No More Learning

The architecture was unusual because it was at odds with virtually all accepted rules; yet it was pleasing, and yet it was fitting.
The architecture was pleasing primarily because of the admiration that simplicity and greatness arouse when they seem to disdain rich- ness and decoration more than to manage without them.
The architecture was fitting because of permanence and comfort. The entire palace stood after many, many years still in the same cleanness and completeness with which the builders had added the finishing touches; from the outside a bit incomprehensible; from the inside light and coherence everywhere.
Those who claimed to be knowledgeable in architecture were par- ticularly offended by its exterior, which was disrupted with few win- dows, scattered to and fro, large and small, round and square; in- stead, however, it had all the more doors and gates of various shapes and sizes.
One did not grasp how enough light could come into so many rooms through so few windows. For it occurred to the fewest that the most elegant rooms received their light from above.
One did not grasp for what reason so many and varied kinds of en- trances would be necessary since a great portal on each side would be likely more becoming and would provide exactly this service. For it occurred to the fewest that anyone who may be called into the pal- ace should arrive precisely where one needed him in the shortest and most fail-safe way.
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And thus among the allegedly knowledgeable arose much contro- versy that was normally promoted most heatedly by those who had had the least chance to see much of the inside.
Also, there was something of which, at first sight, one would have believed that it necessarily would have to make the controversy very effortless and short, which, nevertheless, precisely most compli- cated the controversy, which provided precisely the richest nourish- ment for the most stubborn continuation of it. Namely, one was thought to have various old plans which were supposed to be de- scended [herschreiben] from the initial builders of the palace; and these plans were found to be annotated with words and characters whose language and characteristics were as good as lost.
Thus everyone explained these words and characters to them- selves as they saw fit. Everyone thus composed from these plans an arbitrary new one; by which new one someone or other not infre- quently let himself become so intoxicated that he not only himself swore by it but also had others swear by it, now by persuasion, now by force.
Only a few said, "What do your plans have to do with me? " This and that one said, "They are all the same to us. It is enough that we hear every moment that the most beneficial wisdom fills the whole palace and that from it nothing but beauty and order and prosperity are spreading themselves over the whole country. "
They were often poorly received, these few! For, sometimes, when they paid a bit closer attention to one of the specific plans in a hu- morous spirit, they themselves were denounced as murderous incen- diaries of the palace by those who had sworn by this plan.
But they did not care much about this, and they became, exactly because of this, most capable of associating with those who worked within the palace and had neither the time nor the desire to get in- volved in controversies that were not controversies for them.
Once--when the controversy about the plans was not so much set- tled as in a quiescent phase--once at midnight the guards' voice sud- denly echoed: Fire! Fire in the palace!
And what happened? Then, everyone got up from his bed; and everyone, as if the fire were not in the palace but in his own house, dashed toward the most valuable thing that he believed he had: to- ward his plan. "Let us only save it! " thought everyone, "The palace can- not be more truly burning up there than it is standing here! "
And thus everyone ran with his plan into the street where, instead of hurrying to protect the palace, each wanted to show the other where the palace presumably was on fire. "Look, neighbor! It's burn- ing here! Here is the best place to cope with the fire. " "Or rather here, neighbor; here! " "What are you both thinking? The palace is burning here! " "What kind of an emergency would it be if it were on fire there? But it is certainly burning here! " "Put it out here whoever wants to. I will not put it out here. " "And I will not put it out here! " "And I will not put it out here! "
Because of these busy disputants, it could actually have burned down, the palace, if it had been on fire. But the horrified guards had taken the northern lights for the blaze of a fire.
LESSING | "THE PARABLE" | 105
FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI
From On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters To Mr. Moses Mendelssohn1
[. . . ]
The following morning, when I returned to my room after breakfast to get dressed, Lessing followed me after a while. I was sitting having my hair done, and meanwhile Lessing settled himself quietly at a table at the end of the room. As soon as we were alone, and I sat down at the other side of the table on which Lessing had his arms propped, he began: I came to talk to you about my hen kai pan [one and all]. You
were distressed yesterday.
I. You surprised me, and I may indeed have blushed and turned
pale, for I felt my bewilderment. It was not distress. Of course, noth- ing had I assumed less than to find a Spinozist or a pantheist in you. And you told me that so bluntly. I had come mainly to get help from you against Spinoza.
