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Potestas Clavium

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Part III

MEMENTO MORIOn Edmund Husserl's Theory of Knowledge

What is philo sophy? That which is most important.

- PLOTINUS.

Evidenz ist in der Tat nicht irgendein Bewusstseinsindex, der, an ein Urtell angeheftet, unswie eine mystische Stimme aus einer bessern Welt zuruft: Hier ist die Wahrheit!, als ob solcheine Stimme uns freien Geistern etwas zu sagen und ihren Rechtstitel nicht auszuweisen hätte.

Evidence is in fact no t any index o f consciousness which, attached to a judgment, calls to uslike a mystical vo ice from a better world saying : "Here is the truth!" - as if such a vo ice hadanything to say to us free spirits and did no t need to present its credentials.

- E. HUSSERL, Ideas Toward a Pure Phenomenology

1

The quest ion is of ten raised what dist inguishes philosophy from theother sciences, but it seems that the most essent ial of thesedist inct ions, that precisely thanks to which philosophy is what it is, i.e., ascience totally dif ferent f rom other sciences, is always deliberatelybrushed aside. I say deliberately for it seems to me that everyonerecognizes the dif ference but at the same t ime obst inately seeks toefface it , to make it non-existent. This has happened since the mostancient t imes. The Greeks had already observed that philosophy isconst ituted otherwise than the other sciences; nevertheless, they triedto demonstrate by all possible means that it did not in any way dif ferf rom them. Even more: they tried to convince themselves thatphilosophy is the science of sciences and that it is part icularly qualif iedto resolve all problems by its special method. The other sciencespossess only opinions, Parmenides already said, while philosophyreveals to us the truth: "It is necessary that you learn to recognizeeverything, both the unshakable heart of the well-rounded truth andthe opinions of mortals in which there resides only t rue belief ."

It is quite evident, however, that neither "roundness," whether goodor bad, and st ill less the "unshakable heart" belongs properly to thetruth, but that these virtues qualify precisely the opinions of mortals. Allmortals know that night follows day, that stones sink in water, thatdrought kills plants, etc.; human beings possess a large number ofopinions of this kind that are f irm and unshakable. As for the t ruths,they f licker only for a moment and are immediately ext inguished; theyalways tremble and shake, like the leaves of the aspen. WhenParmenides proclaims his t ruth, "being and knowing are one and thesame," he needs all the passion and ardor of his great soul topronounce these words with that f irm tranquility with which theordinary man expresses his opinions, even those whose error willappear the very next day.

For error is one of the accidental predicates of opinion, while itappears to be mysteriously bound to the very essence of t ruth. When Iam of the opinion that Caesar killed Brutus or that Alexander was thefather of Philip of Macedon, my error is easily correctable: it suf f ices for

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me to be taught by a better instructed person or to open a manual ofhistory for me to be delivered from my erroneous opinion. In brief , theopinions of men in what concerns daily life are false only temporarily.Often we are too quick to reach a conclusion or we do not possesssuff icient data to answer the quest ion that has been raised, but weknow well that when we shall have examined things more carefully,when we shall have obtained the necessary data, we shall arrive atsolid and true opinions. Let us take an example: Are there living beingson the planet Mars? Some believe in their existence, others do not. Buta t ime will come when people will cease to believe, for they will becomeconvinced, either that Mars is inhabited or that it is not.

The situat ion is quite dif ferent when it is a quest ion of purelyphilosophical problems. Parmenides believes that thought and beingare ident ical. I believe that it is not so at all. Some will agree withParmenides; others will join me. But none of us has the right to declarethat his judgment contains the whole t ruth. The supreme, authent icallycertain t ruth, on which men will sooner or later reach agreement, is thatin the metaphysical domain there are no certain t ruths. One can argueabout the laws of chemistry and physics, and these arguments arefruit ful in the sense that they lead the opponents lit t le by lit t le tocommon convict ions that are solid and certain. When Archimedesinvest igated the laws of the lever, he established the samerelat ionships that we can conf irm today. And he who presentedobject ions to Archimedes and fought him wished f inally the same thingas Archimedes. One can say the same of the disciples of Ptolemy andCopernicus. All of them wished to know the truth about themovements of the sun and the earth and when, at a certain moment,this t ruth appeared clearly, arguments ceased of themselves, havingbecome useless.

In philosophy, on the other hand, it seems that arguments do notcome from the unclarity of the object : uncertainty and contradict ion arehere inherent in the very nature of the problem. Heraclitus andParmenides will be incapable of agreeing not only in this world, but inthe other also, if they should meet there. The truth that they served onearth and in the other world not only exists but st ill lives. And like everyliving thing, it is not always equal to itself and not always similar toitself . I think that it is necessary to admit this. I think that it is impossibleto accept blindly the convict ion t ransmit ted to us by the Greeks thatphilosophy, by its logical structure, is a science like other sciences.Precisely because the ancients, under the hypnosis under which wecont inue to the present day to live and think, t ried to make philosophythe science par excellence, we are obliged to doubt these statements.

However, philosophy today as in the past avoids posing the problemin this form. The works of our t ime dealing with the theory ofknowledge, like those of ancient t imes, pursue a quite dif ferent object .They wish at all costs to just ify our science as the only possible one,and to demonstrate that philosophy also must be a science. We areconvinced that our knowledge is perfect ; the dif f iculty consists only inexplaining on what this convict ion is based. In the course of the ent irenineteenth century the representat ives of scient if ic philosophy alwaystried with extreme obst inacy to overcome this dif f iculty. And thetwent ieth century, in this respect, does not wish to remain behind. Wetoo encounter not a few at tempts at new theories of knowledge whichcont inue to strive for the realizat ion of the ancient object .

I think I shall not be in error to say that among these works the mostremarkable are those of Edmund Husserl. And I think it would beextremely useful to test the results of his invest igat ions. It is obviouslyimpossible for me here to study in detail everything that Husserl haswrit ten. Furthermore, it is not necessary. Husserl published in the f irstnumber of the review Logos an art icle ent it led "Philosophy as RigorousScience" (Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft). In this extremely well-developed art icle Husserl sums up the results of his long meditat ions. Itis chief ly to this study that I shall here refer, touching on Husserl's otherworks only, so to speak, in passing, in the measure that they explain histhoughts to us.

The very art icle of Husserl's art icle, "Philosophy as RigorousScience," already clarif ies for us to a certain degree the orientat ion ofthe author's ideas by emphasizing that the problem Husserl raises isquite in the historic t radit ion. Husserl, it is t rue, complains that the

Lev Shestov - Potestas Clavium - Part III - Memento Mori 1 11/16/15


philosophers who preceded him, obeying the necessit ies of themoment, of ten agreed to compromises, abandoned the direct objectof their searches and aspired not to philosophy but to "wisdom" oreven a "general concept ion of the universe," and thus, so to speak,betrayed their mission. But he declares, nevertheless, that philosophyalways wished to be a science; it did not always succeed, however, inconf ining itself within limits and of ten manifested a criminal impat iencein its haste to at tain its supreme goal, thus itself hampering theaccomplishment of its work. The most important epochs in the historyof philosophy were the Socrat ic-Platonic period in ant iquity and theCartesian in modern t imes. The last representat ives of scient if icphilosophy were Kant and, to a certain degree, Fichte. According toHusserl's terminology, Schelling and Hegel among the moderns andPlot inus and the Stoics among the ancients were not philosophers but"wise men" - that is, not representat ives of rigorous science but brilliantand profound improvisors who choose the f irst and last problems ofbeing as their theme.

This opposing of philosophy and science, on the one hand, andwisdom and profundity of thought, on the other hand, is extremelyoriginal and curious. As far as I know, it was f irst expressed in thisformulat ion by Husserl. Before him it had always been admit ted thatwisdom and profundity of thought, which were everywhere driven out,could f ind asylum only in the bosom of philosophy, where also, as isknown, virtue, which is forever hunted down, f inds rest . But Husserlenerget ically refuses to let philosophy be the refuge of wisdom andvirtue. He is prepared to accord to the lat ter all marks of respect(perhaps sincerely and perhaps also merely to conform to t radit ion),but wisdom and virtue must seek their means of existence elsewhere,even though they be reduced to applying to public or even privatecharity.

I am not disposed to take on the role of defender of oppressedvirtues - for reasons, however, quite dif ferent f rom Husserl's. I also amof the opinion that wisdom has too long occupied a throne that doesnot belong to it . Wisdom, i.e., a long white beard, a large forehead, eyesdeeply sunken under tuf ted eyebrows, and crowning it all, the blessinggesture - everything in this image of ancient piety breathes thefalsehood of carefully masked impotence. And, like every falsehood,this image irritates and disgusts us. One can venerate wise men andpity them. Pushkin venerated and loved the metropolitan Philarete anddedicated some wonderful verses to him. But no great percept ivenessis required to guess that Pushkin would not have agreed for anything inthe world to become himself a wise man with silver hair, the object ofvenerat ion and even adorat ion. And the gods spared their favorite bydispatching to him in good t ime his murderer d'Anthes who, with thegreatest calmness, as if aware of the big mission with which he wascharged, accomplished his role as execut ioner of fate. And Lermontovand Nietzsche were also spared. As for Tolstoy, toward whomProvidence was less indulgent, he did not f inally have the power to bearthe torture of his unwanted glory and himself hastened thedenouement: is not his f light several days before his death the brusque,violent deed of a man completely beside himself? The makeup ofwisdom - the white hair, the solemn mask, the halo of the genius andbenefactor of humanity - all this was for him a veritable martyrdom and,with impat ient hand, he tore away this t insel which disgusted him.Venerable old age and the glory of the wise man are certainly muchheavier to bear than the royal crown, and much less at t ract ive!

But Husserl rises against wisdom for reasons quite dif ferent f romthose that drove Tolstoy out of Yasnaia Poliana. Husserl is a posit iveand sober mind. He rejects wisdom not because it presents itself asexaggeratedly clever but because it appears to him insuff icient ly solidand rat ional. It is not its heavy respectability and the rigid at t itude thattradit ion confers upon it that are repugnant to him. On the contrarywisdom and depth of thought appear to him as a sign of youth and anindicat ion of a lack of maturity; they recall to him the t ime when menst ill believed in astrology and alchemy. Now mankind is older and moremature; it possesses astronomy and chemistry, which are exactsciences. It is t ime that philosophy f inally arrive at maturity and betransformed, in its turn, into a rigorous science.

Edmund Husserl thus formulates the problem: we need neitherwisdom nor depth of thought; we need rigorous science.



Once the problem is posed in this form, the theory of knowledgenaturally passes to the f irst rank. In other words, the quest ion is: canphilosophy be a science, and is there any truth outside of science? AndHusserl's problem immediately appears less new and original than atf irst sight . Let us recall Kant: what Husserl calls "wisdom" Kant called"metaphysics." Kant also admit ted as indisputable the existence ofposit ive sciences that furnish us certain unshakable t ruths and, set t ingout f rom the analysis of the possibility of these sciences, he concludedthe impossibility of metaphysics, i.e., in Husserl's language, theimpossibility of wisdom and profundity of thought. What brings the twothinkers st ill closer, despite the century and a half that separates them,is that both of them are convinced that t rue knowledge, i.e., science,can only be a priori. Kant formulates his quest ions and conducts hisarguments otherwise than Husserl, but this dif ference does notinterest us for the moment. What is important for us is only to clarifythe reasons why the problem of knowledge acquires such greatsignif icance for these two philosophers. If we lend an at tent ive ear totheir argumentat ion, we shall also establish that the theory ofknowledge has const ituted the fundamental problem of philosophysince the most ancient t imes. The Greeks already - and not onlySocrates, Plato, and Aristot le but those who are called the fathers ofGreek thought - conferred on quest ions of the theory of knowledge acapital signif icance. The inconstancy of human opinions troubled themand, as Parmenides' example shows us, they tried by every possiblemeans to escape from this inconstancy and to f ind repose in thebosom of the t ruth that is always equal to itself . The well-knownstruggle between Socrates and his famous disciples, on the one hand,and the heirs of the thought of Heraclitus, the Sophists, on the other,was in very large part a struggle about the theory of knowledge. Platoand Aristot le, following Socrates, t ried to kill in germ the anxiety thatthe skept ical reasonings of their adversaries aroused. "To everystatement one can oppose a contrary statement," "man is the measureof things," - such theses appeared to Socrates and his disciples notonly false but even sacrilegious. And that is why they were not contentwith opposing arguments to them but even tried to persuade theirhearers that the part isans of such ideas were immoral men. Such amethod of argument, very inappropriate in general, appears part icularlysuperf luous in cases where one possesses a complete theoret icalargument against the skept ics. But this theoret ical demonstrat ion thesuccessors of Socrates had in hand, as many passages from Plato andAristot le test ify.

I shall quote a short f ragment of Aristot le's Metaphysics, directedagainst the statements of the extreme skept ics:

"Therefore all such views are also exposed to the of tenexpressed object ion that they destroy themselves. For he whosays that everything is t rue makes even the statement contraryto his own true, and therefore his own not t rue (for the contrarystatement denies that it is t rue), while he who says everything isfalse makes himself also false. - And if the former person exceptsthe contrary statement, saying it alone is not t rue, while the lat terexcepts his own as being not false, none the less they are drivento postulate the truth or falsity of an inf inite number ofstatements; for that which says the true statement is t rue, is t rue,and this process will go on to inf inity." (Met., I, 8, 1012b)

From this refutat ion, t ruly classic in its brevity and clarity, of skept icism,it follows that the skept ical posit ion is devoid of all foundat ion. Onewould then think that there was no need to crush the skept ics underarguments of a moral order: one does not strike an enemy who isalready conquered. Nevertheless, the theoret ical arguments appearedinsuff icient and the opponents of the Sophists gave them thereputat ion of being greedy and immoral people, even though we st ill donot know precisely what ruined the Sophists' work, whether their badphilosophy or their bad reputat ion. The lat ter, it is known, of tenexercises the decisive weight in the balances of history's scale.

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2

Let us now raise the quest ion: What is philosophy? It must be ascience, Husserl answers us. Those who, according to Husserl,replaced philosophy with wisdom said the same thing. But this is onlyone of philosophy's characterist ics. And, then, a new quest ion: What isscience? Before listening to Husserl's answer, let us hear again oncemore what the ancients tell us. Let us listen f irst to the word of Plot inuswho gives us a def init ion of philosophy that is extremely brief andsimple but very remarkable in its kind. Ti oûn hê philosophia; totimiôtaton, "What is philosophy? It is the most important." As you see,Plot inus does not even think it necessary to tell us whether philosophyis a science or not. It is the most important, the most necessary. It is amatter of indif ference to him whether it be a science, an art , orsomething as dif ferent f rom art as f rom science. Let us listen now toAristot le:

"For the most divine science is also the most honorable; and thisscience alone must be, in two ways, most divine. For the sciencewhich it would be most meet for God to have is a divine science,and so is any science that deals with divine objects; and thisscience alone has both these qualit ies; for (1) God is thought tobe among the causes of all things and to be a f irst principle, and(2) such a science either God alone can have, or God above allothers. All the sciences, indeed, are more necessary than this, butnone is better" (Met., A. 2, 982b).

So spoke the great thinkers of ant iquity. Husserl ought certainly tohave accepted the def init ions of Plot inus and Aristot le. However, heprobably would have rejected certain of the lat ter's expressions; I donot think he would have agreed to repeat af ter the Stagyrite thatphilosophy is the divine among the sciences, that it is most proper toGod, and that it has God for its object . No, Husserl would not agree tomake these words his own. The word "God" would have recalled to himwisdom, which he considers, as we know, the enemy of philosophy anddrives out of his domain, as Plato drove out the poets. Nevertheless,one would not be mistaken in saying that Aristot le's words expressent irely Husserl's at t itude toward philosophy, with the dif ference thatwhere Aristot le, following the custom of the ancients, speaks of Godand the divine, Husserl employs expressions to which modern earseducated by science are more accustomed. To this quest ion, What isphilosophy? Husserl replies, "A science of t rue principles, of sources, oforigins, of rhidzômata pantôn (the roots of all things)." But Aristot le alsosays: "Clearly, then, Wisdom is knowledge about certain principles andcauses" (Met., A. i, 982a).

When a modern scient ist speaks of principles, of the roots of things,it is obviously God that he has in mind, but a God whose existence heplaces outside of every theological or even metaphysical system. Thefear of reducing philosophy to the role of ancilla theologiae has st ill notcompletely disappeared in us, and we prefer to express our thoughts inour own way. This is perfect ly understandable and even commendable;it is more than probable that if Aristot le had lived in our t ime he wouldhave wished to avoid every approach to dogmatic theology. If oneassumes that the words "God" and "divine" were used by Aristot le inthe character of the superlat ive, the most beaut iful, the most powerfulthat may be, one can say that Husserl has no reason to argue with him.This, furthermore, is what his art icle "Philosophy as a RigorousScience" proves, an art icle which not only applies itself to determiningthe object and methods of philosophy but also sings to the glory ofphilosophy a veritable hymn in an inspired, prophet ic tone. Husserl says:



"In all of contemporary life there is probably no idea that is morepowerful, more irresist ible, more triumphant, than that of science.Nothing can stop its victorious march. It seems that its legit imategoals embrace absolutely everything. If one thinks of it in its idealachievement, it appears as reason itself , which does not admitany other authority beside or above itself" (Logos, I).

So, then, in Husserl's eyes philosophy is the supreme achievement ofmankind, and its dominion will f inally extend over all domains of humanact ivity. For Husserl, just as for Aristot le, philosophy is divine and itsobject is God. Not, naturally, the God of Catholic or Mohammedantheology, but such a God appears necessary only f rom the point ofview of pract ical goals. Aristot le says, "It is right to call philosophy thescience which seeks truth, for the goal of theory is t ruth and the goalof pract ice is act ion," and Husserl would have subscribed to thissentence.

Husserl is not content with simple declarat ions of principle, but t riesto demonstrate that the pretensions of science are wellgrounded."General statements do not mean much if one does not prove them,and the hopes that are founded on science have no importance if onedoes not point out the ways which lead to the realizat ion of the goal"(Logos, p. 296).

That is correct . If one is content with inspired declarat ions andprophet ic promises, one falls back into that very wisdom we have sosolemnly renounced. But how shall we discover these ways? How shallwe just ify the pretensions of science to becoming that supreme courtwhere all quest ions that t rouble mankind will f ind their solut ion?

Let us recall that science does not recognize any other authorityoutside itself . This is the fundamental and dearest idea of Husserl. Hedeclares categorically: "Science has spoken; f rom that moment on,wisdom is obliged to conform to it " (Ibid., p. 334). In other words: Romalocuta, causa finita [Rome has spoken, the case is closed]. Philosophyproclaims the infallibility of scient if ic judgment in the same terms(apparent ly intentionally) and according to the same formula as thosethat Catholicism used in the Middle Ages to af f irm the infallibility andsupreme authority of the papal throne. The rights of the pope werebased on the revelat ion given to men by Holy Scripture, but on whatdoes modern philosophy base the rights of reason?

We shall proceed to this quest ion in a moment, but f irst let usobserve once more the immense importance that the theory ofknowledge has and must have in philosophy. The theory of knowledgeis not at all an abstract , harmless ref lect ion on the methods of ourthought; it determines in advance the sources whence our knowledgef lows. It waters the rhidzômata pantôn out of which our life grows. Justas Catholicism needed the idea of the infallibility of the Church in orderto obtain the right to point out to mankind the ways to salvat ion andlife eternal, so philosophy, to at tain the goals that it has set for itself ,cannot and does not wish to admit any limitat ion to its power. Whenreason speaks ex cathedra, it cannot be mistaken. And so long as thetheory of knowledge will not have led thinking man to this convict ion,what sense can there be in raising any quest ions? For what isimportant to us is not simply to raise quest ions but to be able toanswer them and to answer them "scient if ically," i.e., in such a way thatthe answer will be obligatory for every rat ional man.

Husserl's task was bequeathed to him by Greek philosophy. It wouldbe erroneous to think that, in af f irming the infallibility of reason,modern philosophy is inspired by the theology of the Middle Ages. Onthe contrary, Catholicism derived the idea of infallibility ent irely f rom theancient Greeks. But realizing well the f ragile foundat ions on which thepretensions of reason rested, Catholicism tried to base its ownpretensions on other principles.

Husserl's problems then, are quite in the ancient t radit ion. He himselfdeclares: "What characterizes the Socrat ic-Platonic revolut ion inphilosophy, as well as the scient if ic react ion against Scholast icism atthe beginning of modern t imes and especially the Cartesian revolut ion,is such a fully conscious will to rigorous science. Its impulse carries overto the great philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century,



is radically renewed in Kant 's crit ique of reason and st ill dominatesFichte's philosophy. Ever anew the searchings have for their goal thetrue principles, the decisive formulas, the exact methods" (Logos, p.292).

These words contain brief ly the ent ire genealogy of Husserl'sthought: f rom Socrates and Plato through Descartes to Kant andFichte. But this genealogy is correct in part only; we must not forgetthat, in denying metaphysics, in manifest ing a kind of repugnance for it ,Husserl separates himself f rom Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.Dif fering in this respect f rom Kant also, he even abstains f rom openlyraising the quest ion, Is metaphysics possible? He assumes that for allhis readers, as for himself , this quest ion can be answered only in thenegat ive. Metaphysics is wisdom - in other words, a hasty, prescient if icat tempt to resolve certain problems of the universe whose solut ion ismost important to us. Metaphysics thus f inds its just if icat ion, to acertain degree, in considerat ions of a pract ical order. It is good toconsole suffering mankind by telling it that there is a God, that the soulis immortal, that the wicked will be punished in another world, etc. And ifthis teaching is given by men of great talent, one can raise no object ionto it . But it would be truly criminal to forget that all teachings of thiskind answer only to temporary, passing needs: "We must remember ourresponsibility toward mankind. We must not sacrif ice eternity for t ime;we must not, in order to sat isfy to a certain degree our needs,bequeath to future generat ions our accrued and insurmountabledif f icult ies. Weltanschauungen, dif ferent forms of wisdom, can argue:science alone can decide, and its decisions bear the stamp of eternity"(Logos, p. 337).

