No More Learning

They all rest fundamentally on the annihilation of evil as a positive opposite and on the reduction
* In the treatise, "On the Assertion that There Can Be No Wicked Use of Rea- son," in the Morgenblatt, 1807, No. 197, and in "On | Solids and Liquids," in the Annuals of Medicine as Science, vol. III, No. 2. Let the relevant comment at the end of this latter treatise, at p. 203, be set out here for comparison and further explanation: "Here common fire (as wild, consuming, painful heat) provides instructive clarification [Aufschluss] as opposed to the so- called organic, beneficial heat of life; since in the latter fire and water come together in a (growing) ground or conjunction while in the former they dis- perse in discord. Now, neither fire nor water existed as such, however, i. e. as separate spheres in the organic process, rather the former existed as centrum (mysterium), the latter openly or as periphery in it, and precisely the unlocking, raising, igniting of the first together with the closing up of the second gave disease and death. Thus, in general, I-hood, individuality is now admittedly the basis, foundation or natural centrum of any creature's life; but as soon as it ceases to be the serving centrum and enters as ruling into the periphery, it burns in I-hood as the selfish and egotistical rage (of enflamed I-hood) of Tantalus. From ? now comes ? --that is: in one single place of the planetary system this dark centrum of nature is closed up, latent, and for that very reason serves as a carrier of light for the entry of the higher system (illumination or revelation of the ideal). For that very reason this place is thus the open point (sun--heart--eye) in the system and, if the dark centrum of nature were also to raise or open it- self there, then the light point would eo ipso close itself up, light would be- come darkness in the system or the sun would be extinguished! "
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of evil to the so-called malum metaphysicum [metaphysical evil] or the negating concept of the imperfection of creatures. It was impos- sible, says Leibniz, that God conferred on man all perfections without making man himself into God. The same is valid for created beings in general; for that reason various degrees of perfection and all manner of limitation pertaining to them had to occur. If one asks from whence comes evil, the answer is: from the ideal nature of creatures to the ex- tent that it depends on the eternal truths that are contained in the di- vine understanding, but not on the will of God. The region of the di- vine truths is the ideal cause of good and evil and must be posited in place of the | matter of the ancients. * Yet, there are, he says in an- other spot, two principles, both however in God; these are the under- standing and will. The understanding yields the principle of evil, al- though it does not thereby become evil itself, for it represents natures as they are in accordance with the eternal truths: it contains in itself the ground that permits evil, but the will alone is directed to- ward the good. ? God did not bring about this sole possibility since the understanding cannot be its own cause. ? ,53 If this differentiation of the understanding and will as two principles in God, whereby the first possibility of evil is made independent of the divine will, accords with the richness of this man's way of thinking, and if even the idea of understanding (of divine wisdom) as something in which God is pas- sive rather than active alludes to something more profound, evil nonetheless--as can be derived from any purely ideal ground-- amounts once again to something merely passive, to limitation, lack, deprivation, concepts that are in complete conflict with the actual na- ture of evil. For the simple reflection that only man, the most com- plete of all visible creatures, is capable of evil, shows already that the ground of evil could not in any way lie in lack or deprivation. The devil, according to the Christian point of view, was not the most lim- ited creature, but rather the least limited one. ? ,54 Imperfection in the general | metaphysical sense is not the common character of evil, since evil often shows itself united with an excellence of individual
* Tentam. Theod. Opp. T. I, p. 136.
? Ibid. , p. 240.
? Ibid. , p. 387.
? In this connection it is remarkable that it was not first the scholastics but
already several among the earlier fathers of the church, most notably, St.
forces, which far more rarely accompanies the good. The ground of evil must lie, therefore, not only in something generally positive but rather in that which is most positive in what nature contains, as is ac- tually the case in our view, since it lies in the revealed centrum or pri- mal will of the first ground. Leibniz tries in every way to make com- prehensible how evil could arise from natural deficiency. The will, he says, strives for the good in general and must demand perfection whose highest measure is God; if the will remains entangled in sen- sual lust to the detriment of higher goods, precisely this deficiency of further striving is the privation in which evil consists. Otherwise, he thinks, evil requires a special principle as little as do cold or dark- ness. What is affirmative in evil comes to it only as accompaniment like force and causal efficacy come to cold: freezing water bursts the strongest containing vessel, and yet cold really consists in the reduc- tion of movement. * Because, however, deprivation in itself is abso- lutely nothing and, in order to be noticeable, needs something posi- tive in which it appears, the difficulty arises as to how to explain the positive that nevertheless must be assumed to exist in evil. Since Leibniz can derive the latter only from God, he sees himself com- pelled to make God the cause of the material aspect of sin and to as- cribe only the formal aspect of sin to the original limitation of crea- tures. He seeks to explain this relation through the concept of the natural inertia of matter discovered by Kepler. He says that this is the complete picture of an original limitation in creatures (which pre- cedes all action). If two different objects of unequal mass are set in | motion at unequal speeds by the same impetus, the ground for slow- ness of movement in one lies not in the impetus but in the tendency to inertia innate to, and characteristic of, matter, that is, in the inner
Augustine, who posited evil as mere privation. Especially noteworthy is the passage in contr. Jul. L. I, C. III:
Quaerunt ex nobis, unde sit malum? Respondemus ex bono, sed non summo, ex bonis igitur orta sunt mala. Mala enim omnia participant ex bono, merum enim et ex omni parte tali dari repugnat. --Haud vero difficulter omnia expe- diet, qui conceptum mali semel recte formaverit, eumque semper defectum ali- quem involvere attenderit, perfectionem autem omnimodum incommunicabili- ter possidere Deum; neque magis possibile | esse, creaturam illimitatam adeoque independentem creari, quam creari alium Deum.
* Tentam. Theod. P. 242.
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limitation or imperfection of matter. *,55 But, in this regard, it is to be noted that inertia itself cannot be thought of as a mere deprivation, but actually as something positive, namely as expression of the inter- nal selfhood of the body, the force whereby it seeks to assert its inde- pendence. We do not deny that metaphysical finitude can be made comprehensible in this way, but we deny that finitude for itself is evil. ?
This manner of explanation arises generally from the lifeless con- cept of the positive according to which only privation can oppose it. But there is still an intermediate concept that forms a real opposition to it and stands far removed from the concept of the merely negated. This concept arises from the relation of the whole to the individual, from unity to multiplicity, or however one wants to express it. The positive is always the whole or unity; that which opposes unity is sev- ering of the whole, disharmony, ataxia of forces. The same elements are in the severed whole that were in the cohesive whole; that which is material in both is the same (from this perspective, evil is not more limited or worse than the good), but the formal aspect of the two is totally different, though this formal aspect still comes precisely from the essence or the positive itself. Hence it is necessary that a kind of being be in evil as well as in good, but in the former as that which is opposed to the good, that which perverts the temperance contained in the good into distemperance. 56 To recognize this kind of being is impossible for dogmatic philosophy because it has no concept of personality, that is, of selfhood raised to spirit, but rather only | the abstract concepts of finite and infinite. If, for that reason, someone wished to reply that, indeed, precisely disharmony is privation, namely a deprivation of unity, then the concept in itself would be nonetheless inadequate, even if the general concept of deprivation included that of abolishment or division of unity. For it is not the divi- sion of forces that is in itself disharmony, but rather their false unity that can be called a division only in relation to true unity. If unity is to- tally abolished, then conflict is abolished along with it. Disease is ended by death; and no single tone in itself amounts to disharmony.