Lessing. Then you do in fact know him?
I. I believe I do as well as very few have known him.
Lessing. Then you are not to be helped. You should rather become
entirely his friend. There is no other philosophy than the philosophy of Spinoza.
I. This might be true. For the determinist, if he wants to cut to the heart of the matter [bu? ndig sein], has to become a fatalist. From this the rest follows by itself.
Lessing. I see we understand each other. I am all the more eager to hear from you what you consider the spirit of Spinozism to be; I mean the one that had made its way into Spinoza himself.
I. This is likely no other than the very ancient [uralt] a nihilo nihil fit [nothing comes from nothing] that Spinoza took into consideration
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according to more abstract concepts than the philosophizing Kabbal- ists and others before him. In accord with these more abstract con- cepts, he found that, through each single coming into being in the infi- nite, and through each single change in the infinite, something is posited from nothing, regardless of the kind of images with which one also disguises it. He rejected thus every transition of the infinite to the finite; generally all causae transitoriae, secundariae, or re- motae, and he posited, instead of the emanating, an immanent En- Sof2; an in-dwelling, in itself eternally unchanging, cause for the world that, taken together with all its consequences, would be one and the same . . . *
This indwelling infinite cause has, as such, explicite, neither under- standing nor will, because it cannot have an object of thinking and willing, according to its transcendental unity and thoroughly [durchga? ngig] absolute infinity; and a capacity to generate a concept before the concept or a concept that would precede its object and be the complete cause of itself, just like the will that would act on the willing and fully determine itself, are nothing but inconsistencies. . .
. . . The objection, that an infinite series of effects is impossible (they are not mere effects because the immanent cause exists al- ways and everywhere), refutes itself, because every series that should not arise from nothing must simply be infinite. And from this it follows once more, since every individual concept must arise from another individual concept and must relate immediately to an actually present object, that neither individual thoughts nor indi- vidual determinations of the will can be found in the first cause, whose nature is infinite, but rather only their inner, first general pri- mal matter [Urstoff]. . . The first cause is exactly no more likely to be able to act on intentions or final causes as it exists because of a cer- tain intention or final cause; a beginning-ground or final end are ex- actly no more likely to achieve something as beginning or end exist
* I am continuing with this presentation and summarize what I can without writing down the conversations that took place in between, because I would then have to digress too much. What immediately follows here came about because Lessing mentioned as the darkest in Spinoza what Leibniz also found to be so and had not understood completely (Theod. ? 173).
I provide this reminder here once and for all and will not repeat it in the following when I take similar liberties.
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in the first cause itself . . . Fundamentally, what we call consequence or duration is, however, pure delusion, because, since the real ef- fect is coextensive with its complete real cause and only different from it with respect to [its] representation, then consequence or duration must be, in truth, only a certain way to intuit the manifold in the infinite.
Lessing. . . . We will not turn against each other on account of our credo.
I. We definitely do not want that. But my credo is not written in Spinoza.
Lessing. I am hoping it is not written in any book.
I. Not only that. I believe in an intelligible, personal cause of the world.
Lessing. Oh, so much the better! In that case, I shall have some- thing utterly new to hear.
I. Don't expect too much. I extricate myself from the matter with a salto mortale,3 and you usually don't exactly take particular pleasure in leaping with your head down.
Lessing. Don't say that; as long as I don't have to imitate it. And you will surely come to stand on your feet again. Thus--if it is not a secret--I want to ask for it.
