No More Learning

Nothing at all can be achieved with such abstract concepts of God as actus purissumus [purest actuality], the likes of which earlier philosophy put forward, or with such concepts as more recent philo- sophy has brought forth again and again out of a concern to remove God quite far indeed from all of nature. God is something more real than a merely moral world order and has entirely different and more vital motive forces in himself than the desolate subtlety of abstract idealists attributes to him. The abhorrence of everything real that finds the spiritual befouled through any contact with the latter must of course also blind one's eye to the origin of evil. Idealism, if it does not have as its basis a living realism, becomes just as empty and ab- stract a system as that of Leibniz, Spinoza, or any other dogmatist. The entire new European philosophy since its beginning (with Des- cartes) has the common defect that nature is not available for it and that it lacks a living ground. Spinoza's realism is thereby as abstract as the idealism of Leibniz. Idealism is the soul of philosophy; realism is the body; only both together can constitute a living whole. 29 The latter can never provide the principle but must be the ground and medium in which the former makes itself real and takes on flesh and blood. If a philosophy is lacking this living foundation, which is com- monly a sign that the ideal principle was originally only weakly at work within it, then it loses itself in those systems whose abstract concepts of aseity, modifications, and so forth, stand in the sharpest contrast with the living force and richness of reality. Where, however, the ideal principle is actually active to a great degree but cannot find a reconciling and mediating basis, it generates a bleak and wild en- thusiasm that breaks out into self-mutilation or, like the priests of the Phrygian goddess, | self-castration which is achieved in philosophy through the renunciation of reason and science. 30
It seemed necessary to begin this treatise with the correction of es- sential concepts that have always been confused, but especially in re- cent times. Hence, the preceding remarks are to be considered merely as an introduction to our genuine investigation. We have al- ready explained: that point of view which is fully adequate to the task to be undertaken here can only be developed from the fundamental
principles of a true philosophy of nature. We do not deny for that rea- son that this correct point of view has not been present in isolated minds for a long time already. But it is also precisely these minds that sought the living ground of nature without fear of the ever trite words of slander against real philosophy, like materialism, pantheism, and so on, and who were natural philosophers (in both senses of the word) in contrast to the dogmatists and abstract idealists who dis- missed them as mystics. 31
The natural philosophy of our time has first advanced in science the distinction between being in so far as it exists and being in so far as it is merely the ground of existence. 32 This distinction is as old as its first scientific presentation. * Notwithstanding that it is precisely this point at which natural philosophy most decisively turns away from Spinoza's path, in Germany it could indeed still be claimed up to this time that its metaphysical principles were the same as those of Spinoza; and, although it is precisely this distinction which at the same time brings about the most decisive differentiation of nature from God, this has not prevented accusation that it is a confusion of God and nature. Since this is the same distinction on which the present investigation is based, let the following remarks be made to- ward its explanation.
Since nothing is prior to, or outside of [ausser], God, he must have the ground of his existence in himself. All philosophies say this; but they | speak of this ground as of a mere concept without making it into something real [reell] and actual [wirklich]. This ground of his existence, which God has in himself, is not God considered abso- lutely, that is, in so far as he exists; for it is only the ground of his ex- istence. It [the ground33] is nature--in God, a being indeed insepara- ble, yet still distinct, from him. This relation can be explained analogically through that of gravity and light in nature. 34 Gravity precedes light as its ever dark ground, which itself is not actu [ac- tual], and flees into the night as the light (that which exists) dawns. Even light does not fully remove the seal under which gravity lies contained. ? Precisely for this reason gravity is neither the pure es- sence nor the actual Being of absolute identity but rather follows
* See this in the Journal for Speculative Physics, vol. II, no. 2, comment to ? 54, further comment to ? 93 and the explanation on p. 114.
? Ibid. , pp. 59, 60.
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only from its own nature* or is absolute identity, namely considered as a particular potency. For, incidentally, that which relative to grav- ity appears as existing also belongs in itself to the ground, and, hence, nature in general is everything that lies beyond the absolute Being of absolute identity. ? Incidentally, as far as this precedence is concerned, it is to be thought neither as precedence according to time nor as priority of being. In the circle out of which everything be- comes, it is no contradiction that that through which the One is gen- erated may itself be in turn begotten by it. Here there is no first and last because all things mutually presuppose each other, no thing is another thing and yet no thing is not without another thing. 35 God has in himself an inner ground of his existence that in this respect pre- cedes him in existence; but, precisely in this way, God is again the prius [what is before] of the ground in so far as the ground, even as such, could not exist if God did not exist actu.
