false or tiresome. But if men are condemned to grow old and lose their beauty and charm, how much more fitting is this fate for the ideas created by these same men!

HEROES OF THE SPIRIT

     Philosophers have always spoken eagerly and at length of the instability of human goods. And no one has ever reproached them for this; on the contrary, it has always been considered a great merit on their part. Why then do people become irritated when I speak of the instability of human convictions? The question is an interesting one and it seems to me that it would be worthwhile to consider it a bit.

     To be perfectly frank, human convictions are very similar to all other human goods, such as riches and honors. It is forbidden man to aspire to riches and honors. This is considered vanity. But is not to aspire to the possession of human truth also vanity? Riches and honors have no value - so, at least, say the philosophers - because there is no way of preserving them. Today you may be rich, but tomorrow some misfortune may come upon you and you will then be a miserable beggar. When Napoleon approached Moscow he was omnipotent, but several months later he had to flee like a thief in the night. Many more such examples might be cited. Open the works of Cicero or Seneca. How long-windedly and eloquently they discuss this theme! But if I had their talent (and if to write as they do were not so boring) I could say much about how the Napoleons and Croesuses of thought lost their "spiritual" goods. To be sure, they sometimes managed to get them back, but how often did they leave this world as poor and miserable as they entered it! However, it is easier for one who is spiritually bankrupt to hide his poverty from the eyes of others. That is why all know and speak so much about Napoleon at St. Helena and Croesus in captivity, but few suspect the catastrophes that occur in the souls of heroes of the spirit.

     It will perhaps be said that it is not necessary to know everything. It is not for nothing that it is said in the reflections of the wisest of mortals, who was imprudent enough at the end of his life to give men the results of his thinking: "My son, be admonished, of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness of the flesh" (Eccl. 12:12). The warning is useful - that cannot be disputed. But it is known that it is not given men to stop in time.

SURSUM CORDA !

[take heart!]      When Adam and Eve walked in the garden of Eden, could it have occurred to them to ask themselves what meaning life has? And if Adam asked Eve - before the sin, naturally - what the meaning of life is, would not his question have appeared absurd to her? And Hamlet's question, which men have raised so often before and after Shakespeare, would also obviously have been ridiculous in paradise. How can man entertain any doubt about whether to be or not to be? To experience "the best," it is at least necessary somehow to be. For "non-being" there can finally be no qualification, no definition even. But if the habit of reflecting, as Hamlet did, is so strong that these considerations appear insufficient, I shall present you still another. Can you imagine God Himself putting this question, to be or not to be, to Himself? I am prepared to formulate this question once more thus: Is it possible that God should suddenly prefer non-being to being and by His omnipotent word plunge the whole universe and Himself into non-being? If it were possible that non-being appeared to Him preferable to being, everything would have returned to non-being long ago. I should not be putting these questions to you, and you who are listening to me would not exist. God, then, does not once raise this question, but man does. Why? Does he wish to be wiser than God? No, it seems that it is not a question of that. Human reason is not at all as proud as the books say. We shall perhaps become convinced of this if we recall the circumstances under which Hamlet raised the question. As long as his father ruled in peace and his mother followed the path of virtue, it did not even occur to Hamlet to ask himself "to be or not to be." Notice the continuation of the monologue: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them."

     Hamlet suddenly lowers his voice an octave. What concerns him is not the general question: "Which is better - to be or not to be?" Had the crime of his uncle and mother not taken place, that crime which shattered Hamlet quite as much as the appearance of his father's ghost, the fatal question would perhaps not even have arisen in his mind. I shall risk going even further. Today on earth, where death rules beside life and where it seems that death has even more rights than life, the question of Hamlet is perfectly possible. Certainly "to be" means for Hamlet to live, not to be to die. But imagine that this happens not on earth but on Olympus, among the gods who were, to be sure, pagan but nevertheless immortal. Could such a question have come to the mind of Jupiter, Apollo, or Mars? Even though they were omniscient, how could they have guessed that "being" has as its correlate "non-being"? Their being is by its very nature such that it does not at all presuppose non-being and cannot be transformed into non-being. Men also, whatever their intellectual capacities may be, could never have arrived by way of logic at the idea of non-being. But if Hamlet and all of us with him, philosophers or not, reflect on non-being, we do this only because empirical reality, which may perhaps be falsifying, shows us the possibility of non-being, which an und für sich [in and of itself] may be impossible.