I. You can pick it up from me. The entire matter consists in the fact that from fatalism I conclude immediately against fatalism, and against everything that is connected with it. If there are only efficient and no final causes, then the capacity to think in the whole of nature merely acts as an observer; its only business is to accompany the mechanism of the efficient forces. The conversation that we are pres- ently having with each other is only a concern of our bodies, and the entire content of this conversation is resolved in their elements: ex- tension, movement, degrees of velocity, along with their concepts, and the concepts of these concepts. The inventor of the clock did not actually invent it; he only observed its emergence from forces that were blindly developing themselves. So too Raphael, when he drew the school of Athens; and Lessing, when he wrote his Nathan. The same is valid of all philosophies, arts, forms of government, naval and ground warfare, in short, of all that is possible. For the affects and pas- sions also have no effect in so far as they are sensations and thoughts; or, more correctly, in so far as the affects and passions carry sensa- tions and thoughts with themselves. We only believe that we acted
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out of rage, love, generosity, or out of rational decision. Pure delusion! In all these cases, that which actually moves us is something that does not know anything about all of this, and that, to this extent, is utterly denuded of sensations and thoughts. These sensations and thoughts, however, are only concepts of extension, movement, de- grees of velocity, and so on. Whoever can now accept this, his opin- ion I do not know how to refute. But whoever cannot accept this must become the antipode to Spinoza.
Lessing. I notice you would like your will to be free. I desire no free will. I am not in the least distressed about what you just said. It be- longs to human prejudice that we view thought as the very first and the most distinguished, and that we want to deduce everything from it, since everything--including ideas--depends on higher principles. Extension, movement, thought are obviously grounded in a higher force [Kraft], which is still far from being exhausted with them. It must be infinitely more excellent than this or that effect; and thus for the force there can exist also a kind of enjoyment that not only sur- passes all concepts but rather lies wholly outside of the concept. That we cannot conceive of it does not abolish the possibility.
I. You go further than Spinoza. For him insight counted above all.
Lessing. For man! But he was far from holding out as the highest method our miserable way of acting according to purposes and from placing thought above.
I. For Spinoza insight is the best part in all finite natures, because it is that part by which each finite nature reaches beyond its finitude. To a certain extent one could say: he too attributed two souls to each and every being: one that relates only to the present, individual thing and another that relates to the whole. * He also grants immortality to this second soul. But as far as the infinite single substance in Spinoza is concerned, it has no determinate or complete existence for itself alone and outside of individual things. If it had for its unity (to express
* Although only by means of this body, which cannot be an absolute individ- ual (since an absolute individual is just as impossible as an individual ab- solute. Determinatio est negatio, Op. Post. , p. 558), but rather must contain general unchangeable properties and qualities, the nature and the concept of the infinite. With this distinction, one has one of the main keys to Spinoza's system without which one finds in it confusions and contradic- tions everywhere.
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myself this way) a proper, particular, individual reality; if it had per- sonality and life, then insight would be the best part in it too.
Lessing. Good. But then according to which ideas do you assume your personal extramundane deity? Perhaps according to the ideas of Leibniz? I am afraid, he was himself a Spinozist at heart.
I. Are you serious?
Lessing. Do you seriously doubt that? Leibniz's concepts of truth were obtained in such a way that he could not brook too narrow lim- its being imposed on truth. Many of his claims flowed from this way of thinking, and it is often very difficult--even with the greatest acu- men--to discover his actual opinion. This is exactly why I hold him in such esteem, I mean, because of the greatness in his way of thinking and not because of this or that opinion that he only seemed to have or then really did have.
I. Quite right. Leibniz liked "to start a fire from every flint. " But you said about a certain point of view [Meinung], Spinozism, that Leibniz was at heart fond of it.
Lessing. Do you remember a passage in Leibniz's writings where it is said about God that, should he reside in a state of perpetual expan- sion and contraction, this would be the creation and the persistence of the world?
I. I know of his fulgurations,4 but this passage is unknown to me.
Lessing. I will look for it, and you ought to tell me then what a man like Leibniz could or must have been thinking by that.
I. Show me the passage. But I have to tell you in advance that, in the recollection of so many other passages of this very Leibniz, so many of his letters, treatises, his Theodice? e and Nouveaux essais, his philosophical career overall, I reel at the hypothesis that this man should have believed not in a supramundane but rather in an intra- mundane cause of the world.
Lessing. From this perspective, I have to concede to you. This per- spective will retain the upper hand, and I admit that I said a bit too much. Nonetheless, the passage that I am thinking of--and still a good many other things--always remains odd. But not to forget! Now, according to what ideas do you believe the opposite of Spinozism? Do you find that the Principia by Leibniz5 put an end to it?
I. How could I in view of the firm conviction that the incisive deter- minist does not differ from the fatalist? . . . The monads together with their vincula [bonds] leave extension and thinking, reality in general,
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as incomprehensible to me as before, and there I know neither right nor left.