I believe it necessary once again to draw the reader's at tent ion tothe character of the expressions employed by Husserl to clarify theobject and claims of science. It is clearly seen from these quotat ionsthat Husserl's vocabulary could be perfect ly well replaced by that ofAristot le, or even of the Catholic apologists; for Husserl, just as forAristot le, philosophy is something divine, for its object is God. But theGod of Husserl, quite like Aristot le's God, can be found only byfollowing the way of scient if ic research. We must then consider "thetheory of knowledge as a discipline preceding metaphysics." In otherwords, Husserl is willing to admit only a God to whom reason cantest ify for, as we know, there is no authority other than reason. But inmodern as in ancient t imes, God was found by ways other than thoseof reason. Because of this and only because of this Husserl avoids theAristotelian def init ions of philosophy.

Husserl is mistaken, I think, only on one point : men, and Husserlhimself , have never been able, have never even wished, to admit a Godto whom reason refused to bear witness. In this respect all religions, atleast all the so-called posit ive religions, do not dif fer at all f rom secularwisdom and from rat ionalist philosophy. They also t ry to at tain a"scient if ic" knowledge of t ruth, that is, a knowledge which can imposeitself on every rat ional man. They have not been able to at tain thisresult , but this does not mean anything. Philosophy also, as Husserlhimself declares, has, in the person of its most illustriousrepresentat ives, made desperate ef forts to conceive the truth inrat ional terms. Despite this, "there have not yet been established eventhe foundat ions of a scient if ic doctrine; the historically t ransmit tedphilosophy as well as the living philosophy which replaces it is at mostonly a scient if ic semi-fabricat ion, or a confused and undif ferent iatedmixture of general concept ions (Weltanschauungen) and theoret icalknowledge" (Logos, p. 335).

These words are hardly f lat tering to philosophy. Astrology andalchemy themselves would be just if ied in claiming more indulgence, notto speak of Catholic theology! It is not that astrology, alchemy, andCatholic theology have scorned reason. If the results of their ef fortswere, according to Husserl, so pit iful, the cause of this must be soughtelsewhere. And quite naturally one then asks himself : is it not thecontrary of that which Husserl assumes happened here? It may be thatthe results obtained by astrology, theology, and philosophy were sopoor precisely because men did not agree to renounce reason where,"according to the very nature of things," reason must be silent andefface itself ! In his theory of knowledge, which must precedemetaphysics, Husserl does not even suspect that the problem of thetheory of knowledge consists perhaps in determining the moment



when he must deprive reason of its direct ing role or limit its rights.Husserl is convinced in advance that if there were failures, thesederived from the fact that the sovereign power of reason was limitedby someone. That is why his theory of knowledge, like those of hispredecessors, applies itself to just ifying reason and to re-establishingits rights by all possible means.

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3

We arrive here at the very source of Husserl's philosophy. The f irstvolume of his Logische Untersuchungen, ent it led "Prolegomena to PureLogic," was devoted almost exclusively to this quest ion, formulated, itis t rue, dif ferent ly than I have done. Husserl does not once say that thetheory of knowledge must test by every means at our disposal whetherreason truly possesses the rights to which it pretends. Posed in thisform, the quest ion, f rom his point of view, already contains acontradict ion and therefore cannot be admit ted. He begins hisinvest igat ions by refut ing what in modern philosophical language iscalled psychologism. He quite correct ly sees psychologism in all therepresentat ives, without except ion, of modern philosophical thought:Mill, Bain, Wundt, Sigwart , Erdmann, Lipps - all are psychologists.Psychologism for Husserl is relat ivism, but relat ivism contains acontradict ion which renders it absurd and, consequent ly, totallyunacceptable to reason.

We know that the contradict ion inherent in all relat ivism was alreadyformulated by the ancients. Relat ivist ic theories destroy themselves,says Aristot le, speaking in this case not in his own name, not as if hehad discovered a new principle, but as if he were expressing acommonplace of philosophy. This principle for Husserl is an articulusstantis et cadentis ecclesiae [proposit ion on which the church stands orfalls]. Furthermore, for his opponents also, the English psychologistsand the German theorists of knowledge, the at t itude of Protagorasand his maxim - "man is the measure of things" - are completelyunacceptable. But Husserl declares that their thoughts conceal thiscontradict ion unconsciously and implicit ly, and that they do not realizeit for the reason only that they are not absolute relat ivists, but ,according to his expression, "specif ic" relat ivists. That is, they see theabsurdity of the statement that each man possesses his own part iculartruth, but they do not not ice that those who af f irm that the humanspecies possesses its own truth, its human truth, necessarily fall intothe same contradict ion. Such a specif ic relat ivism (i.e., "of species")does not have any advantage over individual relat ivism. For he whodeclares that men possess their own purely human truth thinks that thecontrary t ruth is absolutely false. His statement is absolutely t rue and,therefore, contradicts itself .

This reasoning is simple and comprehensible and also well known.What dist inguishes Husserl's posit ion is that he pit ilessly uncovers thetraces of relat ivism in all philosophical systems without except ion andshows in his researches a rigor and obst inacy that are of ten almostprovoking. But this is precisely what const itutes, to my mind, thegreatness of the service he renders and the signif icance of his work.Husserl reproached his contemporaries for not having conf idence inthe demonstrat ion deduced from the consequences of a thesis. Hehimself has full conf idence in this kind of demonstrat ion. That is, havingset up a certain statement, he boldly accepts all the consequencesthat f low from it . Having dethroned specif ic relat ivism, he declaresopenly: "What is t rue is t rue absolutely, in itself ; the t ruth is one,ident ical with itself , whatever may be the beings who perceive it - men,monsters, angels or gods" (Logische Untersuchungen I, p.117). This issaid very daringly. Other theorists of knowledge, even such as Sigwart ,never dared express such statements. Sigwart , for example, writes:

"The possibility of establishing criteria and rules of progress inthought, progress that is necessary and has general value, restson the faculty of dist inguishing object ively necessary thoughtfrom thought that is not necessary, and this faculty is manifested



in the immediate consciousness of evidence that accompaniesthe necessary thought. The experience of this consciousnessand the faith in its certainty are a postulate that one cannot deny.When we ask ourselves if and how it is possible to solve theproblem in the sense that we have posed it ... we can answer onlyby referring to the subject ively experienced necessity, to theinward feeling of evidence that accompanies a part of ourthought, to the consciousness that, given the supposit ions, wecould not think any other way than we do. The faith in thelegitimate character of this feeling and in its trustworthiness is thefinal basis of all certainty in general; for one who does notrecognize it there is no science but only accidental opinion."(Logik, I, p. 15. Italics mine. - L.S.)

Where Sigwart , then, sets up a postulate, in other words, anindemonstrable statement, Husserl sets up an axiom. And if Husserl isright , if the argumentat ion deduced from consequences is everywhereand uncondit ionally admissible, Sigwart 's words are absurd, for they aretainted with specif ic relat ivism, i.e., they contradict themselves.

How could it happen that a thinker as rigorous and severe towardhimself as Sigwart could have admit ted such an obvious error and onethat completely ruins his theory of knowledge? This contradict ion had,furthermore, already been indicated even before Husserl by Wundt. ButSigwart maintained his point of view. Even more: the very same Wundtwho accused Sigwart of founding knowledge on a decept ive feeling didnot escape the same accusat ions: his theory of knowledge is alsotainted, according to Husserl, with relat ivism. Who, then, is heremistaken, consciously or unconsciously? Who is blind? I am certain thatSigwart would not have been willing for anything in the world torenounce the tradit ional at t itude of philosophy toward skept icism. And Ithink, likewise, that Sigwart had no need of Husserl to see that specif icrelat ivism contains the same contradict ion as individual relat ivism. AndSigwart would certainly have been very happy to be able solemnly toproclaim that our t ruths are absolute t ruths which impose themselveson all beings - angels, demons, and gods. But the old scholar who haddedicated his ent ire existence to searching for the foundat ions of t ruthwas obliged toward the end of his life to declare that our t ruth is basedin the f inal analysis only on a postulate and that t rust in the feeling ofself -evidence is the cornerstone of our scient if ic certainty. I think thatone cannot pass indif ferent ly over such an admission and believehimself just if ied in set t ing it aside for the reason only that it contains acontradict ion. If it were a quest ion of Mill, this would not have been soserious. One can indeed admit that , in the heat of his polemics, Mill wascapable at t imes of expressing extreme judgments in which he himselfdid not fully believe. Even here, however, suspicion would be a badcounsellor. But as far as Sigwart is concerned, one can say withcertainty that relat ivism was for him a very heavy cross to bear andthat only his intellectual honesty as a scholar and scient ist obliged himto this painful admission.

Sigwart , it is t rue, could not resolve to develop explicit ly the ideacontained in his admission. To say what he said amounts f inally tosaying that beyond certain limits the competence of reason comes toan end and a new power then imposes its rights upon us - a power thathas nothing in common with reason and whose ef fects we men feelhere in our empirical world. Sigwart , however, did not conclude thus, nomore than did Lotze, who admits that we are condemned to moveconstant ly in the same enchanted circle; and no more than did Kant,who found himself in the same situat ion as Sigwart and Lotze.According to Kant our most indisputable judgments, synthet ic a priorijudgments, are also the most false, for they f low not f rom the powerthat reason possesses of seizing the very essence of things, but f roma necessity that is imposed upon it externally and that it represents asits prerogat ive to create its own ideas, valid for it alone - in otherwords, illusions and f ict ions.

Kant 's conclusion that metaphysics cannot be a science since itdoes not have any special source for its synthet ic, a priori judgments (aconclusion generally considered as a refutat ion of metaphysics),argues rather in its favor. Mathematics and the natural sciences arerigorous disciplines and obligatory upon all because they have agreedto submit blindly to blind masters. Metaphysics, however, is st ill f ree,and therefore can not and does not wish to be a science and pretends



to independent knowledge. Kant did not dare take up the defense ofmetaphysics in this way. The empiricists of the school of Hume andLocke did not dare to do so either (perhaps also because metaphysicsdid not interest them), nor did the idealists of Sigwart 's type. To do soit would have been necessary, indeed, to quest ion the rights of reason- something that none of the philosophers could accept. They wouldhave been obliged to admit a metaphysics that is fantast ic, arbit rary,alien to science. Who would have dared this? Philosophy preferred toremain in the middle way. It did not pretend to absolute t ruth, but it didnot renounce the sovereign rights of reason. The lat ter were brilliant lyproven by the rapid blossoming of the posit ive sciences. In the domainof logic, however, one never went beyond admissions of the typemade by Sigwart and Lotze.

In order to just ify such a self -limitat ion men thought to establish arigorous dist inct ion between the point of view of the theory ofknowledge and the psychological point of view. The task of the theoryof knowledge is not to establish the origin of our knowledge. Its task isto show its structure, the inner relat ionship of the laws by means ofwhich man's thought leads to the knowledge of t ruth. But the quest ionwhence these laws came is in the province of psychology and of nointerest to the theory of knowledge; the problems of the theory ofknowledge must not be confused with psychological problems.

Let us examine this argument. It is extremely important for us, sinceHusserl uses it in the same way as the Neo-Kant ians of the end of thelast century. But we must f irst of all emphasize that Husserl does notagree to admit relat ivism, either implicit ly or explicit ly, under any formwhatsoever. Specif ic relat ivism is for him as absurd as individualrelat ivism. This decisiveness const itutes, in my opinion, the great meritof Husserl. It is t ime at last to lay all the cards on the table and to raisequest ions as radically as Husserl did: either reason can expressabsolute t ruths that angels and gods, as well as men, must accept, orwe must renounce the philosophic heritage of the Greeks and re-establish the rights of Protagoras of which he was robbed by history.

Let us recall that in his crit ique of the ancient theories of knowledgeHusserl uses the classical argument: every theory that containsstatements contradict ing it is absurd. To establish his own theory ofknowledge, however, he makes use of a dif ferent argument. In order toavoid the at tacks of psychologism he tries, quite like the Neo-Kant ians,rigorously to dist inguish the psychological point of view from the pointof view of the theory of knowledge. But to just ify reason he developshis own theory of ideas, which is close to that of Plato and the realismof the Middle Ages.

But can one separate the point of view of the theory of knowledgefrom that of psychology? And why do theories of knowledge, or ratherapologists of the theory of knowledge, avoid so carefully all demandsfor genealogical informat ion? Both in the f irst and in the secondvolume of his Logische Untersuchungen Husserl repeats dozens oft imes that genet ic quest ions are of no concern to him. He admits thatlogical concepts have a psychological source but rejects thepsychological conclusions that are drawn from this fact . Why? Becausefor his discipline the psychological quest ion of the birth of abstractideas does not present any interest . In other words, whatever may bethe origin of t ruth, it is a fact that t ruth exists and that it rules ourjudgment. It is for us therefore to determine, by means of a rigorousanalysis, how, by what methods, and by the act ion of what laws truthrealizes its sovereign rights.

The theorists of knowledge are willing to compare, for more clarity,t ruth with morality. The goal of the moralists, they say, is not to explainthe origins of the "good." The moralists, quite like the theorists ofknowledge, are persuaded that the good in itself (an sich) has no origin.One can speak of origins only in connect ion with real objects which areborn and disappear. But ideas are outside of t ime: they exist , they havealways existed, they will always exist , they would have existed even ifthe universe had never existed, or if , having existed, it returned to thenothingness whence it arose.

What is t rue - is t rue. We must admit that if one renounces thesearch for origins, the tasks of the theorists of knowledge and themoralists, who aspire to absolute t ruth and absolute good, appear



much simpler and easier. Pretenders to the throne are generally fearfulof genealogical researches. Try to "explain" morality, as ut ilitarianismand economic materialism did, and its rights will immediately appearquite illusory. Plato understood this perfect ly well and in his reasoningsalways took the good as his point of departure. In analyzing humanact ions, he discovered that they were completely determined by anindependent principle, one which could not in any way be deduced fromthe experiences of daily life and reduced to pleasure or usefulness oranything else. If I kill a man, I can feel a certain sat isfact ion: if I am rid ofa rival, for example, I can draw prof it f rom this by seizing the wealth ofthe deceased or even his throne; nevertheless, my act ion was, is, andalways will be evil - and not because of the wrong that I have done tothe deceased. It may be that the soul of my vict im has immediatelyf lown from this vale of tears to the Elysian Fields and gained by thechange. Despite this, I have done evil and no power in the world cantake away from my act ion the stamp of evil. And, on the other hand, if Ihave suffered for the cause of t ruth, if I have been despoiled of mygoods, if I have been imprisoned and condemned to death, I have actedwell, and neither men nor angels nor gods have the power to t ransformmy good act ion into an evil one. The good is sovereign and does notadmit any power above itself . Plot inus himself , who was not asrigorously consistent as Plato, speaks of the aretê adespotos [virtuethat is not a tyrant], which in modern philosophic language is equivalentto the autonomy or independence of morality.

In despot ic states court jurists developed similar theories about theorigins of royal power. These jurists never admit ted, indeed could notadmit , any ref lect ions on the historical development of the autocrat icidea. The monarch, f rom their point of view, is the source whence allpowers and all rights f low; consequent ly his rights cannot come to himfrom any source. They are beyond and above t ime, they are therhidzômata pantôn. Or, if one will allow theological phraseology, theirsource is in the heavens. The monarch is the autocrat through thegrace of God; he is the anointed of God. Only explanat ions of this kind,or the complete absence of all explanat ion, can guarantee absoluteideas the rights which they claim. Under our very eyes, as it were, amiraculous transformat ion occurred: af ter having tried to "explain"morality, Nietzsche arrived at the formula "beyond good and evil." Or,more exact ly, when the good had lost its power over Nietzsche, hediscovered for it a genealogy such that it could only take away from usall desire to worship morality.

Such, in brief , are the reasons for the obst inacy with which thetheorists of knowledge refuse to confront the psychological and logicalproblems of the theory of knowledge. They cannot, however,completely renounce genet ic quest ions, for then they would be obligedto allow metaphysical and theological assumptions that are completelydiscredited by contemporary posit ivist thought. Indeed, neither Husserlnor Sigwart nor Erdmann could seriously develop the Platonic theory ofanamnêsis, or rely on the Ten Commandments that Moses broughtdown from Mount Sinai direct ly f rom God's hands. Husserl even risesagainst Plato's desire to hypostat ize the ideas. Postulates andmetaphysical theories are as inadmissible for Husserl as for the Neo-Kant ians. They try to base philosophy exclusively on the lumennaturale; hence they are obliged to endow the lumen naturale withabsolute rights. The negat ive method that Husserl employs in this taskis the same as that of the Neo-Kant ians: he forbids himself to test thepretensions of reason through invest igat ions about its origin. But thisst ill does not suf f ice for him: he proposes to us his theory of ideaswhich ought, once and for all, to just ify the absolute conf idence thatwe place in reason. Let us look, then, somewhat more closely at thistheory.

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Husserl takes upon himself the defense of the rights of universals(ideal objects) as equal to those of individuals (real objects). "This is thepoint where relat ivist and empiricist psychologism separates itself f romthe idealism which represents the only possibility of a theory ofknowledge that is in agreement (i.e., that conceals no innercontradict ion within itself ) with itself" (Logische Untersuchungen, II, p.107. Italics mine - L.S.). And he adds immediately, in order to avoid allequivocat ion, that his idealism does not presuppose any metaphysicaldoctrine: "Naturally, in speaking here of idealism, I do not have in viewany metaphysical doctrine but the form of the theory of knowledgewhich recognizes the ideal as the condit ion of the possibility ofobject ive knowledge in general without giving this term anypsychologist ic interpretat ion." These two statements are of majorimportance for the philosophy of Husserl. He seeks to at tain object iveknowledge and admits the existence of an ideal world but is convincedthat he has no need to betake himself to metaphysics. The father andcreator of the theory of ideas was not afraid of metaphysics. Evenmore: for Plato the theory of ideas had meaning only because itopened to him the way to metaphysical revelat ions and, conversely, itappeared to him true and eternal insofar as it expressed certainmetaphysical visions.

It was the same for Descartes, whose argumentat ion and point ofdeparture did not remain without inf luence on Husserl; metaphysicalprinciples were the conditio sine qua non of his thought. Husserldeclares that one cannot relat ivize thought without relat ivizing beingand, arguing with Erdmann, who defended relat ivism, he says: "Therewould perhaps be beings of a special kind, logical supermen so tospeak, for whom our principles are not valid but who have otherprinciples such that what is t ruth for us is error for them. For them itcould be true that they do not experience the psychic phenomenawhich they sometimes experience. That we and they exist would betrue for us but false for them, etc. Certainly our own judgment, that ofordinary logical men, would be the following: these beings have lostreason, they speak of t ruth and abolish its laws, they af f irm that theyhave their own laws of thought and they deny those to which thepossibility of laws in general is bound" (Logische Untersuchungen, I,151).

When we hear these reasonings we recall quite naturally theref lect ions of Descartes that led him to his cogito ergo sum. Descartes,it will be remembered, had pushed his doubt to the farthest limits. Hehad come to the point of admit t ing that God had set himself the taskof deceiving men in all things. But there is one thing about which Godcannot deceive us: our own existence. For to be deceived, we must be.Husserl makes in short the same reply to the relat ivists: deny andrelat ivize all you wish but your existence and the truth of yourexistence cannot be denied. You are not, then, relat ivists but"absolut ists" just as I am.

This argumentat ion appears irresist ible: the heritage of Plato (forDescartes also reasons according to Plato) is a great help to us indif f icult cases.

But a very interest ing quest ion then arises. I have already indicatedthat these reasonings appeared to Plato perfect ly correct butnevertheless insuff icient , whereupon he went to seek the roots ofthings in another world, dif ferent f rom our own. Descartes did thesame. It might seem that having demonstrated that God could not



deceive us about everything, Descartes should have glorif ied thehuman reason which is t riumphant over all the higher and lower powersof the world that had conspired against it . And, indeed, he appears fora moment quite disposed to chant a song of victory. But turn the pageand you will f ind that the lumen naturale, such as we understand it now,is insuff icient . The very Descartes who has just demonstrated to usthat God could not deceive us, feels himself once again invaded by afeeling of anxiety and, quite like Plato, throws himself toward anasylum metaphysicum which is, according to our ideas, only an asylumignorantiae or, to use Husserl's language, a f light to wisdom. It is notenough that God cannot deceive us - that is, that God, even if Hewished it , found it impossible to outwit man. Descartes af f irmed thatGod does not even wish to deceive us, for falsehood is not worthy ofthe Supreme Being. And it is on this convict ion f inally that thephilosopher bases his conf idence in reason. There is obviously here atrue testimonium paupertatis [test imony of poverty]. Descartes well sawthat man could not overcome God by means of natural reason andthat he must f inally, whether he wishes it or not, bend his knees beforethe Creator of the universe and not demand of Him truth but obtain itf rom His mercy through supplicat ion. As Luther said: Oportet ergohominem suis operibus diffidere et velut paralyticum remissis manibus etpedibus gratiam operum artificem implorare [Man should thereforedistrust his works and like a cripple, with slack arms and legs, beg theart if icial grace of works].