     And our so presumptuous reason fell this time, as it had already done hundreds and thousands of times before, into a trap. It took an illusion of the senses that it always despises for its own ideas, and indeed the purest ideas. But do not think that I wish to present to you new proofs for the immortality of the soul. There is no need, I think, of new ones; the old ones suffice. They are even already too much. If it were in my power, I would perhaps forbid speaking of them for the reason, among others, that the habit we have of considering true only what is demonstrated is the most detestable and pernicious of habits. When one searches for proofs in the empirical sciences, this is still very well. In this domain everyone proceeds at least with a reservatio mentalis: since it is proven only empirically it is only a conditioned and relative truth which may be replaced by another relative truth.

     Experience teaches us, for example, that the seeds of beets produce beets and that the seeds of cucumbers produce cucumbers. We know this because it has always happened so. One sows beet seeds and beets grow; one sows cucumber seeds and obtains cucumbers. But if everything changed so that from beet seeds suddenly came oranges, bananas, pineapples, calves, or even rhinoceroses, we should at first be very astonished, for this would be contrary to our expectations, but we would have nothing to say against it and would only find ourselves under obligation to note the new order of things, which we would formulate thus: the seeds of beets sometimes produce pineapples, sometimes calves, and sometimes also rhinoceroses. Our descendants in ten or twenty generations, having become accustomed to the new order of things and having adapted themselves to it, will understand it as well as we understand the present order and will even explain it through the influence of climate, soil, the presence of radium, etc. For the fact that a small grain produces an enormous beet is as incomprehensible, despite all the explanations of the botanists, as the birth of a rhinoceros from the same grain. Is it not so?

     Here is another example - I am forever concerned with making myself clear. We know that light rays follow a straight line. Consequently, if we place between a source of light and a screen some object that intercepts the rays, a shadow must appear on the screen. But what if light rays become tired of following straight lines and begin to describe curves? We could do nothing but register our new experiences. Why, finally, must light rays always follow a straight line? Why not assume that they are afraid of certain objects and carefully curve around them? It may actually be that light cannot stand "witches" and that in the Middle Ages, when witches still existed, it was easy to recognize them by the sign that they did not cast any shadow.

     In general, it must be admitted that the constancy of the phenomenon of nature is a fact that is enigmatic and mysterious to the highest degree. I am even prepared to say that it presents an almost anti-natural character. What great efforts we must expend before bringing any living being to even relative constancy. But light rays are constant, stones and metals are also, and they are so to such a degree and follow with such regularity the way on which they have once set out, that no mathematician could demand more. Whence comes this puzzling constancy? Why for millions of years has no light ray ever traced a curve, no stone floated on water, and no beet seed produced pineapples? Say what you will, I find this strange and monstrous, and only the inertia of our stupid and cocksure reason has found for this order of things the epithet "natural."