It seems to me as if, ultimately, a confidence trick were being played on me . . . For that matter, I don't know of any doctrinal edifice that would agree as much with Spinozism as that of Leibniz; and it would be difficult to say which one of these authors fooled us and himself the most; with all due respect! . . . Mendelssohn proved pub- licly that the harmonia praestabilita is in Spinoza. From this alone, it already follows that Spinoza must contain much more of Leibniz's basic doctrines, or else Leibniz and Spinoza (on the basis of whose doctrine Wolff's lessons would hardly have flourished) would not have been the striking minds [Ko? pfe] that they indisputably were. I dare to explain on the basis of Spinoza Leibniz's complete doctrine concerning the soul . . . Both have fundamentally the same doctrine of freedom as well, and only an illusion [Blendwerk] distinguishes their theories. While Spinoza (Ep. LXII, Op. Post. , p. 584) explains our feeling of freedom through the example of a stone which would think and know that it strives as much it can to continue its movement, Leibniz explains the same (Theod. ? 50) through the example of a mag- netic needle that would like to move toward North and would be of the opinion it may turn itself independently from another cause since it would not be aware of the imperceptible movement of the magnetic matter. * . . . Leibniz explains the final causes through an appetitum, a conatum immanentem (conscientia sui praeditum) [a striving, an ind- welling impetus (endowed with self-consciousness)]. This is just like
* Atque haec humana illa libertas est, quam omnes habere jactant, & quae in hoc solo consistit, quod homines sui appetitus sunt conscii, & causarum, a? quibus determinatur, ignari [And this is that human freedom, which all claim to have, and which consists solely in the fact that men are conscious of their own desire but ignore the causes by which they are determined]-- says Spinoza in the same 63rd letter.
Spinoza by no means lacks the concept of the expression with which the determinists presume they evade the fatalists. But it seemed to him of such bad philosophical character that he preferred the arbitrium indifferentiae [indifferent power/will] or the voluntas aequilibrii [will of equi- librium] even more. Among other passages, one should refer to the end of the 2nd Schol. of the 33rd Prop. in the Ist part of the Ethics. Further, to the Schol. of the 9th Prop. in the IIIrd part and, especially, to the preface to the IVth part.
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Spinoza, who, in this sense, was able to let them be completely valid, and for whom, as for Leibniz, representing the external and desire are the essence of the soul. In short, if one gets down to the heart of the matter, it turns out that, for Leibniz as for Spinoza, each and every final cause presupposes an efficient cause . . . Thinking is not the source of substance, but rather substance is the source of thinking. Thus some- thing not-thinking must be assumed before thinking as that which is first; something that must be thought as the foremost, if absolutely not in reality, then according to representation, essence and inner nature. Leibniz was therefore honest enough to call souls des automates spiritu- els [spiritual automatons]. * But how (I am speaking here according to Leibniz's deepest and most complete meaning, to the extent I under- stand it) can the principium of all souls exist for itself anywhere and be an efficient cause. . . , how can spirit [exist] before matter, and thought before object? This great knot that he would actually have had to untie to help us out of difficulty, he left just as entangled as it was. . .
Lessing. . . . I will not allow you any rest, you must bring this par- allelism into the open . . . people do indeed speak of Spinoza always asofadeaddog. . .
I. They will continue to speak of him in this way. Understanding Spinoza takes too long and stubborn an effort of the mind [des
* The same term is also to be found in Spinoza, though not in his Ethics but rather in the fragment de intellectus emendatione. The passage is worth quoting here. At ideam veram simplicem esse ostendimus, aut ex simplicibus compositam, & quae ostendit, quomodo, & cur aliquid sit, aut factum sit, & quo`d ipsius effectus objectivi in anima procedunt ad rationem formalitatis ip- sius objecti; id, quod idem est, quod veteres dixerunt, nempe veram scientiam procedere a causa ad effectus; nisi quod nunquam, quod sciam, conceperunt, uti nos hic, animam secundum certas leges agentem, & quasi aliquod automa spirituale. [As regards a true idea, we have shown that it is simple or com- posed of simple ideas; and what it shows, how and why something is or has been made; and that the effects of the object in the soul proceed according to the formal structure (ratio) of the same object; this conclusion is identi- cal with what the ancients said, that true science proceeds from cause to effect; though the ancients, so far as I know, never conceived the soul (as we do here) as acting in accordance with fixed laws and almost as some kind of spiritual automaton. ] (Op. Post. , p. 384). The derivation of the word automaton and what Bilfinger mentions at that point, is not unknown to me.