And again, that same quest ion that I previously raised and becauseof which we are cont inually obliged to return to the theory ofknowledge: who is right? The ancient philosophers who sought t ruthonly in the metaphysical domain where they found a refuge against allrelat ivism? Or the modern philosophers who, having renouncedmetaphysics, are obliged to admit relat ivism under the form that is leastof fensive for the human reason? Or, f inally, Husserl, whodemonstrates with all the convict ion and ardor of fanat icism that onecan, without addressing himself to metaphysics, escape relat ivism, andthat men know few things but what they do know, they know truly, forneither angels nor demons nor gods can deny their human truths? Hereis the problem, the only problem that the theory of knowledge tries tosolve. And on the solut ion of this quest ion depends the philosophy ofthe thinker. Or, rather, his philosophy - if this word also designates acertain disposit ion of the mind - will lead him toward such or such atheory of knowledge. Such a person who has felt with the totality ofhis being that life goes beyond the truths that can be expressed bymeans of judgments obligatory for all and that can be developed by thetradit ional methodological procedures will not be sat isf ied either withthe specif ic relat ivism of Sigwart and Erdmann or with the extremerat ionalism of Husserl. He will here clearly discern the desire not toescape outside the limits of posit ivism - a desire dependent not onmetaphysical considerat ions but on the profoundly inculcated habit ofliving and thinking in certain condit ions of existence already well knownand comfortable, a desire determined also at t imes (though this mayappear paradoxical) by an obscure metaphysical need which incites theindividual "reason" to take refuge and withdraw into itself and into itsown shell. He will then be prepared to allow Husserl's argument in itsent ire compass to pass as valid.

No, specif ic relat ivism is not in any way dist inguished from individualrelat ivism. The one as well as the other t ransforms the world of ourtruths into a world of visions and dreams. All the guarantees of solidityand certainty that logic and the theory of knowledge furnished uscollapse: we are then obliged to live in constant anxiety and ignoranceand to be prepared for everything. Postulates in this case not only donot calm us but, on the contrary, even intensify our unrest . Butphilosophy since Parmenides has promised us a solid t ruth and anunshakable heart . And if Husserl has succeeded not only in making ussee the relat ivism of t radit ional theories of knowledge but also inovercoming the relat ivism in his own thought, and has made us a gif t ofthat t ranquility of mind to which humanity has aspired for thousands ofyears, was he not fully just if ied in set t ing the theory of knowledgebefore everything else? The expansion of our knowledge becomesalmost a quest ion of t ime, one could say, once it is demonstrated thatthe truth we perceive imposes itself on gods as well as on men. Thepostulate of Descartes that God does not wish to deceive us, apostulate as problemat ic as Sigwart 's, now becomes quite superf luous.We also no longer have any need of Plato's anamnêsis, in which we do



not have any great conf idence: who today would seriously maintainthat our souls existed in another world before their birth and st ill recallin this earthly existence truths previously seen? Even if the human soulis born at the same t ime as the body, even if God is a liar and animmoral Being, our science and our knowledge would have nothing tofear. Reason will not leave us in the lurch. It possesses all authority.

How does Husserl overcome relat ivism?

The answer to this quest ion is bound to the quest ion of what theobject of knowledge is. This is obviously a fundamental quest ion. Platoand Aristot le already af f irmed that the object of knowledge is not theindividual but the general. The realism of the Middle Ages adopted thesame thesis. It is only in modern t imes that scient if ic thought has seenthe impossibility of speaking of the general as an "object ." And it wason the ground of Kant 's and Fichte's philosophy that the theory ofRickert , who teaches that the object of knowledge is "that whichshould be" (das Seinsollende) was born. The philosopher of Freiburgimagined that he succeeded through das Seinsollende in deliveringpoor human thought f rom the chains in which it has struggled forcenturies. Like Husserl, Rickert t ries to escape from the claws ofrelat ivism which tear the conscience of the thinker. But Rickert 's joywas of short durat ion. It soon appeared that das Seinsollende is only aweak remedy for doubt; it is at most an anesthet ic whose act ion doesnot last . As for Husserl, he resolved the dif f iculty quite dif ferent ly by re-establishing - under a new form, it is t rue - the Platonic theory of ideasor Scholast ic realism.

Husserl begins by opposing the act of the individual's t rue judgmentsto the truth. I say that 2 x 2 = 4. My judgment is a psychological act andas such can be the object of psychologic study. But whatever thepsychologist may do to clarify the laws of thought, he could not in anyway deduce from these laws the dist inct ion between truth and error.On the contrary, all his argumentat ions already presuppose that he hasa criterion through which he dist inguishes truth f rom falsehood. Thetheorist of knowledge is not at all interested in the individual judgmentsof John or Peter according to which 2 + 2 = 4. What concerns him is thetruth of the judgment, 2 x 2 = 4. Judgments carrying such a t ruth arereckoned by the thousands, but the t ruth is one.

"When a natural scient ist deduces from the laws of the lever, thelaw of weight, etc., the way a machine acts, he certainly feels inhimself all kinds of subject ive acts... In this case, to theassociat ions of the subject ive thoughts there corresponds anobject ive unity of meaning which is what it is, whether or not it beactualized by anyone in thought" (Logische Untersuchungen, II,94). The same point of view is st ill more clearly expressed in thef irst volume of the Logische Untersuchungen: "If all the massessubject to gravitat ion disappeared, the law of gravitat ion wouldnot be destroyed but would simply remain without any possibleapplicat ion. The law, indeed, says nothing about the existence ofgravitat ional masses but about what is inherent in these massesas such" (Ibid., I, 149).

In both cases Husserl emphasizes that the theorist of knowledge is notat all concerned with the resemblance established between thedif ferent psychological acts of a single or several individuals. What isimportant is not that you, I, and millions of individuals experience thesame thing and express it in the same way by establishing the laws ofthe lever or of gravitat ion. To understand Husserl right ly we must neverlose sight of this. He returns constant ly to this point both in the f irstand in the second volume of his Logische Untersuchungen, where thisthought resounds as a kind of leitmot if . I quote again this importantpassage:

"For example, the meaning of the statement, "pi is a t ranscendentquant ity": what we understand by reading it or think by speaking itis not an individual characterist ic but is always individuallydif ferent, while the meaning of the statement must be identical. Ifwe or other persons repeat the same proposit ion with the sameintent ion (mit gleicher Intention), each of these persons has hisown phenomena, words, and moments of understanding. Butdespite this limit less mult iplicity of individual experience, what isexpressed in them is everywhere something ident ical, the same



(es ist dasselbe) in the strictest sense of the word. The meaningof the proposit ion is not mult iplied with the number of personsand acts; the judgment, in the ideal and logical sense, remainsone. The fact that we here maintain the strict ident ity of themeaning (der Bedeutung) by dist inguishing the lat ter f rom theconstant psychic character of the interpretat ion (der Bedeutung)does not come from any subject ive inclinat ion for subt ledist inct ions but f rom a f irm theoret ical convict ion that it is only inthis way that one can arrive at a t rue appreciat ion of the situat ionthat is fundamental for the understanding of logic. Likewise, it isnot a quest ion here of a simple hypothesis which must bejust if ied by its explanatory usefulness (durch ihreErklärungsergiebigkeit); but we consider this as a t ruthapprehensible immediately, obeying in this the supreme authorityfor all quest ions concerning knowledge, i.e., evidence. I perceivethat in repeated acts of representat ion and judgment, I certainlythink the same thing (identisch dasselbe), the same concept, i.e.,the same proposit ion, and that I cannot think otherwise; Iperceive that, for example, where it is a quest ion of theproposit ion or t ruth, "pi is a t ranscendent quant ity," I do not thinkof anything less than of an individual experience or of a momentin the experience of any person. I perceive that this ref lectedstatement has really for its object what const itutes meaning inordinary speech (was in der schlichten Rede die Bedeutungausmacht). Finally, I perceive that what I mean in the proposit ion inquest ion or what I grasp as its meaning when I hear it is ident icallywhat it is (identhisch ist, was es ist), independent ly of the factthat I think and exist or that , in general, thinking persons and actsexist or do not exist ... This t rue ident ity that we af f irm here isnone other than the ident ity of the species (Identitat der Spezies).It is in this way, but only in this way, that it can embrace in an idealunit y, ksymballein eis en, the scattered mult iplicity of individualpart icularit ies." (Logische Untersuchungen, II, 99)

And further:

"Ideal objects exist t ruly... which does not prevent the meaning ofthis existence and, with it , the meaning of the predicate f rombeing here completely, specif ically the same as that, for example,in cases where to a real subject a real predicate is at t ributed ordenied. In other words, we do not deny it but rely rather on thefact that inside the conceptual unity of what exists (or, what isthe same thing, of the object in general) there exists afundamental categorical dif ference of which we take accountthrough the dist inct ion between ideal being and real being, beingas species and being as individual. But this dif ference does notabolish the supreme unity in the concept of the object ." (Ibid.,125)

And f inally:

"Every one of these examples lets us perceive that in knowledgespecies becomes an object and that judgments about species arepossible in the same logical forms as about individual objects."(Ibid., 111)

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Here are the three principal theses on which Husserl bases hisrat ionalism. First of all, every theory which admits statementsdestroying the possibility of any theories whatsoever is absurd. Thisthesis, which was transmit ted to Husserl by the ancient t radit ion andwhich all the theorists of knowledge consider indisputable, serves himto refute the present theories of knowledge.

The second principle is not new either: a rigorous dist inct ionbetween the points of view of psychology and theory of knowledge. AsI have already said, this principle was proclaimed by the neo-Kant ians tojust ify Kant 's doctrine that reason dictates its laws to nature. Whatpertains here especially to Husserl is the rigor and boldness with whichhe develops and applies this principle, a rigor and boldness thatdist inguish all the works of this remarkable f igure. Even though he gaveto the second volume of his Logische Untersuchungen the t it le"Untersuchungen zur Phanomenologie und Theorie den Erkenntnis," heproposes f inally to rid himself of all theory in the strict sense of theword. In a note on the expression "theory of abstract ion," which he hadhimself used, he declares: "the word theory does not f it completelyhere, for what follows in the text does not give any place to theoret icalconstruct ion, i.e., to explanat ion." One could then perhaps say that histheory of knowledge tries to put an end to every theory of knowledge.His success would have been the supreme triumph of rat ionalism, for itwould then have appeared that reason has no need of being just if iedbut, on the contrary, can itself just ify everything. Husserl saw correct ly;it is precisely thus that the problem of the theory of knowledge mustbe posed. It is because of this that he defends his f irst principle withsuch ardor and applies it so boldly.

It is for the same reason also that he insists on the reality of idealobjects, a reality which appears evident in direct intuit ion, andintroduces these objects into the same category as real objects, forboth have being and exist . If his "arguments" are really irrefutable,Husserl can consider his work f inished. Psychologism will forever haveto abandon the domain of philosophy where, henceforth, absolutetruths will reign. Science could then go forward in all t ranquility withoutfear of an at tack f rom the f lank. All its judgments will be def init ive andunalterable. No other court will be able to set itself above it . Everythingwill be according to its decisions: Roma locuta, causa finita.

I repeat, we must do just ice to Husserl. No other theory ofknowledge poses the problem with such rigor, clarity, and frankness.Husserl will accept no compromise: all or nothing. Either evidence is thef inal goal to which human thought tends when it seeks the truth andthis evidence can be obtained by human methods, or the reign ofchaos and madness will be established on earth and it will be permit tedto anyone who has the whim to seize the rights of reason, its scepterand its crown. And then "t ruth" will no longer have anything in commonwith the unshakable deduct ions which the exact sciences have soughtand obtained unt il now. Then it would perhaps be necessary to recallwith a certain grat itude the immature "wisdom" that Husserl had setaside, perhaps even alchemy and astrology. These were not sciences,of course, but construct ions of a more or less scient if ic appearancewhich relied on argumentat ion. One would perhaps even come to thepoint of thinking back longingly about Catholic theology: Saint ThomasAquinas, whatever else he was, was a faithful disciple of Aristot le.

Let us, however, examine a lit t le more closely Husserl's"argumentat ion."



I have put the word "argumentat ion" in quotat ion marks becauseHusserl, who pretends to rely only on intuit ion and self -evidence, t riesto pose the problem in such a way that every demonstrat ion becomessuperf luous. He leaves to other sciences the concern for Erklärungen,but the task of phenomenology is beyond all demonstrat ions. Hisconcern is not das Erklären, but das Aufklären (LogischeUntersuchungen, II, p.120). Such is the axiom: every theory whichdenies the possibilit ies of any theory whatsoever is absurd and,therefore, unacceptable. As Aristot le says, such theories refutethemselves.

Sett ing out f rom this, Husserl, as we recall, overthrows the specif icrelat ivism he had discovered in the theories of knowledge of Sigwart ,Erdmann, Mill, etc. But is this thesis really indisputable? If we admit thatour t ruth is only a human truth, do we really introduce into ourreasonings an element which ruins them and takes away all theirmeaning?

At f irst blush, this seems indisputably so. It is not for nothing thatGreek thought has dominated men's minds for centuries. And thenthere is the evidence on which Husserl relies: we establish direct ly thata statement which conceals its own negat ion is absurd.

But f rom another side an extremely strange fact solicits ourat tent ion. Despite all the ef forts that have been made to expel thatunfortunate relat ivism, it cont inues to live in philosophy, and its powerof act ion and contagion af ter thousands of years of cont inuouslyvagabond and hunted existence not only has not weakened but, onthe contrary, grown stronger. Husserl himself establishes that the mostconscient ious and penetrat ing thinkers, without taking account of theaquae et ignis interdictio [banishment] which threatens it , not onlymaintain constant relat ionships with this inveterate sinner but evenrender homage to it and honor it . How explain this mystery? Why havethe frightening curses of reason not been ef fect ive? Why does Husserlsee himself again obliged to raise his voice and to hurl his anathema atthe philosophical community in the person of its most remarkable andmost loyal representat ives? Husserl does not raise this quest ion and,moreover, cannot raise it . The very nature of his philosophicaltendencies forbids him to take reality and history into considerat ionand treat them as independent factors. For one who admits theprimacy of autonomous reason, reality always recedes into thebackground. He is persuaded in advance that every fact mustnecessarily f ind its place marked out in the thought which possesses allthe purity of the a priori. Wir werden uns nicht zu der Uberzeugungentschliessen, es sei psychologisch möglich, was logisch undgeometrisch widersinnig ist. [We will not commit ourselves to theproposit ion that that which is logically and geometrically absurd ispsychologically possible] (Ibid., II, p. 215).

One cannot f ight against Husserl if one remains on his ground. Youwill hardly have opened your mouth to answer him before heimmediately stops you: if you admit a thesis that denies the possibilityof all theses, you speak words devoid of meaning and must withdrawyour word.

But let us make an experiment. In a general way Husserl avoidsmetaphysics, that is, he does not like it and is not interested in it . Buthe is prepared to examine carefully any metaphysical ideas whatsoeveron the condit ion that they are presented to him not as "rigorousscient if ic t ruths" but as hypothet ical supposit ions and on the condit ionalso that they do not contain any inner contradict ion.

Let us then make one of those supposit ions which came toDescartes' mind and which, though inadmissible for certain othermetaphysical considerat ions, are nevertheless possible. Let us assumethat God can deceive men and that He does in fact deceive them. AsDescartes has demonstrated to us, we see clearly that in order to beable to deceive us, God must somehow bring it about that we exist andthat we even know the truth of our existence. But then af ter havinggranted to us, even if against His will, this unique truth - for otherwise itwould have been impossible to deceive us - God can perfect ly welldeceive us about everything else and make us believe that our othertruths are as indisputable as the truth of our existence. Descartes is



perhaps right in reject ing with indignat ion the idea that God, who isperfect ion Himself and the supreme good, is capable of duping men.But it may also be that Descartes is wrong. Despite his great genius,the father of modern rat ionalism could have been insuff icient lyinformed about the designs of Providence. And then, in any case, insupposing that God is t ruthful, Descartes makes a purely metaphysicalassumption on which Husserl's theory, which is purely a priori and relieson evidence, has no right to lean. It is possible, then, that God deceivesus about everything except about our own existence. It may then bethat other beings exist - angels or gods - whom no one deceives andwho see the real t ruth. What then? From the point of view of thesebeings, the human truth will be a specif ic t ruth - useful and necessary(perhaps, on the contrary, hurt ful and bad) for men but inapplicable inother worlds. It is said that we cannot imagine any consciousness otherthan our own, but this is not t rue at all.

As if it were not enough for nature to deceive us, but as if it wishedexpressly also to make us sadly suspect the decept ion, nature itselfplunges us f rom t ime to t ime into states whose "evidence" is verydif ferent f rom that which serves as the basis for Husserl's theory ofknowledge. Let us recall the state of drunkenness, the act ion ofmorphine and opium; let us recall ecstasy and f inally the so-called"normal" state of sleeping which alternates regularly with the state ofwaking. Compared to the man who is awake, the man who is asleepcan be considered as a being from another world. The sleeper has hisown reality which is quite dif ferent f rom daily reality. He even has - andthis is part icularly important for us - his own logic and his own a priori, alogic and a priori which have nothing in common with the relat ive t ruthsaccepted by relat ivists like Sigwart and Mill. And this logic also rests onevidence. If a man dreams that he is the Emperor of China and that inthis character he is engraving monograms on the surface of a spherewith one dimension only (dreams constant ly of fer examples of realityof this kind), the dreamer does not at all experience thecontradictoriness of the elements out of which his representat ions andjudgments are composed. On the contrary - and this happensconstant ly in dreams, as everyone knows from his own experience -when suddenly the sleeper begins to doubt that one can engravemonograms on a surface with one dimension, or that a man born inRussia or England and not knowing a word of Chinese can be Emperorof China, when, in a word, the memory of a "t ruth" strange to theuniverse of the dreamer t ries to disturb the "natural" and "normal"march of the thoughts immanent in the lat ter, the logic of dreamsimmediately intervenes. It imposes its rights upon us and withindisputable evidence leads us to the convict ion that all thesememories are only the ef fect of an inveterate relat ivism, for, asappears clearly to the dreamer, the Emperor of China can never be aChinese and monograms must necessarily be engraved on the surfaceof a one-dimensional sphere.

In short , the "evidence" which conquers doubts, the "evidence"which pretends to be the supreme court and leads the thought of thedreamer according to its desires, plays the same role in dreams as inthe state of waking.[1] And, then, it of ten happens that in dreaming webegin suddenly to feel that the events which unroll before us are false,that they are only the product of our imaginat ion, that we are sleeping,and that to deliver ourselves from this network of falsehoods and ofabsurd a priori which ensnare us, we must awake. In other words, in thestate of dreaming, among the truths which are t rue only for the specieshomo dormiens there suddenly emerge two truths that are no longerspecif ic but absolute. If we reason in the dream state as Husserl andthe Greeks reason, we shall have to reject precisely these two truths ascontaining an inner contradict ion. If we say that we are sleeping andthat our evidence is the evidence of a sleeper, i.e., a decept iveevidence, the statement that we are sleeping is also false. Homodormiens, in relat ivizing the truth of his dream, relat ivizes being, etc. Butthis convict ion which has arisen in us that we are sleeping and that wemust awake in order to obtain the truth, these judgments that relat ivizethe truth of our dreams, are the only ones that are true, and this is eventoo lit t le to say, for they are the only ones that permit us to rid ourselvesof the absurd and outrageous falsehoods of the state of dreaming.

[1] Cf. the end of Tolstoy's Confession: "And then, as of ten happens in



dreaming, the mechanism by which I maintain myself seems natural,understandable and indisputable, though in the waking state it isabsurd."

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I am not at all thinking of ident ifying our existence with the dreamstate and of pushing the parallel further. And, moreover, there is nonecessity for this. It was important for me to establish that Husserl'sf irst argument, his fundamental argument, is not at all as strong as heimagined. We are not always right to argue according to consequences,and it is not always necessary to be afraid of contradictory judgments.There is a certain limit beyond which it is necessary to guide oneselfnot according to the general rules of logic but according to somethingelse which st ill does not, and probably never will, have any name in thelanguage of men. Therefore, we must not have too much conf idence inour a priori t ruths; we must somet imes renounce them, contrary to allphilosophical t radit ions. If , then, one separates the point of view of thetheory of knowledge from the psychological point of view, it wouldperhaps be better to follow the example of Sigwart and Erdmann who,in their theories of knowledge, brush relat ivism aside and leave itoutside their theoret ical reasonings. So, at least , the f irst condit ionwhich every theory of knowledge must sat isfy is fulf illed: the postulatesare formulated sharply and clearly. One can then remain a posit ivist andrestrict himself to the immanent. But the situat ion of Husserl, who likeIbsen's Brand, does not admit compromises and at the same t ime fearsor scorns metaphysics, appears completely insoluble, even though hedoes not even suspect it . He sees clearly the absurd conclusions towhich one who decides to relat ivize the truth is led, but he does notnot ice that the danger is no smaller if one pretends to at tain absolutetruth without leaving the domain of the immanent. Let us examine thisin more detail.

Husserl's doctrine about the object of knowledge (a doctrine whichis related to that of Leibniz about the vérités de raison and the véritésde fait, which Husserl considers closest to his own [Log.Unter. I, 163,191, compare to 117]) af f irms, as we remember, the existence of theideal, an existence which belongs to the same category as that towhich the existence of the real belongs: these are two species of thesame genus. The vérités de raison, however, have an existencecompletely independent of the real; I would say that they "are" parexcellence. Even if there were not one living being, if all real objectswithout except ion disappeared, the general laws, the t ruths, and theconcepts would cont inue to exist .