     But this is still not all. You know, of course, what the theory of probability, the laws of great numbers, and statistics are. And you know also that in social phenomena a certain regularity and constancy of order has been established. Not only is the number of male births in each country always a little above the number of female births, but human absent-mindedness is even subject to a certain rule: the statisticians have established that the number of unaddressed letters deposited in post-boxes does not vary significantly from one year to another. Absent-mindedness, however, assumes many forms. One can forget one's cane or umbrella, take someone else's hat, forget to write an address on an envelope. And if it be said that poor human beings must have a determinate index of absent-mindedness, one should at least allow us a certain liberty in the choice of the diverse manifestations of this absentmindedness. But, no! Someone watches carefully that the number of envelopes without address, umbrellas lost and overcoats put on by mistake etc., not pass the limits of the established norm. But there is yet more! Try to throw a coin into the air. As long as you repeat this act only a small number of times, complete freedom is given you. The coin will sometimes fall heads, sometimes tails, as usually happens; but reproduce this act on a large scale and then there is an end to your freedom. It is as if someone begins to push your arm and, whether you wish it or not, the number of falls on heads or tails become almost equal. "Proud" reason felt very offended that regimentation was pushed to such details and, following its habit, immediately found a "natural" explanation. This must be so because, if there are no special grounds for the coin's falling on one side rather than the other, the number of falls on heads and on tails must almost balance. But is this an explanation? There is no ground for the number of falls to be equal! The correct conclusion would be the following: since there is no reason that the number of falls, heads or tails, should be equal, nor that one should be larger or smaller than the other, the results can be different each time: in one case the coin will fall heads more often, in another case tails will predominate, and in a third they will perhaps be balanced. And that this deduction is correct, that is, that the law of large numbers does not at all dissipate the strangeness of the phenomena in question and does not explain anything, is indirectly proven by the fact that many logicians have tested the matter experimentally by throwing a coin into the air up to 10,000 times. And they became convinced experimentally that there was nothing to be done here: someone limits the freedom of the coin's fall and brings it about that a certain norm is realized. The experimental demonstration is obviously irrefutable, all the more so as it has been repeated many times under the most varied circumstances. But the explanation is worth nothing, or rather, it is not an explanation, just as there is no explanation for the fact that beet seeds never produce pineapples and that light rays never follow curved lines.

     I insist that the customary explanations are unacceptable not through caprice and not even through conscientiousness, though, to tell the truth, these motives are not to be rejected as not answering the circumstances. On the contrary, in such cases we should encourage caprice and even - horribile dictu - conscientiousness, the most taboo virtue of our day. What matter that conscientiousness is not clothed in the latest fashion and does not know how to make much of itself. It also, despite its respectable age, wishes still to live.

     But it is only in passing that I wished to take under my protection the caprice which would play at being a young man and that poor old grandmother, conscientiousness. In reality, I have completely other concerns. It is much more important to me at this moment to show in what nets modern thought struggles and how easily it accepts as indubitable truth the first absurdity that is offered to it - and this even though all the philosophers, following the example of Descartes, begin by trying to drive from their heads all the dust that thousand-year-old prejudices and superstition had deposited there. We are convinced that philosophy is a science and even an explanatory science. And we even imagine that "the metaphysical need" is the need to "understand" life. This prejudice is even older than the virtue of honesty and at least a thousand times more tenacious of life than all the virtues taken together.

     I think that Thales, Anaximander and, in general, those Greek sages who first formulated this prejudice did not invent it themselves but found it already at hand. The monotonous centuries have passed and this prejudice is still living, and not only living but is as young and fresh as if it were born yesterday, so that it appears incapable of growing old. Men willingly accept every explanations even the most absurd, provided that the universe no longer have a mysterious aspect. They wish to "understand" life, to discover its meaning. But in reality if there is anything that needs to be explained it is "meaning" and not life. If we must explain something it is rather meaning in terms of life and not life in terms of meaning. They wish to explain nature "naturally," and with an obstinacy worthy of a better fate they have been training themselves to think for generations now that the "natural" is a principle to which everything that exists may be reduced. When it is impossible to do otherwise, they maim their logic, which is already sufficiently miserable, in order, by means of its feeble exorcisms, to drive out of life everything that is most charming and most attractive in it, devising the theory of large numbers, etc. Why all this? Why does mankind have such great confidence in what is limited? And to what will this lead us?

     And yet, dear readers, sursum corda! I can console you very well. Whatever be the praises which human beings sing to the glory of the "natural," whatever be their struggles against the unnatural, their efforts will lead to nothing. The Demiurge of whom they do not wish to take account does his work all the more calmly. We have seen that light rays obey him and that even the coin a man holds between his fingers follows the way he indicates. Therefore, one can also omit reflecting on the meaning of life.