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Geistes]. And no one has understood him for whom one single line in the Ethics remains obscure or who does not grasp how this great man was able to have the firm inner conviction about his philosophy, which he exhibits so often and so emphatically. Even at the end of his days, he still wrote: . . . non praesumo, me optimam invenisse philosophiam; sed veram me intelligere scio [I do not claim to have discovered the best philosophy, but I know how to recognize the true one]. * Only a few may have tasted of such a peace of the spirit, of such a heaven in the under- standing as this bright and pure mind wrought for itself.
Lessing. And you are not a Spinozist, Jacobi!
I. No, in all honesty!
Lessing. In all honesty! Thus you must, by your philosophy, turn
your back on all philosophy.
I. Why turn my back on all philosophy?
Lessing. Well, then you are a complete skeptic.
I. On the contrary, I turn away from a philosophy that makes com-
plete skepticism necessary.
Lessing. And then turn--where to?
I. To the light, of which Spinoza says that it illuminates itself and
the darkness--I love Spinoza, because he, more than any other phi- losopher, led me to the complete conviction that certain things can- not be explained, that because of this one need not close one's eyes to them, but rather take them as one finds them. I have no concept that would be more innate than that of the final causes and no more lively conviction than that I do what I think instead of that I only should think what I do. Sure enough, I have to assume a source of thinking and acting that remains utterly inexplicable to me. But if I
* In his letter to Albert Burgh. He adds to this: "Quomodo autem id sciam, si roges, respondebo, eodem modo, ac tu scis tres angulos Trianguli aequales esse duobus rectis, & hoc sufficere negabit nemo, cui sanum est cerebrum, nec spiritus immundos somniat, qui nobis ideas falsas inspirant veris similes: est enim verum index sui & falsi. " ["And if you ask me, however, in what way I know it, I will reply: in the same way as you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; that this is sufficient no one will deny whose brain is sound, and who does not go dreaming of unclean spir- its inspiring us with false ideas resembling truth. For the truth is an index of itself and of what is false. "] Spinoza distinguishes greatly between "to be sure" and "not to doubt. "
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want to explain [it] fully, then I must fall back onto the second propo- sition, whose application to individual cases, and considered in its full extent, almost no human understanding can bear.
Lessing. You express yourself almost as bravely as the resolution of the Augsburg Reichstag. 6 But I remain an honest Lutheran and keep "the more bestial than humane misapprehension and blasphemy that there is no free will" in which even the bright pure mind of your Spi- noza also knew how to find itself.
I. Spinoza also had to twist himself to no small degree to hide his fatalism when applied to human conduct, especially, in his fourth and fifth part [of the Ethics--our note] where I would like to say that he every now and then degrades himself to a sophist. And this was what I was claiming: that even the greatest mind must arrive at inconsis- tencies, if he wants to explain all things absolutely, to make them con- sistent with each other according to distinct concepts, and does not want to accept anything else.
Lessing. And he who does not want to explain?
I. He who does not want to explain what is incomprehensible but rather wants to know only the border where it begins and to recog- nize that it exists, of him I believe that he reclaims the most space within himself for genuine human truth.
Lessing. Words, my dear Jacobi, words! The border that you want to establish cannot be determined. And you provide, on the other hand, a free open field for fantasy, nonsense, blindness.
I. I believe that this could be determined. I do not want to establish one but rather find the one already established and leave it. And as far as nonsense, musing, and blindness are concerned. . .
Lessing. They are at home everywhere disordered concepts rule.
I. Still more, where corrupt concepts rule. Even the blindest, most nonsensical, if not already the stupidest, belief also has its high throne there. For he who once fell in love with certain explanations adopts blindly every consequence that, according to a conclusion he cannot refute, is drawn from them and as if it were the case that he were walking on his head.
