Lev Shestov - Potestas Clavium - Part III

But the materialist philosophy, just like the idealist, has always tried to rise above God. And finally theology itself which, as I have already indicated, was even in the Middle Ages, at the time of its highest flowering and triumph, the servant of philosophy (ancilla philosophiae), wished absolutely to be above God and beyond God. The entire potestas audendi of the philosophers and theologians expressed itself chiefly in the endeavor to subordinate God to man. So that it seems today, at this moment, after the relentless struggle that reason has waged for twenty-five hundred years against God, that it would be extreme audacity to speak of the true God, of that God who is called, in the Holy Bible and in the creed that millions of men repeat, the creator of heaven and earth. There once was a time when it seemed that one had to be a madman to deny the existence of God: "The fool saith in his heart, 'there is no God.'" (Psalm 14:1). Nowadays the existence of God is proved and people wish to restore the ontological argument for His existence. And this is so not only in Hegel but even in Descartes. The presupposition of the proof is the metabasis eis allo genos ("passage into another realm"), the favorite method of speculative philosophy, the surest means it possesses to reach its goals. I repeat that the God of Hegel is not distinguished in any way from the materialist principle. And if the examples already quoted do not suffice, I would indicate another which, in certain respects, is still more interesting and more instructive. This is Hegel's reflection on the fate of Socrates, a reflection so significant that it is worth the trouble to quote it in extenso:

"It is said of Socrates that, since he was condemned to death without being guilty, his fate was tragic. But such a misfortune happening to an innocent man would only be sad and not at all tragic, for it is not a rational misfortune. Misfortune is rational only when it is provoked by the will of the subject, who ought to be infinitely moral and just, like the forces against which he rises. It is for this reason that these cannot be simple forces of nature or a despotic will, for it is only in the former case that man is himself guilty of his death, while natural death is an absolute right, a right that nature realizes in relation to man. In the truly tragic, therefore, two forces equally just and moral must run into conflict; and such was indeed the fate of Socrates. And it was not only his personal, individual, romantic destiny; in it is manifested a general morally tragic destiny, the tragedy of Athens, the tragedy of Greece. Two opposed rights enter into combat and mutually destroy each other; both are conquered, and each of them is right in relation to the other, and neither is wrong. One of the forces is the divine right, the established custom whose laws are identified with the will that lives in it as in its own being, freely and nobly. And we, expressing it abstractly, can call it objective freedom. The other principle is the right, just as divine, of freedom, the right of consciousness or the right of subjective freedom. This is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil, that is, reason drawing out of itself the general principle of philosophy for all time to come. These are the two principles that entered into conflict in the life and philosophy of Socrates."

I have taken this fragment from Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, but what concerns us is obviously the philosophy of history as the greatest and perhaps most consistent of the rationalists understood it. The principle of philosophy for all time to come is found to be reason which draws it out of itself. This is true; there is nothing to reply to this. Post-Socratic philosophy - I would rather say, and it would be very close to the truth, post-Platonic philosophy - was entirely and exclusively determined by this principle. After Plato the philosophers have deliberately scorned every other source of knowledge, and in this respect the empiricists and positivists are very little distinguished from the metaphysicians. Plato himself, however, always wavers. He uses myth, and even very gladly. He believes in revelation but, while believing in it, he pushes it away, as the following fragment of the Timeaus testifies: "The best proof that God has given the faculty of prophecy precisely to human folly is the fact that no man in possession of his reason attains divine and true prophecy, but only those whose sleep binds their power of reason or those who in a state of illness or ecstasy are beside themselves."

     It is obvious that Plato despises prophetic gifts of every kind, holds them in suspicion, refuses to consider them pure sources of knowledge. He who prophesies is not in possession of himself: his reason is enchained by sleep, sickness, or ecstasy. Would it not perhaps be more correct to say "unchained"? And then Plato forgets one very remarkable case, which he knew very well, wherein the gift of prophecy was not at all conditioned by the slumber of reason. Socrates' demon revealed the future to him not in dreams but while he was quite awake, with his body and his mind in their normal state. Plato wishes in one way or another to consider reason the only source of the knowledge of truth, and it is only by an inconsistency proper to human nature that he turns to myth. We have seen, however, through the example of the man who eats and drinks what exists, that inconsistency is sometimes more fruitful than the most rigorous logic.

     But here is something still more striking: even Plotinus, the mystical philosopher, lived exclusively in the intelligible world, but his ecstatic states not only did not remove him from reason but, on the contrary, brought him closer to it. It may be said that Plotinus needed these ecstasies only to deliver himself from what the philosophers call the hold of sensible reality. Or, to employ the language of the Bible, which was at times not strange even to Hegel, in the state of ecstasy Plotinus renewed the sin of Adam: in a state of voluntary irresponsibility he tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and of evil in order to transform his human essence into a purely rational essence. Of all the gifts of God, the philosopher accepts only reason.