* Ibid. ,P. I. ? 30.
? For the same reason, every other explanation of finitude, for example, from
the concept of relations, must be inadequate for the explanation of evil. Evil does not come from finitude in itself but from finitude raised up to Being as a self.
But just to explain this false unity requires something positive that must thus necessarily be assumed in evil but will remain inexplicable as long as no root of freedom is recognized in the independent ground of nature.
As far as we can judge, it will be better to speak of the question concerning the reality of evil from the Platonic viewpoint. The no- tions of our era, which treats this point far more lightly and pushes its philanthropism [Philanthropismus] to the brink of denying evil, have not the most distant connection to such ideas. According to these no- tions, the sole ground of evil lies in sensuality or animality, or in the earthly principle, as they do not oppose heaven with hell, as is fitting, but with the earth. This notion is a natural consequence of the doc- trine according to which freedom consists in the mere rule of the in- telligent principle over sensual desires and tendencies, and the good comes from pure reason; accordingly, it is understandable that there is no freedom for evil (in so far as sensual tendencies predominate)-- to speak more correctly, however, evil is completely abolished. For the weakness or ineffectualness of the principle of understanding can indeed be a ground for the lack of good and virtuous actions, yet it cannot be a ground of positively evil ones and those adverse to vir- tue. But, on the supposition that sensuality or a passive attitude to external impressions | may bring forth evil actions with a sort of ne- cessity, then man himself would surely only be passive in these ac- tions; that is, evil viewed in relation to his own actions, thus subjec- tively, would have no meaning; and since that which follows from a determination of nature also cannot be objectively evil, evil would have no meaning at all. That it is said, however, that the rational prin- ciple is inactive in evil, is in itself also no argument [Grund]. For why does the rational principle then not exercise its power? If it wants to be inactive, the ground of evil lies in this volition and not in sensual- ity. Or if it cannot overcome the resisting power of sensuality in any way, then here is merely weakness and inadequacy but nowhere evil. In accordance with this explanation, there is hence only one will (if it can otherwise be called that), not a dual will; and, in this respect, since the names of the Arians, among others, have fortunately been introduced into philosophical criticism, one could name the adher- ents of this view Monotheletes, using a name also taken from church history, although in another sense. As it is, however, in no way the intelligent or light principle in itself that is active in the good,
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but rather this principle connected to selfhood, that is, having been raised to spirit, then, in the very same way, evil does not follow from the principle of finitude for itself but rather from the selfish or dark principle having been brought into intimacy with the centrum; and, just as there is an enthusiasm for the good, there is a spiritedness [Begeisterung] of evil. 57 Indeed, this dark principle is active in animals as well as in all other natural beings, yet it is still not born into the light in them as it is in man: it is not spirit and understanding but blind craving and desire; in short, no fall, no separation of principles is pos- sible here where there is still no absolute or personal unity. The con- scious and not conscious are unified in animal instinct only in a cer- tain and determinate way which for that very reason is unalterable. For just on that account, because they are only relative expressions of unity, they are subject to it, and the force active in the ground re- tains the unity of principles befitting them always in the same propor- tion. Animals are never able to emerge | from unity, whereas man can voluntarily tear apart the eternal bond of forces. Hence, Fr. Baader is right to say it would be desirable that the corruption in man were only to go as far as his becoming animal [Tierwerdung]; unfortunately, however, man can stand only below or above animals. *
We have sought to derive the concept and possibility of evil from first principles and to discover the general foundation of this doc- trine, which lies in the distinction between that which exists and that which is the ground for existence. ? But the possibility does not yet in- clude the reality, and this is in fact the main object in question. And, indeed, what needs to be explained is not, for instance, how evil be- comes actual in individuals, but rather its universal activity [Wirk- samkeit] or how it was able to break out of creation as an unmistak- ably general principle everywhere locked in struggle with the good.
* In the treatise cited above in the Morgenblatt 1807, p. 786.
? St. Augustine says against emanation: nothing other than God can come from God's substance; hence, creatures are created from nothingness, from whence comes their corruptibility and inadequacy (de lib. Arb. L. I, C. 2). This nothingness has been a crux for understanding for a long time now. A scriptural expression gives a hint: man is created ek t ? on m ? e ont ? on, from that which does not exist, just like the celebrated m ? e on of the ancients, which like the creation from nothingness, might receive for the first time a
positive meaning through the above-noted distinction.
Since it is undeniably real, at least as general opposite, there can in- deed be no doubt from the outset that it was necessary for the revela- tion of God; exactly this results from what has been previously said as well. For, if God as spirit is the inseverable unity of both principles, and this same unity is only real in the spirit of man, then, if the princi- ples were just as indissoluble in him as in God, man would not be distinguishable from God at all; he would disappear in God, and there would be no revelation and motility of love. For every essence can only reveal itself in its opposite, love only in hate, unity in conflict. Were there no severing of principles, unity could not prove | its om- nipotence; were there no discord, love could not become real [wirk- lich]. Man is placed on that summit where he has in himself the source of self-movement toward good or evil in equal portions: the bond of principles in him is not a necessary but rather a free one. Man stands on the threshold [Scheidepunkt]; whatever he chooses, it will be his act: but he cannot remain undecided because God must necessarily reveal himself and because nothing at all can remain am- biguous in creation. Nonetheless, it seems that he also may not be able to step out of his indecision exactly because this is what it is. That is why there must be a general ground of solicitation, of tempta- tion to evil, even if it were only to make both principles come to life in man, that is, to make him aware of the principles. Now it appears that the solicitation to evil itself can only come from an evil fundamental being [Grundwesen], and the assumption that there is such a being seems nonetheless unavoidable; it also appears that that interpreta- tion of Platonic matter is completely correct according to which mat- ter is originally a kind of being that resists God and for that reason is an evil being in itself. 58 As long as this part of the Platonic teaching remains in darkness, as it has until now,* a definite judgment about this issue is, however, impossible. The preceding reflections clarify in which sense, nonetheless, one could say of the irrational principle that it resists the understanding or unity and order without suppos- ing it to be an evil fundamental being on that account. In this way one is likely able to explain the Platonic phrase that evil comes from
* Would that this be elucidated by the incisive exegete of Plato or still sooner by the sturdy Bo? ckh who has already given rise to the best hopes in this respect through his occasional comments on Platonic harmonics and through the announcement of his edition of the Timaeus.
