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Problema III

Problema III

563 sentences · 280 notes

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  1. 1

    Was it ethically defensible of Abraham that he concealed his undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer, from Isaac?

    Varwasvære · auxiliary verb, past, indicative, activecopula linking to forsvarligt
    detitdet · pronoun, nominative, neuter, singularsubject of Var
    ethiskethicallyethisk · adverbmodifies forsvarligt
    forsvarligtdefensibleforsvarlig · adjective, neuter, singularpredicate complement of Var
    afofaf · prepositionpreposition marking Abraham
    AbrahamAbrahamAbraham · proper nounoblique complement of forsvarligt
    atthatat · subordinating conjunctionintroduces the clause explaining det
    hanhehan · pronoun, nominative, common gender, singularsubject of fortiede
    fortiedeconcealedfortie · verb, past, indicative, activeverb of the at-clause
    sithissin · determiner, neuter, singular, reflexivedeterminer of Forehavende
    Forehavendeundertakingforehavende · noun, neuter, singulardirect object of fortiede
    forfromfor · prepositionpreposition marking Sara
    SaraSarahSara · proper nounoblique complement of fortiede
    forfromfor · prepositionpreposition marking Elieser
    ElieserEliezerElieser · proper nounoblique complement of fortiede
    forfromfor · prepositionpreposition marking Isaak
    IsaakIsaacIsaak · proper nounoblique complement of fortiede
  2. 2

    The ethical is as such the universal.

  3. 3

    as the universal it is in turn the manifest.

  4. 4

    The single individual, as immediately sensuous and psychical, determined as such, is the hidden one.

  5. 5

    His ethical task is then to wind himself out of his hiddenness and become manifest in the universal.

  6. 6

    Every time he then wishes to remain in concealment, he sins and lies in spiritual trial, out of which he comes only by disclosing himself. …

  7. 7

    Here we stand again at the same point.

  8. 8

    If there is not a hiddenness grounded in this, that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, then Abraham's conduct cannot be defended; for he overlooked the intermediate ethical instances.

  9. 9

    If, on the other hand, there is such a hiddenness, then we stand at the paradox that does not let itself be mediated, since it rests precisely on this, that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal — but the universal is precisely the mediation.

  10. 10

    Hegelian philosophy assumes no justified hiddenness, no justified incommensurability.

  11. 11

    It is therefore consistent with itself when it demands disclosure, but it is not in the clear when it would regard Abraham as the father of faith and speak of faith.

  12. 12

    For faith is not the first immediacy, but a later one.

  13. 13

    The first immediacy is the aesthetic, and here Hegelian philosophy may well be right.

  14. 14

    But faith is not the aesthetic — or else faith has never existed, because it has always existed.

  15. 15

    It will be best here to consider the whole matter purely aesthetically, and to that end to enter upon an aesthetic deliberation, into which I will ask the reader for the moment to give himself over entirely, while I, in order to contribute my part, will modify my presentation in relation to the objects.

  16. 16

    The category I will look at a little more closely is: the interesting — a category that, especially in our age, precisely because the age lives in a crisis of things, has acquired great significance; for it is really the category of the turning point.

  17. 17

    One should therefore not, as sometimes happens, after having oneself loved it with all one's might, treat it with scorn because one has outgrown it; but neither should one be all too greedy for it — for this is certain, that to become interesting, or that one's life is interesting, is no task for artful diligence, but a fateful privilege which, like every privilege in the world of the spirit, is bought only in deep pain.

  18. 18

    Thus Socrates was the most interesting human being who has lived, his life the most interesting that has been led; but this existence was assigned to him by the god, and insofar as he himself had to acquire it, he too was no stranger to toil and pain.

  19. 19

    To wish to take such an existence in vain does not befit anyone who thinks more earnestly about life; and yet it is not rare in our age that one sees examples of such striving.

  20. 20

    The interesting is, moreover, a boundary category, a confinium between aesthetics and ethics.

  21. 21

    To that extent the deliberation must constantly stray over onto the territory of ethics, while, in order to be able to acquire significance, it must grasp the problem with aesthetic inwardness and concupiscence.

  22. 22

    Such a thing ethics in our age engages in more rarely.

  23. 23

    The reason is said to be that there can be no room for it in the System.

  24. 24

    Then one could of course do it in monographs; and besides, if one does not wish to do it at length, one can do it briefly and yet attain the same thing — provided, that is, one has the predicate in one's power; for one or two predicates can betray a whole world.

  25. 25

    Should there in the System not be room even for such small words?

  26. 26

    Aristotle says in his immortal Poetics: two parts, then, of the plot are these — peripeteia and recognition (cf. ch. 11).

  27. 27

    Naturally it is only the second element that occupies me here: anagnorisis, the recognition.

  28. 28

    Wherever there can be talk of a recognition, there is eo ipso talk of a preceding hiddenness.

  29. 29

    Just as recognition then becomes the resolving, the relaxing element, so hiddenness is the tension-creating element in dramatic life.

  30. 30

    What Aristotle develops in the preceding part of the same chapter concerning the differing worth of tragedies, all according to how peripeteia and anagnorisis collide, as well as concerning the single and the double recognition, I cannot take into account here — however much it tempts, by its inwardness and its quiet absorption, especially anyone long enough wearied by the surveyors' superficial omniscience.

  31. 31

    A more general remark must find its place here.

  32. 32

    In Greek tragedy the hiddenness (and, as a consequence of it, the recognition) is an epic remnant grounded in a Fatum, in which the dramatic action disappears, from which the latter takes its dark, enigmatic origin.

  33. 33

    Hence it comes that the effect a Greek tragedy produces bears a likeness to the impression of a marble statue that lacks the power of the eye.

  34. 34

    Greek tragedy is blind.

  35. 35

    Therefore a certain abstraction is required in order to be properly affected by it.

  36. 36

    A son murders his father, but only afterward does he come to know that it is his father.

  37. 37

    A sister is about to sacrifice her brother, but at the decisive moment she comes to know it.

  38. 38

    This kind of tragedy can occupy our reflective age less.

  39. 39

    The more modern drama has given up fate, has dramatically emancipated itself, is sighted, gazes into itself, takes fate up into its dramatic consciousness.

  40. 40

    Hiddenness and disclosure are then the hero's free deed, for which he is responsible.

  41. 41

    In the more modern drama too, recognition and hiddenness belong as an essential element.

  42. 42

    To adduce examples of this would be too long-winded.

  43. 43

    I am polite enough to assume that everyone in our age is so aesthetically voluptuous, so potent and inflamed, that he conceives just as easily as the partridge, which according to Aristotle's account needs only to hear the cock's voice or its flight over its head; I assume that everyone, merely on hearing the word "hiddenness," will easily be able to shake half a score of novels and comedies out of his sleeve.

  44. 44

    I can therefore be brief and so at once merely intimate a more general remark.

  45. 45

    If the one who plays hide-and-seek, and thereby brings the dramatic ferment into the play, is hiding some nonsense, then we get a comedy; if, on the other hand, he stands in relation to the Idea, then he can approach becoming a tragic hero.

  46. 46

    Here merely an example of the comic.

  47. 47

    A man puts on makeup and wears a wig.

  48. 48

    This same man would gladly make his fortune with the fair sex; he is sure enough of victory by means of the makeup and the wig, which unconditionally make him irresistible.

  49. 49

    He catches a girl and is at the pinnacle of happiness.

  50. 50

    Now comes the catch: can he confess it — does he not lose his whole bewitching power when he shows himself as a plain and simple, indeed even a bald, male person; does he not thereby lose the beloved again. —

  51. 51

    The hiddenness is his free action, for which aesthetics too makes him responsible.

  52. 52

    This science is no friend of bald hypocrites; it abandons him to laughter.

  53. 53

    This must suffice merely to intimate what I mean; the comic cannot be the object of this inquiry's interest.

  54. 54

    The way I have to go is to carry hiddenness dialectically through aesthetics and ethics; for the point is that the aesthetic hiddenness and the paradox should show themselves in their absolute difference.

  55. 55

    A couple of examples.

  56. 56

    A girl is secretly in love with someone, without their having, however, definitively confessed their love to each other.

  57. 57

    The parents force her to marry another (there may, besides, be a consideration of filial piety that determines her); she obeys the parents, she hides her love, "so as not to make the other unhappy, and no one shall ever come to know what she suffers." —

  58. 58

    A young man can, by a single word, come into possession of the object of his longings and his restless dreams.

  59. 59

    This little word will, however, compromise — indeed perhaps (who knows?) destroy a whole family; he resolves magnanimously to remain in his concealment: "The girl shall never come to know it, so that she may perhaps become happy at another's hand."

  60. 60

    A pity that this pair of people, who are each of them hidden from their respective beloveds, are also hidden from each other; otherwise a remarkable higher unity could be brought about here. —

  61. 61

    Their hiddenness is a free deed, for which they are also responsible to aesthetics.

  62. 62

    Aesthetics, however, is a polite and sentimental science that knows more ways out than any pawnshop manager.

  63. 63

    What does it do then?

  64. 64

    It does everything possible for the lovers: by means of a chance, the respective partners in the projected marriage get a hint of the other party's magnanimous resolve, it comes to an explanation, they get each other, and along with that rank among real heroes; for although they have not even had time to sleep on Fear and Trembling.

  65. 65

    their heroic resolve, aesthetics nevertheless regards it as if for many years they had bravely fought their resolution through.

  66. 66

    For aesthetics does not care much about time; whether it is jest or earnest, it goes equally fast for it.

  67. 67

    But ethics knows nothing either of that chance or of that sentimentality, nor does it have so swift a concept of time.

  68. 68

    By this the matter takes on a different appearance.

  69. 69

    Ethics is not good to dispute with, for it has pure categories.

  70. 70

    It does not appeal to experience, which indeed, of all ridiculous things, is just about the most ridiculous of all, and so far from making a man wise that it rather makes him mad, if he knows nothing higher than it.