     This is the meaning of the words "reason which draws out of itself"; this is the content of the "general principle" which, according to Hegel, determines philosophy for all time to come. Obviously if reason can, must, and wishes to draw everything out of itself, and if philosophy and that alone is what reason can draw out of itself, the philosophy of history and in particular the history of the philosophy of history must be constructed more geometrico. That is to say, we must establish the inner relations of pure concepts and show how one concept is transformed into another dialectically, i.e., through natural necessity. Socrates lived, taught the good, and died. He died not of his own free will, as - from the human point of view - should have happened to so great a man, but was condemned and executed as a criminal by his fellow citizens. Plato wrote his famous dialogue Phaedo on this subject. And then what did reason, which draws everything out of itself, do? The first rule is: reason never loses its head, being always certain of finding in itself the required explanation. Socrates was poisoned; consequently, he had to be poisoned. He had to be. If he did not have to be, he could still have been poisoned, but this would no longer have been anything but accidental - sad, it is true, but nevertheless only a matter of chance. To become a tragedy the misfortune had to be "rational," and Hegel strives to demonstrate that the death of Socrates was precisely a rational misfortune and is therefore worthy of being the object of historical-philosophical reflections. Objective freedom had to make place for subjective freedom: the process was accomplished, and Socrates was poisoned.

     But, first of all, the historical process could very well have been accomplished without Socrates being poisoned. If Socrates had died at sixty-nine years of typhus or some other sickness, the process of passing from objective freedom to subjective freedom would in no way have been delayed. And, then, why does Hegel speak of a sad accident, a misfortune, a tragedy? What is sad or tragic in the death of an aged Greek? From the point of view, naturally, of reason which draws everything out of itself? That Socrates should have died or not died, or that his death should have been the consequence of a conflict of two opposed principles or of a collision with a speeding chariot - what difference would there be? And how did reason draw out of itself expressions such as "sad misfortune," "tragedy"? Plato could weep for his friend and master. But pure reason does not know and does not wish to know tears: for it sadness and joy are only manifestations of individual perception. If one seeks pure knowledge he must renounce all "possessions" and follow Spinoza's heritage, treat the human passions as he treats triangles and perpendiculars. Everything must be reduced to "understanding," that is, to mechanical explanations. Objective freedom is transformed into subjective freedom: it is in this that the content of history consists. The capitalist regime is replaced by the socialist - this is again a content of history. All this is certainly very well thought out, and it is difficult to refute Hegel or the materialists while remaining on their ground.

     But if it be permitted to raise objections of a psychological character, I would recall what Hegel said about the naïve man who imagines that bread and water exist. For Hegel does not always dwell on the "heights" of pure speculation and, no matter how high he rises in the domain of the general and the metaphysical, he remains nevertheless always clothed, so to speak, in "particular" and "empirical." He eats and drinks without distinguishing the real from the illusory, and his own acts refute him much better than his most relentless adversaries could. It is not for nothing that he speaks of the Festigkeit der Allgemeinheit: he wishes to condense, I would say to materialize, the general. And he attains his goal: his "general" is almost tangible and it is this, I think, that constitutes the secret of his immense success.

     On the one hand, he detached himself from the individual that philosophy is not suited to manage; on the other, there remain to him the "matter" and "motion" that have always seduced those who aspire to a philosophy with a beginning and an end. These are guaranteed only to a philosophy that recognizes a single source of truth. This philosophy "raises itself" above the particular and the contingent; it overcomes all the difficulties and insoluble contradictions of life. It "understands" life; death itself does not frighten it, for der natürliche Tod nur ain absolutes Recht ist, was die Natur am Menschen ausübt [natural death is only an absolute right which nature exercises over man]. If the very heavens collapsed on its head, it would not fear anything. And God? Him it would fear even less. For God is an idea, certainly the purest idea, the idea most free of every individual element. It cannot give anything to or take anything away from men. "In history, certainly, the idea manifests itself as an absolute power: in other words, God rules over the world. But history is an idea that is naturally and not consciously fulfilled." It is quite evident that the essence of Hegel's rational philosophy is die Idee, die auf natürliche Weise vollbracht wird [the idea that is naturally fulfilled]. And further, I do not believe that I am mistaken in saying that the term "naturally" exhausts the essence of materialism.

     I do not know who first introduced the use of the term "naturally." I know only that it has existed for a very long time, probably since philosophy has existed. I know also that it requires today immense daring to rid oneself of the power of this word. Try to renounce it - see what will then remain of philosophy. It seems that without it, it is impossible not only to philosophize but even to speak. It is for this reason that the philosophers have always been so drawn to the scientific method of thinking.

     Res nullo alio modo vel ordine a Deo produci potuerunt quam productae sunt [things could have been made by God in no other way or order than the way in which they were made], says Spinoza. In these few words he expressed, in a way that could not be improved upon, philosophy's historic goals and methods of research. In creating things, in creating the world, God only obeys His own nature with the same necessity that geometrical theorems are deduced from axioms and definitions. The sum of the two sides of a triangle is more than, and their difference less than, the third side. The side of a regular hexagon inscribed in a circle is equal to the radius of the circle, etc. To the last theorem, everything flows necessarily from the fundamental principles. And just as the geometer cannot inscribe a rhombus in a circle, God could not go so far as to create winged men or lions endowed with speech. And just as the geometer sees that the side of a regular hexagon inscribed in a circle must be equal to the radius of the circle, the philosopher will feel satisfied only when he will be convinced that man must be wingless, that Epictetus could not not have been a slave, and that Socrates had to die the death of a criminal. To understand is the final goal of philosophy. When Hegel "understood" that the death of Socrates was a "rational" misfortune or a tragedy, when he ate or drank "this" truth, he was satisfied and appeased. It then seemed to him that all those who read his writings would be equally satisfied and feel themselves content and that his The Fate of Socrates is therefore a more philosophic work than Plato's Phaedo, which is not an answer but a question, and a question to which no one, it seems, will ever be able to give a satisfactory or reassuring answer.