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ancient nature. For all evil strives back into chaos, that is, back into that state in which the initial centrum had not yet been subordinated to the light and is a welling up in the centrum of a yearning still with- out understanding. Yet we have proven once and for all that evil as such could only arise in creatures in so far as light and darkness or | both principles can be unified in a severable manner only in them. The initial fundamental being can never be evil in itself because there is no duality of principles in it. But we also cannot presuppose some- thing like a created spirit which, having fallen itself, tempted man to fall, for the question here is exactly how evil first arose in creatures. Hence, we are given nothing else toward an explanation of evil aside from both principles in God. God as spirit (the eternal bond of both) is the purest love: there can never be a will to evil in love just as little as in the ideal principle. But God himself requires a ground so that he can exist; but only a ground that is not outside but inside him and has in itself a nature which, although belonging to him, is yet also differ- ent from him. The will of love and the will of the ground are two differ- ent wills, of which each exists for itself; but the will of love cannot with- stand the will of the ground, nor abolish it because it would then have to oppose itself. For the ground must be active so that love may exist, and it must be active independently of love so that love may really exist. If love now wanted to break the will of the ground, it would be struggling against itself, would be at odds with itself and would no longer be love. This letting the ground be active is the only conceivable concept of permission that in the usual reference to man is completely unacceptable. Thus the will of the ground admittedly also cannot break love nor does it demand this, although it often seems to; for it must be particular and a will of its own, one turned away from love, so that love, when it nonetheless breaks through the will of the ground, as light through darkness, may now appear in its omnipotence. The ground is only a will to revelation, but precisely in order for the latter to exist, it must call forth particularity and opposition. The will of love and that of the ground become one, therefore, exactly because they are separate and each acts for itself from the beginning on. That is why the will of the ground already arouses the self-will of creatures in the first creation, so that when spirit now appears as the will of | love, the lat- ter finds something resistant in which it can realize itself.
The sight of nature as a whole convinces us that this arousal has occurred by which means alone all life first reached the final degree
of distinctiveness and definiteness. The irrational and contingent, which show themselves to be bound to that which is necessary in the formation of beings, especially the organic ones, prove that it is not merely a geometric necessity that has been active here, but rather that freedom, spirit and self-will were also in play. Indeed, every- where where there is appetite and desire, there is already in itself a sort of freedom; and no one will believe that desire, which deter- mines the ground of every particular natural being, and the drive to preserve oneself not in general but in this defined existence, are added on to an already created being, but rather that they are them- selves that which creates. The empirically discovered concept of the basis [Basis], which will assume a significant role for the entire sci- ence of nature, [if] acknowledged scientifically, also must lead to a concept of selfhood and I-hood. 59 But in nature there are contingent determinations only explicable in terms of an arousal of the irrational or dark principle in creatures--in terms of activated selfhood--hav- ing occurred already in the first creation. Whence unmistakable signs of evil in nature, alongside preformed moral relationships, if the power of evil was only aroused by man; whence appearances which, even without regard to their dangerousness for man, nonetheless arouse a general, natural abhorrence? * That all organic beings ad- vance toward | dissolution absolutely cannot appear to be an origi- nal necessity; the bond of forces that defines life could be just as in- dissoluble according to its nature, and if anything, a created being, which has restored what has become lacking in it through its own strength, appears destined to be a perpetuum mobile. Evil, in the meantime, announces itself in nature only through its effects; it can
* Thusthecloseconnectionthattheimaginationofallpeoples,especiallyall fables and religions of the east, makes between the snake and evil is cer- tainly not an idle one. The complete development of the auxiliary organs, which has reached its highest point in man, indeed already suggests the will's independence from desires or a relation of centrum and periphery that is really the only healthy one, since the former has stepped back into its freedom and sobriety, having removed itself from what is simply (pe- ripheral or) instrumental. Where, to the contrary, the auxiliary organs are not developed | or completely lacking, there the centrum has walked into the periphery; or it is the circle without a middle point in the comment to the above-mentioned citation from Fr. Baader.
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itself break through only in its immediate appearance at the endpoint [am Ziel] of nature. For, as in the initial creation, which is nothing other than the birth of light, the dark principle had to be as ground so that the light could be raised out of it (as from mere potency to actu- ality),60 so there must be another ground of the birth of spirit and, hence, a second principle of darkness that must be just as much higher than the first as spirit is higher than the light. This principle is the very spirit of evil that has been awoken in creation by arousal of the dark ground of nature, that is, the turning against each other [Entz- weiung] of light and darkness, to which the spirit of love opposes now a higher ideal, just as the light had done previously in regard to the anarchic movement of initial nature. For, just as selfhood in evil had made the light or the word its own and for that reason appears precisely as a higher ground of darkness, so must the word spoken in the world in opposition to evil assume humanity or selfhood and be- come personal itself. This occurs alone through revelation, in the most definitive meaning of the word, which must have the same stages as the first manifestation in nature; namely so that here too the highest summit of revelation is man, but the archetypical [urbildlich] and divine man who was with God in the beginning and in whom all other things and man himself are created. The birth of spirit is the realm of history as the birth of light is the realm of nature. The same periods of creation | which are in the latter are also in the former; and one is the likeness and explanation of the other. The same princi- ple, which was the ground in the first creation, only in a higher form, is here also the germ and seed from which a higher world is devel- oped. For evil is surely nothing other than the primal ground [Ur- grund] of existence to the extent this ground strives toward actuality in created beings and therefore is in fact only the higher potency of the ground active in nature. But, just as the latter is forever only ground, without being itself, precisely on this account evil can never become real and serves only as ground so that the good, developing out of the ground on its own strength, may be through its ground inde- pendent and separate from God who has and recognizes himself in this good which, as such (as independent), is in him. But, as the undi- vided power of the initial ground comes to be recognized only in man as the inner aspect (basis or centrum) of an individual, so in history as well evil at first remains latent in the ground, and an era of innocence