ON THE SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE

     Parmenides already said: to gar auto noeîn esti te kai eîvai. And Plotinus repeats after him: orthos ara "to gar auto noeîn esti te kai eînai," that is, "it is rightly said that to think and to be is the same thing."

     Plotinus, like most of the philosophers and metaphysicians, wishes to place rational knowledge above sensible knowledge. Here noeîn means something other than Descartes' cogitare. Descartes explained that cogitationis nomine intelligo illa omnia, quae nobis consciis, in nobis sunt, quatenus eorum in nobis conscientia est: atque ita non modo intelligere, velle, imaginari, sed etiam sentire idem est hoc quod cogitare [by the term cogitation or thinking, I understand all those things which are in us and conscious to us insofar as a consciousness of them is in us; and therefore not only knowing, wishing, imagining, but even sensing is the same thing as thinking]. In Plotinus the intelligible world is opposed to the sensible world as reality is opposed to what is not real, as what truly exists is opposed to the non-existent. He argues chiefly by appealing to the unstable and transitory character of sensible phenomena and the eternity of the intelligible world. His proofs are nothing other finally than a kind of exercitia spiritualia which have as their goal to accustom man little by little to despise the sensible world and to adore the intelligible world. Whole pages, chapters, entire books even, of his remarkable works are devoted to promoting this goal. Plotinus, like Plato, rises to the heights of true pathos when he speaks of the beauty of the intelligible world and of the defects of the sensible world.

     A question: how did the philosophers themselves arrive at such a valuation of the two worlds? Were they first obliged to undergo those same exercitia spiritualia that they now make their readers undergo, or did they follow a different order: did they first feel - one knows not why - a disgust for the sensible world and then, when they failed to arouse the same sentiments in others, think up their argumentations? This is, for several reasons, a very important question. First, if their love for the intelligible world and their disgust for the sensible world is a fact, this would remain unchanged even if it should be found that their argumentation is insufficiently proven. Then, if we leave the argumentation aside, the fact itself will reveal to our eyes a completely different meaning. Plato and Plotinus prefer the intelligible world to the sensible world. They aspire only to pure ideas. And they say that there, in the world of pure ideas, everything is wondrously beautiful. One can give them no reply, and if one will trust the tone of their discussions, there is also no need for this: one feels that they speak of things they have seen.

     But there are other people who have spoken just as well and with just as much passion about the sensible world. The painters in their works have glorified the world of colors no less than that of lines. The musicians will never renounce sounds. Colors, it is true, pale and sounds vanish as soon as they are uttered. But the painters and musicians know this, and it does not trouble them in the least. They continue to do their work and to love it. And I think that one can establish an identity between "thinking" and "being" only on condition of a certain reservatio mentalis. If one renounces it, he will be obliged to speak respectfully, to "interpret" Plato and Plotinus considerably, or, to speak freely and simply, to propose to them that they limit their pretensions. The intelligible world may be entirely surrendered to them: let them live there in that sublime joy of which they sing so enthusiastically. (Plotinus, in my opinion, speaks at times of the intelligible world quite as well as Plato himself.) But it would be better if they completely renounced arguments and proofs. Everything seems to indicate, indeed, that they loved their intelligible world before they found arguments proving its superiority to the sensible world. And, really, there is nothing bad in this; it is even very good, for we must say that, as far as arguments and proofs are concerned, the situation is much less favorable than people ordinarily think. I shall say even more: as far as arguments are concerned it is very bad. Everyone can convince himself of this if he will read carefully any solid manual on the history of philosophy, so that it is not necessary for me to be concerned with justifying my statement.