  71. 71

    Ethics has no chance, hence it does not come to an explanation; it does not jest with dignities; it lays an enormous responsibility on the frail heroes' shoulders; it condemns as presumptuous the wish, by one's deed, to play Providence — but it condemns just as much the wish, by one's suffering, to do so.

  72. 72

    It commands one to believe in reality and to have courage to struggle with all of reality's tribulations rather than with these bloodless sufferings one has taken upon oneself at one's own responsibility; it warns against trusting the understanding's cunning calculations, which are more treacherous than the oracles of antiquity.

  73. 73

    It warns against every untimely magnanimity; let reality take it, then it is time to show courage — but then ethics itself offers every possible assistance.

  74. 74

    If, however, there were something deeper stirring in these two, if there were earnestness to see the task, earnestness to set to work, then no doubt something would come of them; but ethics cannot help them, it is offended — for they have a secret from it, a secret which they have taken upon their own account and answer.

  75. 75

    Aesthetics therefore demanded hiddenness and rewarded it; ethics demanded disclosure and punished hiddenness.

  76. 76

    Sometimes, however, aesthetics itself demands disclosure.

  77. 77

    When the hero, entangled in the aesthetic illusion, believes that by his silence he saves another human being, then it demands silence and rewards it.

  78. 78

    When, on the other hand, the hero by his deed intervenes disturbingly in another human being's life, then it demands disclosure.

  79. 79

    Here I stand at the tragic hero.

  80. 80

    I will for a moment consider Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis: Agamemnon is to sacrifice Iphigenia.

  81. 81

    Aesthetics now demands silence of Agamemnon insofar as it would be unworthy of the hero to seek consolation from any other human being, just as he ought, out of care for the women, to conceal it from them as long as possible.

  82. 82

    On the other hand, precisely in order to be a hero, the hero must also be tried in the terrible spiritual trial that Clytemnestra's and Iphigenia's tears will prepare for him.

  83. 83

    What does aesthetics do?

  84. 84

    It has a way out: it has an old servant in readiness, who discloses everything to Clytemnestra.

  85. 85

    Now everything is in order.

  86. 86

    Ethics, however, has no chance and no old servant at hand.

  87. 87

    The aesthetic idea contradicts itself as soon as it is to be carried out in reality.

  88. 88

    Ethics therefore demands disclosure.

  89. 89

    The tragic hero shows precisely his ethical courage in this, that he, not entangled in any aesthetic illusion, is himself the one who announces to Iphigenia her fate.

  90. 90

    If he does this, then the tragic hero is ethics's beloved son, in whom it has its good pleasure.

  91. 91

    If he keeps silent, it may be because he thereby believes he makes it easier for others; but it may also be because he thereby makes it easier for himself.

  92. 92

    Yet from this he knows himself to be free.

  93. 93

    If he keeps silent, then he takes upon himself, as the single individual, a responsibility, insofar as he disregards an argument that may come from outside.

  94. 94

    This he cannot do as a tragic hero; for precisely on that account ethics loves him, because he constantly expresses the universal.

  95. 95

    His heroic deed requires courage, but to this courage also belongs that he does not withdraw himself from any argumentation.

  96. 96

    Now it is certain that tears are a terrible argumentum ad hominem, and there has surely been the man whom nothing moved, yet whom tears stirred.

  97. 97

    In the play Iphigenia is allowed to weep; in reality she ought, like Jephthah's daughter, to be granted two months to weep — not in solitude, but at her father's feet — and to use all her art, "which is only tears," and to wind herself, "instead of an olive branch," about his knees (cf. v. 1224). —

  98. 98

    Aesthetics demanded disclosure, but helped itself with a chance; ethics demanded disclosure, and found in the tragic hero its satisfaction.

  99. 99

    In spite of the severity with which ethics demands disclosure, it cannot be denied that secrecy and silence are precisely what make a man great, exactly because they are determinations of inwardness.

  100. 100

    When Amor leaves Psyche he says to her: You shall bear a child who will be a child of the gods, if you keep silent, but a human being, if you betray the secret.

  101. 101

    The tragic hero, who is ethics' favorite, is the purely human being; him too I can understand, and all his undertaking is likewise in the open.

  102. 102

    If I go further, I keep striking against the paradox, the divine and the demonic; for silence is both of these.

  103. 103

    Silence is the demon's snare; and the more one is silent, the more terrible the demon becomes — but silence is also the deity's confidence with the single individual. Before I pass over, however, to the story of Abraham, I will summon up a couple of poetic individualities.

  104. 104

    By the power of dialectic I hold them on the point, and as I swing the discipline of despair over them, I shall surely keep them from standing still, so that they may possibly, in their dread, discover one thing and another.

  105. 105

    Aristotle relates in his Politics a story of a political disturbance in Delphi that had its cause in a matter of marriage.

  106. 106

    The bridegroom, to whom the augurs foretell a misfortune that will have its origin in his marriage, suddenly alters his plan at the decisive moment, when he comes to fetch the bride — he will not hold a wedding.

  107. 107

    More than that I do not need.

  108. 108

    These movements and postures may well still become an object for aesthetic treatment; to what extent, by contrast, faith and the whole life of faith can become so, I leave here undecided.

  109. 109

    I will only, because it is always a joy to me to thank whomever I owe something, thank Lessing for the few hints toward a Christian drama that are to be found in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie.

  110. 110

    He has, however, fixed his gaze on the purely divine side of this life (the completed victory), and therefore he has despaired; perhaps he would have judged otherwise had he paid more attention to the purely human side.

  111. 111

    (Theology of the wayfarers.)

  112. 112

    What he says is admittedly very brief, partly evasive, but since I am always exceedingly glad when I can get an occasion to bring Lessing in, I take him at once.

  113. 113

    Lessing was not merely one of the most comprehensive minds Germany has possessed; he was not merely in possession of a quite rare promptness in his knowledge, which makes it possible to rely on him and his autopsy with confidence, without fearing to be duped by loose citations that belong nowhere, half-understood phrases drawn from unreliable compendia, or disoriented by a stupid trumpeting of novelties that the ancients had set forth far better — but he also possessed a most uncommon gift for explaining what he himself had understood.

  114. 114

    There he stopped; in our age one goes further, and explains more than one has oneself understood.

  115. 115

    The historical catastrophe, according to Aristotle, was as follows: to take revenge, the family smuggles a temple vessel in among his household goods, and he is condemned as a temple-robber — an event hardly to be told without tears; if a poet would adopt it, he might well count on sympathy.

  116. 116

    Is it not dreadful that love, which has often enough been an exile in life, is now also deprived of heaven's aid?

  117. 117

    Is the old saying, that marriage is made in heaven, not here put to shame?

  118. 118

    Otherwise it is all the tribulations and difficulties of finitude that, like evil spirits, would part the lovers, but love has heaven on its side, and therefore this holy alliance vanquishes all foes.

  119. 119

    Here it is heaven itself that parts what heaven itself has, after all, joined together.

  120. 120

    And who could have suspected this?

  121. 121

    least of all, surely, the young bride.

  122. 122

    Only a moment ago she sat in her room in all her beauty, and the lovely girls had conscientiously adorned her, so that they could answer for it before all the world, so that they not only took joy in it but envy — yes, joy that it was impossible for them to grow more envious, because it was impossible for her to be more beautiful.

  123. 123

    She sat alone in her room and was transfigured from beauty to beauty; for all that womanly art could do had been used worthily to adorn the worthy one, but something was still lacking that the young girls had not dreamed of: a veil, finer, lighter, and yet more concealing than the one in which the young girls had wrapped her; a bridal gown that no young girl knew anything about, or could help her with.

  124. 124

    This, however, is a matter of indifference; for the question is not whether the family is clever or stupid in taking revenge — the family gains ideal significance only insofar as it is drawn into the hero's dialectic.

  125. 125

    For the rest, it is fateful enough that he, in seeking to flee the danger by not marrying, plunges into it, and that his life comes into contact with the divine in a twofold way: first through the augur's pronouncement, then through being condemned as a temple-robber.

  126. 126

    with — indeed, the bride did not even have the understanding to help herself.

  127. 127

    It was an invisible, a kindly power, which takes its joy in adorning a bride, that wrapped her in it without her knowing anything of it; for she only saw how the bridegroom passed by and went up to the temple.

  128. 128

    She saw the door close behind him, and she grew yet calmer and more blissful; for she knew that he now belonged to her more than ever.

  129. 129

    The temple door opened, he stepped out, but she lowered her eyes maidenly and therefore did not see that his countenance was distraught, while he saw that heaven was indeed envious of the bride's loveliness and of his happiness.

  130. 130

    The temple door opened, the young girls saw the bridegroom step out; but they did not see that his countenance was distraught, for they were busy fetching the bride.

  131. 131

    Then she stepped forth in all her maidenly humility and yet as a sovereign, surrounded by her retinue of young girls who curtsied to her, as the young girl always curtsies to a bride.

  132. 132

    Thus she stood at the head of the lovely throng and waited — it was only a moment, for the temple was right beside it — and the bridegroom came — but he passed her door by.

  133. 133

    But I break off here; I am not a poet and proceed only dialectically.

  134. 134

    First it is to be noted that it is at the decisive moment that the hero receives that information; he is then pure and free of guilt, having not lightly bound himself to the beloved.

  135. 135

    Next, he has a divine pronouncement for him, or rather against him; he is then not governed, like those flimsy lovers and mistresses, by self-conceit.

  136. 136

    It follows further as a matter of course that that pronouncement makes him just as unhappy as the bride — indeed, a little more so, since he is, after all, the occasion of it.

  137. 137

    For it is indeed true that the augurs foretold a misfortune only for him, but the question is whether this misfortune is not of such a nature that, in striking him, it will also strike their married happiness.

  138. 138

    What is he now to do?

  139. 139

    1) Shall he keep silent and hold the wedding, and think: the misfortune may perhaps not come at once; in any case I have upheld love and not been afraid to make myself unhappy — but silent I must be, for otherwise even the short moment is squandered.

  140. 140

    This seems plausible, but is by no means so; for in that case he has wronged the girl.