or unconsciousness about sin precedes the era of guilt and sin. In the same way, namely, as the initial ground of nature was active alone perhaps for a long time and attempted a creation for itself with the di- vine powers it contained, a creation which, however, again and again (because the bond of love was missing) sank back into chaos (per- haps indicated by the series of species that perished and did not re- turn prior to the present creation), until the word of love issued forth [erging]61 and with it enduring creation made its beginning, likewise, the spirit of love also did not immediately reveal itself in history, but rather, because God perceived the will of the ground as the will for his revelation and, according to his providential vision, recognized that a ground independent from him (as spirit) would have to be the ground for his existence, he let the ground be active in its indepen- dence; or, expressed in another way, he set himself in motion only in accordance with his nature and not in accordance with his heart or with love. Because the ground now held the whole of the divine being in itself as well, only not as unity, only individual divine | beings could preside over this being-active-for-itself [Fu? r-sich-wirken] of the ground. This primeval [uralt] time begins thus with the golden age of which only a frail memory in legend remains for modern mankind, a time of blessed indecision in which there was neither good nor evil; then there followed the time of the presiding gods and heroes or the omnipotence of nature in which the ground showed what for itself it had the capacity to do. 62 At that time understanding and wisdom came to men only from the depths; the power of oracles flowing forth from the earth led and shaped their lives; all divine forces of the ground dominated the earth and sat as powerful princes on secure thrones. This appeared to be the time of the greatest exaltation of na- ture in the visible beauty of the gods and in all the brilliance of art and profound [sinnreich] science until the principle active in the ground finally emerged as a world-conquering principle to subordi- nate everything to itself and establish a stable and enduring world empire. Because, however, the being of the ground can never generate for itself true and complete unity, there comes the time when all this magnificence dissolves and, as if by a terrible sickness, the beautiful body of the previous world collapses and chaos finally emerges once again. Already prior to this, and before complete collapse has set in, the presiding powers in this whole assume the nature of evil spirits
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just as the same forces, which in healthy times were beneficial guar- dians of life, become malignant and poisonous in nature as dissolution approaches; the belief in gods vanishes and a false magic, complete with incantations and theurgic formulas, strives to call the fleeing ones back and to mollify the evil spirits. The attractive force of the ground shows itself ever more determinately; anticipating [voremp- findend] the coming light, the ground in advance thrusts all forces out of indecision to meet the light in full conflict. As a thunderstorm is caused in a mediated way by the sun but immediately by an opposing force of the earth, so is the spirit of evil (whose meteoric nature we have already explained earlier) aroused by the approach of the good not through a sharing but rather by a spreading out of forces. Hence, only in connection with the decisive | emergence of the good, does evil also emerge quite decisively and as itself [als dieses] (not as if it only first arose then, but rather because the opposition is now first given in which it alone can appear complete and as such), [just] as, in turn, the very moment when the earth becomes for the second time desolate and empty becomes the moment of birth for the higher light of the spirit that was in the world from the very beginning, but not comprehended by the darkness acting for itself, and in a yet closed and limited revelation; and, in order to counter personal and spiritual evil, the light of the spirit in fact appears likewise in the shape of a human person and as a mediator in order to reestablish the rapport between God and creation at the highest level. For only what is per- sonal can heal what is personal, and God must become man so that man may return to God. 63 The possibility of being saved (of salvation) is restored only through the reestablished relation of the ground to God. Its beginning is a condition of clairvoyance which, through di- vine imposition, befalls individuals (as the organs chosen for this purpose), a time of signs and miracles in which divine forces counter- act everywhere emergent demonic ones and mollifying unity counter- acts the dispersion of forces. Finally a crisis ensues in the turba gen- tium [tumult of peoples] that overflows the foundations of the ancient world, just as once the waters of the beginning covered the creations of the primeval time [Urzeit] again in order to make a sec- ond creation possible--a new division of peoples and tongues, a new empire in which the living word enters as a stable and constant cen- trum in the struggle against chaos, and a conflict declared between
good and evil begins, continuing on to the end of the present time, in which God reveals himself as spirit, that is, as actu real. *
Hence, there is a general evil which, if not exactly of the beginning, is first awoken in the original revelation of God by the reaction | of the ground; a general evil which, though it never becomes real, yet continually strives toward that end. Only after coming to know gen- eral evil is it possible to grasp good and evil in man. If, namely, evil al- ready has been aroused in the first creation, and through the ground's being-active-for-itself was developed finally into a general principle, then a natural propensity [Hang] of man to do evil seems to be explicable on that basis because the disorder of forces engaged by awakening of self-will in creatures already communicates itself to them at birth. Yet the ground continues to be incessantly active in in- dividuals as well and arouses individuality [Eigenart] and the particu- lar will precisely so that the will of love may appear in contrast. God's will is to universalize everything, to raise everything up toward unity with the light or keep it there; the will of the ground, however, is to particularize everything or to make it creaturely. The will wants dif- ference [Ungleichheit] only so that identity [Gleichheit] can become perceptible to itself and to the will.
For that reason the will reacts necessarily against freedom as that which is above the creaturely and awakes in freedom the appetite for what is creaturely just as he who is seized by dizziness on a high and steep summit seems to be beck- oned to plunge downward by a hidden voice; or, according to the an- cient legend, the irresistible song of the sirens reverberates from the depths in order to drag the passing sailor into the maelstrom. The connection of the general will with a particular will in man seems al- ready in itself a contradiction, the unification of which is difficult if not impossible. The fear of life itself drives man out of the centrum into which he was created64: for this centrum, as the purest essence of all willing, is for each particular will a consuming fire; in order to be able to live within it the man of all particularity must become extinct [absterben], which is why the attempt to step out of this center into the periphery is almost necessary in order to seek there some calm
* One should compare this whole section with the author's Lectures on the Method of Academic Study, VIII. "Lecture on the Historical Construction of Christianity. "
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for his selfhood. Hence, the general necessity of sin and death as the actual extinction of particularity through which all human will as a fire must cross in order to be purified. 65 Notwithstanding this general | ne- cessity, evil remains always an individual's own choice; the ground cannot make evil as such, and every creature falls due to its own guilt. But just how in each individual the decision for good or evil might now proceed--this is still shrouded in complete darkness and seems to de- mand a specific investigation.
We have generally focused up to this point less on the formal es- sence of freedom, although insight into it seems to be strapped with no less difficulty than explication of the real concept of freedom.
