Lev Shestov - Potestas Clavium - Part III

     If we admit, what no one will deny, that the essence of philosophy lies in finding how to put the question, then it becomes perfectly clear that Husserl's fundamental and enormous service lies in the fact that he was bold enough to contrast philosophy with wisdom. Philosophy must and can be strict science, which rejects wisdom as decisively as it does all kinds of relativism, disguised or open. To use Spinoza's words, philosophy wishes to be vera, not optima; but there is absolutely no intrinsic connection between the "true" and the "best." Biblical Job says: If my grief and my calamity were laid in the balances, it would be heavier than the sands of the seas. He thinks that there is a balance in which human sorrow and the sand of the seas can be weighed, and that there are cases in which human sorrow would weigh more heavily than the sand of the seas. Husserl will, of course, not think of discussing Job's words; they are quite clearly "nonsensical." There is no such balance in which human experience could weigh heavier than the weight of physical bodies. What we hold for the optimum, for right and significant, cannot be measured with what is verum. Were one to heap ever so much human optimum in one scale, and in the other only a handful of sand, the latter would still be the heavier, and sink. This is the fundamental and most self-evident assertion of that philosophy which aims at being strict science. And if we were to ask a philosopher how he knows this, he would answer with Spinoza: eodem modo ac tu scis, tres angulos trianguli aequales esse duobus rectis [just as you know that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.] As to Job, who has not ceased his lamentations, the philosopher would interrupt him curtly: non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari. And not to Job alone, but also to Him whom Hering calls the Logos-Messiah, who cries aloud "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" the philosopher could reply with certainty: intellectus et voluntas, qui Dei essentiam constituerent, a nostro intellectu et voluntate toto caelo differre deberent... non aliter scilicet, quam inter se conveniunt canis, signum caeleste, et canis animal latrans [the intellect and will which constitute the essence of God must differ from our intellect and will as does heaven from earth... clearly they have as little in common as the constellation of the Dog and the dog, a barking animal.]

     As we see, the answers are quite exhaustive. Both Job and the Logos-Messiah have been put in their places; they must bow before the truth and be silent. But if they will not be silent, but continue to cry aloud, the philosopher will examine their lamentations with the same equanimity and the same tranquility with which he examines perpendiculars, planes, and circles. And so it must be. But it has never been so, neither with Spinoza, who assured the world that his philosophy was not the true, but the best, nor with the other great representatives of human thought. Spinoza did not discover his sub specie aeternitatis himself. All philosophers before and after him, even those who, like Husserl, have wanted philosophy to be a strict science, have sought help and support from wisdom; and wisdom at all times and by all philosophers has been reduced, more or less to the formula which Spinoza terms sub specie aeternitatis. It is no chance that Spinoza's main work is called the Ethics; all his works might bear this title. The meaning of his sub specie aeternitatis lies in the bridge which it makes between the vera philosophia and the philosophia optima. For him the cognitio intuitiva vel tertium genus cognitionis is nothing else than perfected intelligere. But intelligere does not mean "understanding" but working out within oneself such a relationship to the world and to life that it is possible to attain the acquiescentia animi or the summum bonum of which all philosophers have always dreamed.

     Now, how does Spinoza attain his summum bonum? In other words, how does the vera philosophia turn into an optima philosophia? That which is called verum cannot be altered by an effort of our will. Spinoza is unshakably convinced of this; this is the compelling truth dictated by reason. It is not possible to arrange for the sum of the angles of a triangle to be equal to three right angles, for good fortune to be granted to the just alone and ill fortune to the unjust, for things and men dear to us not to fall a prey to the passage of time. And Job in his tribulations cannot be helped, and we cannot arrange that the last, dreadful cry of the Logos-Messiah should not ring out into infinite space. All these are self-evident and irrefutable truths. So reason tells us, and reason allows no authority beside her equal to her own. But there wisdom comes to our help. It says to us: Mens ducente Ratione sub eadem specie aeternitatis seu necessitatis concipit eademque certitudine afficitur [whatsoever the mind conceives under the guidance of reason, it conceives under the form of eternity or necessity, and is therefore affected with the same certitude.] (Ethics, IV, xii, Dem.); it is senseless to strive after the impossible. It is fruitless to fight against the truths determined by reason. But if we cannot fight, we must submit. We must realize that the individual being, whether Job or the Logos-Messiah, is destined in virtue of an unchangeable law which has existed from all eternity, destined from the beginning, to sorrow and destruction. Consequently man must renounce everything which has "self" existence, and first and foremost himself, and must direct his eyes toward that which knows neither origin nor beginning, and consequently neither end nor destruction. This is what is meant by comprehending life sub specie aeternitatis vel necessitatis. To love that which knows no beginning and has no end (amor erga rem aeternam) means to love God. This is man's highest end and his purpose. So wisdom speaks in Spinoza. In this way the vera philosophia turns in wondrous wise into a philosophia optima.

     It teaches quomodo circa res fortunae, sive quae in nostra potestate non sunt, hoc est circa res, quae ex nostra natura non sequuntur, nos gerere debeamus; nempe utramque fortunae faciem aequo animo expectare et ferre: nimirum quia omnia ab aeterno Dei decreto eadem necessitate sequuntur, ac ex essentia trianguli sequitur quad tres ejus anguli sunt aequales duobus rectis [how we are to behave with respect to things of fortune or things which lie outside our power, with respect, that is, to things which do not follow from our nature; we have to bear either aspect of fortune with an equal mind, for without doubt all things follow from God's eternal decree with the same necessity as it follows from the essence of a triangle that the sum of its three angles is equal to two right angles] (Ethics, II). I do not know whether after all this it is necessary to expatiate further on the fact that Spinozism simply cannot be identified with naturalism, still less with pantheism. Although Spinoza speaks regularly of Deus sive Natura, yet his philosophy is the fruit of a purely ethical principle, which he equates, with full consciousness of what he is doing, with an ontological principle: per realitatem et perfectionem idem intelligo (Ethics, II, 6). Spinoza's main historical significance lies in the fact that after the long struggle, lasting more than a thousand years, which was carried on with such vehemence throughout the Middle Ages, he was the first to resolve to step forward openly in defense of the old wisdom which the world inherited from the Greeks. In mentioning his relationship with the Greeks I do not mean to attack either his originality, his profundity, or the direct inspiration of his philosophy. But the idea of equating perfection with reality, or rather, the interpolation of the idea of reality into that of perfection, was given to them, not by Spinoza, but by the Greeks.