  141. 141

    By his silence he has in a way made the girl guilty; for had she known it, she would surely never have given her consent to such a union.

  142. 142

    In the hour of need he will then have not only the misfortune to bear, but also the responsibility of having kept silent — her righteous anger that he kept silent.

  143. 143

    2) Shall he keep silent and refrain from holding the wedding?

  144. 144

    In that case he must enter into a mystification whereby he annihilates himself in his relation to her.

  145. 145

    This, perhaps, aesthetics would approve.

  146. 146

    The catastrophe could then be formed in likeness to the real one, only that at the last moment it came to an explanation, which was however too late, since, aesthetically considered, it becomes a necessity to let him die — unless this science should find itself able to lift that ill-omened prophecy.

  147. 147

    Meanwhile this conduct, however magnanimous it may be, contains an affront to the girl and to the reality of her love.

  148. 148

    3) Shall he speak?

  149. 149

    One must of course not forget that our hero is a little too poetic for renouncing his love to have for him no other significance than a failed commercial speculation.

  150. 150

    If he speaks, then the whole thing becomes an unhappy love story in the same style as Axel and Valborg.

  151. 151

    They become a couple whom heaven itself — For the rest, from this point one could enter another direction of dialectical movements.

  152. 152

    Heaven foretells him a misfortune from his marriage; so he might refrain from holding the wedding — but not therefore give up the girl, and instead live in a romantic union with her, which for the lovers was more than reassuring.

  153. 153

    This, however, contains an affront to the girl, because in his love for her he does not express the universal.

  154. 154

    parts them.

  155. 155

    Yet this separation must, in the present case, be thought somewhat differently, since it also results from the individuals' free act.

  156. 156

    For the exceedingly difficult thing about the dialectical element in this matter is that the misfortune is to strike only him.

  157. 157

    They do not, then, like Axel and Valborg, get a common expression for their suffering, whereas heaven separates Axel and Valborg all the same, because they are equally near to each other.

  158. 158

    Were this the case here, a way out could be conceived.

  159. 159

    For since heaven uses no visible power to part them, but leaves it to themselves, one could indeed conceive that they decided in union to defy heaven together with its misfortune.

  160. 160

    Ethics, however, will demand of him that he shall — Meanwhile it was a task both for a poet and for an ethicist who would defend marriage.

  161. 161

    In general, poetry, when it becomes attentive to the religious and to the inwardness of individuality, would get far more significant tasks than those it now busies itself with. Again and again one hears, after all, this story in poetry: a man is bound to one girl whom he once loved, or perhaps never really loved, for now he has seen another girl who is the ideal.

  162. 162

    A man makes a mistake in life: the street was right, but it was in the wrong house, for opposite, on the second floor, there lives the ideal — that, people think, is a task for poetry.

  163. 163

    A lover has made a mistake: he has seen the beloved by lamplight and believed she had dark hair, but look!

  164. 164

    on closer inspection she had blonde — but the sister, she is the ideal.

  165. 165

    That, people think, is a task for poetry.

  166. 166

    My opinion is that every such man is a Laban, who may be insufferable enough in life, but who ought to be instantly hissed off the stage when he wants to make himself important in poetry.

  167. 167

    Only passion against passion yields a poetic collision, not this rummaging of trifles within one and the same passion.

  168. 168

    When a girl, for example, in the Middle Ages, after having fallen in love, convinces herself that earthly love is a sin and prefers a heavenly one, then here is a poetic collision, and the girl is poetic, for her life is in the idea.

  169. 169

    lost.

  170. 170

    His heroism then consists essentially in giving up the aesthetic magnanimity, which in this case could not easily be thought to have any admixture of the vanity that lies in being hidden, since it must surely be clear to him that he makes the girl unhappy all the same.

  171. 171

    The reality of this heroism, however, rests on its having had and annulled its presupposition; for otherwise, especially in our age, one could find heroes enough — in our age, which has carried it to a matchless virtuosity in the forgery that achieves the highest by skipping over what lies between.

  172. 172

    But to what end now this sketch, since I get no further than the tragic hero?

  173. 173

    Because it was, after all, possible that it might cast a light on the paradox.

  174. 174

    Everything then depends on the relation in which he stands to the augurs' pronouncement, which in one way or another becomes decisive for his life.

  175. 175

    Is this pronouncement publici juris, or is it a privatissimum?

  176. 176

    The scene is in Greece; an augur's pronouncement is intelligible to all — I mean not merely that the single individual can understand its content lexically, but that the single individual can understand that an augur proclaims to the single individual heaven's decision.

  177. 177

    The augur's pronouncement, then, is intelligible not only to the hero but to all, and no private relation to the deity results from it.

  178. 178

    He can do what he will; what has been foretold will come to pass, and neither by doing nor by leaving undone does he come into a closer relation to the deity, becomes neither an object of its grace nor of its wrath.

  179. 179

    The outcome every single individual will be able to understand just as well as the hero, and there is no secret writing that is legible only to the hero.

  180. 180

    Insofar, then, as he wishes to speak, he can do so excellently, for he can make himself intelligible; insofar as he wishes to keep silent, it is because, by virtue of being the single individual, he wants to be higher than the universal — wants to delude himself with all sorts of fantastical notions about how she will soon forget this whole matter, and so on.

  181. 181

    If, on the other hand, the will of Heaven had not been announced to him by an augur, if it had come to his knowledge in an entirely private way, if it had set itself in an entirely private relation to him, then we are at the paradox — if indeed there is one (for my deliberation is dilemmatic) — for then he could not speak, however gladly he might wish to.

  182. 182

    He did not then enjoy himself in his silence, but he suffered the pain; yet this pain was to him precisely the assurance that he was justified.

  183. 183

    His silence had its ground, then, not in his wishing as the single individual to place himself in an absolute relation to the universal, but in his being, as the single individual, set in an absolute relation to the absolute.

  184. 184

    He would then also be able to find rest in it, as far as I can imagine, whereas his high-minded silence would constantly be disquieted by the demands of the ethical.

  185. 185

    It were altogether to be wished that aesthetics would for once try to begin where for so many years it has ended, with that illusory high-mindedness.

  186. 186

    As soon as it did this, it would be working straight into the hand of the religious; for this power is the only one that can rescue the aesthetic out of its struggle with the ethical.

  187. 187

    Queen Elizabeth sacrifices to the State her love for Essex by signing his death warrant.

  188. 188

    This was a heroic deed, even though there was a little personal affront mixed up in the affair, that he had not sent her the ring.

  189. 189

    As is well known, he had done so, but through the malice of a lady of the court it had been held back.

  190. 190

    Elizabeth received — so it is told, ni fallor — the news of this; thereupon she sat for ten days with one finger in her mouth and bit it without saying a single word, and thereupon she died.

  191. 191

    This was a task for a poet who knew how to wrench the mouth open; otherwise it is at most usable for a ballet-master, with whom the poet of our time often enough confuses himself.

  192. 192

    Now I will let a sketch follow in the direction of the demonic.

  193. 193

    For that I can use the legend of Agnes and the Merman.

  194. 194

    The Merman is a seducer who shoots up from the hiding-place of the abyss and in wild lust seizes and breaks the innocent flower that in all its loveliness stood by the seashore and pensively bowed its head to the murmur of the sea.

  195. 195

    This has hitherto been the poets' view.

  196. 196

    Let us make a change.

  197. 197

    The Merman was a seducer.

  198. 198

    He has called upon Agnes, he has by his fawning speech lured forth what was hidden in her, in the Merman she has found what she was seeking, after which she had stared down to the bottom of the sea.

  199. 199

    Agnes will follow him.

  200. 200

    The Merman has set her upon his arm, Agnes twines herself about his neck; she gives herself trustingly, with her whole soul, to the stronger one; he is already standing at the seashore, he bends out over the sea in order to plunge down with his prey — then Agnes looks at him once again, not fearful, not doubting, not proud of her good fortune, not intoxicated with desire, but absolutely believing, but absolutely humble as the lowly flower she took herself to be, and with this look she entrusts to him, absolutely trustingly, her whole destiny.

  201. 201

    — And behold!

  202. 202

    The sea roars no more, its wild voice falls silent, the passion of nature, which is the Merman's strength.

  203. 203

    leaves him in the lurch, it becomes a dead calm — and still Agnes looks at him so.

  204. 204

    Then the Merman sinks down, he cannot withstand the power of innocence, his element turns false to him, he cannot seduce Agnes.

  205. 205

    He leads her home again, he explains to her that he only wished to show her how beautiful the sea was when it is calm, and Agnes believes him.

  206. 206

    — Then he returns alone, and the sea storms, but the despair in the Merman storms more wildly.

  207. 207

    He can seduce Agnes, he can seduce a hundred Agneses, he can beguile any girl — but Agnes has conquered, and the Merman has lost her.

  208. 208

    Only as prey can she become his; faithfully he cannot belong to any girl, for he is after all only a merman.

  209. 209

    I have allowed myself a little change*) with the Merman; at bottom I have also altered Agnes a little, for in the legend Agnes is not altogether without guilt, just as it is altogether nonsense and dalliance and an affront to womankind to imagine a seduction in which the girl has no, no, no guilt at all.

  210. 210

    Agnes is, in the legend — that I may modernize my expression a little — a woman who craves the interesting, and every such woman can always be sure that there is a merman +) In another way too one could treat that legend.

  211. 211

    The Merman will not seduce Agnes, even though he has seduced many before.

  212. 212

    He is no longer a merman.

  213. 213

    or he is, if you will, a poor merman who has already long sat down on the bottom of the sea and grieved.

  214. 214

    Yet he knows, as is indeed taught in the legend, that he can be saved by the love of an innocent girl.

  215. 215

    But he has a bad conscience with regard to the girls, and dares not approach them.

  216. 216

    Then he sees Agnes.

  217. 217

    Many times already, hidden in the reeds, he has seen her walking by the seashore.

  218. 218

    Her beauty, her quiet absorption in herself, binds him to her; but all is melancholy in his soul, no wild lust stirs in it.