If the real world had never been born, the existence of the idealworld would not have suffered any harm. The ideal world would thenoccupy ent irely the category which actually includes, besides the idealworld, the real world. 2 + 2 = 4 would have remained the same even ifno being had ever thought this statement. And the laws of gravitat ionwould remain what they are even if all masses should disappear, andthese laws already existed before any masses came into existence.

But what, then, is the relat ionship between the truths of reason, orthe ideal t ruths, and the world of the real? Autonomous reasondecrees its laws without concerning itself with reality, as if the lat ter didnot exist . Indeed, since ideas exist , since they have their own being,why should they concern themselves with other kinds of existence?Have we, who proclaim the doctrine of sovereign reason, the right tosay anything whatsoever about the real world before asking permissionfrom the supreme master, the logos adespotos? [reason which is not atyrant] We know that there is no authority other than reason. Andreason is not something real, something psychological, a certain hic etnunc. Reason is also ideal, something in the genus of "consciousnessin general" or of "the subject of the theory of knowledge" of the older



German schools. And as this reason will decide, so shall it be.

But it suf f ices to put to reason the quest ion of the existence of realobjects immediately to obtain a perfect ly clear and implacablycategorical response: real being does not exist and cannot exist ; theexistence of the real is a kind of contradictio in adjecto [contradict ion indef init ion], much worse even than that psychologism toward which themyopic philosophers turn cont inually despite the interdict ions of reason(Cf. L. U. II, pp. 21 - 22, where Husserl says: nicht die mindesteBehauptung über reales Dasein [not the least af f irmat ion about realbeing] and ob es überhaupt so etwas wie Menschen und eine Naturgibt). Indeed, if reason is autonomous, how will you oblige it torecognize the individual reality over which it has no power? In general,how will you constrain reason to anything whatsoever - that reasonwhich has the power of constraining us and which, by its very nature,does not bear even the shadow of constraint? It will never accept anysuch limitat ion of its rights, for it knows well what this means. But thatindividual reality is the irreconcilable enemy of reason - this, I think, is atruth as evident (i.e., a t ruth about which reason does not admit anydebate) as the truth of the principle of contradict ion. All that is real, allthat exists hic et nunc, as Husserl expresses it , is in the eyes of reasonpure absurdity, which nothing can just ify. We can st ill admit the idea ofreality, the idea of space and t ime in which the real exists, but cannot,that is to say, our reason cannot, admit the real itself withoutabdicat ing. So, then, if reality had need, in order to be, of therecognit ion of reason, it would st ill not have come out of nothingnessto the present day. We discover, then, between the ideal and the realor, to use Husserl's terminology, between reason and reality, anirreducible antagonism, a cruel struggle for the right to exist .

In the measure that reason triumphs, there remains less and lessplace for the real, and the complete victory of the ideal principle wouldmean the disappearance of the universe and of life. Contrary, then, towhat Husserl thinks, I would say: to af f irm the absolute existence of theideal is to relat ivize and even destroy all reality. Husserl's ef forts toreconcile the ideal and the real, the rat ional and the individual, bybringing them into the same category, that of being, where each hasequal rights, lead not to a solut ion of the problem but to its obscuring;for thus is created the possibility of a metabasis eis allo genos - a leapinto another realm, which is, so to speak, legal and in which this veryrelat ivism that is constant ly hunted down, a relat ivism that no matterhow many t imes killed - like the phoenix - is always born anew from itsashes, takes refuge. Both species of being belong to the same genus;what then can be more tempt ing and natural than to subst itute theideal for the real, or vice versa?

When Husserl declares that a mathematical law would cont inue toexist even if there would not be a single real consciousness toconceive it , he commits this metabasis which would have beencompletely impossible if he had not admit ted the existence of idealbeings. He would also not have been able to say that the law ofgravitat ion would be preserved even if all gravitat ing massesdisappeared. If this statement is not a tautology empty of all meaning(and one cannot suspect Husserl of this), it is certainly false, for notonly would the law cease to exist with the disappearance of masses,but even if masses cont inued to exist the law of gravitat ion could verywell lapse. One can perfect ly well admit the supposit ion of Mill thatsomewhere, in other planetary spheres (or, perhaps much closer to us),masses are not subject to the law of gravitat ion but come closer ormove away from each other f reely, without their movements beingsubject to any established plan. One can, one even must, admit thispossibility, if one does not admit Kant 's doctrine that reason dictateslaws to nature. Our ideas of the regularity of phenomena, of rat ionalrelat ionships, of "unchangeable meanings," as Husserl says - all theseideas have an empirical origin. Husserl himself also understands this, itseems, but he assumes that he must forget it in order not to fall underthe anathema already hurled by the Greek fathers of the Church ofScience against all those who do not submit to the commands ofreason. But no, on the contrary, we must not forget it . It will thenappear that even the old 2 + 2 = 4 would not have been able to existwithout the human intelligence capable of discovering one, two, andfour and that law of mult iplicat ion according to which the productarises out of the mult iplicand as the mult iplicator is composed of unity.If one bears this in mind he will see that the ideal ent it ies that exist



outside of t ime, and therefore appear eternal, are essent ially temporaryand perishable.

So it is in a chess game. Husserl himself will tell you that in chess theking, the queen - in short , every piece - is an ideal ent ity which does notundergo any change from the fact of its real incarnat ions. Whether theking be of gold, of ivory, or of paste; whether it be in the f igure of acow or a sparrow; whether its head bear a crown or a t iara, will not inany way change its ideal being, which would no more have changedeven if no chess f igure had ever been incarnated. One can say thesame of all other pieces. Consequent ly the idea of the king remainsalways equal to itself and ident ical, in the strictest sense of the term,whatever way the individual empirical consciousness may grasp it . Onecan even solemnly declare that monsters as well as angels and godswill have to see in it what men see in it , and to conclude from this that itis outside of t ime and eternal, and that the ideas of chess will cont inueto exist even if the ent ire universe disappeared. But whatever may beHusserl's daring, it does not occur to him to speak of eternal ideas inconnect ion with chess pieces, though he once ment ions the game ofchess somewhere...

It is evident that the word "eternal" contains an equivocat ion thatHusserl did not avoid, even though he constant ly warns us against thedangers of the ambiguous use of terms and words. But it followsclearly f rom the example quoted that "eternal" and "atemporal" are notat all synonymous. On the contrary, the meaning of the word"atemporal" is much closer to that of the word "t ransitory." Ideal beingsare just t ransitory things, and no proofs or argumentat ions of reasonwill be able to save them from inevitable death. They have triumphedfor centuries and thousands of years, and their t riumph will perhaps beof st ill longer durat ion. I am even inclined to believe that the power ofthe ideas will not fall for some t ime to come and perhaps will alwayspersist on our earth. The arguments of reason exercise an irresist iblepower over the human mind, just as do the charms of morality. When itis necessary to choose between the rat ional and the real, man willalways incline toward the rat ional. What Husserl expressesphilosophically is f inally only the free and bold expression of the stateof mind of the immense majority of men: let the world perish, providedjust ice is saved; let life disappear, but let us not sacrif ice reason! Somen have thought, so men will think, and one can predict forrat ionalism a long, peaceful, almost "atemporal" existence.

But it requires only a moment for all this to change.

Indeed there are moments in the life of man when the imperat ives ofpure reason and the seduct ive chants of the siren called moralitysuddenly lose all their power. Man then perceives that reason and goodare only the work of his own hands. It seems to me that all thephilosophers have known such lucida intervalla; but they consideredthem the sign of a spiritual weakness, or they were unwilling or couldnot express them completely in their works. I think that the father ofthe theory of ideas himself , the divine Plato, knew such moments, andthat his theory of ideas arose in him precisely in such lucid moments.This seems to be indicated by a passage of Aristot le's Metaphysicswhere it is said that Plato and his disciples obtained their ideas bysett ing before concrete words the term to auto - prostithentes toîsaisthêtoîs to rhêma to auto [placing in f ront of all objects of sensepercept ion the word to auto (itself )]. They thus obtained suchexpressions as as autoanthrôpos, autoippos [man himself , horse itself ]etc. This remark is very subt le and exact but it does not at tain the goalAristot le set himself : it does not at all discredit Plato's ideas but permitsus, it seems, to penetrate further to their most inward esoteric essenceand confers upon them the new charm of an intuit ion that is inf initelyprofound and inexpressible.

Plot inus, likewise, speaks openly not only of the idea of man butalso of the idea of Socrates without fear of irreconcilablecontradict ions, as is appropriate to great philosophers. Once he writesthat the ideas relate, in general, not to Socrates but to the speciesman (V. 9, 12). But another t ime he declares in the same categoricaltone: "If there is a Socrates and if the soul of Socrates exists, there isalso a Socrates in himself , inasmuch as the individual souls exists there(in the spiritual or noumenal universe)" (V. 7, I, beginning). Plot inus hadapparent ly taken pity on Socrates and did not agree to submerge him



in the general idea "man." Plot inus suddenly felt for a moment that totimiôtaton [the most important] is precisely Socrates, the Socrates hicet nunc who was the teacher of Plato and whom the Athenianspoisoned at the accusat ions of Anytus and Meletus. He understoodthat philosophy could not get along without the living Socrates andthat it was better for once to disobey reason than to refuse Socrates aplace in the intelligible world.

In Plato the love of the individual shines through st ill more clearlythan in Plot inus. For Plato the general ideas are only a kind of outervestment, a breastplate under which he hid f rom strangers and fromthe mob that which was dearest in life to him. The elect have the gif t ofcatching a glimpse in very rare moments with their own eyes of what isbest, and they see this, no matter what theories may be constructed.But for the mob it is necessary to show the "general" which can bedist inguished by common sight and demonstrated to all, i.e., the ideas.Kai ta men da horâsthai phamen, noeîsthai d'ou tas d'aû ideas noeîsthaimen, horasthai d'ou [Further, the many things, we say, can be seen butare not objects of rat ional thought, whereas the forms are objects ofthought but invisible] (Rep. 507b).

One perceives, by means of the reason that is common to all, onlythe general, the neutral. As for sight, one must have one's own. Such isthe meaning of the myth of the cave at the beginning of the SeventhBook of the Republic. Real objects, the things that surround us, areonly the pale ref lect ion of t rue realit ies. We see Socrates and admirehim, but this is not yet the t rue Socrates, him whom our soul saw in itsprior existence, him whom it will see in its future existence. And,likewise, lions, horses, cypress trees that we admire on earth, areinf initely paler and poorer than those that exist in t rue reality and that itis given man at t imes to glimpse in brief moments of extraordinaryexaltat ion.

In short , the "theory" of ideas such as the young Plato discovered ina part icularly happy moment of inspirat ion meant that the idea is thequintessence of reality, the being kat'eksochên [par excellence] ofwhich the images of daily reality present only a weak copy. It was onlylater when, under the pressure of an external necessity, he had totransform the ideas into a permanent and immutable good common toall, when he was obliged to defend them before the opinion of the moband to demonstrate to everyone who came along what is by its verynature undemonstrable, - it was then, in a word, when he had to makea "science" out of philosophy, that Plato saw himself under obligat ionto sacrif ice reality and to place on the f irst level that which could be"evident" to all. And the last stage was the theory of the ideas ofnumbers, for one can hardly imagine anything more evident thanmathematics. If , then, at the beginning Plato had the right to claim thatreal objects are only the shadows of ideas, the contrary resulted later:his ideas became no more than the ref lect ion of real objects, shadowswith sharply delimited contours which, by this very fact , could be theobject of that epistêmê (knowledge) for which men have so muchrespect. And it is under this aspect that the ideas pass into modernscience.

The prototype of ideas, of Husserl's and Leibniz' vérités de raison isof fered to us by mathematics. The science created af ter the pattern ofmathematics claims supreme authority to decide all the doubts ofmankind. And indeed, if the f irst quality of the judge must be perfectknowledge of everything in his province, science must take for itsobject the ideas in the sense that Husserl uses the term, i.e., that whichdoes not and cannot contain any reality, like everything that is the workof man. The real arose one knows not whence; it is surrounded by adeep mystery inf initely rich with the unforeseen. And it is precisely thismysterious variability, this inconstancy, of the real that confers uponlife its meaning, its charm, its beauty. But no science, as Husserl himselfadmits, is capable of plumbing the depths of this capricious andchanging reality. Science f inds in the real only what it has itselfintroduced into it ; only the immutable is subject to it (ideel, also starr, asHusserl expresses himself ); it feels itself master only in the domainwhich belongs to it , in the domain whose creator is a creature - man.Spinoza, it is t rue, teaches us and, we must believe, right ly that illeeffectus perfectissimus est, qui a Dei immediate producitur, et quoaliquid pluribus causis intermediis indiget, ut producatur, eo imperfectiusest [that ef fect is most perfect which is produced immediately by God,



and insofar as something has need of many intermediate causes inorder that it be produced, so much the more imperfect is it ] (Ethics, I,XXXVI, Append. Cf. Plot inus, Enneads, V, I. 7). But in this domain, atleast , reason can autocrat ically command and make itself obeyed, forthere are absent f rom it living beings, those intractable beings to whomthe whim of showing their own free will can occur. As for animat ing theideas, this is not given to man; even if this power had been granted tohim, he would not have dared so risky an enterprise. Therefore, in orderto place the ideas on the level of things created by nature while at thesame t ime maintaining them in obedience, Husserl confers upon themthe predicate of being but categorically refuses to them the predicateof reality.

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Let us return to our principal theme, the sovereignty of reason.Reason af f irms that our t ruths are not only human but absolute t ruths,and demands that we recognize that the contrary thesis is inadmissiblebecause obviously absurd. Reason af f irms that reality is not andcannot be, for the existence of the real is a def iance of the existenceof reason. Reason demands furthermore that we admit all theconsequences of the given principles and brand as a crime againstmankind every deviat ion f rom this demand. But, while admit t ingevidence and, consequent ly, the logical legality of the pretensions ofreason, we feel with all our being that in certain cases self -evidenceand logic do not guarantee the chief thing, to timiôtaton — the truth ofour judgments. Just as it of ten happens that the sleeper protests in hisdream state already against that "unity" of consciousness whichpenetrates and organizes all the part icular percept ions of his dreamand, without even realizing what he is doing, t ries no longer to maintainbut to overthrow the convict ion imposed upon him from the outsidethat the unity of consciousness guarantees the truth of his percept ion;so also the philosopher sees arising before him this quest ion: where isthe truth to be sought? To whom, to what, conf ide my dest iny? Must Isubmit to the demands of reason, or at the risk of becoming thelaughingstock of all and of appearing ridiculous in my own eyes, refuseobedience to reason and consider it no longer a legit imate master but ausurper who has exceeded his powers?

The evidence that supports reason enters into a struggle with anobscure sent iment which does not succeed in f inding any just if icat ion.Husserl complains that demonstrat ion deduced from consequencedoes not have suff icient inf luence over men. But this is a calumnyagainst fate, men, and history. On the contrary: we should standastonished at the power of this kind of argumentat ion. The bestweapon in intellectual struggles is reductio ad absurdum, an even moreeff icacious weapon than the accusat ion of immorality. Husserl himselfuses it constant ly, and with what success! All who admit specif icrelat ivism, even thinkers as eminent as Sigwart and Erdmann, are,according to him, mad. This "argumentat ion" acts on minds inirresist ible fashion. Sigwart was st ill living when the f irst edit ion ofLogische Untersuchungen appeared; he was extremely t roubled andfelt himself almost crushed by Husserl's at tacks. In a note to the fourthedit ion of Volume I of his Logik he t ries to respond to his t riumphantadversary. But assurance and energy are lacking in his voice. One feelsthat he is not at all certain that his response can push back Husserl'sat tack. And it could not be otherwise. Sigwart knew well that his ownattempts to f ind an immanent basis for the absolute pretensions ofreason always failed against an insurmountable obstacle. But how ridoneself of the argumentat ion deduced from consequences? If onerejects it , does he not risk being shut up in an insane asylum?Furthermore, Sigwart himself , like Rickert and Erdmann, constant lymade use of this kind of argumentat ion, had complete conf idence in it ,and could not take except ion to it . Sigwart was already an old and sickman when Husserl's book appeared; he died before the publicat ion ofthe edit ion of his Logik where his answer to Husserl appears. We mustthen believe that he carried his last doubts to the grave.

Before the philosopher who lef t this world for another a t ruly t ragicquest ion arose. All his life he had believed that he was living in peacewith reason, but here, at the brink almost of his death, Husserl comesto him to pour the poison of doubt into his soul. Sigwart died withouthaving put his conscience at rest . Can we be certain that Husserl willpreserve his faith to the end of his days? Will there not come to him



also the fearful hour when he will f ind himself obliged to ask himself ifreason is t ruly the heir of Saint Peter, the representat ive of God onearth, the supreme authority which alone possesses the right to speakin the name of Him who sent it and consecrated it king? And if hedoubts - at the risk of being shut up in an insane asylum where the hoipolloi send the daring - will he not imagine that this t iny, essent iallyinvisible, star of doubt which shines in him, is perhaps precisely thatstar of Bethlehem which leads man toward the supreme truth that iscompletely dif ferent f rom ordinary human truths? If you turn to theright you will lose your horse, if you turn to the lef t you will lose your life- as the Russian fable says. Remain on the middle way, the way ofposit ivism and of well-ordered family existence. But it is not appropriateto the philosopher to even think of this! Ein verheirateter Philosophgehört in die Komödie [a married philosopher belongs in comedy],according to Nietzsche.

Husserl will perhaps take me at my word: I speak of the star ofBethlehem, of that absolute t ruth which he also t ries to discover bymeans of his phenomenological method. He will tell me that I admit thatthe criterion of t ruth is one. But if I admit this, he will oblige me toaccept all the consequences of this statement and will thus lead meagain to swear f idelity to reason, the only legit imate master. But I donot believe that this object ion is correct , even if one places himself atHusserl's point of view. I recall once again what I have said aboutdif ferent states of the soul, states whose "evidences" bring ustest imonies so opposed that if one confronted them they woulddevour each other rather than come to agreement.

The invisible star which is under discussion here does not at allresemble that to which the rat ionalists aspire. If one f lees reason, thisdoes not mean that one sets himself necessarily in such or such adetermined direct ion.

On a surface one can trace passing through a given point only oneline perpendicular to a determinate straight line, but in a space of threedimensions one can trace an inf inite number of these perpendiculars.One who is accustomed to planimetry can conceive only with greatdif f iculty the laws of stereometry: unt il he becomes accustomed toconceiving the third dimension, he will obst inately repeat that , given apoint and a straight line, one can construct only a single perpendicular,and he will be persuaded that he is right . This example will, I believe,render my thought clearer, insofar as analogies that are so distant canbe of some use.

The rat ionalist will perhaps answer that planimetry and stereometrydo not destroy the unity of consciousness. But I wished to presenthere only a vague analogy, being obliged to use the same terms bymeans of which "common truths" are expressed. One can also tell methat, in debat ing with Husserl, I presume to put in the place of hisbinding truths my own truths that are just as binding. And this hasalready of ten been said to me by people who consider this"psychological" object ion very serious. But I think it is not even worththe trouble to pause over this anecdotal argument.

But there is st ill another thing which is much more important andcannot be passed over in silence. Husserl says, "The process ofdevelopment of the rigorous sciences consists essent ially in thetransformat ion of the guesses of wisdom into rat ional formulas thatare perfect ly clear. The exact sciences have also had their long periodof wisdom. And as in the course of the struggles of the Renaissancethe sciences raised themselves from wisdom to scient if ic clarity, sophilosophy, I dare hope, will also at tain, in the course of the struggleswe are now traversing, this scient if ic "rigor" (Logos, p. 339). We alreadyknow on what Husserl bases his hopes: he believes thatphenomenology will lead humanity to the realizat ion of this "greatgoal." And he is right to a certain degree, inasmuch as it is t rue that"wisdom" never succeeded in long f ixing on itself the at tent ion andinterests of men. Almost everyone will readily agree with Husserl'swords: "Wisdom, depth of thought, is a sign of that chaos whichscience tries to t ransform into a cosmos, into a simple and perfect lyclear order." Man is a dzôon politikon, a social animal, and aspires tocosmos, a simple and clear order, for no social life is possible in chaos;this, I t rust , does not require demonstrat ion. Not only the naturalistsbut every man, among our contemporaries as well as among the



ancients, considers and will for a long t ime st ill consider that it would bea "sin against science" (Husserl was not afraid to use a Biblical term,and I think that this is not a matter of simple chance; posit ivism alsohas its source in certain hopes that are not at all posit ive and that it isnot advisable to examine) "to imagine a f ree concept ion of nature"(Logos, p. 335). This is t rue as long as centripetal forces dominate thesoul, as long as man wishes to know what has meaning and is valid forall, as long as all his interests are bound to the empirical world and truthappears to him based in the f inal analysis on evidence which renders itconvincing for each of us. For him "it is clear that the abstract ornomological sciences are the truly fundamental sciences, and that f romtheir theoret ical content the concrete sciences must draw everythingthat makes them sciences, namely, theory" (L.U., I, 235).

But Plato speaks to us of a deep mystery that only the init iatesknow. This mystery consists in the fact that philosophers have onlyone purpose, which is to prepare themselves for death and to die.Husserl had certainly read the Phaedo and knew the passage of which Ispeak, but he does not take it into considerat ion, perhaps because inhis judgment this is the domain of wisdom, of depth of thought. But ifhe thinks thus, then he does not see what is involved here. It is anincontestable fact that besides the centripetal forces visible to all,there are in the human soul centrifugal forces. These are less constant;they are dist inguished only with dif f iculty and people so rarely not icethem that when they manifest themselves and disturb or even alter theorder established by men and which they believe is a cosmos inst itutedby nature itself , they are amazed as if at some supernatural event. Butindignat ion and the protestat ions of reason are useless: the factremains a fact .