     The Greeks already taught that we must consider the res quae in nostra potestate non sunt as adiaphora, as though they were non-existent. Socrates proclaimed in the most solemn of words: ou gar oiomai themiton eînai ameinoni andri hupo cheironos blaptesthai [I do not think that it is lawful for a better man to suffer harm from a worse man] (Ap. 30D). The whole post-Socratic philosophy rests on this principle. This is also the source of the quite erroneous belief that ancient philosophy set itself practical rather than theoretical aims. These words of Socrates' which describe so exhaustively the fundamental ambition of Hellenic thought cannot possibly be understood or interpreted as Xenophon interpreted them. For Socrates, who was the first to express this thought, for Plato, who developed it so persistently in his Dialogues, for the Stoics and for Plotinus, who carried it out in their lives and their works, questions of practical character always took the second place. And indeed, can the "truth" that the worse man can do no harm to the better, be of any use in practical life? Or have we a right to think that the ancients did not see, as Spinoza saw, that good and ill fortune fall on the just and unjust alike? Neither Socrates nor Plato, nor even Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, can be suspected of such naïveté. They knew, only too well, that good and ill fortune fall on the just and unjust alike, and they knew much else besides, and yet - or rather, precisely for that reason - they declare that the worse man can do no harm to the better. It is only when we keep this in mind that we can understand the relationship between Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis and his assertion that res quae in nostra potestate non sunt... ex nostra natura non sequuntur, and understand also why and under what circumstances the wisdom which Husserl rejects could have been born among the Greeks. Wisdom is an illegitimate child of reason, but her true child for all that, flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. When Anaximander, and after him Heraclitus and the Eleatics, led by reason, recognized the instability and impermanence of all existence, the soul of man was poisoned with an eternal sorrow and unrest never again to cease. Everything flows, everything is changeable, everything is impermanent, nothing is stable - so wisdom teaches us to regard the world. So long as the Olympian gods lived, elementary and somewhat imperfect as they were, one could hope that they would help in some way. But the gods died a slow but sure death, and in Socrates' day they had to be protected from the criticism and even the scorn of enlightened men by the threat of heavy penalties. Socrates himself was called to account for despising the gods.

     The gods died, for all that, and man had to take their tasks on himself. How was he to cope with this duty? The gods created the visible world, visible man, etc. It is not granted to man to create all that - that is res quae in nostra potestate non sunt. Now when man had taken the place of the gods, the visible world, which survived even after their death and submitted to no one, had in one way or another to be replaced by another world. Socrates' deepest and most secret thought was expressed by those men who are commonly called one-sided Socratics: the Stoics. Epictetus says: archê philosophias sunaisthêsis tês autoû astheneias kai adunamias peri ta anankaîa [the beginning of philosophy is the realization of our own weakness and impotence with respect to the necessary things](Diatr. II, 11) In no philosopher is so open an admission to be found; the beginning of philosophy is the recognition of human impotence and the impossibility of conquering necessity. But the same Epictetus says: "This is the wand of Mercury. All that thou touchest with it will become gold. Give me what thou wilt and I will turn it for thee into a Good (ho theleis phere, kagô auto agathon poiêsô). Bring hither sickness and death, poverty and suffering, condemnation to death, through the magic wand all this shall be turned to profit" (Diatr. III, 20). How could so extraordinary a metamorphosis come about? Man felt his complete impotence, the absolute impossibility of fighting necessity - and suddenly it appears that he could turn anything you like, the most trivial and useless things into gold, the most dreadful and repulsive into a Good. Where did weak and wretched man find his magic wand? We find our answer if we ask Epictetus how he performs his miracles. He does not conceal it from us, he will tell us all; the Stoics had no mysteries. En toîs eph'hêmîn hê ousia toû agathoû... Mia de odos pros toûto, kataphronêsis tôn ouk eph'hêmîn [The essence of the Good lies in that which is in our power... But there is one road to it, to despise what is not in our power] (Ench. XIX). If we would use Mercury's wand, we must learn to despise everything that does not lie within man's power, for the essence of the good is that which lies within man's power. That which does not depend upon us is of the adiaphora, the indifferent, even (as the less honest but still bolder Platonists said) the non-existent.

     I think that it is now clear what reason and the "wisdom" born of it effected. Reason saw that necessity is invincible, and that it is not given to reason to rule over the world created by the old, dead gods. Wisdom, which has never dared dispute with reason, which it holds to be the beginning of all things (even Plotinus repeated - archê oûn logos), accepted everything which reason regarded as self-evident. And then it had nothing left to do but to declare that the Good, and reality itself, is only that which is within the power of reason, and that all that which is not within reason's power is to be rejected as evil or unreal. In this way ethics usurped the place of ontology in ancient philosophy. And so it has remained to this day. This is the meaning of Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis, which leads men away from what he calls res fortunae, sive quae in potestate nostra non sunt. This is also the meaning of Hegel's was winklich ist, ist vernünftig [what is real is rational].