For the common concept of freedom, according to which freedom is posited as a wholly undetermined capacity to will one or the other of two contradictory opposites, without determining reasons but simply because it is willed, has in fact the original undecidedness of human being as idea in its favor; however, when applied to individual actions, it leads to the greatest inconsistencies. To be able to decide for A or -A without any compelling reasons would be, to tell the truth, only a prerogative to act entirely irrationally and would not dis- tinguish man in exactly the best way from the well-known animal of Buridan which, in the opinion of the defenders of this concept of free will [Willku? r], would have to starve if placed between two piles of hay of equal distance, size and composition (namely because it does not have this prerogative of free will). 66 The only proof for this concept consists in referring to the fact that, for example, anyone has the power now to draw back or extend his arm without further reason; for, if one says, he stretches his arm just in order to prove his free will, then he could say this just as well of when he draws it back; interest in proving the statement can only determine him to do one of the two; here the equilibrium [Gleichgewicht] is palpable, and so forth; this is a generally bad manner of proof since it deduces the non-existence of a determining reason from lack of knowledge about it; but this argument could be used in the completely opposite way here, for exactly | where lack of knowledge enters, determination takes place all the more certainly. The main issue is that this concept introduces a complete contingency [Zufa? lligkeit] of individual ac- tions and, in this respect, has been compared quite correctly with the contingent swerve of atoms that Epicurus conceived in physics with the same intention, namely, to evade fate. 67 But contingency is
impossible; it contests reason as well as the necessary unity of the whole; and, if freedom is to be saved by nothing other than the com- plete contingency of actions, then it is not to be saved at all. Deter- minism (or, according to Kant, predeterminism68) counters this system of the equilibrium of free will and, indeed, with complete jus- tification, since it claims the empirical necessity of all actions be- cause each is determined by representations or other causes that lie in the past and that no longer remain within our power during the ac- tion itself. Both systems adhere to the same point of view; but if there were no higher one, then the latter would undeniably earn the advan- tage. For both, that higher necessity remains unknown which is equi- distant from contingency and from compulsion or external determi- nation, which is, rather, an inner necessity springing from the essence of the acting individual itself. All improvements, however, which one has sought to make to determinism, for example, the Leib- nizian ones that motivating causes only incline but do not determine the will, are of no help at all in the main issue. 69
Idealism actually first raised the doctrine of freedom to that very region where it is alone comprehensible. According to idealism, the intelligible being of every thing and especially of man is outside all causal connectedness as it is outside or above all time. 70 Hence, it can never be determined by any sort of prior thing since, rather, it it- self precedes all else that is or becomes within it, not so much tempo- rally as conceptually, as an absolute unity that must always already exist fully and complete so that particular action or determination may be possible in it. We | are expressing namely the Kantian con- cept not exactly in his very words, but indeed in the way, as we be- lieve, that it would have to be expressed in order to be comprehen- sible. But if this concept is assumed, then the following appears also to be correctly deduced: free action follows immediately from the in- telligible aspect of man. But it is necessarily a determined action, for example, to take what is nearest at hand, a good or an evil one. There is, however, no transition from the absolutely undetermined to the determined. That, for instance, the intelligible being should deter- mine itself out of pure, utter indeterminacy without any reason leads back to the system of the equilibrium [Gleichgu? ltigkeit] of free will dis- cussed above. 71 In order to be able to determine itself, it would al- ready have to be determined in itself, admittedly not from outside, which contradicts its nature, also not from inside through some sort
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of merely contingent or empirical necessity since all this (the psycho- logical as well as the physical) is subordinate to it; but rather it would have to be its determination itself as its essence, that is, as its own na- ture. This is of course not an undetermined generality, but rather de- termines the intelligible being of this individual; the saying determina- tio est negatio [determination is negation]72 holds in no way for such determinateness since the latter is itself one with the position and the concept of its being, therefore it really is the essence in its being. Hence, the intelligible being can, as certainly as it acts as such freely and absolutely, just as certainly act only in accordance with its own inner nature; or action can follow from within only in accordance with the law of identity and with absolute necessity which alone is also absolute freedom. For free is what acts only in accord with the laws of its own being and is determined by nothing else either in or outside itself.
At least one thing is achieved with this notion of the matter, that the inconsistency of the contingent is removed from individual action. This must be established, in every higher view as well: that individual action results from the inner necessity of a free being and, accord- ingly, from necessity itself, which must not be confused, as still hap- pens, with empirical necessity based on compulsion (which is itself, | however, only disguised contingency). But what then is this inner ne- cessity of the being itself? Here lies the point at which necessity and freedom must be unified if they are at all capable of unification. Were this being a dead sort of Being [ein totes Sein] and a merely given one with respect to man, then, because all action resulting from it could do so only with necessity, responsibility [Zurechnungsfa? higkeit] and all freedom would be abolished. But precisely this inner necessity is it- self freedom; the essence of man is fundamentally his own act; neces- sity and freedom are in one another as one being [Ein Wesen] that ap- pears as one or the other only when considered from different sides, in itself freedom, formally necessity. 73 The I, says Fichte, is its own act; consciousness is self-positing--but the I is nothing different from this self-positing, rather it is precisely self-positing itself. This con- sciousness, however, to the extent it is thought merely as self- apprehension or cognition of the I, is not even primary and all along presupposes actual Being, as does all pure cognition. This Being, pre- sumed to be prior to cognition, is, however, not Being, though it is like- wise not cognition: it is real self-positing, it is a primal and fundamental
willing, which makes itself into something and is the ground of all ways of being [Wesenheit]. 74
But, in their immediate relation to man, these truths are valid in a much more definite sense than in this general one. Man is in the initial creation, as shown, an undecided being--(which may be portrayed mythically as a condition of innocence that precedes this life and as an initial blessedness)--only man himself can decide. But this deci- sion cannot occur within time; it occurs outside of all time and, hence, together with the first creation (though as a deed distinct from creation). Man, even if born in time, is indeed created into the beginning of the creation (the centrum). 75 The act, whereby his life is determined in time, does not itself belong to time but rather to eter- nity: it also does not temporally precede life but goes through time (unhampered | by it) as an act which is eternal by nature. Through this act the life of man reaches to the beginning of creation; hence, through it man is outside the created, being free and eternal begin- ning itself. 76 As incomprehensible as this idea may appear to conven- tional ways of thinking, there is indeed in each man a feeling in ac- cord with it as if he had been what he is already from all eternity and had by no means become so first in time. Hence, notwithstanding the undeniable necessity of all actions and, although each individual, if he is aware of himself, must admit that he is by no means arbitrarily or by accident good or evil, an evil individual, for example, surely ap- pears to himself not in the least compelled (because compulsion can be felt only in becoming and not in Being) but rather performs his ac- tions in accordance with and not against his will. That Judas became a betrayer of Christ, neither he nor any other creature could change, and nevertheless he betrayed Christ not under compulsion but will- ingly and with complete freedom. * It is exactly the same with a good individual; namely he is not good arbitrarily or by accident and yet is so little compelled that, rather, no compulsion, not even the gates of hell themselves, would be capable of overpowering his basic disposi- tion [Gesinnung]. This sort of free act, which becomes necessary, ad- mittedly cannot appear in consciousness to the degree the latter is merely self-awareness and only ideal, since it precedes consciousness
* This is what Luther maintains, correctly, in his treatise de servo arbitrio, even though he did not grasp the unification of such unwavering necessity with freedom of action in the correct manner.