Plato is right . Men are not concerned only with living and withorganizing their lives but also die and prepare themselves for death.And when the breath of death touches them, they no longer aspire toattach themselves more strongly to the center which binds men toeach other but rather strain all their powers to escape beyond the limitsof that periphery which even yesterday seemed to them eternal. Andthey then try above all else to destroy the illusion of the unity ofconsciousness as well as the evidences that nourish this illusion.

Then they must, to speak in modern language, pass "beyond"human truth and error, beyond the truth and the error which arededuced from the fact of the existence of the posit ive sciences and ofthe most perfect of these, mathematics.

Philosophy then no longer wishes and no longer can be a rigorousscience which amasses truths that by virtue of their evidence mustimpose themselves sooner or later on all men. Philosophy then aspires,as to its timiôtaton (what is most important), to the t ruths which do notwish to be "t ruths common and good for all." And in the light of thissearch, it is the t ransformat ion of the "vague hopes of wisdom" intoclear and simple "rat ional forms" which then appears as the philosophicsin, to speak Husserl's language. The truths convincing for all aretreasures that rust , that moths destroy, and that have no value "inheaven." Even if they should be, as Husserl holds, outside t ime andspace, they would not for all this become eternal. There are in"concrete" reality many more elements of eternity than in all the ideasdiscovered and remaining st ill to be discovered by phenomenology. Ifwe st ill need a witness for the character of the goal that philosophysets, I would recall these words of Nietzsche:

"A philosopher: that is a man who constant ly experiences, sees,hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who isstruck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside,from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-f lashes peculiar to him; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnantwith new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there isalways rumbling and mumbling and gaping and somethinguncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who of ten runsaway from himself , is of ten afraid of himself - but whose curiosityalways makes him 'come to himself ' again." (Beyond Good andEvil, IX, 292)

One can, it is t rue, discern in these words certain nuances which couldleave the way open to those who would like to f ind rat ional t ruths in



them. Nietzsche, it will be said, also pretends to reach a t ruth that isobligatory for all. But we must not take everything literally and make agreat thing of the least word. If we wish to understand a writer, wemust know how to forgive him for what is inadequate in his works. Weare all children of Adam, and even those among the philosophers whoprepared themselves to die and saw the meaning of life in deathcont inued to live and better arrange their existence.

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Husserl stops at nothing in his at tempt to make of philosophy thescience of absolute t ruths. His theory of knowledge extends its rightsnot only to the natural sciences and mathematics but also claims toimpose its direct ives on history and, consequent ly, to rule all themanifestat ions of the human spirit . Husserl does not wish to listen tothe teachings of history; it is history, on the contrary, that must accepthis teaching. One really cannot deny him rigor of thought and a spirit ofconsistency, nor can one deny him a noble audacity and an ardor whichare very rarely found in our t ime among "academic" philosophers.

His dispute with Dilthey is part icularly signif icant in this respect.Husserl has the greatest respect for Dilthey. Despite this, he sends himto the insane asylum along with Sigwart and Erdmann, though usingexpressions - it is t rue - that are less rude. But a madhouse is always amadhouse, whatever words we use to designate it . Here is whatprovoked the pit iless judgment of Husserl. I shall quote only a few linesbut they will suf f ice to make clear for us what Husserl considers ascient if ic sin. Dilthey writes:

"For him whose vision embraces the world and all its history, theabsolute t ruth of any form of religion, philosophy, or pract icalorganizat ion completely disappears. And thus the elaborat ion ofthe historical consciousness destroys, in a more radical way thanthe examinat ion of the struggle of systems, belief in the absolutevalidity of any of the philosophies which try to formulate inconstraining fashion the universal relat ionships of being by meansof a relat ionship of concepts."

To this Husserl replies:

"It is easily seen that historicism, rigorously developed, leads toskept ical subject ivism. Ideas, theories, t ruths, sciences wouldthen, like all ideas, lose their absolute validity. That an idea is validwould then mean simply that it is a spiritual form, a fact to which ameaning is granted and which, as such, determines thought. Inthat case there no longer exists validity as such or an sich, whichis what it is even if no one can realize it and no historic mankindhas ever realized it . This is t rue as well of the principle ofcontradict ion and of all of logic which, already without this, is nowin total f lux. Then one is f inally obliged to admit that the logicalprinciples of noncontradict ion will t ransform themselves into theiropposites. Then all the statements that we now make, all thepossibilit ies that we examine and take into considerat ion, can f indthemselves deprived of all meaning and validity, etc. There is noneed to cont inue this discussion and to repeat here what hasalready been said elsewhere." (Logos, pp. 324-25).

"Elsewhere" means, as Husserl explains in a footnote, in the f irstvolume of his Logische Untersuchungen.

We already know what was said on this subject in the f irst volume ofLogische Untersuchungen. The last word of this discussion is theinsane asylum, where all those who accept relat ivism, even specif icrelat ivism, belong. I do not know how the aged Dilthey reacted to thissevere judgment (he was seventy-six years old when Husserl's art icleappeared). Did he, under the pressure of his adversary's arguments,grant the right of reason to judge history, or did he persist in believingthat history judges reason and everything that reason imagines?



This case is more complex than that of Sigwart ; and Husserl'spretensions here appear inf initely vaster, for now Husserl's ideasdemand that they be granted not only the predicate of being but ofreal being. There then appears that metabasis esi allo genos (changeto another genus) because of which alone it appeared to Husserlnecessary to place real objects and ideas in the same category. Husserlcont inues thus:

"History, the empirical science of the spirit , is incapable by its ownmeans of deciding either in a posit ive or negat ive sense whetherthere is room to dist inguish religion as a part icular form of culturefrom religion as an idea, i.e., as valid religion, art as a form ofculture f rom art possessing true meaning and validity, historicalright f rom valid right , and f inally historical philosophy from validphilosophy. Neither can history tell us whether the relat ionshipbetween each of these two terms is or is not that which existsbetween the idea, to speak Platonic language, and its obscured,phenomenal image (Logos, p. 325). Only philosophicalunderstanding must unveil for us "the riddle of the world and oflife." (Logos, p. 336).

Rat ionalism here blooms magnif icent ly with a splendor such that, tospeak frankly, I am not even completely convinced that Husserl t ruly"dared hope" that some day human reason, even af ter having passedthrough the school of phenomenology and af ter having fully acceptedthe phenomenological method, "must unveil for us the riddle of theworld and of life." Husserl said this, but he does not, it seems to me,think it ; on rather, I believe that he has not yet thought t ruly eitherabout the riddle of the universe or the mystery of life, postponingthese "quest ions" to some future day, as do the majority of very busypeople. Husserl conf ined himself always to the middle zone of beingand has st ill not arrived at the extreme regions. He speaks of theseregions with so much assurance because he sets out f rom thesupposit ion that, thanks to the "unity" of being, the knowledge of themiddle zone permits us by way of deduct ion to judge concerning thefarthest regions. The meaning and at t ract ive power of rat ionalismcome from this postulate, and I think that it is the source of thesaddest misunderstandings in the domain of philosophy and that it ishere precisely that we f ind the original sin of which Husserl has apresent iment but does not succeed in discovering.

We must have the courage to say it f irmly: the middle zones ofhuman and universal life do not at all resemble the polar and equatorialzones. The dif ference is so great that if one concludes from what onesees in the middle zone and applies it to what exists in the extremezones, not only does he not approach the truth but he f lees f rom it .The constant error of rat ionalism derives f rom its faith in the limit lesspower of reason, der Schrankenlosigkeit der objektiven Vernunft(Logische Untersuchungen II, p. 80). Reason has done much, thereforeit can do everything. But "much" does not mean "everything"; "much" isseparated from "everything" toto coelo; "much and "everything" belongto two dif ferent, irreconcilable categories.

That is the f irst point . The second is: to answer Dilthey, Husserl wasobliged to commit a real metabasis eis allo genos (change to anothergenus) and to make use of Plato's language about the relat ionbetween the idea and its darkened image. Plato had the right to speakthus: the idea was for him the reality kat'eksochên, par excellence, andthe reality that we perceive appeared to him an obscured form of theprimary reality. But, according to Husserl, the idea is not real; Husserl'sidea possesses only a certain "meaning," only a being that is an und fürsich and cannot "manifest itself" in reality under any form whatsoever,pure or cloudy. Husserl obviously had no other way out. If philosophypretends to unveil the mystery of the universe and of life, it must haveideas richer in content and more alive than those with which one cancombat Sigwart 's logic. And Husserl hopes that his ideas will give himthe possibility of answering all quest ions, that they will serve him notonly to describe religion and art as "forms of culture" but to decidewhich of the religions has validity in itself - in other words, in whichreligion the voice of God is heard and in which the divine voice,revelat ion, is replaced by a human voice, and whether, in general, thereis a God on earth. Such was certainly the meaning of his statementthat the theory of knowledge precedes metaphysics. Husserl, to ourgreat regret , has st ill not writ ten a phenomenology of religion; I daresay



he will never write it . We must believe that he will not judge himselfent it led to put to his reason, outside of which there is not and cannotbe any authority, the quest ion of the "validity" of religions. And he willnot , furthermore, take it upon himself to answer the quest ion which ofthe exist ing religions has "validity in itself" and where the f inal t ruth is tobe found - in the Old and New Testament, in the Koran, in the Vedas,or even in Also sprach Zarathustra. Nevertheless, he pretends that onlyhis phenomenology is capable of resolving our doubts about the f inalt ruth!

I have already said more than once that theory of knowledge is thesoul of philosophy. One could express oneself with st ill greater force:tell me what your theory of knowledge is and I will tell you what yourphilosophy is. And this is understandable: in accordance with what hewishes to know, man invents his method of knowledge and hisdef init ion of "t ruth." Rat ionalism fears and detests the extreme zones;it holds itself f irmly in the middle zone, in the center, around which aredisposed all the points of the surface that it studies and with which it isconcerned. And it admits the phenomena that it encounters on its wayonly insofar as they can be ut ilized for the needs and necessit ies of thecenter. Religion itself - I do not even speak of art , of morality, of law -acquires importance and meaning only in the measure that it is inagreement with the condit ions of existence at the center. Therat ionalist wishes at all costs to bring it about that religion have"validity" in itself - in other words, that it bear the seal with which thefunct ionaries of reason mark all merchandise carried to the spiritualmarketplace. And it does not even occur to it that religion does nottolerate any control or mark, and that at the merest touch or brushingby the hand of of f icial registrars it t ransforms itself immediately into itscontrary. It is enough to recognize any religion whatsoever as t rue for itimmediately to cease to exist .

Husserl's idea about the "validity" of religion was certainly notinvented by him. Following his custom, he only expresses in an open,sharp, almost brutal manner the goal of the aspirat ions of the "posit ivereligions," even of those which imagined that they lived in the mostelevated regions of fantast ic myst icism. All of them wish beforeeverything else that their "t ruths" should have object ive validity,persuaded that "the rest will come." And all of them would cease tolove and respect their God the moment they saw themselves obligedto renounce the object ive (i.e., admit ted by reason) validity of religion,not even suspect ing that the thirst for object ivity comes from the devil,f rom the prince of this world, and that it is the indisputable sign ofindif ference to other worlds. The most dif f icult thing for man is torenounce the idea that his t ruth is and must be true for all! And yet hemust separate himself f rom this "t ruth." It is possible that "validity initself , a validity which is what it is even if no one can realize it and nohistoric mankind will ever realize it " exists, but it is not and will never bein the "public domain," for "by its very nature" it does not admit thecondit ions and laws that the public domain always imposes. So long aslogic rules, the way to metaphysics is barred. At t imes man feels that solong as he does not awaken from the sleep where the evidences rule,the truth will not disclose itself to him. But, as we know, this feeling,according to Husserl, is the worst and most serious of sins.

It is because of this present iment, expressed very modest ly bySigwart , Erdmann, and Dilthey, that Husserl launched so violent anattack on modern philosophy. But the arguments through which hewishes to force Dilthey to renounce psychologism, on the contrary,only support psychologism. For if man has st ill not expressed "validity initself" and will never express it , how could reason not rise up in wrathagainst itself? Or if reason is too fearful or has too much self -love anddecides not to accuse itself , is it really t rue that there will not be foundin the human soul forces capable of rebelling against the centuries-oldslavery? And is not psychologism, which, despite all at tacks, cont inuesto live, the expression of this rebellion? Is it not precisely that mementomori which always lives in the souls of men, that supreme mystery ofphilosophy that Plato had revealed in his apothnêiskein kai tethnanai[dying and the state of death] and that he himself forgot when he hadto make of philosophy a science capable of imposing itself always andupon all men? If one can reproach modern philosophy for anything, it isnot that it disdains argumentat ion deduced from consequences butrather that it has not the courage to defend its rights and to deliveritself f rom the tyranny of reason. The ancient Greeks doubted whether



men possess the powers necessary to at tain t ruth. Among others,Aristot le bears witness to this. "One could say," he writes, "that thepossession of t ruth is not proper to man. For it may be that man is bynature a slave; that , as Simonides says, the privilege [of f reedom] isgiven only to God; and that it is appropriate for man to aspire only tothat knowledge for which he is dest ined. If one accepts what the poetssay, and if the gods really are jealous, this applies precisely to the caseat hand and he who rises too high perishes" (Met., 982b, 29 ff.). Sothought the ancients. Aristot le himself , however, is of a dif ferentopinion. "It is absurd to assume that the gods are jealous. It isnecessary rather to suppose that the proverb is right : the poets lie agreat deal. Let us not think any science more important, more elevatedthan this."

"The poets lie a great deal." Husserl will certainly acquiesce in thisjudgment of Aristot le's and will gladly repeat with him polla pseudontaihoi aoidoi. In his eyes all that Sigwart and Erdmann bracket in theirtheories of knowledge, Dilthey's statement that history makes usdoubt the absoluteness of human knowledge - all these are onlyinvent ions of the poet that reason cannot just ify. "The gods arejealous" is a metaphysical statement and consequent ly completelyarbit rary. Descartes' thesis that God qui summe perfectus et verax est[who is wholly perfect and true] cannot lie is also a metaphysicalstatement, but it const itutes de facto the unexpressed postulate of allDilthey's demonstrat ions. And are not the melancholy admissions ofSigwart and Dilthey f inally the expression of that obscure feeling whichthe sleeper experiences when suddenly the reality of the dream beginsto seem to him illusory, when the vague recollect ion of another realityto which he belonged in another life begins to destroy the "unity ofconsciousness" and despite all the evidence demands imperiously ofthe sleeper that he awaken?

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With his customary daring Husserl declares: "Our statement thatevery subject ive statement allows itself to be replaced by an object ivestatement signif ies basically nothing other than the limitless characterof objective reason (Schrankenlosigkeit der objektiven Vernunft[author's italics] Logische Untersuchungen, II, 90).

What Husserl promises us here has always been the object of men'smost ardent desires, as the promised land was for the Jews. Reasonhas so of ten deceived us that we really have all grounds for nottrust ing it any more than sense-impressions which, as daily experiencedemonstrates, are equally decept ive. The philosophical skept icismwhich for thousands of years has ruined the established truths wasborn and developed on the soil of observed errors. We have certainsensat ions, we also have subject ive observat ions whose evidenceappears indisputable to all, but where shall we f ind the supremesanct ion - the guarantee that all of us, the human species as such, donot live in a world of phantoms and that the t ruth we dist inguish isreally the t ruth and not an error? Husserl gives to the quest ions soformulated a precise answer: "to the subject ive associat ion ofthoughts there corresponds here an object ive... unity of meaning, whichis what it is whether it be actualized in thought or not" (Ibid., 94). Andhe adds with st ill greater force: "the scient ist knows also that he doesnot create the object ive validity of thoughts and of associat ions ofthoughts, of concepts and of t ruths, as if it were a quest ion ofaccidents of his mind or of the human mind in general, but that heintuits and discovers them. He knows that their ideal being does nothave the meaning of a 'psychic being in our mind' where, through thenegat ion of a real object ivity of the t ruth and of the ideal in general, allreal being, including object ive being, would be abolished" (Ibid., p. 94.Cf. Logische Untersuchungen, I, p. 129: "Truth and being are both, andin the same sense of the term, 'categories,' and obviously correlat ive.One cannot relat ivize t ruth and maintain the object ivity of being.")

And again in Volume I of Logische Untersuchungen:

"The experience of the agreement exist ing between thought andthe real that is thought, between the actual meaning of thestatement and the facts of the case is evidence, and the idea ofthis agreement is t ruth. But the ideality of the t ruth const itutes itsobject ivity. It is not an accidental fact that a proposit ion, in thisplace and at this moment, is in agreement with a given state ofthings. The relat ionship concerns rather the ident ical meaning ofthe proposit ion and the ident ical facts of the case. "Validity" and"object ivity" (or "nonvalidity" and "nonobject ivity") belong to thestatement not insofar as the statement is temporal but to thestatemen in specie, the (pure and ident ical) statement 2 x 2 = 4 ."(I, pp. 190-91)

The explanatory example given here is again drawn from arithmet ic.And this is certainly not a matter of chance. All of Hussen's philosophyis constructed as if there were nothing in the world but mathematics.And if it had not pretended to discover for us the rhidzômata pantôn,the roots of all things, it would perhaps have conformed to itsdef init ion. As the theory of knowledge for mathematics and themathematical sciences it could f ind its use and just if icat ion.

But it pretends to much more, and it is generally considered muchmore important. When Husserl, wishing to sat isfy the "eternal" need ofman, speaks of the limit less power of our reason besides which there is



not and can not be any other authority, what is involved is no longer aquest ion of the mult iplicat ion table. One then discerns the voice ofSaint Thomas Aquinas who, when he asks utrum fides meritoria est,whether faith is praiseworthy, knows that there cannot be two answersto this quest ion or, to speak Husserl's language, that the answer willhave an object ive value. One hears also the voice of Saint ThomasAquinas' opponent Luther, who, even though he called reason a whoreand vulgarly insulted Aristot le, cried out passionately: Spiritus sanctusnon est scepticus, nec dubia aut opiniones in cordibus nostris scripsit,sed assertiones, ipsa vita et omnia experientia certiores et firmiores [TheHoly Spirit is not a skept ic, nor does it write doubts or opinions ourhearts, but rather assert ions more certain and f irm than life itself and allexperience]. Husserl's theory maintains and nourishes precisely this kindof assurance. "It is necessary," he says, "to consider theory ofknowledge a discipline which precedes metaphysics" (L. U., I, 195). Thismeans that before tast ing the inf inite riches of life it is necessary toadmit that reason is object ive and limit less. It is necessary to believethat mathematics determines the character and possibilit ies of humanunderstanding in this world as well as in all those that have alreadyexisted and those that will exist in the future and that, consequent ly, itmay be that the solut ions we propose to metaphysical problems willshow themselves to be false but that in principle the fashion in whichthese quest ions are raised does not admit of any modif icat ion.

To put it dif ferent ly, when Saint Thomas asks utrum fides meritoriaest, it is necessary to answer him "yes" or "no," and this "yes" or "no"will be accepted both by Luther and by the spiritus sanctus in the nameof which he speaks or, to use Husserl's language, by monsters, angels,and gods. Likewise when Luther speaks of his sola fide one must eitheragree or disagree with him. In the kingdom of t ruth, metaphysical aswell as empirical, the supreme ideal is unshakable order. From thiscomes the religious and philosophical intolerance which, to f lat terhuman weakness, has always been considered a proof of our love forGod and the truth. In 1525, in connect ion with the Wars of thePeasants, Luther wrote: Der Esel will Schläge haben und der Poebelwill mit Gewalt regirt sein; das wusste Gott wohl, darum gab er denobrigkeyt nicht eynen Fuchsschwanz, sondern ein schwert yn die Hand[The donkey wishes to be whipped and the mob wishes to be ruled byforce; God knew this well and therefore gave the government not afoxtail but a sword in its hand].

Who knows? It may be that the creators of rat ionalism were movedby the same considerat ions as those of which Luther speaks. Perhapsthey also thought that it is necessary to beat the donkey and to keep at ight rein on the rabble and therefore they created their reason in theimage of the sword. But he who takes up the sword will perish by thesword. Luther, Saint Thomas, and many other great men of this world,suf fered from the autocrat ic power of the tyrant they had placed onthe throne no less than the rabble whom they despised. For in the endthe tyrant demands above all complete submission of those very oneswho helped him ascend the throne.

It is deliberately, for the sake of greater clarity, that I have touchedhere on metaphysical quest ions, but I could have spoken also of theproblems of the exact sciences. "Every theory in the experimentalsciences is simply a hypothet ical theory. It does not draw itsexplanat ions from fundamental laws that are obviously certain but onlyobviously probable. Thus the theories themselves possess onlyobvious probability; they are provisional and not def init ive theories"(L.U., I, p. 255). "If we could intuit clearly the exact laws of psychicprocesses they would show themselves as eternal and invariable as thefundamental laws of the natural theoret ical science and wouldtherefore be valid even if there were no psychic process" (L. U., I, 149).One would, I think, have to be blind not to see clearly that Husserl doesnot keep, and does not wish to keep, within the limits of the"posit ivism" that he proclaims. Or rather, Husserl believes that he hasthe right to raise his posit ivism to the rank of metaphysics. Havingbegun by establishing the equality of the right to be of the ideal andthe real, he ends by subordinat ing the lat ter to the former. The idealworld is the eternal order which determines and supports the real world.The real world was born yesterday and will disappear tomorrow; theideal world was not born and will never pass away. This is thefoundat ion of the limit less power of reason; it is because of this thatwe can transform every subject ive statement into an object ive t ruth.