     Neither Plato nor Plotinus succeeded in demonstrating in absolutely convincing fashion that the world they preferred is actually the only real and the best of all possible worlds. But they succeeded, and that very well, in demonstrating that they loved their world and that this world was worthy of love. Is this too little? Is it absolutely necessary that all men and all reasonable beings be obliged to admit that salvation lies only in the intelligible world and that outside it there can be no life? Plotinus himself who, following Plato, glorifies pure reason and looks down contemptuously on the other sources of knowledge, could not prevent himself from having recourse to charming "conviction" and even once compares "pure reason" with its necessary deductions to brute mechanical force. When, then, was Plotinus right? When, following the general example, he glorified pure reason, or when he welcomed charming "conviction"? You will tell me that you do not understand this question, that "pure reason" cannot be compared to capricious "conviction," no matter how charming the latter may be, and that Plotinus, like Plato, always venerated pure reason and if he speaks of "conviction" it is only out of consideration for his readers.

     It may be so, but it may also be otherwise. It may be that the exclusive love Plotinus (and Plato) expressed for "pure reason" testifies precisely to an all too human weakness. Plotinus loves the intelligible world but is afraid - and this is very human - that his love may prove to be "forbidden," "illegal," and that someone may place a hand on it and tear it away from him. And he continues to be afraid until he succeeds in protecting it against every attack by the high walls of so-called proofs or in forcibly gathering together, at least in imagination, all men, all reasonable beings, in one place and wresting from them the solemn promise that they will never attack the object of his love. You see, he feels a very human fear. I shall go further: it is the fear of the bandit who has stolen and wishes to preserve the fruits of his theft, to defend them by force if necessary. Do not take amiss the crudeness of my expression: I love and respect Plotinus no less than you. This crudeness is not aimed at Plotinus but at the way in which he is read and understood. Certainly it is not we who invented this way. It has existed since the most ancient times. Men have always believed only in physical force and, following their ideals and beliefs, have created the image of "the truth girded with the sword." Without "necessity" no one would agree to subject himself, and people wish the logos to have the same power of coercion as the stone or club which, if one knows how to handle them, are alone capable of guaranteeing to man a peaceful and comfortable existence in this world. Obviously, if necessity is an intelligible essence, primum movens immobile, the supreme principle of the Universe, then there is nothing to do. We must obey, just as we should have had to obey if the "force and matter" of the materialists were the final elements of being. But there is no occasion for rejoicing here. It would be good to love the intelligible world if it offered itself freely to our love, relying on charming "conviction" (peithô) and not on the brutal logos, alias mechanical force (bia). But then it would not need to arm itself with a sword or club. Then it would not need to be the only true world and to fight other worlds, disputing their right to the predicate "being." Beauty is neither jealous nor fearful: it has confidence in itself and calmly exists in proximity with another beauty. Only mortal man, who has still not left the period of struggle for existence, is jealous by nature. He must raise walls to protect himself against his neighbors or bury in the ground the riches he has acquired in the struggle for existence; otherwise they may be taken away from him.

     Let us, then, render the homage due the wisdom of Plotinus and Plato. Let us accept their intelligible world, even though it does not appear to us as the only real world or, rather, precisely because it does not appear to us as the only real world. It is beautiful, but there are many other beautiful things on earth - where nothing is known of the struggle for existence, where there is no fear and therefore no logos, where men sing and do not demonstrate, where they cannot even understand why proofs were invented.

A QUESTION

     Today sensible goods are accessible to all. The crudest man, even the savage, sees the sun and the sky, hears the song of the nightingale, breathes the odor of lilac and lily of the valley, etc. Spiritual goods, on the contrary, are the lot only of the elect. But what if the opposite were the case: what if spiritual goods were accessible to all, what if everyone could assimilate geometry, logic, and the lofty ideals of morality, while sight, hearing, sense of smell were the portion of some only? How then would we establish our hierarchy? Would we continue, as before, to consider spiritual goods beautiful and sublime and declare sensible goods vile and base? Or would the arbiter elegantium (you know, of course, who he is and where he is to be sought) be obliged to proceed to a transmutation of values?