  219. 219

    And when the Merman then mingles his sigh with the whispering of the reeds, she turns her ear thither, she stands still and sinks into dreams, lovelier than any woman and yet beautiful as a saving angel who instills trust in the Merman.

  220. 220

    The Merman takes courage, he draws near to Agnes, he wins her love, he hopes for his salvation.

  221. 221

    But Agnes was no quiet girl, she was very fond of the roaring of the sea, and the melancholy sigh by the water pleased her only because it then roared the more strongly within her.

  222. 222

    She will away, away, wildly she will storm out into the infinite with the Merman whom she loves — then she goads the Merman.

  223. 223

    She scorned his humility, now pride awakens.

  224. 224

    And the sea roars, and the wave foams, and the Merman embraces Agnes and plunges with her into the abyss.

  225. 225

    Never had he been so wild, never so craving, for in this girl he had hoped for his salvation.

  226. 226

    Soon he grew weary of Agnes, yet her corpse was never found, for she became a mermaid who tempted men with her songs.

  227. 227

    the nearness; for such things the mermen detect with half an eye, and they steer by it as the shark by its prey.

  228. 228

    It is therefore very stupid, or else it is a rumor that a merman has let be spread, that so-called cultivation secures a girl against seduction.

  229. 229

    No, existence is more just and fair: there is only one means, and that is innocence.

  230. 230

    We will now give the Merman a human consciousness, and let the fact that he is a merman signify a human pre-existence in whose consequence his life was ensnared.

  231. 231

    There is nothing to hinder his becoming a hero, for the step he now takes is reconciling.

  232. 232

    He is saved by Agnes, the seducer is crushed, he has bowed beneath the power of innocence, he can never seduce again.

  233. 233

    But in the same instant two powers contend over him: remorse, and Agnes and remorse.

  234. 234

    If remorse takes him alone, then he is hidden; if Agnes and remorse take him, then he is disclosed.

  235. 235

    . In so far now as remorse seizes the Merman and he remains hidden, then he has indeed made Agnes unhappy; for Agnes loved him in all her innocence, she believed that it was the truth, that in that moment when he appeared changed even to her, however well he concealed it, he only wished to show her the beautiful stillness of the sea.

  236. 236

    Meanwhile the Merman himself becomes, in the direction of passion, even more unhappy; for he loved Agnes with a manifold of passions and had besides a new guilt to bear.

  237. 237

    The demonic in remorse will now no doubt explain to him that this is precisely his punishment, and the more it torments him, the better.

  238. 238

    If he surrenders himself to this demonic, then he perhaps makes yet another attempt to save Agnes, in the way that one can in a certain sense save a person by the help of evil.

  239. 239

    He knows that Agnes loves him.

  240. 240

    Could he wrest this love from Agnes, then she is in a way saved.

  241. 241

    But how?

  242. 242

    To count on a frank confession arousing her loathing — the Merman is too shrewd for that.

  243. 243

    He will then perhaps try to inflame all dark passions in her, to scorn her, to mock her, to make her love a ridiculous thing, if possible to provoke her pride.

  244. 244

    He will not spare himself any torment; for this is the deep contradiction in the demonic, and there dwells, in a certain sense, infinitely much more good in a demonic person than in trivial people.

  245. 245

    The more selfish Agnes is, the more easily will she be deceived; (for it is only very inexperienced folk who suppose that it is easy to deceive innocence — existence is exceedingly profound, and it is the easiest thing for the clever to dupe the clever) but the more frightful will the Merman's sufferings become.

  246. 246

    The more cunningly his deception is laid, the less will Agnes bashfully hide her suffering from him; she will use every means, which then also will not be without effect — that is to say, not to shake him, but to torment him.

  247. 247

    By the help of the demonic, then, the Merman would be the single individual who, as the single individual, was higher than the universal.

  248. 248

    The demonic has the same property as the divine, that the single individual can enter into an absolute relation to it.

  249. 249

    This is the analogy, the counterpart to that paradox of which we are speaking.

  250. 250

    It has therefore a certain likeness that may deceive.

  251. 251

    Thus the Merman has, to all appearance, the proof that his silence is justified, that in it he suffers all his pain. Meanwhile there is no doubt that he can speak.

  252. 252

    A tragic hero he can then become — in my thoughts a grandiose tragic hero — if he speaks.

  253. 253

    Few perhaps will grasp wherein the grandiose lies*).

  254. 254

    He will then have *) Aesthetics sometimes treats something similar with its usual dalliance.

  255. 255

    The Merman is saved by Agnes, and the whole thing ends with a happy marriage.

  256. 256

    A happy [marriage] the courage to wrest from himself every self-deception that he can make Agnes happy by his art; he will have the courage, humanly speaking, to crush Agnes.

  257. 257

    For the rest, I will here merely make a psychological remark.

  258. 258

    The more Agnes has been selfishly developed, the more dazzling will the self-deception be; indeed it is not unthinkable that it could occur in reality, that a merman by his demonic shrewdness, humanly speaking, had not only saved but brought something extraordinary out of an Agnes; for a demon knows how to torture forces out of even the weakest human being, and he can in his way mean very well by a person.

  259. 259

    The Merman stands on a dialectical point.

  260. 260

    If he is saved out of the demonic in remorse, then two ways are possible.

  261. 261

    He can hold himself back, remain in concealment, but not rely on his shrewdness.

  262. 262

    He does not then, as the single individual, come into an absolute relation to the demonic, but finds rest in the counter-paradox that the Deity will save Agnes.

  263. 263

    (In this way the Middle Ages would no doubt make the movement; for the Merman is plainly, according to its conception, forfeit to the cloister.)

  264. 264

    Or he can be saved by Agnes.

  265. 265

    This must not now be understood [as a] hap[py marriage]! that is easy enough.

  266. 266

    it is easy enough.

  267. 267

    If, on the other hand, ethics is to hold the address at the wedding, then I think it becomes another matter.

  268. 268

    Aesthetics throws love's cloak over the Merman, and so all is forgotten.

  269. 269

    It is moreover careless enough to suppose that it goes at a marriage as at an auction, where everything is sold in the condition in which it is found at the fall of the hammer.

  270. 270

    It cares only that the lovers get each other; the rest it does not trouble itself about.

  271. 271

    It ought just to see what happens afterward; but for that it has no time, it is at once in full swing clapping a new loving pair together.

  272. 272

    Aesthetics is the most faithless of all the sciences.

  273. 273

    Everyone who has rightly loved it becomes in a certain sense unhappy; but he who has never loved it, he is and remains a dunce.

  274. 274

    in such a way as if by Agnes's love he were to be saved from becoming, in future, a seducer (this is an aesthetic attempt at rescue that always goes round the main point, namely the continuity in the Merman's life); for in this respect he is saved; he is saved in so far as he becomes disclosed.

  275. 275

    He weds Agnes, then.

  276. 276

    Meanwhile he must take refuge in the paradox.

  277. 277

    For when the single individual has by his guilt come outside the universal, then he can return to it only by virtue of having, as the single individual, come into an absolute relation to the absolute.

  278. 278

    Here I will now make a remark by which I say more than has been said at any point in the foregoing*).

  279. 279

    Sin is not the first immediacy, sin is a later immediacy.

  280. 280

    In sin the single individual is already, in the direction of the demonic paradox, higher than the universal, because it is a contradiction of the universal to demand of itself a person who lacks the conditio sine qua non.

  281. 281

    If philosophy, among other things, also thought that it could occur to a person to wish to act according to its teaching, then one would get a strange comedy out of it.

  282. 282

    An ethics that ignores sin is an altogether idle science; but if it makes sin count, then it is eo ipso out beyond itself.

  283. 283

    Philosophy teaches that the immediate is to be annulled.

  284. 284

    This is true enough; but what is not true is that sin is, without further ado, the immediate, just as little as faith is, without further ado, the immediate.

  285. 285

    As soon as I move in these spheres, then it goes — in what precedes I have deliberately kept every consideration of the question of sin and its reality at a distance.

  286. 286

    The whole thing is directed at Abraham, and him I can still reach in immediate categories — that is, insofar as I can understand him.

  287. 287

    As soon as sin comes forward, then ethics founders, precisely upon repentance; for repentance is the highest ethical expression, yet precisely as such the deepest ethical self-contradiction.

  288. 288

    Fear and Trembling.

  289. 289

    3rd ed. 8 All easy, but what has been said here does not explain Abraham either; for Abraham had not become the single individual through sin — on the contrary, he was the righteous man, the one who is God's chosen.

  290. 290

    The analogy to Abraham will therefore appear only after the single individual has been put in a position to be able to realize the universal, and now the paradox repeats itself.

  291. 291

    The merman's movements I can therefore understand, whereas I cannot understand Abraham; for the merman, precisely by way of the paradox, comes to will the realization of the universal.

  292. 292

    For if he remains hidden and devotes himself to all the torments of repentance, then he becomes a demon, and as such is annihilated.

  293. 293

    If he remains hidden but does not cleverly suppose that, by being tormented himself in the bondage of repentance, he can work Agnete loose, then he does indeed gain peace, but he is lost to this world.

  294. 294

    If he becomes manifest, lets himself be saved through Agnete, then he is the greatest human being I can imagine; for it is only aesthetics that frivolously supposes it is praising the power of love by letting the lost one be loved by an innocent girl and thereby saved; it is only aesthetics that sees wrongly, and believes the girl is the heroine, instead of the merman being it.

  295. 295

    The merman cannot then belong to Agnete unless he, after making the infinite movement of repentance, makes yet one more movement — the movement by virtue of the absurd.

  296. 296

    By his own strength he can make the movement of repentance, but he also uses absolutely all his strength for it, and therefore he cannot possibly, by his own strength, come back again and grasp reality.

  297. 297

    When a person does not have passion enough to make either the one movement or the other, when he slovens his way through life, repents a little and supposes the rest will manage well enough — then he has once and for all renounced living in the idea, and then he can very easily attain, and help others to, the highest, namely: to delude himself and others into imagining that in the world of spirit things go as in a game of dice, where everything goes by sheer luck.