A reflection starting out from things leads to this same distinction. First, the concept of immanence is to be set aside completely in so far as thereby a dead containment of things in God is supposed to be ex- pressed. We recognize rather that the concept of | becoming is the only one appropriate to the nature of things. But they cannot become in God, considered in an absolute manner, since they are different from him toto genere or infinitely, to speak more correctly. In order to be divided from God, they must become in a ground different from God. 36 Since, however, nothing indeed can be outside of God, this contradiction can only be resolved by things having their ground in that which in God himself is not He Himself,? that is, in that which is the ground of his existence. If we want to bring this way of being closer to us in human terms, we can say: it is the yearning the eternal One feels to give birth to itself. 37 The yearning is not the One itself but is after all co-eternal with it. The yearning wants to give birth to God, that is, unfathomable unity, but in this respect there is not yet unity in the yearning itself. Hence, it is, considered for itself, also will; but will in which there is no understanding and, for that reason, also not independent and complete will, since the understanding is really the will in will. Nevertheless it is a will38 of the understanding, namely
* Ibid. , p. 41.
? Ibid. , p. 114.
? In the sense that one says: the logic of the enigma [das Wort des Ra? tsels].
yearning and desire for the latter; not a conscious but a divining will [ahnender Wille] whose divining is the understanding. 39 We are speaking of the essence of yearning, considered in and for itself, that likely must be brought into view, although it has long been repressed by the higher things that have arisen out of it, and although we can- not grasp it by the senses but rather only with the mind and [in] thought. After the eternal act of self-revelation, everything in the world is, as we see it now, rule, order and form; but anarchy still lies in the ground, as if it could break through once again, and nowhere does it appear as if order and form were what is original but rather as if initial anarchy had been brought to order. 40 This is the incompre- hensible base of reality in | things, the indivisible remainder, that which with the greatest exertion cannot be resolved in understand- ing but rather remains eternally in the ground. The understanding is born in the genuine sense from that which is without understanding. Without this preceding darkness creatures have no reality; darkness is their necessary inheritance. 41 God alone--as the one who exists-- dwells in pure light since he alone is begotten from himself. The arro- gance of man rises up [stra? ubt sich] against this origin from the ground and even seeks moral reasons against it. Nevertheless we would know of nothing that could drive man more to strive for the light with all of his strength than the consciousness of the deep night from which he has been lifted into existence. The effeminate lamenta- tions that what is without understanding is thus made the root of understanding, the night into the beginning of light, indeed rest in part on a misunderstanding of the matter (since one does not grasp how, from this point of view, the conceptual priority of understanding and essence can nevertheless be maintained), yet do express the true system of today's philosophers who happily want to make fumum ex fulgore [smoke from lightning]42 for which, however, even the most violent Fichtean impetuosity is not sufficient. 43 All birth is birth from darkness into light; the seed kernel must be sunk into the earth and die in darkness so that the more beautiful shape of light may lift and unfold itself in the radiance of the sun. 44 Man is formed in the maternal body; and only from the obscurity of that which is with- out understanding (from feeling, yearning, the sovereign [herrlich] mother of knowledge) grow luminous thoughts. Thus we must ima- gine the original yearning as it directs itself to the understanding, though still not recognizing it, just as we in our yearning seek out
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unknown and nameless good, and as it moves, divining itself, like a wave-wound, whirling sea, akin to Plato's matter, following dark, un- certain law, incapable of constructing for itself anything enduring. 45 But, corresponding to the yearning, which as the still dark ground is the first stirring of divine existence, an inner, reflexive representation is generated in God himself through which, since it can have no other
object but God, God sees himself | in an exact image of himself. This representation is the first in which God, considered as absolute, is re- alized [verwirklicht], although only in himself; this representation is with God in the beginning and is the God who was begotten in God himself. This representation is at the same time the understanding-- the Word--of this yearning* and the eternal spirit which, perceiving the word within itself and at the same time the infinite yearning, and impelled by the love that it itself is, proclaims the word so that the understanding and yearning together now become a freely creating and all-powerful will and build in the initial anarchy of nature as in its own element or instrument. 46 The first effect of the understanding in nature is the division of forces, since only thus can the understanding unfold the unity that is unconsciously but necessarily immanent in nature as in a seed, just as in man the light enters into the dark yearn- ing to create something so that in the chaotic jumble of thoughts, all hanging together, but each hindering the other from emerging, thoughts divide themselves from each other, and now the unity hid- den in the ground and containing all raises itself up; or as in the plant the dark bond of gravity dissolves only in relation to the unfolding and expansion of forces, and as the unity hidden in divided material is developed. Because, namely, this being (of primordial nature) is nothing else than the eternal ground for the existence of God, it must contain within itself, although locked up, the essence of God as a re- splendent glimpse of life in the darkness of the depths. 47 However, yearning aroused by the understanding strives from now on to retain
* This is the only correct dualism, namely that which at the same time per- mits a unity. The above discussion concerned the modified dualism, whereby the evil principle is not coordinated with, but subordinated to, the good principle. It is hardly to be feared that someone will confuse the relationship put forward here with that dualism in which the subordinate is always an essentially evil principle and, precisely for that reason, in re- spect of its origin in God remains completely incomprehensible.