T he spiritus sanctus of Saint Thomas Aquinas and of Luther, whichwas born of the Greek logos, has become the ideal cosmos of Husserl.And the spiritus sanctus gives men the power to perform miracles, orwhat they consider such. If Christ had said to Saint Thomas bene deme scripsisti [you have writ ten well of me], this would mean - and this isprecisely the essent ial thing - that what Saint Thomas had understoodwas not his subject ive experience but object ive t ruth. All of us,consequent ly, must think and write what Saint Thomas thought andwrote. Christ himself , as is said in Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor," canadd nothing or take anything away from the writ ings of Saint Thomas.And Luther, who was saved by faith, already "knows" not only that hehimself was saved by faith but that all men can only be saved by faith.The Mohammedan, the Hindu, the scient ist of Gött ingen or of Marburg,who have subject ively experienced certain things, have transformedthem into limit less, ideal, object ive t ruths and are unshakably convincedthat it is in this transformation that the supreme goal of mankindconsists; and they do not even ask themselves pro forma if they arenot betraying mankind by barring it , through such philosophic sorceries,f rom the way to salvat ion.

Naturally in our t ime, when the scient ist cannot use the vocabularyof the church, the spiritus sanctus has been replaced by the theory ofideas, as formerly when men had lost conf idence in reason they put thespiritus sanctus in the place of the Xóyoc. But the goal of everyphilosophy "which had a future" was always to give man the possibilityof passing from the subject ive to the object ive and of thustransforming limited experience into absolute judgments. Men havealready more or less arrived at this. Husserl has also succeeded in it . Hisideas have found an echo among many contemporary philosophers.People have already for a long t ime aspired to proclaim proudly, lif t ingtheir heads high, the absolute, unshakable t ruth. And when Husserldaringly began to develop his ideas hundreds of voices responded tohis call. Who today does not possess the absolute t ruth, and whodares doubt that the absolute t ruth is now def init ively the trulyabsolute t ruth and that philosophy has entered into a period of surescient if ic discoveries? Men have again plunged into a peacefulrat ionalist slumber - for the moment, naturally. The printer's ink had notyet had t ime to dry on the pages writ ten by Husserl when the worldwas shaken by events which could in no way have found a place in the"ideal" order perceived anew by the Gött ingen professor. Will menawake, or are they dest ined to a heavy slumber to the end of t ime?There have always been events of immense importance, some ofwhich entered into history while others - the most important - remainedoutside of history and lef t no test imony, but the need for a well-def ined and peaceful existence was stronger than everything. And allmemento mori, beginning with relat ivism and up to death itself , t roubled- and this but for a moment - only a few rare spirits, without succeedingin overthrowing the order of the enchanted kingdom in which we aredest ined to be born and to end our ephemeral existence.

But, despite everything, it is not given to rat ionalism, with all its"arguments deduced from consequences" and its threats ofconf inement in the madhouse, to choke in the heart of men theobscure feeling persist ing there that the f inal t ruth, the t ruth which ourancestors sought unsuccessfully in Paradise, is found epkeina noû kainoêseôs, beyond reason and what can be conceived by reason, andthat it is impossible to discover it in the immobile and dead universewhich is the only one over which rat ionalism can rule as sovereign.

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Part III

WHAT IS TRUTH? On Ethics and Ontology

ou gar deîtai idruseôs, ôsper auto pherein ou dunamenon.It does no t need a support, as though it could no t carry itself.

- PLOTINUS, VI, ix, 6.

tote de chrê heôrakenai pisteuein, hotan hê psychê eksaiphnês phôs labêi.But indeed we must believe that we have seen, when light suddenly dawns on the soul.

- PLOTINUS, V, iii, 17.

This section is a reply to critic ism made by Pro fesso r Albert Hering to my essay MementoMori. [Shestov's essay appeared in Russian in 1916 in the Russian journal Rouskaia Misl. AFrench translation appeared in the Revue Philosophique fo r January, 1925. Pro fesso r Hering 'scritic ism, entitled Sub Specie Aeternitatis, can be found in the 1927 vo lume o f PhilosophischerAnzeiger (Berne)]

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Hering calls his essay Sub specie aeternitatis. These are words ofvery great purport . In a certain sense they sum up the philosophicthought of Europe, if not of mankind. Eternity has ever been the objectof philosophic thought, and all arguments conceived by the opponentsof philosophy have always foundered on the f irm rock of eternity.Nevertheless, those who know Husserl's work cannot evade onequest ion: this idea is old and venerable, and even absolutely def inite,but in any case not "scient if ic"; can the author of the Logical Inquiriesshelter behind it?

Sub specie aeternitatis - this is surely the quintessence of thatwisdom and profundity which Husserl at tacks with such force andpassion in his essay Philosophy as Strict Science. Hering, however,disregards this. He even resorts to the scriptures and appeals to theGospel according to Saint Matthew 10:39. He writes: "Will Shestov'sMemento Mori make any impression on the champions of scient if icphilosophy? Will not his warning to them not to lose their lives inseeking for the logos [I never gave this warning, but I will not enlarge onthis point , in order not to diverge from the main issue - L.S.] beanswered with reference to the words of the Logos-Messiah: 'He whof inds his life shall lose it , and he who loses his life for my sake shall f indit?'" I am ready to admit that my Memento Mori will make no impressionon the champions of scient if ic philosophy. I cannot, however, allowthem to appeal to the words of the Gospel. It is t rue that God is calledlogos in the Gospel, but can the logos of the Gospel be equated withthat of the philosophers? And will Husserl's philosophy, which rejectsprofundity and wisdom, ever agree to admit that it cannot get along inits inquiries without the doubtful support of a young Jew who wascondemned innocent to a felon's death two thousand years ago?Husserl's argument is based on self -evident t ruths; has it then a right toenlist the support of the Gospel commandments? Dostoevsky wasable to take the passage in Saint John (12:24) as motto for his BrothersKaramazov; but Dostoevsky is hardly a f it t ing mate for Husserl. Husserlhas never appealed to the authority of Scripture in anything which he

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has writ ten hitherto, and I am convinced that he will not approve themethod discovered by Hering of defending phenomenology.

Af ter what Hering has said, it is comprehensible that he should thinkmy account of Husserl's views incorrect . I t ried to show that Husserlshuts himself of f in the strictest fashion from both profundity andwisdom. Hering insists that I am exaggerat ing, that Husserl made nosuch clean break with profundity and wisdom, and even recognizedthat they can be of pract ical use. But I never denied this; I even said soin my essay. Why, then, does Hering insist on it? Read what he says:"Then philosophers have nothing lef t but the necessity of a decision...But no one is forced to throw his spiritual salvat ion to the windsbecause his speciality, whether it be chemistry or scient if ic philosophy,says nothing about it ." I did not, indeed, say this, but I shall permitmyself to state that Husserl will not accept a word of what Heringwrites. These thoughts were quite usual toward the end of the lastcentury and the beginning of the present. Even today there are manyphilosophers who think thus. They have, however, nothing of Husserl inthem and are as alien to him as the specif ic relat ivism with which, again,many did and st ill do content themselves. Hering says: "There is nonecessity for a decision". How so? There is a necessity. Husserl's wholeforce, his enormous signif icance, is based precisely on the fact that hehad suff icient acumen to see this necessity and suff icient boldness totake the decision. Before him philosophers clung pat ient ly and evenwillingly to wisdom. Its rights had been hallowed through centuries, andno one dared doubt them. Every one would have thought it the mostfright ful blasphemy; but Husserl was not afraid to proclaim aloud whatthe others dared not confess even to themselves, what they dared notsee. Yet Hering tries to just ify Husserl, as though he were ashamed forhim. I cannot repeat here the quotat ions which I adduced from Husserl'sPhilosophy as Strict Science and other works. Any reader interestedcan look at my Potestas Clavium. If he reads the Memento Mori he willeasily be able to convince himself that this was precisely how Husserlposed the quest ion: there is no alternat ive, we must decide betweenphilosophy and profundity and wisdom, and profundity and wisdom areas out of date as astrology and alchemy.

Let 's cont inue: "because his speciality, whether it be chemistry orscient if ic philosophy, says nothing about it ." Hering thinks that thequest ions which the wise have discussed hitherto are no concern ofphilosophers, as they are no concern of chemists, because they gobeyond the limits of their speciality (in another passage he even speaksof a "modest speciality"). And the same opinion is ascribed to Husserl!But Husserl maintains the exact opposite. He says that philosophy isthe "science of the t rue beginnings, of the origins, the rhidzômatapantôn (roots of all things)." And again: "Science has spoken, now it isfor wisdom to learn." Once more, I cannot repeat the quotat ions which Iadduced in my essay, but surely the above shows very clearly thatHusserl will not be content with the modest role of a specialist whichHering assigns him (when, indeed, did a great philosopher ever displaythe virtue of modesty?) and is certainly not inclined to leave profundityand wisdom in their old rights. Many are shocked by Husserl's decisionand challenging boldness. They think that a bad peace is better than agood war, and try, as far as possible, to sof ten down Husserl's wordsor change their meaning. He himself is not at all pacif ically inclined."Perhaps there is no more powerful, more irresist ibly progressive idea inmodern life than that of science. Nothing can stop its victoriousadvance. It is, indeed, all-embracing in its legit imate ends. In itsimaginary ideal complet ion it would be reason itself , which can have noauthority beside it and over it ." Do these words need any addit ion? Andare Husserl's words such that we should hold him for a "modest"specialist? Is Hering right in saying that Husserl is ready to live in peaceand good understanding with wisdom and that my account of thethought of the creator of phenomenology is not suf f icient ly exact?

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And yet in a certain sense Hering is right in calling his essay Subspecie aeternitatis. He is even right in appealing to the Scriptures. Thereis a certain connect ion between phenomenology and the wisdomwhich it rejects. Somewhere, at the last end, phenomenology losesbelief in itself and its self -evident t ruths and seeks help and blessingfrom wisdom. In Husserl's works themselves this relat ionship was notpercept ible, but the moment his pupils take up the word it becomesevident at once. Why do the pupils deviate f rom their master and denyhim? Why did the master speak of "limit lessness of reason" while thedisciples only wished to be modest specialists and to hide in theshadow of sub specie aeternitatis?

I think that here we have reached the fundamental quest ion, andthat insofar as we succeed in throwing light upon it , we shall also f indan answer to all the object ions brought forward by Hering. Sub specieaeternitatis is, of course, the basic theme of Spinoza's philosophy. Denatura rationis est res sub quadam aeternitatis specie percipere [it is inthe essence of reason to perceive things from the aspect of eternity](Ethics, II, xliv, cor. 2). Further: Quisquid mens, ducente ratione, concipit,id omne sub eadem aeternitatis seu necessitatis specie concipit[whatever the mind, guided by the reason, perceives, it perceives fromthe same aspect of eternity or necessity]. In other passages, too, ofthis and his other works he has much to say on this point . The close ofthe f if th part of the Ethics is simply a symphony on the theme subspecie aeternitatis: Mens nostra, quatenus se et corpus sub aeternitatisspecie cognoscit, eatenus Dei cognitionem necessario habet, scitque sein Deo esse et per Deum concipi [Insofar as our understandingcognizes itself and the body from the aspect of eternity it necessarilyhas cognit ion of God and knows that it is in God and is conceivedthrough God] (Ethics, V, Prop. XXX).

But at the same t ime Spinoza says in his Letter LXXVI, in which he isanswering Burgh: Ego non praesumo, me optimam invenissephilosophiam, sed veram me intelligere scio. Quomodo autem id sciam,si roges, respondebo: eodem modo ac tu scis tres angulos trianguliaequales esse duobus rectis; et hoc sufficere negabit nemo, cui sanumest cerebrum. [I do not assume that I have found the best philosophy,but I know that I have the true one. And if you ask how I know this, Ireply: just as you know that the sum of the three angles of a t riangle isequal to two right angles; and no one of sound understanding will denythat this suf f ices.]

At f irst sight these sentences seem to agree completely with oneanother and with the whole tendency of Spinoza's philosophy. Inreality, however, they are so dissimilar that they must be considered asmutually exclusive. In his let ter Spinoza maintains that his philosophy isby no means the best, but only the true. And he knows that it is thetrue for the same reason by which his correspondent knows that thesum of the angles of a t riangle is equal to two right angles. Accordingto this, the task of philosophy is to seek not the "best," but the "t rue."And philosophical t ruth shall be sought precisely where we seek theanswer to the quest ion of to what the sum of the angles of a t riangleis equal. Any number of passages could be quoted from Spinoza'sworks in which the same thought is expressed with equal sharpnessand clarity. He rejects with the utmost scorn any at tempt to see in manand his claims anything greater than one among many naturalphenomena: imo hominem in Natura veluti imperium in imperioconcipere videntur [they seem to t reat man in nature as a state withinthe state] (Part III, Beginning). He speaks of the praejudicia de bono et



malo, merito et peccato, laude et vituperio, ordine et confusione,pulchritudine et deformitate et de aliis hujus generis [prejudicesconcerning good and evil, merit and sin, praise and blame, order andconfusion, beauty and ugliness, and other suchlike things] (Part I,Appendix). He also say that these prejudices would have necessarilyhidden truth f rom man for all eternity, nisi mathesis, quae non circafines, sed tamen circa figurarum essentias et proprietates versatur, aliamvenitatis normam hominibus ostendisset [had not mathematics, whichdeals not with ends, but with the nature and propert ies of f igures,shown to man another norm of t ruth]. And he assures us that deaffectuum natura et viribus, ac mentis in eosdem potentia, eademmethodo agam, qua in praecendentibus de Deo et mente egi, ethumanas actiones atque appetitus considerabo perinde, ac si questio delineis, planis aut de corporibus esset [I shall t reat of the nature andforces of the af fect ions, and of the power of the spirit over them,using the same methods as I employed in the previous part of my work,when I t reated of God and the soul, and shall t reat of human act ionsand appet ites as though dealing with lines, planes, and bodies].

How, now, is Spinoza's idea that the science of mathematics mustserve philosophy as model to be harmonized with his passionatehymns to the theme sub specie aeternitatis? I will answer f rankly: itcannot be harmonized at all. This is the basic and, if you will, theintent ional and premeditated contradict ion of Spinoza's system. Whenhe speaks of his methods of invest igat ion he assures us that living manwith his ambit ions, fears, and hopes does not concern him. But whenhe tries to show his ult imate t ruth, he forgets his mathematics, forgetshis solemn vows, non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari. He wants toknow an aliquid daretur, quo invento et acquisito continua ac summa inaeterno fruerer laetitia [whether there is anything, the discovery andacquisit ion of which would give man last ing and supreme joy through alleternity]. Mathematics has, of course, nothing to do with human joys,whether eternal and sublime or t ransitory and debased. Similarly, thefollowing words are meaningless for a mathematician: sed amor ergarem aeternam et infinitam sola laetitia pascit animum, ipsaque omnistristitiae est expers; quod valde est desiderandum, totisque viribusquaerendum [but the love of the eternal and endless feeds the soulwith pure joy, and is itself f ree f rom all sorrow; which is great ly to bedesired and to be sought af ter with all our force] (De IntellectusEmendatione). The mathematician recognizes that the sum of theangles of a t riangle is equal to two right angles, or that the relat ionbetween the circumference and the diameter is a constant; that is theend of it . And if Spinoza has found a something which enables him tolif t himself into those spheres in which there is no mourning and nowailing but only joys without ceasing, this is certainly not because hefound the norma veritatis in mathematics. And f inally - and this is themain point - there is absolutely no doubt that a philosophy whichaffords man pure joy and frees him from sorrow is simply not able tosay of itself that it is only vera philosophia; it is, in the most exactsense of the phrase, optima philosophia. It brings the summum bonum,quod est valde desiderandum totisque viribus quaerendum.

But here arises the dif f icult and even fatal quest ion whichphilosophy cannot possibly evade. What is the relat ionship betweenverum and optimum? Has the verum to adapt itself to the opt imum, orvice versa? And it is not one quest ion that confronts us here, but awhole series. We must answer the following: (1) What is "t ruth"? (2)What is the "best"? (3) To whom is power given to determine therelat ionship between the "best" and the "t rue"?

Spinoza assures us that mathematics must be the model ofphilosophic thought, and gives us the norma veritatis: he who f inds thatthe sum of the angles of a t riangle is equal to two right angles has theanswer to all quest ions that could st ir in the breast of man. But is anassurance enough? It is clear that an assert ion is not enough, in spiteof the fact that it is neither necessary nor possible to interpret hiswords to Burgh as though he thought the methods of invest igat ionapplied by mathematicians to be the only correct ones and eternallyapplicable. When he says that success and failure fall equally to the justand the unjust , or that the good things for which the crowd yearns -divitiae, honores, libidines - are unstable and decept ive, he knows verywell that to establish his assert ions he need make no subtract ions ormult iplicat ions, need draw no circles nor t riangles. But when he saysnevertheless that mathematics must give us the norma veritatis, this



only means that there is no place in philosophy for f ree choice andarbit rariness, and that the t ruths of philosophy are as compelling andbeyond repeal as those of mathematics. Thus the "best" has to adaptitself to the "t rue." But the "t rue" belongs exclusively to the domain ofreason. In this respect the so-called empirical t ruths dif fer in no wisefrom the a priori t ruths. They, too, are imposed upon man withinexorable compulsion. Our knowledge is, of course, st ill at the loweststage of evolut ion, and the cognitio intuitiva, tertium genus cognitionis(intuit ive cognit ion, the third kind of cognit ion) is so far only the ideal ofhuman achievement. But this does not in the least diminish or reducethe sovereign rights of scient if ic cognit ion. "In its ideal perfect ion itwould be reason itself , which can have no other authority by its side orover it ." These words are f rom Husserl, but are an almost word forword translat ion of the passage quoted by me from Spinoza's LetterLXXVI. And does this not mean that the "best" is ent irely subjected tothe rule and disposit ion of the "t rue"?

Hering does not observe this. He asks, and obviously quite sincerely:"Then why not quiet ly admit that under certain circumstances even thescient if ic philosopher can f ind his necessary spiritual food in religiousrevelat ion, experience and tradit ion?" Why not admit that? Simplybecause it would mean evading a fundamental quest ion. And I repeatonce again that Husserl, the creater of phenomenology founded onself -evidence, will never agree to the compromise which Heringproposes; this would be for him tantamount to giving up the task whichhe had set himself . Not to make an unsupported statement, I will giveanother quotat ion f rom Husserl: "Self -evidence is not in fact a sort ofindex of consciousness at tached to a judgment, calling to us, like amyst ic voice f rom another world, 'here is the t ruth!', as though such avoice had something to say to us f ree spirits, and had not to prove itst it le." This is how Husserl answers any at tempt at interference withjudgments, with the verdict of reason. And if t radit ion, whether that ofthe church or another, personal "experience," or what is called revealedtruth, t ried to raise their voices, would he not ask f rom them what hecalls their "t it les" - what the Roman jurists called justus titulus? And is itnot then quite clear that the cause of revelat ion must be regarded ashopelessly lost at the forum of reason? Perhaps it is rather less clear,but it is equally indubitable that Husserl's task, like Spinoza's, liesprecisely in eradicat ing f rom human consciousness all remnants andremains of the belief that there could be any lawful sources ofcognit ion at all outside reason. In this he sees the necessarypresupposit ion of f ree inquiry ("for us f ree spirits"). This convict ion iscertainly not new. It was not Husserl who evolved it , and not Spinoza.Perhaps it has existed as long as there has been a philosophy, forphilosophy has always wanted to be a rat ional philosophy, and rat ionalinquiry has always passed for f ree inquiry. Revelat ion must just ify itselfbefore reason, otherwise no one would ever t rouble about it . Even GodHimself , insofar as He claims the predicate of existence, must apply toreason in respect, precisely, of that predicate. And reason may give itHim, or it may - and this is more likely - refuse.

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If we admit , what no one will deny, that the essence of philosophylies in f inding how to put the quest ion, then it becomes perfect ly clearthat Husserl's fundamental and enormous service lies in the fact thathe was bold enough to contrast philosophy with wisdom. Philosophymust and can be strict science, which rejects wisdom as decisively as itdoes all kinds of relat ivism, disguised or open. To use Spinoza's words,philosophy wishes to be vera, not optima; but there is absolutely nointrinsic connect ion between the "t rue" and the "best." Biblical Job says:If my grief and my calamity were laid in the balances, it would be heavierthan the sands of the seas. He thinks that there is a balance in whichhuman sorrow and the sand of the seas can be weighed, and thatthere are cases in which human sorrow would weigh more heavily thanthe sand of the seas. Husserl will, of course, not think of discussingJob's words; they are quite clearly "nonsensical." There is no suchbalance in which human experience could weigh heavier than theweight of physical bodies. What we hold for the optimum, for right andsignif icant, cannot be measured with what is verum. Were one to heapever so much human optimum in one scale, and in the other only ahandful of sand, the lat ter would st ill be the heavier, and sink. This isthe fundamental and most self -evident assert ion of that philosophywhich aims at being strict science. And if we were to ask a philosopherhow he knows this, he would answer with Spinoza: eodem modo ac tuscis, tres angulos trianguli aequales esse duobus rectis [just as youknow that the sum of the three angles of a t riangle is equal to two rightangles.] As to Job, who has not ceased his lamentat ions, thephilosopher would interrupt him curt ly: non ridere, non lugere, nequedetestari. And not to Job alone, but also to Him whom Hering calls theLogos-Messiah, who cries aloud "My God, my God, why hast Thouforsaken me?" the philosopher could reply with certainty: intellectus etvoluntas, qui Dei essentiam constituerent, a nostro intellectu et voluntatetoto caelo differre deberent... non aliter scilicet, quam inter se conveniuntcanis, signum caeleste, et canis animal latrans [the intellect and willwhich const itute the essence of God must dif fer f rom our intellect andwill as does heaven from earth... clearly they have as lit t le in common asthe constellat ion of the Dog and the dog, a barking animal.]