  298. 298

    One may then amuse oneself by reflecting how strange it is, after all, that precisely in an age in which everyone, indeed, can do the highest, doubt about the immortality of the soul can be so widespread; for whoever has really made even just the movement of infinity scarcely doubts.

  299. 299

    The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones, namely: the only convincing ones.

  300. 300

    Fortunately, existence here is more loving, more faithful, than what wise men maintain; for it excludes no human being, not even the lowliest; it deceives no one, for in the world of spirit only the one who deceives himself is deceived.

  301. 301

    It is everyone's opinion, and insofar as I dare allow myself to judge of it, it is also my opinion, that to go into a monastery is not the highest; but for that reason it is by no means my opinion that, in our age, when no one goes into a monastery, every single person is greater than the deep and earnest souls who found rest in a monastery.

  302. 302

    How many in our age have passion enough to think that, and then to judge themselves honestly.

  303. 303

    The mere thought of thus taking time upon one's conscience — of giving it time, in its sleepless indefatigability, to search out every secret thought, so that, if one does not every instant make the movement by virtue of the noblest and holiest in a human being, one may with anxiety and dread discover, and, if by nothing else, then by anxiety lure forth the dark stirring that nevertheless hides in every human life, while a person, when he lives in community with others, so easily forgets, so easily slips away from it, is in so many ways held up, and gets occasion to begin afresh — this people in our earnest age do not believe; and yet it is remarkable enough that even in paganism, which by its very nature is more frivolous and less thoroughly reflective, the two real representatives of the Greek view of existence, know thyself, each in his own way intimated that by sinking into oneself one first and foremost discovers the disposition to evil.

  304. 304

    That I am thinking of Pythagoras and Socrates I scarcely need to say.

  305. 305

    — this thought alone, grasped with fitting reverence, I supposed might chasten many a single individual in our age who already imagines he has arrived at the highest.

  306. 306

    But about this people trouble themselves little in our age, which has arrived at the highest — even though no age, precisely as this one, has been so forfeit to the comic.

  307. 307

    And it is inconceivable that it has not already happened that the age itself, by a generatio æquivoca, has begotten its hero, the demon who would mercilessly stage the dreadful spectacle of bringing the whole age to laugh and bringing it to forget that it is laughing at itself.

  308. 308

    Or what is existence worth more than to be laughed at, when one has already in one's twentieth year arrived at the highest.

  309. 309

    And yet what higher movement has the age devised since the hour when people gave up going into a monastery at all?

  310. 310

    Is it not a pitiful worldly wisdom, prudence, faint-heartedness, that sits at the head of the table, that cravenly persuades people that they have done the highest, and slyly keeps them from even attempting the lesser?

  311. 311

    The one who has made the monastic movement has only one movement left, and that is the movement of the absurd.

  312. 312

    How many in our age understand what the absurd is; how many live in our age so as to have renounced everything, or to have received everything; how many are merely so honest that they know what they can and what they cannot do?

  313. 313

    And is it not true that, insofar as one finds such people, one most readily finds them among the less educated and partly among women?

  314. 314

    In a kind of clairvoyance the age discloses its defect — just as a demonic person always discloses himself without understanding himself; for it demands, again and again, the comic.

  315. 315

    Could that really be what the age needed; could the theatre perhaps need a new play in which it was made ridiculous that someone died of love — or would it not rather be saving for the age if it happened among us, if the age became witness to such an event, so that it might for once gain the courage to believe in the power of spirit, the courage to stop cravenly stifling the better in itself and enviously stifling it in others — by laughter.

  316. 316

    Could the age really need a ridiculous apparition of an awakened one, so as to get something to laugh at — or would it not rather need such an inspired figure to remind it of what had been forgotten?

  317. 317

    If one wanted a plot in a similar style, which yet — because the passion of repentance was not set in motion — would be more moving, then one could use for it a story that occurs in the Book of Tobit.

  318. 318

    The young Tobias wishes to marry Sara, the daughter of Raguel and Edna.

  319. 319

    With this girl there is a sorrowful state of affairs.

  320. 320

    She has been given to seven men, all of whom perished in the bridal chamber.

  321. 321

    This, in the direction of my plot, is a blemish on the story; for the comic effect is almost unavoidable when the thought is awakened of a girl's seven fruitless attempts to get married, though she came quite close to it — just as close as a student who went down to rejection at his theology examination seven times.

  322. 322

    In the Book of Tobit the accent lies in another place, and therefore the high number is of importance and in a certain sense even a tragic contributing factor; for the greater is the young Tobias's magnanimity, partly insofar as he is his parents' only son (6:15), partly because the deterrent presses itself more upon one.

  323. 323

    This, then, must go.

  324. 324

    Sara, then, is a girl who has never loved, who still keeps a young girl's blessedness, her immense priority-claim upon existence, her 'warrant of attorney to happiness' — to love a man with her whole heart.

  325. 325

    And yet she is more unhappy than anyone, for she knows that the evil demon who loves her will kill the bridegroom on the wedding night.

  326. 326

    I have read of much sorrow, but I doubt that anywhere there is to be found a sorrow so deep as the one that lies in this girl's life.

  327. 327

    When misfortune does come from outside, there is, after all, consolation to be found.

  328. 328

    Even if existence did not bring a person what could have made him happy, it is still a consolation that he could have received it.

  329. 329

    But the unfathomable sorrow, which no time can dispel, no time can heal — to know that it would help nothing even if existence did everything!

  330. 330

    A Greek author conceals so infinitely much in his simple naïveté when he says: [Greek] (cf. Longus, Pastoralia).

  331. 331

    There was many a girl who became unhappy in love, but she did become it; Sara was it before she became it.

  332. 332

    It is heavy not to find the one to whom one can give oneself, but it is unspeakably heavy not to be able to give oneself.

  333. 333

    A young girl gives herself, and then people say: now she is no longer free — but Sara was never free, and yet she had never given herself.

  334. 334

    It is hard if a girl gave herself and was deceived, but Sara was deceived before she gave herself.

  335. 335

    What a world of sorrow lies in what follows, when Tobias finally means to marry her?

  336. 336

    What wedding ceremonies, what preparations!

  337. 337

    — No girl has been deceived as Sara was; for she was cheated of the most blessed of all, the absolute riches that even the poorest girl possesses, cheated of the secure, unbounded, unbound, unbridled self-abandon of surrender; for there had first to be a fumigation, as the heart and liver of the fish were laid upon glowing embers.

  338. 338

    And how must the mother not take leave of the daughter, who — being herself, like the mother, cheated of everything — must in continuity with this cheat the mother of the most beautiful thing.

  339. 339

    One has only to read the story.

  340. 340

    Edna prepared the chamber and led Sara into it, and wept, and she received her daughter's tears.

  341. 341

    And she said to her: my child, be of good courage!

  342. 342

    May the Lord of heaven and earth give you joy for this your sorrow!

  343. 343

    Daughter, be of good courage.

  344. 344

    And now the wedding moment — let one read, if one otherwise can for tears: but when the two of them were shut in together, Tobias rose from the bed and said: Get up, sister!

  345. 345

    and let us pray that the Lord may have mercy upon us (8:4).

  346. 346

    If a poet read this story, if he wanted to use it, I wager a hundred to one he would stake everything on the young Tobias.

  347. 347

    This heroism of being willing to risk his life in so manifest a danger, which the story recalls once more — for Raguel says to Edna the morning after the wedding: send one of the maids and let her see whether he is alive, but if not, that I may bury him, and no one shall know it (cf. 8:13) — this heroism would be the theme.

  348. 348

    I take the liberty of proposing another.

  349. 349

    It is bravely, stout-heartedly, and chivalrously done by Tobias, but any man who has not the courage for it is a milksop who knows neither what love is, nor what it is to be a man, nor what is worth the trouble of living for; he has not even grasped the little mystery that it is better to give than to receive, and has no inkling of the great one: that it is far harder to receive than to give — that is, when one has had the courage to do without and in the hour of need did not turn coward.

  350. 350

    No, Sara — she is the heroine.

  351. 351

    Her I will approach as I have never approached any girl, nor felt myself tempted in thought to approach anyone I have read about.

  352. 352

    For what love of God it takes, after all, to be willing to let oneself be healed, when one is thus from the very beginning botched through no fault of one's own — from the very beginning a ruined specimen of a human being!

  353. 353

    What ethical maturity, to take upon oneself the responsibility of permitting the beloved such a hazardous venture!

  354. 354

    What humility before another human being!

  355. 355

    What faith in God, that she would not in the next moment hate the man to whom she owed everything!

  356. 356

    Let Sara be a man, and the demonic lies close at hand.

  357. 357

    The proud, noble nature can bear everything, but one thing it cannot bear: it cannot bear pity.

  358. 358

    There lies in it an affront that can be inflicted on him only by a higher power; for by himself he can never become an object of it.

  359. 359

    If he has sinned, then he can bear the punishment without despairing; but to be, without guilt, from the mother's womb singled out as a victim for pity, a sweet savour in its nostrils — that he cannot endure.

  360. 360

    Pity has a strange dialectic: in one moment it demands guilt, in the next it will not have it; and therefore to be predestined for pity becomes more and more dreadful, the more the individual's misfortune lies in the direction of the spiritual.

  361. 361

    But Sara has no guilt; she is flung down as a prey to all sufferings, and on top of that is still to be tormented by people's pity — for even I, who do admire her more than Tobias loved her, even I cannot name her name without saying: the poor girl.

  362. 362

    Put a man in Sarah's place, let him know that if he will love a girl, then a spirit out of hell comes and murders the beloved on the wedding night — then it might well be that he chose the demonic; he shut himself up within himself, and said in the manner in which a demonic nature speaks in secret: "Thanks, I am no friend of ceremonies and prolixities, I demand love's pleasure not at all, I can become a Bluebeard who takes his delight in seeing the girls sink down on the wedding night."