the glimpse of life seized within itself and to close itself up in itself so that a ground may always remain. Since, therefore, the understand- ing, or the light placed in primordial nature, arouses the yearning that is striving back into itself to divide the forces (for the surrender of darkness), while emphasizing precisely in this division the unity closed up within the divided elements--the hidden glimpse of light-- something comprehensible and individuated first emerges in this manner and, indeed, not through external representation but rather | through genuine impression [Ein-Bildung], since that which arises in nature is impressed [hineingebildet] into her or, still more correctly, through awakening, since the understanding brings to the fore the unity or idea hidden in the divided ground. 48 The forces split up (but not fully dispersed) in this division are the material from which the body is subsequently configured; the vital bond which arises in divi- sion--thus from the depths of the natural ground, as the center of forces--however, is the soul. Because the original understanding raises the soul up as something inner [als Inneres] out of a ground that is independent of it, the soul thereby remains independent of the original understanding as a particular and self-sufficient being.
It is easy to see that, in the resistance of the yearning that is neces- sary for any complete birth, the innermost bond of forces loosens it- self only in a gradually occurring unfolding; and at each point of divi- sion of forces a new being emerges from nature whose soul must be that much more complete the more it contains divided what is not di- vided in other things. 49 To show how each succeeding process ap- proaches closer to the essence of nature, until the innermost center appears in the highest division of forces, is the task of a comprehen- sive philosophy of nature. For the current purpose only the following is essential. Each being having emerged in nature according to the manner indicated has a dual principle in itself which, however, is ba- sically but one and the same considered from both possible sides. The first principle is that through which things are separated from God or through which they exist in the mere ground; since, however, an original unity indeed occurs between what is in the ground and what is prefigured in the understanding, and the process of creation involves only an inner transmutation or transfiguration of the initial principle of darkness into the light (because the understanding or the light placed in nature genuinely seeks in the ground only the light that is related to it and turned inward), the--by its nature--dark principle
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is exactly what is transfigured in the light, and both are, though only to a certain point, | one in each natural being. The principle, to the extent that it comes from the ground and is dark, is the self-will of creatures which, however, to the extent that it has not yet been raised to (does not grasp) complete unity with the light (as principle of understanding), is pure craving or desire, that is, blind will. The understanding as universal will stands against this self-will of crea- tures, using and subordinating the latter to itself as a mere instru- ment. But, if through advancing mutation and division of all forces, the deepest and most inner point of initial darkness in a being is fi- nally transfigured wholly into the light, then the will of this same being is indeed, to the extent it is individual, also a truly particular will, yet, in itself or as the centrum of all other particular wills, one with the primal will or the understanding, so that now from both a single whole comes into being. This raising of the deepest centrum into light occurs in none of the creatures visible to us other than man. In man there is the whole power of the dark principle and at the same time the whole strength of the light. In him there is the deepest abyss and the loftiest sky or both centra. The human will is the seed--hidden in eternal yearning--of the God who is present still in the ground only; it is the divine panorama of life, locked up within the depths, which God beheld as he fashioned the will to nature. In him (in man) alone God loved the world, and precisely this likeness of God was possessed by yearning in the centrum as it came into op- position with the light. Because he emerges from the Ground (is creaturely), man has in relation to God a relatively independent prin- ciple in himself; but because precisely this principle--without it ceasing for that reason to be dark in accordance with its ground--is transfigured in light, there arises in him something higher, spirit. For the eternal spirit proclaims unity or the word into nature. The pro- claimed (real) word, however, is only in the unity of light and dark- ness (vowel and consonant). 50 Now both principles are indeed in all things, yet they are without complete consonance [Konsonanz] due to the deficiency of that which has been raised out of the ground. Only in man, therefore, | is the word fully proclaimed which in all other things is held back and incomplete. But spirit, that is, God as existing actu, reveals itself in the proclaimed word. In so far as the soul is now the living identity of both principles, it is spirit; and spirit is in God. Were now the identity of both principles in the spirit of
man exactly as indissoluble as in God, then there would be no dis- tinction, that is, God as spirit would not be revealed. The same unity that is inseverable in God must therefore be severable in man--and this is the possibility of good and evil. 51