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just as it precedes essence, indeed, first produces it; but, for that rea- son, this is no act of which no consciousness at all remains in man since anyone, for instance, who in order to excuse a wrong action, says "that's just the way I am" is surely aware that he is like he is through his guilt, as much as he is right that it was impossible for him to act otherwise. How frequently does it occur that, from childhood on, from a time when, considered empirically, we can hardly attribute to him freedom and self-reflection, an individual shows a propensity [Hang] to evil from which it can be | anticipated that he will bend nei- ther to discipline nor to doctrine, and which consequently brings to ripeness the wicked fruit that we had foreseen in the earliest sprout [Keim]; and yet no one doubts his capacity to deliberate, and all are as convinced of this individual's guilt as they could only ever be if each particular action had stood within his power. This general as- sessment of a propensity to evil as an act of freedom which, in accor- dance with its origin, is utterly unconscious and even irresistible points to an act and, thus, to a life before this life, except that it is not to be thought just as prior in time since that which is intelligible is altogether outside of time. Because there is the highest harmony in creation, and nothing is as discrete and consecutive as we must por- tray it to be, but rather in what is earlier that which comes later is also already active, and everything happens at once in one magic stroke, accordingly, man, who appears decided and determinate here, apprehends himself in a particular form in the first creation and is born as that which he had been from eternity since through this act even the type and constitution of his corporeal formation is deter- mined. The assumed contingency of human actions in relation to the unity of the world as a whole already outlined in the divine under- standing has been forever the greatest obstacle [Anstoss] in the doc- trine about freedom. 77 Hence, then, the presumption of predestina- tion, since neither the prescience of God nor genuine foresight can be relinquished. The authors of this presumption felt that human ac- tions had to have been determined from eternity; but they sought this determination not in the eternal act contemporaneous with crea- tion that institutes the being of man itself but rather in an absolute, that is, utterly groundless, decision of God whereby one would be predestined to damnation, the other to blessedness and, in so doing, they abolished the root of freedom. We too assert a predestination but in a completely different sense, namely in this: as man acts here
so has he acted from eternity and already in the beginning of crea- tion. His action does not become, just as he | himself does not be- come as a moral being, but rather it is eternal by nature. Thus this oft- heard and tormenting question also falls by the wayside: Why is exactly this individual destined to act in an evil and base manner while, in contrast, another is destined to act piously and justly? For the question presupposes that man is not initially action and act and that he as a spiritual being has a Being which is prior to, and indepen- dent of, his will, which, as has been shown, is impossible. 78
Once evil had been generally aroused in creation by the reaction of the ground to revelation, man apprehended himself from eternity in his individuality and selfishness, and all who are born are born with the dark principle of evil within even if this evil is raised to self- consciousness only through the emergence [Eintreten] of its oppo- site. As man is now, the good as light can be developed only from the dark principle through a divine transformation [Transmutation]. This original evil in man, which can be denied only by one who has come to know man in and outside himself only superficially, although wholly independent of freedom in relation to contemporary empiri- cal life, is still in its origin his own act and for that reason alone origi- nal sin; something that cannot be said about the admittedly equally undeniable disorder of forces that propagated itself like a contagion after the collapse had taken place. For the passions in themselves do not constitute evil, nor do we have to struggle just with flesh and blood but with an evil in and outside of us that is spirit. Only this evil, contracted through our own act but from birth, can on that account [daher] be called radical evil; and it is remarkable how Kant, who had not raised himself in theory to a transcendental act that determines all human Being, was led in his later investigations, merely by faithful observation of the phenomena of moral judgment, to the recognition of, as he expressed it, a subjective ground of human actions preced- ing every act apparent to the senses but that itself must be nonethe- less an actus of freedom. Whereas Fichte, who had grasped specula- tively the | concept of such an act, fell prey once again to the philanthropism [Philanthropismus] prevalent in his moral theory and wanted to find this evil that precedes all empirical action in the leth- argy of human nature. 79
There seems to be only one argument [Ein Grund] to advance against this point of view: that it cuts out all turning of man from evil
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toward good, and vice versa, at least for this life. But suppose now that human or divine assistance--(man always requires some assis- tance)--may destine an individual to convert to the good, then, that he grants the good spirit this influence and does not positively shut himself off from it, lies likewise already in the initial action whereby he is this individual and no other. That is why in the man in which this transformation has not taken place but in which the good principle is also not completely extinguished, the inner voice of his own better nature [Wesen], in terms of what he now is, never ceases to exhort him to such a transformation, just as he first finds peace within his own inner realm [in seinem eignen Innern] through a real and deci- sive turnaround and, as if only now the initial idea [Idea] had been satisfied, finds himself reconciled with his guardian spirit. It is true in the strictest understanding that, given how man is in fact created, it is not he himself but rather the good or evil spirit in him that acts; and, nonetheless, this does no harm to freedom. For precisely the allowing-to-act-within-himself [das in-sich-handeln-Lassen] of the good and evil principles is the result of an intelligible act whereby his being and life are determined.
After we have thus outlined the beginning and emergence of evil up to its becoming real in the individual, there seems to be nothing left but to describe its appearance in man.
The general possibility of evil consists, as shown, in the fact that man, instead of making his selfhood into the basis, the instrument, can strive to elevate it into the ruling and total will and, conversely, to make the spiritual within himself into a means. If the dark principle of selfhood and self-will in man is thoroughly penetrated by the light and at one with it, then God, as | eternal love or as really existing, is the bond of forces in him. But if the two principles are in discord, an- other spirit usurps the place where God should be, namely, the re- versed god, the being aroused to actuality by God's revelation that can never wrest actuality from potency, that, though it never is, yet always wants to be and, hence, like the matter of the ancients, can- not be grasped actually (actualized) by the complete understanding but only through the false imagination (logismo ? i notho ? i*), which is sin
* The Platonic expression in the Timaeus p. 349, Vol. IX of the Zweibr. Ed. : earlier in Tim. Locr. De an. Mundi, ibid. , p. 5.
itself; for this reason, since, having no Being itself, it borrows the ap- pearance of Being from true Being, as the serpent borrows colors from the light, it strives by means of mirrorlike images to bring man to the senselessness in which it alone can be understood and accepted by him. 80 That is why it is presented correctly not only as an enemy of all creatures (because they come to be only through the bond of love) and, above all, of man, but also as the seducer of man who entices him toward false pleasure [falsche Lust] and the acceptance of what does not have Being in his imagination; there it is supported by the tendency to evil proper to man, whose eyes, being incapable of be- holding constantly the luster of the divine and the truth, always look away to what does not have Being [das Nichtseiende]. Thus is the be- ginning of sin, that man transgresses from authentic Being into non- Being, from truth into lies, from the light into darkness, in order to be- come a self-creating ground and, with the power of the centrum which he has within himself, to rule over all things. For the feeling still re- mains in the one having strayed [gewichen] from the centrum that he was all things, namely, in and with God; for that reason he strives once again to return there, but for himself, and not where he might be all things, namely, in God. From this arises the hunger of selfishness which, to the degree that it renounces the whole and unity, becomes ever more desolate, poorer, but precisely for that reason greedier, hungrier, and more venomous. In evil there is the self-consuming and always annihilating | contradiction that it strives to become crea- turely just by annihilating the bond of creaturely existence and, out of overweening pride [U? bermut] to be all things, falls into non-Being. In- cidentally, obvious sin does not fill us with regret, as does mere weakness or incapacity, but with fear and horror, a feeling that is only explicable on the basis that sin strives to break the word, touch the ground of creation, and profane the mystery. But this should also be revealed, for only in the opposition of sin is revealed the most inner bond of the dependence of things and the being of God which is, as it were, before all existence (not yet mitigated by it) and, for that rea- son, terrifying. For God himself cloaks this principle in creatures and covers it with love in so far as he makes it into the ground and, so to speak, the carrier of beings. This principle becomes actual [aktuell] for and against anyone who now provokes it by misusing self-will raised to the level of selfhood. For, because God cannot be disturbed,
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much less abolished, in his existence, so, according to the necessary correspondence that occurs between God and his basis [Basis], pre- cisely that radiant glimpse of life in the depths of darkness in every individual flares up in the sinner into a consuming fire, just as in a liv- ing organism a particular joint or system, as soon as it has strayed from the whole, perceives the unity and cooperative effort itself to which it is opposed as fire (= fever) and ignites from an inner heat.