  363. 363

    In general one gets to know very little about the demonic, even though this domain has, precisely in our age, a valid claim to be discovered, and even though the observer, when he otherwise knows how to put himself a little into rapport with the demon, can use almost every human being, at least momentarily.

  364. 364

    Shakespeare is and remains forever, in this direction, a hero.

  365. 365

    That dreadful demon, the most demonic figure Shakespeare has depicted — but depicted incomparably: Gloster (later Richard the Third) — what made him into a demon?

  366. 366

    Plainly this: that he could not bear the pity to which he had been given over from childhood.

  367. 367

    His monologue in the first act of Richard the Third is worth more than whole systems of morals that have no inkling of existence's horrors or of the explanation.

  368. 368

    I, roughly stamped, and bare of all charms.

  369. 369

    Before the lightly turning nymphs to strut; I, so curtailed of fair proportion, cheated of feature by deceitful nature, deformed, neglected, sent before my time into this world of breathing, scarce half made up — and that so lamely and unfashionably that dogs bark at me as I halt by them.

  370. 370

    Such natures as Gloster's one cannot save by mediating them into an idea of society.

  371. 371

    Ethics really only makes a fool of them, just as it would be a mockery of Sarah if it were to say to her: why do you not express the universal and marry?

  372. 372

    Such natures are from the ground up in the paradox, and they are by no means more imperfect than other people, only that they are either lost in the demonic paradox or saved in the divine.

  373. 373

    Time out of mind people have taken pleasure in the fact that witches, goblins, trolls, and so on were misshapen creatures, and it is undeniable that every human being has an inclination, when he sees a deformed creature, to attach at once to it the notion of a moral depravation.

  374. 374

    What monstrous injustice, since the relation must rather be turned around — that existence itself has corrupted them, just as a stepmother makes the children turn out badly.

  375. 375

    To be originally set, by nature or by a circumstance of history, outside the universal — that is the beginning of the demonic, for which the individual nevertheless is not himself to blame.

  376. 376

    Cumberland's Jew is thus likewise a demon, even though he does good.

  377. 377

    Thus the demonic can also express itself as contempt for human beings — a contempt that, mark well, does not bring the demonic person himself to act contemptibly; on the contrary, he has his strength in knowing that he is better than all who judge him.

  378. 378

    — Concerning all such things, the poet ought first of all to raise the alarm.

  379. 379

    God knows what writings the younger verse-makers now living read!

  380. 380

    Their study probably consists in learning rhymes by heart.

  381. 381

    — God knows what their significance is in existence!

  382. 382

    At this moment I do not know that they do any other good than that they furnish an edifying proof of the soul's immortality, in that one can say comfortingly of them to oneself what Baggesen says of the town's poet Kildevalle: if he becomes immortal, then so do we all.

  383. 383

    — What has here been said in connection with Sarah, chiefly in the direction of poetic production and therefore with a fantastic presupposition, has its full significance when, with psychological interest, one would immerse oneself in the meaning of the old maxim: nullum unquam exstitit magnum ingenium sine aliqua dementia.

  384. 384

    For this dementia is the genius's suffering in existence, is the expression of, if I may so put it, the divine envy, while the genial is the expression of a divine preference.

  385. 385

    Thus the genius is from the beginning disoriented in relation to the universal, and brought into relation with the paradox — whether, in despair over his limit, which in his eyes transforms his omnipotence into impotence, he seeks a demonic reassurance and therefore will not acknowledge it before either God or human beings, or he reassures himself religiously in love for the Deity.

  386. 386

    Here lie psychological tasks on which, with joy, it seems to me, one could sacrifice a whole life — and yet one hears so seldom a word about them.

  387. 387

    In what relation does madness stand to genius — can one construct the one out of the other? In what sense and how far is the genius master over his madness? For it follows of itself that to a certain degree he is master over it, since otherwise he really would be insane.

  388. 388

    To such observations, however, there belongs cunning in a high degree, and love; for to observe the superior person is exceedingly difficult.

  389. 389

    If with attention to this one would read through certain of the most genial authors, it might nevertheless perhaps be possible, just a single time and though with much trouble, to discover a little.

  390. 390

    Yet one more case I will imagine: that a single individual, by being hidden and by his silence, would save the universal.

  391. 391

    For this I can use the legend of Faust.

  392. 392

    Faust is a doubter, an apostate of the spirit who takes the way of the flesh. (If one does not wish to use a doubter, one could choose a similar figure — an ironist, for example, whose sharp gaze has discovered from the ground up the ridiculousness of existence, whom a secret understanding with the forces in life assures of what the patient wishes.)

  393. 393

    He knows that he has the power of laughter, if he will use it; he is sure of his victory, indeed — what is more — of his good fortune.

  394. 394

    He knows that a single voice will raise itself to hold back, but he knows he is stronger; he knows that for a moment longer one can bring the men to seem grave, but he knows too that in secret they long to laugh with him; he knows that for a moment longer one can bring the woman to hold the fan before her eyes when he speaks, but he knows that she laughs behind the fan, he knows that the fan is not absolutely opaque, he knows that one can write an invisible script upon it, he knows that when a woman strikes at him with the fan it is because she has understood him, he knows undeceivably how laughter creeps in and dwells hidden in a person, and, once it has taken up lodging, lies in wait and waits.

  395. 395

    Let us imagine such an Aristophanes, such a Voltaire, a little altered; for he is at the same time a sympathetic nature, he loves existence, he loves human beings, and he knows that, though the condemnation of laughter may perhaps raise up a saved young generation, yet in the contemporary one a multitude of people will be ruined.

  396. 396

    He keeps silent, then, and forgets, as far as possible, to laugh himself.

  397. 397

    But dare he keep silent?

  398. 398

    Perhaps there are several who do not at all understand the difficulty of which I speak.

  399. 399

    They probably think it was an admirable high-mindedness to keep silent.

  400. 400

    This is not at all my view; for I hold that every such nature, if he has not had the high-mindedness to keep silent, is a traitor against the cause.

  401. 401

    This is the poets' view, and while it is repeated again and again that every age has its Faust, yet one poet after another of the age goes undaunted along the beaten highroad.

  402. 402

    Let us make a little alteration.

  403. 403

    Faust is the doubter par excellence; but he is a sympathetic nature.

  404. 404

    Even in Goethe's conception of Faust I miss a deeper psychological insight into the secret conversations of doubt with itself.

  405. 405

    In our age, when after all everyone has experienced doubt, no poet has yet taken a step toward it.

  406. 406

    I imagine, therefore, that I might well offer them royal bonds to write on, to write all the great deal they have experienced in this respect — they would scarcely write more than could be contained on the front margin.

  407. 407

    Only when one thus bends Faust into himself, only then can doubt take on a poetic look, only then does he himself also really discover, in actuality, all its sufferings.

  408. 408

    He knows then that it is spirit that bears existence, but he knows too that the security and joy in which human beings live is not grounded in the power of spirit, but is easily explicable as an unreflected blessedness.

  409. 409

    As a doubter, as the doubter, he is higher than all this, and if anyone would deceive by making him believe that he has gone through doubt, he sees through it easily; for one who has made a movement in the world of spirit — that is, an infinite movement — he can at once [grasp] existence.

  410. 410

    I therefore demand this high-mindedness of him; but when he has it, dare he then keep silent?

  411. 411

    Ethics is a dangerous science, and it might well be that Aristophanes, determined purely ethically, had resolved to let laughter judge the misguided age.

  412. 412

    Aesthetic high-mindedness cannot help; for on that account one does not venture such a thing.

  413. 413

    If he is to keep silent, then he must go into the paradox.

  414. 414

    — One more configuration I will indicate: that, for example, a person possesses an explanation of a hero's life which explains it in a sorrowful way, and yet a whole age rests absolutely secure in this hero, without suspecting anything of the kind.

  415. 415

    to hear through the line, whether it is a tried-and-tested man who speaks, or a Münchhausen.

  416. 416

    What a Tamerlane can do with his Huns, that Faust knows he can do with his doubt — to startle people up in terror, to let existence totter beneath their feet, to scatter people asunder, to make the cry of anxiety sound everywhere.

  417. 417

    And if he does it, then he is nevertheless no Tamerlane; he is in a certain sense authorized and has the authorization of thought.

  418. 418

    But Faust is a sympathetic nature, he loves existence, his soul knows no envy, he sees that he cannot stop the frenzy he could well awaken, he craves no Herostratic fame — he keeps silent, he hides the doubt in his soul more carefully than the girl who hides the fruit of a sinful love beneath her heart, he tries as best he can to walk in step with other people, but what goes on within him he consumes within himself, and thus he brings himself as a sacrifice for the universal.

  419. 419

    One can sometimes hear people complain, when an eccentric head raises the whirlwind of doubt; they say then: would that he had kept silent.

  420. 420

    This idea Faust realizes.

  421. 421

    Whoever has a notion of what it means that a person lives by spirit, he also knows what the hunger of doubt means, and that the doubter hungers just as much for life's daily bread as for the nourishment of spirit.

  422. 422

    Although, then, all the pain Faust suffers may be a fairly good argument that it is not pride which has possessed him, yet I shall use a little precautionary means that I readily invent; for as Gregory of Rimini was called tortor infantium because he held to the damnation of little children, so I might be tempted to call myself tortor heroum; for I am very inventive when it comes to torturing the heroes.

  423. 423

    Faust sees Margarete, not after he has chosen lust; for my Faust does not choose lust at all, he sees Margarete not in Mephistopheles's concave mirror, but in all her lovely innocence, and since his soul has preserved its love for human beings, he can also very well fall in love with her.

  424. 424

    But he is a doubter, his doubt has annihilated reality for him; for so ideal is my Faust that he does not belong to those scholarly doubters who doubt for one hour each semester at the lectern, but otherwise can do everything else — as indeed they also do this — without the state of spirit or by virtue of spirit.

  425. 425

    He is a doubter, and the doubter hungers just as much for joy's daily bread as for the nourishment of spirit.