We say expressly: the possibility of evil. And we are seeking at the moment to make intelligible only the severability of the principles. The reality of evil is the object of a whole other investigation. The principle raised up from the ground of nature whereby man is separ- ated from God is the selfhood in him which, however, through its unity with the ideal principle, becomes spirit. Selfhood as such is spirit; or man is spirit as a selfish [selbstisch], particular being (separ- ated from God)--precisely this connection constitutes personality. Since selfhood is spirit, however, it is at the same time raised from the creaturely into what is above the creaturely; it is will that beholds it- self in complete freedom, being no longer an instrument of the pro- ductive [schaffenden] universal will in nature, but rather above and outside of all nature. Spirit is above the light as in nature it raises it- self above the unity of the light and the dark principle. Since it is spirit, selfhood is therefore free from both principles. Now selfhood or self-will is, however, only spirit and thus free or above nature by virtue of the fact that it is actually transformed in the primal will (the light) so that it (as self-will) indeed remains in the ground (because there must always be a ground)--just as in a transparent body the matter which has been raised to identity with the light does not for that reason cease being matter (the dark principle)--yet, it does so merely as a carrier and, as it were, receptacle of the higher principle of light. Since, however, selfhood has spirit (because this reigns over light and darkness)--if it is in fact not the spirit | of eternal love-- selfhood can separate itself from the light; or self-will can strive to be as a particular will that which it only is through identity with the uni- versal will; to be that which it only is, in so far as it remains in the cen- trum (just as the calm will in the quiet ground of nature is universal will precisely because it remains in the ground), also on the periph- ery; or as created being (for the will of creatures is admittedly out- side of the ground, but it is then also mere particular will, not free but bound). For this reason there thus emerges in the will of man a separ- ation of selfhood having become animated by spirit (since spirit is above the light) from the light, that is, a dissolution of the principles which are indissoluble in God. If, to the contrary, the self-will of man
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remains as central will in the ground so that the divine relation of the principles persists (as, namely, the will in the centrum of nature never elevates itself over the light but remains under the latter as a base in the ground), and if, instead of the spirit of dissension that wants to sep- arate the particular from the general principle, the spirit of love pre- vails in it, then the will is in divine form [Art] and order. But that pre- cisely this elevation of self-will is evil is clarified by the following. The will that steps out from its being beyond nature [das U? bernatu? rliche], in order as general will to make itself at once particular and creaturely, strives to reverse the relation of the principles, to elevate the ground over the cause, to use the spirit that it obtained only for the sake of the centrum outside the centrum and against creatures; from this re- sults collapse [Zerru? ttung] within the will itself and outside it. The human will is to be regarded as a bond of living forces; now, as long as it remains in unity with the universal will, these same forces exist in divine measure and balance. But no sooner than self-will itself moves from the centrum as its place, so does the bond of forces as well; in its stead rules a mere particular will that can no longer bring the forces to unity among themselves as the original will could and, thus, must strive to put together or form its own peculiar life from the forces that have moved apart from one another, an indignant host of desires and appetites (since each | individual force is also a craving and appe- tite), this being possible in so far as the first bond of forces, the first ground of nature itself, persists even in evil. But since there can in- deed be no true life like that which could exist only in the original re- lation, a life emerges which, though individual, is, however, false, a life of mendacity, a growth of restlessness and decay. The most fitting comparison here is offered by disease which, as the disorder having arisen in nature through the misuse of freedom, is the true counter- part of evil or sin. Universal disease never exists without the hidden forces of the ground having broken out [sich auftun]: it emerges when the irritable principle, which is supposed to rule as the innermost bond of forces in the quiet of the depths, activates [aktuiert] itself; or when aroused Archaeus leaves his peaceful dwelling in the centrum and steps into his surroundings. 52 Just as, by contrast, all original heal- ing consists in the reconstruction of the relation of the periphery to the centrum, and the transition from disease to health can in fact only occur through its opposite, namely through restoration of the separate and individual life into the being's inner glimpse of light, from which
restoration division [Krisis] once again proceeds. Even particular dis- ease emerges only because that which has its freedom or life only so that it may remain in the whole strives to be for itself. As disease is ad- mittedly nothing having inherent being [nichts Wesenhaftes], really only an apparent picture of life and merely a meteoric appearance of it--an oscillation between Being and non-Being--yet announces itself nevertheless as something very real to feeling, so it is with evil.
In more recent times Franz Baader especially has emphasized this concept of evil, the only correct one, according to which evil resides in a positive perversion or reversal of the principles, and has ex- plained this through profound analogies, in particular, that of dis- ease. * | All other explanations of evil leave the understanding and moral consciousness equally unsatisfied. 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.
SW | 385-386 51
52 OA 470-473
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.