. . . According to my judgment, the greatest merit of the scientist [Forscher] is to unveil and reveal existence . . . Explanation is a means to him, a path to the end, a proximate, never final, purpose. His final purpose is what cannot be explained: the unresolvable, the immediate, the simple.
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. . . Unrestrained craving for explanation makes us seek what is uni- form so intensely that we pay no attention to what is different; we al- ways want only to join together while we would split apart often to our much greater advantage . . . As we only compose and associate that which is explainable in things, a certain appearance emerges in the soul that blinds the soul more than it illuminates it. We then sacri- fice that which Spinoza calls--profoundly and exaltedly--cognition of the supreme genus to cognition of the lower genera. We shut the eye of the soul with which it sees God and itself in order to look in a more undistracted manner with the eyes of the body only . . .
Lessing. Good, very good! I can use all of this, too, but I cannot do the same with it. In general your salto mortale pleases me not a little, and I understand how a man of intellect can put his head down in this way in order to move on from the spot. Take me with you if possible.
I. If you only will step onto the elastic spot that swings me farther, then it works as if of itself.
Lessing. This too would require a leap that I do not dare to expect of my old legs and my heavy head. 7
FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI
"On Human Freedom" (1789)8
On Human Freedom
First Part
Man Has No Freedom
I. The possibility of the existence of all things known to us is based on and related to the coexistence of other single things, and we are not in the position to form an idea of a finite being that exists for itself alone.
II. The results of the manifold relations of existence to coexistence express themselves in living natural things [lebendige Naturen] through sensations.
III. We call desire and repulsion the inner mechanical behavior of a living natural thing according to its sensations; or the sensed rela- tionship of the inner conditions of existence and persistence of a liv- ing natural thing to the external conditions of this very existence--or also only the sensed relationship of the inner conditions among themselves--is connected mechanically with a motion that we name desire or repulsion.
IV. That which forms the basis for all the different desires of a living natural thing we name its original natural drive [Trieb], and it consti- tutes the very being of this thing. Its business is to preserve and to extend the capacity-to-exist [das Vermo? gen da zu sein] of the particu- lar natural thing whose drive it is.
V. One could name this original natural drive desire a priori. The multitude of individual desires are only so many occasional applica- tions and modifications of this unchangeable general desire.
VI. One could name a desire utterly a priori that would be ascribed to every individual being without difference in genus, species, and gender to the extent that all strive in the same way generally to pre- serve their existence [sich u? berhaupt im Dasein zu erhalten].
VII. A capacity that would be absolutely undetermined is a non- thing. But every determination presupposes something that is al- ready determined and the consequence and fulfillment of a law. De- sire a priori of both the first and second kind thus also presupposes laws a priori.
VIII. The original drive of the rational being consists, like the drive of each and every other being, in the incessant striving to preserve and to extend the capacity-to-exist of the particular natural thing of which it is the drive.
IX. The existence of rational natural beings is called a personal exis- tence in opposition to all other natural beings. This consists in the consciousness of its identity that the particular being has and is the consequence of a higher degree of consciousness in general.
X. The natural drive of the rational natural being, or rational de- sire, aims thus necessarily at increasing the degree of personhood [Personalita? t], that is, of living existence itself.
XI. We call rational desire in general, or the drive of the rational being as such, the will.
XII. The existence of each finite being is a successive existence; its personhood is based on recollection and reflection, its limited but clear cognition on concepts, consequently, on abstraction and ver- bal, written or other signs.
XIII. The law of the will is to act according to concepts of agreement and coherence, that is according to basic principles [Grundsa? tzen]. The will is the faculty [Vermo? gen] of practical principles [Prinzipien].
XIV. Whenever the rational being does not act in accordance with its basic principles it does not act according to its will, not according to a rational but rather to an irrational desire.
XV. The identity of the rational existence is disrupted by the satis- faction of each and every irrational desire; consequently the person- hood, which alone is grounded in the rational existence, is injured and, therefore, the quantity of the living existence is diminished by the same amount.
XVI. That degree of the living existence that brings forth the per- son is only one manner of the living existence in general, and not a personal particular existence or being. Thus, the person does not only impute those actions to himself that happen according to basic principles but also those that are the effects of irrational desires and blind inclinations.
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XVII.