As we see, the answers are quite exhaust ive. Both Job and theLogos-Messiah have been put in their places; they must bow beforethe truth and be silent . But if they will not be silent , but cont inue to cryaloud, the philosopher will examine their lamentat ions with the sameequanimity and the same tranquility with which he examinesperpendiculars, planes, and circles. And so it must be. But it has neverbeen so, neither with Spinoza, who assured the world that hisphilosophy was not the t rue, but the best, nor with the other greatrepresentat ives of human thought. Spinoza did not discover his subspecie aeternitatis himself . All philosophers before and af ter him, eventhose who, like Husserl, have wanted philosophy to be a strict science,have sought help and support f rom wisdom; and wisdom at all t imesand by all philosophers has been reduced, more or less to the formulawhich Spinoza terms sub specie aeternitatis. It is no chance thatSpinoza's main work is called the Ethics; all his works might bear thist it le. The meaning of his sub specie aeternitatis lies in the bridge which itmakes between the vera philosophia and the philosophia optima. Forhim the cognitio intuitiva vel tertium genus cognitionis is nothing elsethan perfected intelligere. But intelligere does not mean"understanding" but working out within oneself such a relat ionship tothe world and to life that it is possible to at tain the acquiescentia animior the summum bonum of which all philosophers have always dreamed.



Now, how does Spinoza at tain his summum bonum? In other words,how does the vera philosophia turn into an optima philosophia? Thatwhich is called verum cannot be altered by an ef fort of our will. Spinozais unshakably convinced of this; this is the compelling t ruth dictated byreason. It is not possible to arrange for the sum of the angles of atriangle to be equal to three right angles, for good fortune to begranted to the just alone and ill fortune to the unjust , for things andmen dear to us not to fall a prey to the passage of t ime. And Job in histribulat ions cannot be helped, and we cannot arrange that the last ,dreadful cry of the Logos-Messiah should not ring out into inf initespace. All these are self -evident and irrefutable t ruths. So reason tellsus, and reason allows no authority beside her equal to her own. Butthere wisdom comes to our help. It says to us: Mens ducente Rationesub eadem specie aeternitatis seu necessitatis concipit eademquecertitudine afficitur [whatsoever the mind conceives under the guidanceof reason, it conceives under the form of eternity or necessity, and istherefore af fected with the same cert itude.] (Ethics, IV, xii, Dem.); it issenseless to strive af ter the impossible. It is f ruit less to f ight againstthe truths determined by reason. But if we cannot f ight , we mustsubmit . We must realize that the individual being, whether Job or theLogos-Messiah, is dest ined in virtue of an unchangeable law which hasexisted from all eternity, dest ined from the beginning, to sorrow anddestruct ion. Consequent ly man must renounce everything which has"self" existence, and f irst and foremost himself , and must direct hiseyes toward that which knows neither origin nor beginning, andconsequent ly neither end nor destruct ion. This is what is meant bycomprehending life sub specie aeternitatis vel necessitatis. To love thatwhich knows no beginning and has no end (amor erga rem aeternam)means to love God. This is man's highest end and his purpose. Sowisdom speaks in Spinoza. In this way the vera philosophia turns inwondrous wise into a philosophia optima.

It teaches quomodo circa res fortunae, sive quae in nostra potestatenon sunt, hoc est circa res, quae ex nostra natura non sequuntur, nosgerere debeamus; nempe utramque fortunae faciem aequo animoexpectare et ferre: nimirum quia omnia ab aeterno Dei decreto eademnecessitate sequuntur, ac ex essentia trianguli sequitur quad tres ejusanguli sunt aequales duobus rectis [how we are to behave with respectto things of fortune or things which lie outside our power, with respect,that is, to things which do not follow from our nature; we have to beareither aspect of fortune with an equal mind, for without doubt all thingsfollow from God's eternal decree with the same necessity as it followsfrom the essence of a t riangle that the sum of its three angles is equalto two right angles] (Ethics, II). I do not know whether af ter all this it isnecessary to expat iate further on the fact that Spinozism simplycannot be ident if ied with naturalism, st ill less with pantheism. AlthoughSpinoza speaks regularly of Deus sive Natura, yet his philosophy is thefruit of a purely ethical principle, which he equates, with fullconsciousness of what he is doing, with an ontological principle: perrealitatem et perfectionem idem intelligo (Ethics, II, 6). Spinoza's mainhistorical signif icance lies in the fact that af ter the long struggle, last ingmore than a thousand years, which was carried on with suchvehemence throughout the Middle Ages, he was the f irst to resolve tostep forward openly in defense of the old wisdom which the worldinherited f rom the Greeks. In ment ioning his relat ionship with theGreeks I do not mean to at tack either his originality, his profundity, orthe direct inspirat ion of his philosophy. But the idea of equat ingperfect ion with reality, or rather, the interpolat ion of the idea of realityinto that of perfect ion, was given to them, not by Spinoza, but by theGreeks.

The Greeks already taught that we must consider the res quae innostra potestate non sunt as adiaphora, as though they were non-existent. Socrates proclaimed in the most solemn of words: ou garoiomai themiton eînai ameinoni andri hupo cheironos blaptesthai [I donot think that it is lawful for a better man to suf fer harm from a worseman] (Ap. 30D). The whole post-Socrat ic philosophy rests on thisprinciple. This is also the source of the quite erroneous belief thatancient philosophy set itself pract ical rather than theoret ical aims.These words of Socrates' which describe so exhaust ively thefundamental ambit ion of Hellenic thought cannot possibly beunderstood or interpreted as Xenophon interpreted them. ForSocrates, who was the f irst to express this thought, for Plato, whodeveloped it so persistent ly in his Dialogues, for the Stoics and for



Plot inus, who carried it out in their lives and their works, quest ions ofpract ical character always took the second place. And indeed, can the"truth" that the worse man can do no harm to the better, be of any usein pract ical life? Or have we a right to think that the ancients did notsee, as Spinoza saw, that good and ill fortune fall on the just andunjust alike? Neither Socrates nor Plato, nor even Epictetus or MarcusAurelius, can be suspected of such naïveté. They knew, only too well,that good and ill fortune fall on the just and unjust alike, and they knewmuch else besides, and yet - or rather, precisely for that reason - theydeclare that the worse man can do no harm to the better. It is onlywhen we keep this in mind that we can understand the relat ionshipbetween Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis and his assert ion that resquae in nostra potestate non sunt... ex nostra natura non sequuntur, andunderstand also why and under what circumstances the wisdom whichHusserl rejects could have been born among the Greeks. Wisdom is anillegit imate child of reason, but her t rue child for all that , f lesh of herf lesh, blood of her blood. When Anaximander, and af ter him Heraclitusand the Eleat ics, led by reason, recognized the instability andimpermanence of all existence, the soul of man was poisoned with aneternal sorrow and unrest never again to cease. Everything f lows,everything is changeable, everything is impermanent, nothing is stable -so wisdom teaches us to regard the world. So long as the Olympiangods lived, elementary and somewhat imperfect as they were, onecould hope that they would help in some way. But the gods died a slowbut sure death, and in Socrates' day they had to be protected from thecrit icism and even the scorn of enlightened men by the threat of heavypenalt ies. Socrates himself was called to account for despising thegods.

The gods died, for all that , and man had to take their tasks onhimself . How was he to cope with this duty? The gods created thevisible world, visible man, etc. It is not granted to man to create all that -that is res quae in nostra potestate non sunt. Now when man had takenthe place of the gods, the visible world, which survived even af ter theirdeath and submit ted to no one, had in one way or another to bereplaced by another world. Socrates' deepest and most secret thoughtwas expressed by those men who are commonly called one-sidedSocrat ics: the Stoics. Epictetus says: archê philosophias sunaisthêsistês autoû astheneias kai adunamias peri ta anankaîa [the beginning ofphilosophy is the realizat ion of our own weakness and impotence withrespect to the necessary things](Diatr. II, 11 ) In no philosopher is soopen an admission to be found; the beginning of philosophy is therecognit ion of human impotence and the impossibility of conqueringnecessity. But the same Epictetus says: "This is the wand of Mercury.All that thou touchest with it will become gold. Give me what thou wiltand I will turn it for thee into a Good (ho theleis phere, kagô autoagathon poiêsô). Bring hither sickness and death, poverty and suffering,condemnat ion to death, through the magic wand all this shall be turnedto prof it " (Diatr. III, 20). How could so extraordinary a metamorphosiscome about? Man felt his complete impotence, the absoluteimpossibility of f ight ing necessity - and suddenly it appears that hecould turn anything you like, the most t rivial and useless things intogold, the most dreadful and repulsive into a Good. Where did weak andwretched man f ind his magic wand? We f ind our answer if we askEpictetus how he performs his miracles. He does not conceal it f rom us,he will tell us all; the Stoics had no mysteries. En toîs eph'hêmîn hêousia toû agathoû... Mia de odos pros toûto, kataphronêsis tôn oukeph'hêmîn [The essence of the Good lies in that which is in our power...But there is one road to it , to despise what is not in our power] (Ench.XIX). If we would use Mercury's wand, we must learn to despiseeverything that does not lie within man's power, for the essence of thegood is that which lies within man's power. That which does notdepend upon us is of the adiaphora, the indif ferent, even (as the lesshonest but st ill bolder Platonists said) the non-existent.

I think that it is now clear what reason and the "wisdom" born of itef fected. Reason saw that necessity is invincible, and that it is notgiven to reason to rule over the world created by the old, dead gods.Wisdom, which has never dared dispute with reason, which it holds tobe the beginning of all things (even Plot inus repeated - archê oûnlogos), accepted everything which reason regarded as self -evident. Andthen it had nothing lef t to do but to declare that the Good, and realityitself , is only that which is within the power of reason, and that all thatwhich is not within reason's power is to be rejected as evil or unreal. In



this way ethics usurped the place of ontology in ancient philosophy.And so it has remained to this day. This is the meaning of Spinoza'ssub specie aeternitatis, which leads men away from what he calls resfortunae, sive quae in potestate nostra non sunt. This is also themeaning of Hegel's was winklich ist, ist vernünftig [what is real israt ional].

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I cannot, of course, sketch here in any detail the history of how theconvict ion grew among the Greeks that life must be regarded subspecie aeternitatis, and that, accordingly, only that is to be regarded astrue and real which depends on us - eph'êmîn - and not that whichdoes not so depend - to ouk eph'êmîn. I will only repeat once again thateven Anaximander was convinced that this was the meaning hidden inHeraclitus' "everything f lows, nothing persists" (panta rheî oudenmenei); that Parmenides is speaking of the same thing in his "being andthinking are one and the same" (auto esti to einai kai to noeîn), and thatconsequent ly the archê (the beginning) of Greek philosophy wasindeed the sunaisthêsis tês autoû astheneias kai adunamias peri taanankaîa - the realizat ion of our own weakness and impotence withrespect to the necessary things. The ancient philosophers disputedabout every subject in the world, but of one thing they wereunshakably convinced: there is in the world an invincible necessity whichlays down to man the bounds of the possible and impossible, andwhich was revealed as the supreme and f inal principle of the universeafter the disappearance of the gods. This seemed to reason so self -evident and indubitable that there could be no two opinions about it .More than this: it seemed that the very possibility of thought itself wasfounded on this self -evident t ruth. For if there is no immutable order,how are we to think? How ask, answer, prove, convince? Even thedeepest and boldest philosophers among the Greeks, even as amongourselves, st ill remained naïve realists in their methodologicalprocesses and proceeded from the presupposit ion that t ruth is anadaequatio rei et intellectus - an equat ion of object and intellect .Aristot le's famous def init ion (Met. 1011, b 15), "A false statement is thestatement that that which is, is not, or that that which is not, is, and atrue statement is a statement that that which is, is, and that which isnot, is not" - this def init ion lived in the souls of the ancients, as it liveson in our souls today, although many t imes proved untenable by thetheory of knowledge.

It is, however, completely suf f icient for the needs of common senseand for those of scient if ic invest igat ion. Heat expands a body, coldcontracts it ; the smith putt ing on a new wheel and the learned physicistdeducing the most dif f icult theory of calories equally admit the t ruth ofthis assert ion, as f ramed by Aristot le. It retains its force even in themost complicated scient if ic arguments, as in those betweenCopernicus and Ptolemy, Einstein and Newton, Lobatchevsky andEuclid. However much the sages dispute, they will never think of raisingthe quest ion of what is t ruth. They are all convinced that they knowalready what t ruth is, and that all, Ptolemy and Copernicus, Einsteinand Newton, the smith and the joiner, insofar as they seek the truth,are seeking one and the same thing, so that in this respect the sage isno dif ferent f rom the ordinary, common-sense man. This principle hasbeen accepted by science, common sense, and philosophy. Evenphilosophers argue and prove, and thus start f rom the supposit ion thatour judgments have, as it were, a pre-existent model which they mustresemble if they want to be truths. It is impossible for heat both toexpand and contract bodies, for the specif ic gravity of mercury to beboth greater and less than that of iron, for the velocity of light to be amaximum and for there to be velocit ies of over 180,000 miles a second.Everything is dominated by the law of contradict ion for which, again,Aristot le found an excellent expression when he called it the bebaiôtatêtôn archôn, the most unshakable of principles.

But now an astonishing fact : Aristot le, who told us what t ruth is andplaced this t ruth under the protect ion of the all-powerful law of



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contradict ion, heard a rumor that one of the greatest philosophers ofant iquity, Heraclitus, refused to recognize the law of contradict ion. Itappears that Aristot le, for all his assurance, was great ly perturbed byHeraclitus. He returns twice to the subject in his Metaphysics. The f irstt ime he contents himself with the mocking remark: "It is not necessaryfor a man to believe what he says" (ouk esti gar anankaîon, ha tis legei)(Met. 1005, b 25). The second t ime (1062, a 34) he repeats almost thesame words: Heraclitus is talking without really realizing what he issaying: ou suneis heautoû ti pote legei. But this st ill seems to himinsuff icient , and he adds another object ion - an ent irely unacceptableone, since it contains a petitio principii; it proceeds from thesupposit ion that Heraditus did not doubt the law of contradict ion. So itcomes down to this, that in either case Aristot le can only make oneanswer to Heraclitus: that what he says is not what he thinks.

Another example out of Aristot le's Ethics. He is speaking of thosewho said that the so-called external goods were not necessary foreudaimonia (happiness); one can be happy even inside Phalaris' bull.Now Aristot le declares that anyone saying this is, intent ionally orunintent ionally, talking nonsense (ê hekontes ê akontes oudenlegousin) (Ethics, 1153, b 21). Many philosophers of ant iquity, bothbefore and af ter Aristot le, not only asserted that a man could be happyeven inside Phalaris' bull, but actually made this assert ion thefoundat ion of their ethics. Epicurus himself , who is clearly not at all theman to make fun of human reason, did not hesitate before thisparadox. Aristot le could give no answer either to Epicurus or toHeraclitus; he could only say: ouden legeis - you are talking nonsense.

Now comes the quest ion: is Aristot le's a suf f icient answer toHeraclitus and Epicurus? Incidentally, in another passage Epicurusproduces an equally glaring paradox. He allowed it "to be possible" thatthe atoms in their mot ion - only once, indeed, very long ago, and onlyto an inf initesimal degree - deviated from their proper mot ion. Whatwould Aristot le have said if this "possibility" had been laid before himfor his approval? Here, again, no proof could be adduced. Nobody wasthere when, in the inf initely distant past, the atoms assumed the libertyof diverging on their own authority f rom the universal laws of mot ion.Aristot le would thus have had no choice but to resort again to oudenlegousin, to anger and abuse. And yet he had to take to such an"argument" of ten enough. Even of Plato he wrote, more than once,kenologeîn esti kai metaphoras legein poiêtikas [those are empty wordsand mere poet ic metaphor](Met. 991, a 21 f f .) Or if he is pressed toohard with object ions, he declares (Met. 1006, a 6): "It is simply lack ofeducat ion (apaideusia) when we cannot dist inguish where proof isnecessary and where not." I think that if Aristot le were deprived of theright to argue in this way, his philosophy would lose a great deal of itsperfect ion and convincing force. If , for example, we assume thatPhalaris' bull simply has to be faced in composing any system ofethics? Or that Heracitus' doubt as to the sovereign rights of the lawof contradict ion simply cannot be set aside in construct ing a theory ofknowledge? Or that the idea of the mean, so carefully cherished byAristot le, an idea with which he surrounded the universe as with aChinese wall, is by no means so ent icing and noble as to enchant allwho look upon it?

Meanwhile, how are we to get away from Phalaris' bull and all theother obstacles which the philosopher encounters on his way, if wemake up our minds to abstain f rom angry exclamat ions and not pourour moral indignat ion on everyone who reminds us too of ten of thesethings? Moral indignat ion is not enough; to "repress" such quest ions, orto answer them, we must take a decision which Socrates took, andafter him all the ancient philosophers, Epicurus not excepted. We mustmake up our minds that morality of fers the summum bonum, that it isthe source of the elixir of life and death, that here and here alone canman f ind his last refuge. Socrates, as I said, did this, and here lies themeaning of his assert ion that a bad man can do no harm to a good. Hewho enjoys the secrets of virtue to which wisdom holds the key neednot fear Anytus and Meletus, with all the Athenians, nor the fury of thetyrant, be he ever so powerful. No one is lord over virtue. And morality,f rom which all the virtues derive, has become by Socrates' will acreat ive principle. Through it the ancient philosophers at tained to thesummum bonum which they could not f ind in the world they inheritedfrom the old, dead gods. In the world of the gods were good and ill,which fell to mortals variously and at haphazard. Man, when he



attached signif icance to good and ill as they happened in the world ofthe gods, placed himself in complete dependence on chance. Thisseemed fearful even to an Epicurus; it was st ill more intolerable to aSocrates, a Plato, the Stoics, and af ter them the Neo-Platonists. "TheGood" must not be made dependent on chance. It is autonomous, ittakes nothing from anyone, creates everything itself and only gives.

How, then, could Aristot le assert that a good life needed somethingmore, which is not subject to the good? Or that the good man shouldfear Phalaris' bull? We see that Aristot le's judgment was too hasty; it isnot possible to say of those who faced Phalaris' bull that they oudenlegousin [talk nonsense]. There was a deep, a very deep meaning intheir words. Thus and only thus can the ethical problem be posed.There is no ethics so long as the good man must t remble before thedreadful face of existence or await the good things of life, like abeggar, f rom blind fortune. Ethics begins by teaching man to see thenothingness of everything on earth, both of that which is commonlylooked upon as good and of that which is commonly looked on as ill.Royal crowns, Alexander's fame, Croesus' riches, a day in May, f ragrantlilac, the rising sun, are just as insignif icant and despicable as everythingelse quae in nostra potestate non sunt, ta ouk eph'êmin. On the otherhand, ill fortune and oppressions, small or great, do not touch us.Sickness, poverty, ugliness, death, ruin of the fatherland cannotdisquiet the wise man. The summum bonum is beyond good and ill. It iscondit ioned by the termini of good and evil, by a Something which isdependent neither on nature, nor on the gods (who do not exist), butonly on man himself . Ancient philosophy created a dialect ic whichunderstood how to f ind in that which has a genesis (origin) and iscondemned to phthora (destruct ion), in that which appears andvanishes, a Something which never began and will therefore never end.It discovered also the katharsis (purif icat ion) - the last word of Greekwisdom - spiritual exercises which transform, not the world, but manhimself , by elevat ing him to the consciousness that it is thefundamental duty of the reasonable being to learn to renounce himself ,his own ego, as direct ly cognized, and to t ransform himself into asimple ent ity, the ideal ent ity. Unt il this is done, unt il the living man hasbroken the bond with the visible world, reason does not become freefrom the intolerable feeling of impotence in the face of necessity, andneither the philosopher nor the ordinary man can grasp Mercury'sdesired wand.

Aristot le knew all this just as well as Plato and his Stoic followers. Heknew that unt il ontology is t ransformed into ethics, philosophy, whichhad begun with consciousness of man's impotence in the face ofnecessity, can never come to consciousness of its strength. And if hest ill evaded Phalaris' bull and preferred altogether to shun the farthestreaches of existence, he had his reasons for it , or rather, he was guidedby the just , unfailing pract ical inst inct of a clever man. He naturallytrusted reason and was certainly not one of the mislogoi. But he hadbesides another great gif t , that of moderat ion. It was said of him thathe was metrios eis hyperbolên - moderate to excess. In his soul there issomething always whispering to him - perhaps, who knows? he had hisown demon, like Socrates - that too consistent and careful thoughtinvolved the greatest dangers. He, like his predecessors, loved spiritualgoods; and he was convinced that there is a moral law above man; healways defended wisdom and praised it . But he never dared pursuereason and the wisdom born of reason to the end, and he was alwaysmistrust ful of Plato. The consequences showed that he was notwrong. We shall see this at once in the example of the last greatphilosopher of ant iquity, Plot inus.