We have seen how, through false imagining and cognition that orients itself according to what does not have Being, the human spirit opens itself to the spirit of lies and falsehood and, fascinated by the latter, soon loses its initial freedom. It follows from this that, by contrast, the true good could be effected only through a divine magic, namely through the immediate presence of what has Being in consciousness and cognition. An arbitrary good is as impossible as an arbitrary evil. True freedom is in harmony with a holy necessity, the likes of which we perceive in essential cognition, when spirit and heart, bound only by their own | law, freely affirm what is necessary. If evil exists in the discord of the two principles, then good can exist only in the complete accord of the two, and the bond that unifies both must be divine since they are one, not in a conditional, but in a complete and unconditional, manner. Hence, it is not possible to present the relation of both as an arbitrary morality or one originat- ing in self-determination. The latter concept presupposed that the two principles were not in themselves one; but how are they sup- posed to become one if they are not one? Moreover, this concept leads back to the inconsistent system of equilibrium of free will. The relation of both principles is that of a ligature of the dark principle (selfhood) onto the light. It may be permitted to us to express this through religiosity according to the original meaning of the word. We do not understand by this meaning what a sickly era calls idle brood- ing, rapturous divination, or a willing-to-feel [Fu? hlen-wollen] of the divine. 81 For God is the clear cognition in us or the spiritual light it- self in which everything else first becomes clear--far be it that it should itself be unclear; and one who has this cognition is not per- mitted by it to be idle or to celebrate. This cognition is, where it really is, something much more substantial than our philosophers of feeling [Empfindungsphilosophen] think. 82 We understand religiosity in the original, practical meaning of the word. It is conscientiousness
or that one act in accordance with what one knows and not contra- dict the light of cognition in one's conduct. An individual for whom this contradiction is impossible, not in a human, physical, or psychological, but rather in a divine way, is called religious, con- scientious in the highest sense of the word. One is not conscientious who in a given instance must first hold the command of duty before himself in order to decide to do right out of respect for that com- mand. Already, according to the meaning of the word, religiosity does not permit any choice between opposites, any aequilibrium ar- bitrii (the plague of all morality), but rather only the highest reso- luteness in favor of what is right without any choice. Conscientious- ness just does not necessarily and always appear as enthusiasm or as an extraordinary elevation over oneself which, | once the conceit of arbitrary morality has been struck down, another and much worse spirit of pride would happily have it become as well. 83 Con- scientiousness can appear quite formal in the strict fulfillment of duty, where even the character of hardness and cruelty is added to it, as in the soul of M. Cato, to whom one ancient ascribed this inner and almost divine necessity of action by saying that Cato most re- sembled virtue because he never acted correctly in order to act in that way (out of respect for the command), but rather because he could not at all have acted otherwise. 84 This severity of disposition is, like the severity of life in nature, the seed from which true grace and divinity first come forth into bloom; but the ostensibly more noble morality that believes it is permitted to heap scorn on this seed is like a sterile blossom that produces no fruit. * The highest, just because it is the highest, is not always generally valid; and whoever has come to know the race of spiritual libertines, whom precisely the highest in science and sentiment must serve for the most outrageous improprieties of spirit and elevation [of self] above the so-called general sense of duty, will surely hesitate to declare it as such. It is already predictable that on the path where everyone wanted to be a beautiful soul rather than a rational one, to be called noble rather than just, that moral doctrine, too, will be lead back to the general concept of taste whereby vice would then still consist in
* ThefrequentlycitedreviewbyMr. Fr. SchlegelintheHeidelb. Annuals,p. 154 contains very just observations concerning this moral genius of the era.
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bad or ruined taste only. * If the divine principle of this doctrine shows through as such in a serious disposition, virtue appears thus as enthusiasm; as | heroism (in the struggle against evil), as the beau- tiful free courage of man to act as his God instructs him and not to fall away in action from what he has acknowledged in thought; as belief, not in the sense of a holding-to-be-true [Fu? rwahrhalten], which is seen as commendable or as leaving something out in regard to certainty-- a meaning that has been foisted onto this word through usage for common things--but in its original meaning as trusting, having confi- dence, in the divine that excludes all choice. If finally a ray of divine love lowers itself into an unshakable seriousness of disposition, which, however, is always presupposed, then a supreme clarity of moral life arises in grace and divine beauty.
We have now investigated to the extent possible the genesis of the opposition of good and evil and how both act through each other in the creation. But the highest question of this investigation returns yet again. God has been considered thus far as a self-revealing being. But how, then, does he relate to this revelation as a moral being? Is reve- lation an action that ensues with blind and unconscious necessity or is it a free and conscious act? And if it is the latter, how does God as a moral being relate to evil, the possibility and actuality of which de- pend on the self-revelation? If he willed the latter, did he also will evil, and how is this willing to be reconciled with the holiness and highest
perfection in God, or, as commonly expressed, how, given the fact of evil [wegen des Bo? sen], is God to be justified?
The preliminary question in fact seems to have been decided by the foregoing due to the freedom of God in the self-revelation. If God were for us a merely logical abstraction, then everything would have to proceed from him with logical necessity as well; he himself would be, as it were, only the highest law from which all things flow out, but without personhood [Personalita? t] and consciousness of personhood.
* A young man who, probably like many others now, is too arrogant to walk along the honest path of Kant and is yet incapable of lifting himself up to a level that is actually better, blathers about aesthetics [a? sthetisch irreredet], has already announced such a grounding of morality through aesthetics. With such advances perhaps something serious too will come of the Kant- ian joke that Euclid should be considered a somewhat ponderous introduc- tion to drawing.