  426. 426

    Yet he remains true to his resolve and keeps silent, and speaks to no human being of his doubt, and to Margarete not even of his love.

  427. 427

    It follows of itself that Faust is too ideal a figure to content himself with the chatter that, if he spoke, he would occasion a general discussion, — or that the whole thing would pass off without consequence, or perhaps, or perhaps.

  428. 428

    (Here, as every poet will easily see, slumbers the comic element in the configuration: in bringing Faust into an ironic relation to these low-comic fops who in our age run after doubt, offer an external argument that they have really doubted — for example, a doctor's certificate — or swear that they have doubted everything, or prove it from the fact that on their travels they met a doubter; these couriers and quick-runners in the world of spirit, who in the greatest haste catch from one person a little whiff of doubt, from another of faith, and now keep house in the best manner, all according as the congregation wants fine sand or coarse sand.)

  429. 429

    Faust is too ideal a figure to go about in slippers.

  430. 430

    Whoever does not have an infinite passion, he is not ideal, and whoever does have an infinite passion, he has long since saved his soul out of such nonsense.

  431. 431

    He keeps silent in order to sacrifice himself — or he speaks with the consciousness that he will confound everything.

  432. 432

    If he keeps silent, then ethics judges him; for it says: "You shall acknowledge the universal, and you acknowledge it precisely by speaking, and you dare not have pity on the universal."

  433. 433

    This consideration one should not forget, when one sometimes judges a doubter harshly because he speaks.

  434. 434

    I am not inclined to judge such conduct gently; but here, as everywhere, what matters is that the movements be made in the normal way.

  435. 435

    When the worst must come, a doubter — even if by speaking he brought every possible calamity upon the world — is still far preferable to those wretched sweet-tooths who taste of everything, who would cure doubt without knowing it, and who therefore are generally the more immediate occasion for doubt breaking out wildly and ungovernably.

  436. 436

    — If he speaks, he confounds everything; for if it does not come to pass, that he learns only afterward, and the outcome can help no one, neither in the moment of action nor with respect to responsibility.

  437. 437

    If he keeps silent on his own account and answer, he may indeed act magnanimously, but to his other pain he will feel a slight spiritual trial; for the universal will perpetually torment him and say: You ought to have spoken — where will you find the certainty that it was not, after all, a hidden pride that governed your decision?

  438. 438

    If, on the contrary, the doubter can become the single individual who, as the single individual, stands in an absolute relation to the absolute, then he can obtain an authorization for his silence.

  439. 439

    In that case he must turn his doubt into guilt.

  440. 440

    In that case he is in the paradox, but in that case his doubt is cured, even though he may acquire another doubt.

  441. 441

    Even the New Testament would acknowledge such a silence.

  442. 442

    There even occur passages in the New Testament that commend irony, only provided it is used to conceal what is better.

  443. 443

    This movement, however, belongs just as much to irony as to any other that has its ground in the fact that subjectivity is higher than actuality.

  444. 444

    Of this our age will know nothing; on the whole it will know no more about irony than what Hegel has said, who oddly enough did not understand much about it and bore a grudge against it — a grudge our age has good reasons not to give up, for it need only beware of irony.

  445. 445

    It is said in the Sermon on the Mount: when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that men may not see you fasting.

  446. 446

    This passage testifies plainly that subjectivity is incommensurable with actuality — indeed, that it is permitted to deceive.

  447. 447

    If only the people who in our age go about with loose talk of the idea of the congregation would read the New Testament, they might perhaps come to other thoughts.

  448. 448

    But now Abraham — how did he act?

  449. 449

    For I have not forgotten, and the reader will now perhaps be pleased to remember, that it was in order to strike against this point that I entered upon the whole preceding inquiry — not so that Abraham might thereby become more intelligible, but so that the unintelligibility might become more desultory; for, as I have said, Abraham I cannot understand, him I can only admire.

  450. 450

    It was also remarked that none of the stages described contained an analogy to Abraham; they were developed only so that, while they were shown within their own sphere, they might at the moment of divergence in a way intimate the boundary of the unknown land.

  451. 451

    Insofar as there were to be any talk of an analogy, it would have to be the paradox of sin, but this lies again in another sphere, and cannot explain Abraham, and is itself far easier to explain than Abraham.

  452. 452

    Abraham, then, did not speak; he did not speak to Sarah, not to Eliezer, not to Isaac — he passed over the three ethical authorities; for the ethical had for Abraham no higher expression than family life.

  453. 453

    Aesthetics permitted, indeed demanded, silence of the single individual, when by keeping silent he could save another.

  454. 454

    This alone shows sufficiently that Abraham does not lie within the compass of aesthetics.

  455. 455

    His silence is by no means in order to save Isaac, just as his whole task as such — to sacrifice Isaac for his own and for God's sake — is to aesthetics an offense; for it can well understand that I sacrifice myself, but not that I sacrifice another for my own sake.

  456. 456

    The aesthetic hero was silent…

  457. 457

    Ethics, however, condemned him, because he was silent by virtue of his accidental particularity.

  458. 458

    It was his human foreknowledge that determined him to keep silent.

  459. 459

    This ethics cannot forgive; every such human knowing is only an illusion — ethics demands an infinite movement, it demands disclosure.

  460. 460

    The aesthetic hero can speak, then, but will not.

  461. 461

    The genuine tragic hero sacrifices himself and all that is his for the universal; his deed, every stirring within him, belongs to the universal — he is manifest, and in this manifestness the beloved son of ethics.

  462. 462

    This does not fit Abraham: he does nothing for the universal, and he is concealed.

  463. 463

    Now, then, we stand at the paradox.

  464. 464

    Either the single individual as the single individual can stand in an absolute relation to the absolute — and then the ethical is not the highest — or Abraham is lost: he is neither a tragic hero nor an aesthetic hero.

  465. 465

    Here again it may seem that the paradox is the easiest and most convenient thing of all.

  466. 466

    Yet I must repeat that whoever holds himself convinced of this is not the knight of faith, for distress and anxiety are the only justification conceivable, even though it cannot be conceived in general terms; for then the paradox is annulled.

  467. 467

    Abraham keeps silent — but he cannot speak; therein lie the distress and the anxiety.

  468. 468

    For when I, in speaking, cannot make myself intelligible, then I do not speak, even though I were to speak unceasingly night and day.

  469. 469

    This is Abraham's case.

  470. 470

    He can say everything; but one thing he cannot say, and yet, since he cannot say it — that is, say it in such a way that another understands it — he does not speak.

  471. 471

    What is relieving in speech is that it translates me into the universal.

  472. 472

    Abraham can now say the most beautiful thing any language can muster about how he loves Isaac.

  473. 473

    But this is not what weighs on his mind; it is the deeper matter, that he wills to sacrifice him because it is an ordeal.

  474. 474

    This last thing no one can understand, and so everyone can only misunderstand the first.

  475. 475

    This distress the tragic hero does not know.

  476. 476

    He has, in the first place, the consolation that every counter-argument has had its due — that he has been able to give Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Achilles, the Chorus, every living being, every voice from the heart of humanity, every shrewd, every anxious, every accusing, every compassionate thought, the occasion to rise up against him.

  477. 477

    He can be certain that everything which could be said against him has been said, unsparingly, mercilessly — and to contend against the whole world is a consolation, while to contend against oneself is dreadful —; he need not fear that he has overlooked something, that someday afterward he may have to cry out, like King Edward the Fourth at the news of Clarence's murder: Who sued to me for him? Who, in my rage, knelt at my feet and bade me be advised? Who spoke of brotherly duty? Who spoke of love?

  478. 478

    The tragic hero does not know the dreadful responsibility of solitude.

  479. 479

    Next, he has the consolation that he can weep and lament together with Clytemnestra and Iphigenia — and tears and cries bring relief, but unutterable sighs are torment.

  480. 480

    Agamemnon can quickly gather his soul into the certainty that he will act, and then he still has time to console and to encourage.

  481. 481

    This Abraham cannot do.

  482. 482

    When his heart is moved, when his words would contain a blessed consolation for the whole world, he dare not console; for would not Sarah, would not Eliezer, would not Isaac say to him: "Why will you do it, then — you can after all refrain."

  483. 483

    And if, in his distress, he were then to give vent to himself, were to embrace all that was dear to him before he proceeded to the last act, he might perhaps bring about the dreadful thing — that Sarah, that Eliezer, that Isaac would take offense at him and believe him a hypocrite.

  484. 484

    Speak he cannot; he speaks no human language.

  485. 485

    Though he himself understood all the tongues of the earth, though the beloved ones also understood them, he still cannot speak — he speaks in a divine tongue, he speaks in tongues.

  486. 486

    This distress I can indeed understand; I can admire Abraham; I do not fear that anyone, on the strength of this tale, would be tempted frivolously to want to be the single individual — but I also confess that I do not have the courage for it, and that I gladly renounce every prospect of getting further, if only it were possible that I might someday, however late, get that far.

  487. 487

    At any moment Abraham can break off; he can repent of the whole thing as a spiritual trial — then he can speak, then all can understand him — but then he is Abraham no longer.

  488. 488

    Abraham cannot speak; for he cannot say the all-explaining word — say it, that is, so that it is intelligible — that it is an ordeal, mark well, an ordeal of such a kind that the ethical is the temptation.

  489. 489

    He who is placed thus is an emigrant from the sphere of the universal.

  490. 490

    But the next thing he can say even less.

  491. 491

    For Abraham makes, as has been sufficiently developed earlier, two movements.

  492. 492

    He makes the infinite movement of resignation and gives up Isaac — this no one can understand, because it is a private undertaking; but then, at every moment, he makes the movement of faith.

  493. 493

    This is his consolation.

  494. 494

    For he says: yet it will not come to pass, or if it does come to pass, then the Lord will give me a new Isaac, by virtue, namely, of the absurd.

  495. 495

    The tragic hero, after all, does reach the end of his story.

  496. 496

    Iphigenia bows under her father's resolve; she herself makes the infinite movement of resignation, and they are now in understanding with each other.