But we have explained God as a living unity of forces; and if personal- ity [Perso? nlichkeit] is founded, according to our previous explana- tion, on the connection between a self-determining [selbsta? ndig] being and a basis independent of him, then, similarly, because both of these completely | saturate the other and are but one being, God is the highest personality through the connection of the ideal principle in him with the (relative to it) independent ground, since basis and things existing in him necessarily unify themselves in one absolute existence; or also, if the living unity of both is spirit, then, as their ab- solute bond, God is spirit in the eminent and absolute understanding. It is so certain that the personality in him is grounded only through the bond of God with nature that, by contrast, the God of pure ideal- ism, as well as the God of pure realism, is necessarily an impersonal being, of which the concepts of Spinoza and Fichte are the clearest proofs. But, because in God there is an independent ground of reality and, hence, two equally eternal beginnings of self-revelation, God also must be considered in regard to his freedom in relation to both. The first beginning for the creation is the yearning of the One to give birth to itself or the will of the ground. The second is the will of love, whereby the word is spoken out into nature and through which God first makes himself personal. 85 That is why the will of the ground can- not be free in the sense in which the will of love is. It is not a con- scious will nor one connected with reflection, although it is also not a completely unconscious one that moves according to blind, mechan- ical necessity; but it is rather of intermediate nature, as desire or ap- petite, and is most readily comparable to the beautiful urge of a na- ture in becoming that strives to unfold itself and whose inner movements are involuntary (cannot be omitted), without there being a feeling of compulsion in them. Plainly free or conscious will is, how- ever, the will of love, precisely because it is what it is: the revelation that results from it is action and act. The whole of nature tells us that it in no way exists by virtue of a merely geometrical necessity; in it there is not simply pure reason but personality and spirit (as we likely distinguish the rational author from one possessing wit); other- wise the geometrical understanding that has ruled for so long would have long ago had to penetrate into nature and prove its idol of gen- eral and eternal natural laws to a greater degree than has | occurred thus far, whereas it has had to recognize the irrational relation of na- ture to itself rather more every day. The creation is not an occurrence
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but an act. There are no results from general laws; rather, God, that is, the person of God, is the general law, and everything that happens, happens by virtue of the personality of God, not according to some abstract necessity that we in acting would not tolerate, to say nothing of God. In the Leibnizian philosophy, which is ruled far too much by the spirit of abstraction, the recognition of laws of nature as morally, but not geometrically, necessary, and just as little arbitrary, is one of its most pleasing aspects. "I have found," says Leibniz, "that the laws which are actually to be proved in nature are still not absolutely de- monstrable, but this is also not necessary. Though they can be proved in various ways, yet something must always be presupposed which is not entirely geometrically necessary. Hence, these laws are the proof of a highest, intelligent, and free being against the system of absolute necessity. They are neither entirely necessary (in this ab- stract understanding), nor entirely arbitrary, but rather stand in the middle as laws that are derived from a perfect wisdom which is above all things. "* The highest striving of the dynamic mode of ex- planation is nothing else than this reduction of natural laws to mind, spirit and will.
In order to define the relation of God as a moral being to the world, general cognition of freedom in creation nevertheless does not reach far enough; moreover, the question still remains whether the act of self-revelation was free in the sense that all consequences of it were foreseen in God? But this too is necessarily to be affirmed; for the will to revelation would not itself be living if no other will turning back into the inner realm of being did not oppose it: but in this holding-in- itself [An-sich-halten] emerges a reflexive picture of all that is impli- citly contained in the essence in which God ideally realizes himself or, what is the same thing, recognizes himself beforehand in his | be- coming real. Thus, since there is a tendency in God working against the will to revelation, love, and goodness or the communicativum sui [self-evidence] must predominate so that there may be revelation; and this, the decision, only really completes the concept of revelation as a conscious and morally free act.
Notwithstanding this concept, and, although the action of revela- tion in God is necessary only morally or in regard to goodness and love, the notion remains of God's deliberating with himself or of a
* Tentam. Theod. Opp. T. I, pp. 365, 366.
choice among various possible worlds, a notion that is groundless and untenable. To the contrary, just as soon as the closer determina- tion of a moral necessity is added, the proposition is utterly undeni- able: that everything proceeds from the divine nature with absolute necessity, that everything which is possible by virtue of this nature must also be actual, and what is not actual also must be morally im- possible. Spinozism is by no means in error because of the claim that there is such an unshakable necessity in God, but rather because it takes this necessity to be impersonal and inanimate. For, since this system grasps altogether only one side of the absolute--namely the real one or the extent to which God functions only in the ground-- these propositions indeed lead to a blind necessity bereft of under- standing [verstandlos]. But if God is essentially love and goodness, then what is morally necessary in him also follows with a truly meta- physical necessity. If choice in the truest understanding were re- quired for complete freedom in God, then one would still have to go on further. For, there would only then have been perfect freedom of choice, if God also had been able to create a less complete world than was possible according to all conditions. Likewise, since nothing is so inconsistent that it also has not been put forth once, it has been claimed by some and in seriousness--not merely like the Castilian King Alphonso, whose well-known utterance concerned only the then dominant Ptolemaic system--that, if he wanted to, God could have created a better world than this one. 86 Thus the arguments [Gru? nde] against the unity of possibility and actuality | in God are derived as well from the wholly formal concept of possibility, that everything is possible which is not self-contradictory; for example, in the well- known objection that all coherently imagined novels must be actual occurrences. Even Spinoza did not have such a merely formal con- cept; all possibility is valid for him only in relation to divine perfec- tion; and Leibniz accepts this concept obviously merely in order to stress a choice in God and thereby distance himself as far as possible from Spinoza. "God chooses," he says, "among possibilities and for that reason chooses freely without necessitation: only then would there be no choice, no freedom, if only one thing were possible. " If nothing more is lacking for freedom than such an empty possibility, it can be admitted that formally, or without having regard to the divine way of being [Wesenheit], infinite things were and still are possible; but this entails wanting to claim divine freedom through a concept
SW | 397-398 61
62 OA 487-489
that is in itself false and is possible merely in our understanding, not in God, in whom disregard for his essence or perfections can likely not be thought. With respect to the plurality of possible worlds, an anarchy in itself, as is, according to our explanation, the original movement of the ground, seems to offer an infinity of possibilities, like material that has not yet been formed but can receive all forms; and if, for instance, the possibility of several worlds should be based on this material, then it would only need to be remarked that surely no such possibility would follow in regard to God since the ground is not to be called God, and God according to his perfection can only will one thing. But by no means is this anarchy also to be thought as if there were no archetype [Urtypus] in the ground containing the only possible world according to God's essence, which in the actual crea- tion is raised from potency into action [zum Aktus] only through divi- sion, regulation of forces and exclusion of the darkening or hindering anarchy. In the divine understanding itself, however, as in primeval [uranfa? nglich] wisdom in which God realizes himself ideally or as archetype [urbildlich], there is only one possible world as there is only one God. |
In the divine understanding there is a system; yet God himself is not a system, but rather a life; and the answer to the question as to [wegen] the possibility of evil in regard to God, for the sake of which the foregoing has been set out, also lies in this fact alone. All exis- tence demands a condition so that it may become real, namely per- sonal, existence. Even God's existence could not be personal without such a condition except that he has this condition within and not out- side himself. He cannot abolish the condition because he would oth- erwise have to abolish himself; he can come to terms with the condi- tion only through love and subordinate it to himself for his glorification. There would also be a ground of darkness in God, if he had not made the condition into his own, bound himself to it as one and for the sake of absolute personality. Man never gains control over the condition, although in evil he strives to do so; it is only lent to him, and is independent from him; hence, his personality and self- hood can never rise to full actuality [zum Aktus].