  497. 497

    She can understand Agamemnon, because his undertaking expresses the universal.

  498. 498

    If, on the contrary, Agamemnon were to say to her, "although the god demands you as a sacrifice, it is nonetheless possible that he did not demand it, by virtue, namely, of the absurd," he would at that very moment become unintelligible to Iphigenia.

  499. 499

    Could he say it by virtue of human calculation, Iphigenia would presumably understand him; but then it would follow that Agamemnon had not made the infinite movement of resignation, and so he is no hero — then the soothsayer's pronouncement is a skipper's report, and the whole affair a vaudeville.

  500. 500

    Abraham, then, did not speak.

  501. 501

    Only one word of his has been preserved, the single reply to Isaac, which therefore also proves sufficiently that he had not spoken beforehand.

  502. 502

    Isaac puts the question to Abraham, where the lamb for the burnt offering is.

  503. 503

    "And Abraham said: God will provide himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son!"

  504. 504

    This last word of Abraham I shall here consider a little more closely.

  505. 505

    If this word were not, the whole event would lack something; if it were otherwise, everything would perhaps dissolve into confusion.

  506. 506

    It has often been the object of my reflection whether a tragic hero, whether he culminates in a suffering or in an action, ought to have a last reply.

  507. 507

    It depends, as far as I can judge, on which life-sphere he belongs to, on whether his life has intellectual significance, on whether his suffering or his action stands in relation to spirit.

  508. 508

    It goes without saying that the tragic hero, in his moment of culmination, like every other person who is not deprived of speech, can say a few words, perhaps a few fitting words — but the question is whether it is fitting for him to say them.

  509. 509

    If his life's significance lies in an outward deed, then he has nothing to say; then everything he says is essentially idle chatter, by which he only weakens the impression of himself, whereas the tragic ceremonial demands that he silently complete his task, whether it consists in an action or in a suffering.

  510. 510

    In order not to go too far, I will simply take what lies nearest at hand.

  511. 511

    If Agamemnon himself, not Calchas, were to have drawn the knife against Iphigenia, then he would only have degraded himself by wanting, at the last moment, to say a few words; for the significance of his deed was, after all, evident to all, the procedure of piety, of compassion, of feeling, of tears was completed — and besides, his life had no relation to spirit, that is, he was not a teacher or a witness of the spirit.

  512. 512

    If, on the contrary, a hero's life's significance lies in the direction of spirit, then the lack of a reply would weaken the impression of him.

  513. 513

    What he then has to say is not a few fitting words, a little declamation-piece, but the significance of his reply is that he carries himself through in the decisive moment.

  514. 514

    Such an intellectual tragic hero — he ought to have and he ought to keep the last word.

  515. 515

    One demands of him the same transfigured bearing that becomes any tragic hero, but then one demands one word more.

  516. 516

    Insofar, then, as such an intellectual tragic hero culminates in a suffering (in death), he becomes immortal in this last word before he dies, whereas the ordinary tragic hero becomes immortal only after his death.

  517. 517

    Socrates may be used as an example.

  518. 518

    He was an intellectual tragic hero.

  519. 519

    His death sentence is announced to him.

  520. 520

    In that moment he dies; for whoever does not understand that the whole power of the spirit is required in order to die, and that the hero always dies before he dies, will not get particularly far in his contemplation of life.

  521. 521

    As a hero it is now required of Socrates that he rest calmly within himself, but as an intellectual tragic hero it is required of him that in this last moment he have strength of spirit enough to carry himself through.

  522. 522

    He cannot, then, like the ordinary tragic hero, concentrate on holding himself steady in the face of death, but he must make this movement so quickly that in the very same moment he is, with his consciousness, beyond this struggle and asserts himself.

  523. 523

    If, in this way, Socrates had fallen silent at the crisis of his death, he would have weakened the effect of his life, awakened a suspicion that the elasticity of irony in him was not a world-force but a game whose springiness in the decisive moment had to be used, by an inverted measure, to hold him pathetically upright”).

  524. 524

    What has here been briefly hinted at can hardly find its application to Abraham — not insofar as one supposes that by some analogy one could find a fitting word for Abraham to end with, but rather insofar as one sees the necessity that in the last moment Abraham must carry himself through, must not silently draw the knife but have a word to say, since he, as the father of faith, has absolute significance in the direction of spirit.

  525. 525

    What he is to say, of that I can form no conception beforehand; after he has said it, I can well understand, can in a certain sense understand Abraham in the ") Which remark of Socrates is to be regarded as the decisive one — about that opinions may be divided, since Socrates has in so many ways been poetically volatilized by Plato.

  526. 526

    I propose the following: the death sentence is pronounced to him, in the same moment he dies, in the same moment he overcomes death and carries himself through in the famous retort — that it surprised him that he had been condemned by a majority of three votes.

  527. 527

    No loose and idle talk in the marketplace, no foolish remark by an idiot could he have toyed with more ironically than with the death sentence that condemns him himself to death.

  528. 528

    val dne ” bb S em said, without thereby having come any nearer to him than I have been to him in what preceded.

  529. 529

    If no last remark of Socrates had existed, then I would have been able to think myself into him and have fashioned one; had I not been able to do that, then a poet would have managed it — but Abraham no poet reaches.

  530. 530

    Before I go on to consider Abraham's last words more closely, I must first call attention to the difficulty that Abraham can come to say anything at all.

  531. 531

    The distress and the anxiety in the paradox lay, as developed above, precisely in the silence — Abraham cannot speak”).

  532. 532

    To that extent it is, then, a self-contradiction to demand that he shall speak, unless one wishes to have him out of the paradox again, in such a way that in the decisive moment he suspends it, whereby he then ceases to be Abraham and annuls all that preceded… If, in this way, Abraham now in the decisive moment would say to Isaac: it is you it concerns — then this would only be a weakness.

  533. 533

    For if he could speak at all, he would have had to speak long ago, and the weakness would then lie in this, that he had not had the spirit's maturity and concentration to think the whole pain through beforehand, but had pushed something away from himself, so that the actual pain was a More than the one thought.

  534. 534

    Besides, by such speech he would fall out of the paradox, and if he really wished to speak with Isaac, he would have to transform his condition into a temptation; for otherwise he could say nothing at all, and if he does this, then he is not even a tragic hero.

  535. 535

    Meanwhile a last word of Abraham has nonetheless been preserved, and insofar as I can understand the paradox, I can ") Insofar as there can be talk of any analogy, the death-situation of Pythagoras affords such a one, for the silence he had always upheld he had to carry through in his last moment, and therefore he said: it is better to be killed than to speak. Cfr.

  536. 536

    Diogenes, eighth book, § 39.

  537. 537

    also understand Abraham's total presence in this word.

  538. 538

    He says first and foremost nothing, and in this form he says what he has to say.

  539. 539

    His answer to Isaac has the form of irony, for it is always irony when I say something and yet say nothing.

  540. 540

    Isaac questions Abraham in the supposition that Abraham is knowing.

  541. 541

    Had Abraham now answered: I know nothing — then he would have said an untruth.

  542. 542

    Say something he cannot; for what he knows, he cannot say.

  543. 543

    He answers then: God will provide himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son!

  544. 544

    One sees from this the double movement in Abraham's soul, just as it has been described in what preceded.

  545. 545

    Had Abraham merely resigned Isaac and done no more, then he has said an untruth; for he indeed knows that God demands Isaac as a sacrifice, and he knows that he himself, precisely in this moment, is ready to sacrifice him.

  546. 546

    He has then, in every moment, after having made this movement, made the next, made the movement of faith by virtue of the absurd.

  547. 547

    To that extent he speaks no untruth; for by virtue of the absurd it is indeed possible that God could do something quite other.

  548. 548

    He speaks, then, no untruth, but neither does he say anything; for he speaks in a foreign tongue.

  549. 549

    This becomes still more evident when we consider that it was Abraham himself who was to sacrifice Isaac.

  550. 550

    Had the task been a different one, had the Lord commanded Abraham to bring Isaac out upon Mount Moriah so that he himself should let his lightning strike Isaac and thus take him as a sacrifice, then Abraham could in a straightforward sense be right in speaking as enigmatically as he does; for then he could not himself know what would happen.

  551. 551

    But as the task is set for Abraham, he himself is to act; he must therefore in the decisive moment know what he himself will do, and thus he must know that Isaac is to be sacrificed.

  552. 552

    Has he not known this with certainty, then he has not made the infinite movement of resignation, and then his word is indeed not an untruth, but he is at the same time very far from being Abraham; he is more insignificant than a tragic hero, indeed he is an irresolute man who can decide neither for the one thing nor for the other, and who on that account will always come to speak in riddles.

  553. 553

    But such a Hesitator is precisely the parody of the knight of faith.

  554. 554

    It shows itself here again that one can indeed understand Abraham, but understand him only in the way one understands the paradox.

  555. 555

    For my own part I can indeed understand Abraham, but I grasp at the same time that I have not the courage to speak in that way, just as little as I have the courage to act as Abraham did; but by that I by no means say that it is something paltry, since on the contrary it is the one and only marvel.

  556. 556

    And what did the contemporary age now judge of the tragic hero?

  557. 557

    that he was great, and it admired him.

  558. 558

    And that honorable assembly of the noble, the jury which every generation constitutes to judge the generation gone before, it judged likewise.

  559. 559

    But Abraham there was no one who could understand.

  560. 560

    And yet what did he attain?

  561. 561

    That he remained true to his love.

  562. 562

    But he who loves God has need of no tears, no admiration; he forgets the suffering in the love — indeed so wholly has he forgotten it that there should not afterward be even the least intimation of his pain, if God himself did not remember it; for he sees in secret, and knows the distress, and counts the tears, and forgets nothing.

  563. 563

    Either there is, then, a paradox — that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute — or Abraham is lost.

The particulars

The text
Frygt og Bæven, Søren Kierkegaard. Problemata.
Translation
Public-domain Danish (Kierkegaard, d. 1855; published 1843). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
Words
Every word of the text, by letter.
Data
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.