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Not only is Plot inus chronologically the last great representat ive ofancient philosophy; in him ancient philosophy reached its complet ion. Ihave already said that with the Greeks reason gave birth to wisdom,and wisdom brought them the recognit ion and convict ion that t ruereality must not be sought in the world inherited f rom the dead gods,but in the ideal world created by that reason which had become heir tothe rights of the gods. Greek philosophy, the philosophy of reason,was bound in the end to set ethics on the throne of ontology. If thereare no gods, the world is masterless. How can we live in such a world?In it everything is false, fortuitous, t ransitory. In it is neither t ruth norjust ice. So the ancients taught; so the world revealed itself to themwhen they regarded it with eyes of reason. So, too, Plot inus saw theworld. And thus he, like his predecessors, was faced with the necessityof f inding for this world another which should answer the demands ofreason. In this respect he treads paths which had been trodden beforehim. And he strives with all forces at his disposal to prove that the"visible" world is a false world, a world of shadows and non-existence,while the only real world is the moral world. He carries out this task withastonishing persistence and incomparable mastery. He makes use of allthe achievements of the ancients; the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus,Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristot le, the Stoics had prepared himsuff icient material. He was able to blend everything which had beencollected by the great Hellenic thinkers in the course of a thousandyears into a single system, the magic of which not even the leaders ofthe rising force of Christ ianity could withstand.

Plot inus begins: Archê oûn logos kai panta logos [Reason is thebeginning and everything is reason](III, ii, 15). Reason is lawgiver andcreator, it does all things, what it will and how it will. At the same t ime itis also the original source both of t ruth and of good. Dialect ics, in whichthe working of reason is expressed, not only reveals t ruth to man, butalso brings him the good. In this way the vera philosophia and optimaphilosophia blends into one:

Ou toinun toîs hêdomenois to eû dzên huparksei, alla to genôskeindunamenôi hoti hêdonê to agathon. Aition de toû eû dzên ouchhêdonê estai, alla to krinein dunamenon, hoti hêdonê agathon. Kaito men krînon beltion ê kata pathos. Logos gar ê noûs, hêdonê depathos: oudamoû de kreîtton alogon logou. Pôs an oûn ho logosauton apheis allo thêsetai en tôi enantiôi genei keimenon kreîttoneînai heautoû; (I, iv, 2).

[Thus the good life does not belong to those who enjoy, but tohim who is able to know that pleasure is the good. And the causeof good living will not be pleasure, but the power of judging thatpleasure is good. And judging is better than sensat ion. For themind is logos and pleasure is sensat ion; and the irrat ional can inno wise be better than the rat ional. How, then, should the logosabandon itself and call something better than itself which is ofopposite nature to itself?]

These words epitomize Plot inus' whole "doctrine"; they are also thesum of what his predecessors taught him. Reason (it is not by chancethat he speaks here of logos ê noûs) will not under any circumstancesadmit that there is something over it , which is not like itself , and willnever renounce itself and its own sovereign rights. To it and to it aloneis given to judge what is t ruth and what the good. Truth lies in the factthat the law of impermanence rules in the visible world, and good in thefact that man shall not seek for that which he desires but for that



which reason prescribes as the best. And the highest good, summumbonum, that which appears the end of the eû dzên, is not hêdonê, forhêdonê is not subject to reason (and neither is that visible world withwhich all hêdonai are bound up) but the ability to judge that hêdonê toagathon. To make it clearer what is the contrast between to krînon andkata pathos, I may quote another passage from Plot inus (I, vi, 4): "Howlovely," he writes, "is the face of just ice and self -control (sôphrosunês),before whose beauty even the morning and the evening star growpale!" He repeats the same thought in even stronger expressions atthe end of VI, vi, 6. Reason decides on its own authority that just iceand self -control are more beaut iful than the morning and the eveningstar, and since, as Plot inus has just told us, it will not abdicate its rightsto anyone, this will remain so forever, and man must submit , even werehe to f ind, kata pathos, that the morning and the evening star are farlovelier than such virtues as just ice and self -control, which are, af ter all,only mortal.

Man must submit . Or is it permissible, af ter all, to ask: Has not reasonoverstepped its bounds here? It has power over self -control and overjust ice, for it has created them. But it did not create the morning andthe evening star. Has it a right to dispose and judge where it is unableto create? Ancient philosophy felt exceedingly strongly the wholeimportance and signif icance of this quest ion - and Plot inus knew thisbetter than anyone else. This is why he puts his assert ion in socategorical a form. In such cases the posit iveness of an assert ion is areliable index to the doubts which st ill cling about it . Aristot le would ofcourse have preferred to evade this quest ion, even as he preferred notto talk too much about Phalaris' bull. And in fact , reason's sovereignrights can only be thought to be guaranteed when all kata pathos isabsolutely and uncondit ionally placed at its disposal. Kata pathos inPhalaris' bull is terrible; kata pathos a man, even one who lives avirtuous life, would perhaps be able to forget himself in contemplat ionof the morning star. But philosophy requires of him that before he fearor rejoice, he shall come to reason, hoti krinei, hê anakrinei, kai hoti toîsen heautôi kanosin, hous para toû noû echei [because he judges whathe judges according to the canons within himself , which he has fromthe mind] (V, iii, 4); and learn f rom reason whether what at t racted himmight be the good, and what repelled him, the evil. For only under thesecondit ions can it promise him the Magna Charta of the poor earthlyfreedoms proclaimed by the old wisdom and conf irmed again byPlot inus: orthôs legetai, ouden kakon tôi agathôi, ou d'aû tôi phaulôiagathon [It is right ly said that there can be no evil for the good man andno good for the bad man] (III, ii, 6). We know that this passed as quiteunquest ionable; men can only overcome the accursed chance whichrules in this God-forsaken world, when everything which is kata pathosis overcome and the last word lef t to the logos by whose decisionanything you please is turned into a good. We remember, too, that thebeginning of philosophy is the knowledge of impotence, and weremember how Epictetus found his magic wand. The Stoics repeatedt irelessly: Si vis tibi omnia subjicere, te subjice rationi. Nihil acciderebono viro mali potest... est enim omnibus externis potentior [Wouldstthou submit all things to thyself , then submit thyself to reason. No evilcan befall a good man... for he is might ier than anything that comesfrom without].

Plot inus adopted the Stoic wisdom complete, but lent it anindescribable charm and a quite new profundity; here his inner kinshipand congeniality with Plato showed itself . While Epictetus and MarcusAurelius himself somet imes seem to us mere wooden moralists andpreachers, the inspired philosopher ever st irs in Plot inus. He, too, says,in the imperat ive of course: genesthô dê prôton theoeides pâs, kai kalospâs, ei mellei theasasthai theon te kai kalon [therefore let him whowould see God and the Beaut iful f irst become godlike and beaut iful] (I,vi, 9); but one gets an impression as though this imperat ive of his werebound up by invisible threads with the ult imate mystery of the universe.In reality Plot inus is much nearer the Stoa than he seems. His verdictsthat the virtues are more beaut iful than the stars of heaven, and thepassage quoted above, always contain the same fatal consciousnessof impotence which haunted Socrates and which Epictetus admit tedopenly. And this consciousness, which is suggested to man by reason,the discoverer of genesis and phthora in the world, forces Plot inus torank the moral world above the real world and to oust ontology byethics. He looks on kata pathos as the original sin: archê men oûn autaîs(taîs psychaîs) toû kakoû hê tolma, kai hê genesis, kai hê prôtê



heterotês, kai to boulêthênai de heautôn eînai [The beginning of evilwas for them (the souls) the audacity and the birth and the f irstdif ferent iat ion and the desire to exist for themselves] (V, i, 1). Thekatharsis, the moral perfect ion, becomes accordingly a method ofseeking for t ruth, a road which leads to t ruth. But the katharsis consistsin isolat ing one's soul, not allowing it to depend on other things, notlet t ing it consider those things at length. Hence hê tôn legomenônagathôn toû sômatos kataphronêsis (I, iv, 4) - just like Epictetus'scontempt of the so-called physical goods. Everything which does notlie within man's power is only shadowy, imagined being. "And here (inlife) as in the theatre, it is not the inner man, but his shadow, the outerman, which laments and groans" (oimôdzei kai oduretaî; III, ii, 15).

As we see, wisdom goes hand in hand the whole t ime with reason.Reason, proceeding from the self -evident t ruths (noûs didôsin enargeîsarchas; I, iii, 15), determines what it can do and what not, or, as itprefers to express itself , what is possible and what impossible. Wisdom,however, convinced that oudamoû alogon kreîtton tôi logôi, that theirrat ional can never be better than the rat ional, calls that which ispossible for reason the good, and that which is impossible for it theevil, or stronger yet (in Plot inus; the Stoics were not so bold): thatwhich is possible for reason it calls t rue reality, and that which isimpossible, decept ion and illusion. The gods when they died took withthem the secret of the world which they had created; reason is unableto decipher how the world was created, and cannot gain mastery overit , and wisdom declares this world non-existent. In the depths of men'ssouls, even af ter the death of the gods, an ineradicable love for theircreat ions has survived; wisdom gathers all its forces and arms againsthêdonê and kata pathos, as it calls man's love of God's world. Itdemands that men should regard the world with the eyes of reason,not t reasure what they desire, not hate what is repellent to them, notlove or hate at all, but only "judge" - on the ground of the ready-made,universal rules which reason of fers, and judge only with respect to whatis good and what evil. Therefore it describes as the "outward man" thatwhich laments and sighs (Spinoza says later: non ridere, non lugere,neque detestari). For this reason, too, it declares the individual,dif ferent iated man not only illusory but an unlawful, sinful intruder intoexistence, and sees in his appearance a tolma, an impious act ofaudacity. Accordingly it considers it its task to expel this pushingintruder out of existence, to drive him back again into that generalbeing whence he sprung. Here, and here alone, has the task of wisdomalways lain: in taming recalcit rant man.

Thus it appears that wisdom is only another name for morality.Wisdom demands and orders, just as morality does. Wisdom is just asautonomous, as self -suf f icient as morality. Its last wish is to t ransformand remold the world and man. But it never f inishes with the world. It is,however, easier to f inish with man. Man can be brought to obedience,can be convinced by threats and ent icements that obedience is thesupreme virtue, that all daring is impious, that independent existence isa sin and a crime, that man has not to think of himself but of the"Whole," not to love the morning and the evening star but to callmoderat ion and reason divine, even when his sons are slain, hisdaughters violated, his fatherland ravaged - but this divine reasonwhich boasted that it could do what it would, conf ines itself todiscussions on the theme that here only the "outward man" suf fersand only the "outward man" cries out: "My God, why hast Thouforsaken me?" And if reason, with the help of morality, really or only inimaginat ion forces "the individual man" to be silent - only then doesphilosophy reach its last end: ontology, the doctrine of real existence,turns into ethics, and the wise man becomes unlimited ruler over theuniverse.

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Thanks to the extraordinary strength of his vast intellect and hisirresist ible gif ts, Plot inus called into life for the last t ime the best andmost signif icant of what the Hellenic spirit had created in the course ofa thousand years. He did not evade the most dif f icult and torturingriddles of existence. If we read his Enneads, so quickly writ ten, never re-read, yet so full of glowing spirit , it seems to us that reason, in whichthe Greeks had put their t rust , brilliant ly just if ied all expectat ions; that aworld does actually exist , created not by the dead gods, but by reason,which has always lived and st ill lives today; that philosophy, which hadturned ontology into ethics, had solved all the secrets of being; andthat sub specie aeternitatis, as it revealed itself to the Greeks, it was noloss that the gods died a natural death and men perished for the gloryof wisdom. It seems as though in the last great philosopher of ant iquityreason had once again shone with a new radiance and established itsmastery in the universe in saecula saeculorum, and as though it wouldnever give up its place. Reason rules; everything must submit . Alldisobedience to reason is an unjust if ied, impious, eternally damnabletolma.

So Plot inus taught himself and the rest . He taught how to think, tolive, and, I might say, "to be," to be as reason with its self -evidentprinciples would have one be. But while he taught, while he listened tohimself , and the others, intoxicated by the nectar of his words, listenedto him, somewhere in an invisible, secret corner of his own soul newfeelings and premonit ions were growing up, and they waxed and amighty force ripened which was dest ined to cast down and breakasunder the noble altar of wisdom which Plot inus had erected withsuch pains and diligence. The impious tolma, which Plot inus had,apparent ly, ut terly destroyed, had eradicated not only f rom himself butalso f rom the universe, showed unexpected vitality. And even thehuman ego, which by its forbidden and despised genesis had brokenthrough into being, showed itself by no means so peaceable andgent le, even before the "self -evident principles." Suddenly, af tersteadily proclaiming the blessings and joys of the yoke of reason,Plot inus feels it to be simply intolerable. Formerly he, like Plato, hadbeen convinced that to be a misologos was the greatest ofmisfortunes. He repeated the saying of the Stoics that the individualman should not and must not think of himself . We must look on theuniversal, not on the individual. For reason can only realize its high aimsif all "individuals" fulf ill the demands made on them dumbly and withoutcontradict ion, ac cadaver.

At reason's command the individual will chant joyous songs if hisdaughters are violated, his sons murdered, his fatherland ravagedbefore his eyes. Sons, daughters, fatherland - all these have abeginning and thus, as reason knows posit ively, have also an end:toutôi to phtheiresthai, ôi kai to paschein (III, vi, 8); hujus perire est, cujuset pati. At reason's command he must turn away from the morning andthe evening star and bow his knee piously before the modest, hand-made virtues of moderat ion and just ice. Reason, or, more accurately,the wisdom born of reason, sees in servility the essence and basis ofbeing and can endure no "selfhood," much less any independence.Plot inus, who had inherited and imbibed the faith of the ancients thattrue life, t rue good, is only possible in the ideal atmosphere, inuntroubled agreement and harmony, and who lived according to thisfaith, begins suddenly to feel as though he were st if ling, that such life isno longer possible. One could and must submit oneself to reason solong as it limited its pretensions and did not at tempt to t ransform itselfinto the archai (principles) the pêgai, rhidzômata pantôn (sources, roots



of all things). Useful and necessary as a tool in man's hand, as lawgiverand mistress of the universe, it became a fearful menace to all thatlives.

But it was too late. The whole of Greek philosophy before Plot inushad exerted all its force uninterruptedly for a thousand years to ensurereason its sovereign rights. Reason sits f irm in its place and will notunder any circumstances move from it of f ree will. Least of all is itinclined to abdicate its rights to the hated human "soul." How tooverthrow it? How to f ight with it? By convict ions, by proofs? It is clearfrom the f irst that all convict ions, all proofs, are on reason's side.Plot inus himself collected with the utmost care all that hispredecessors had accumulated in the defense of reason, and himselfcontributed not a lit t le to it . He knows well that if one begins to strivewith reason one is certainly defeated, and yet he proclaims: agônmegistos kai eschatos taîs psychaîs prokeitai [A supreme and f inalbatt le awaits the soul](I, VI, 7). Not a "struggle," but a "batt le." We mustnot seek for proofs which do not exist , but for new words ofincantat ion, kainê epôidê (V, viii, 18), to awaken from self -evidence, tobreak the spell woven by reason. He himself speaks thus on thesubject : "Often when I awake to myself f rom the slumber of the body(egeiromenos esi emauton) and issue forth f rom the outer world to visitmyself , I behold a wonderful beauty: then I believe assuredly that I havebeen created for a higher lot (tês kreittonos moiras eînai), that noble lifeworks might ily in me and I am become one with Godhead and lif ted upabove all that is rat ional" (IV, viii, 1).

If Plot inus came with these words before the forum of reason,reason would not merely condemn, but crush, him. Here is everyindicat ion of a case of lèse-majesté, and of that impious tolma towhose destruct ion Greek philosophy had applied its best forces. Howcan a mortal permit himself to dream of so lof ty a dest iny; to melt intoGod and soar alof t above that which the noûs has created? And whatmeans this "awakening to oneself"? Does it not mean assigning valueto that which had a genesis and is condemned to phthora, taking thisdoomed creature, against all t radit ions hallowed by ant iquity, andplacing it under the shield and protect ion of Something which "in itsnature is something quite dif ferent f rom reason"? And f inally theawakening, the egrêgorsis: this word contains something quiteintolerable to reason, an inner contradict ion. Thus the soul sleeps ever,and its whole rat ional act ivity passes as in sleep. And to part icipate inreality one must f irst awake; then it must be that something happenswith man which non sequitur ex natura sua (does not follow by nature),and is therefore clearly impossible.

There can be no doubt that Plot inus' words would be declaredcriminal before the forum of reason, that Aristot le would have said oft hem ouden legousin, or something of the sort ; and it is equallyindubitable that Plot inus knows very well how Aristot le would havetaken his words, but cares for Aristot le's judgment only so long as hesleeps. But the moment he awakes (which does not, indeed, happenoften, but very rarely, he tells us) there are no forums and no verdictswhich touch him. On the contrary, the highest possible delight f ills himat the thought that reason has been lef t somewhere far below, andthat neither its krinein nor its kanones are at all valid. Reason, indeed,does not yield at once, but makes desperate ef forts to recover itsrights, to subject to itself the new reality which revealed itself toPlot inus af ter his awakening. He cont inues to repeat that submissionand humility are the lot of man, the good is only that which man has inhis power. But the hymns which Plot inus used to sing to humility, nowseem to him dull, intolerably lukewarm, blasphemous. He has passedthrough the strict school of humble obedience and carried away from itan irreconcilable hatred against everything that he was taught. Theidea that man must content himself with what lies within his power, andf ind in this contentment the meaning of life, seems to him heavy andoppressive as a nightmare. We must awake, awake at all costs, escapefrom the enchanted realm of the "Good" in which the ancient wisdomthought to f ind the true reality. Precisely in the res fortunae, sive quaein nostra potestate non sunt, in that which is ouk eph'hêmîn, there wherethe morning and the evening star are, there and only there dwells totimiôtaton, the one thing that we need, which alone holds t rue reality.

And that is why Plot inus fell into such a rage when he learned thedoctrine of the Gnost ics, who, t rust ing reason and wisdom, had



determined to leave forever the world not created by them. An almostmyst ic horror seizes him when he thinks that he was within a hair'sbreadth of t reading their path. He, who is usually so quiet andpeaceable, is overcome with rage and says, nay, shouts: "A man is notgood simply because he despises the gods, the world, and all beauty init " (II, ix, 16) - as though he himself had not preached with Epictetus têntôn legomenôn agathôn toû sômatos kataphronêsin (contempt of theso-called physical goods) and that the human virtues were more lovelythan the stars of heaven. Plot inus does not usually recall or contrastwhat he had taught with what was revealed to him later af ter hisawakening. Had he done so he would have had to just ify himself andbring proofs. But he has no proofs and does not know how to just ifyhimself . Or rather, did not the most t reasured privilege of his lof tydest iny (kreittonos moiras) lie precisely in the fact that he no longerneeded to just ify himself before anyone?

Just if icat ions and proofs are necessary in the realm of reason. Buthere in the world where Plot inus had now arrived, what "criteria oft ruth" could be applied? Plot inus does not raise this quest ion. By virtueof the power which he gave himself , he forbids reason to ask at all, andanswers all its quest ions curt ly: "This does not concern you, you arenot the master." The man who st ill has to ask before he moves, toinform himself , gather experience, look behind, is not yet awakened,has st ill to pass through the school of humility and of wisdom whichPlot inus himself has lef t behind, to learn f rom his own experience whatthat reality is worth which admits only that which is eph' hêmîn, wherehuman "good" takes the place of real life. The horror of such adesolate world leads to the "awakening" and gives courage todisregard all proofs and evidence and speak with reason as Plot inusspoke.

The parts are reversed; it is not Plot inus who goes to reason to askwhat is good and what evil, what t rue and what false, what is and whatis not, what is possible and what impossible - it is reason which looksup to Plot inus like a slave and begs of him even a lit t le part of its earlierrights. But Plot inus is inexorable. All reason's pleas remain unanswered;en aphairesei panta peri toûto legomena (VI, viii, 11) (all that is saidabout it consists only in negat ion). Thus Plot inus f ights against reason.And how can the truth of reason "compel" Plot inus when he has feltthat he himself is kreittonos moiras? Whatever reason may say, it onlygets one answer: No. It t ries to tempt him with the old words: kalos,agathos, ousia, eînai - words which always used to make an irresist ibleimpression. Plot inus seems not even to hear them and calls out hishyperkalos, hyperagathos (beyond all measure lovely, beyond allmeasure good) as though anxious to be rid of this t iresome intrusion.Reason recalls the epistêmê, which Plot inus himself so respected, buthe has long since come to the point of drameîn hyper epistêmên(escaping beyond scient if ic knowledge) (VI, ix, 4). For him science isnow reason and reason is mult iplicity - logos gar hê epistêmê, polla deho logos(V, viii, 11).

Finally reason appeals to necessity, which none can overcome. ButPlot inus does not even fear necessity; even necessity "came later," andhe rejects any def init ion which reason may propose. "It is in t ruthunspeakable. Whatever you may say you will yet only say one individualthing. But that which lies epekeina pantôn, epekeina toû semnotatounoû, which is separated from all things, has no other t rue name exceptthat it is the Other and not of the All" (V, iii, 13). You must cast of feverything (aphele panta; leave all things aside; ib. 17). To grasp truereality "reason must, as it were, retreat backwards" - deî ton noûn oîoneis toupissô anachôreîn (III, viii, 9). "For what gives God His value (totimion)? Thought, or Himself? If thought, then He has no value ofHimself , or at best only a small one; if Himself , then He is alreadyperfect before any thought and is not made perfect by thinking" (VI, vii,37). Something which seems quite impossible is passing under our eyes."Awakened" Plot inus overthrew reason, which he, like all hispredecessors, had thought invincible. He overthrew it, he carried thebatt le into a new f ield which had not, as it were, existed for us. Thereasonable proofs which were self -evident for all the world lost theirpower over him. He released, as it were, the world and man from a spellwhich supernatural forces had cast over them. "It is not there becauseit had to be so (ou dioti echrên), but rather because it is as it is, is it alsobeaut iful: a conclusion not arising f rom the premises, for there thingsdo not arise out of deduct ions and inquiries; all these things, like



conclusions, proofs, and conf irmat ion, came later" (hustera gar ta pantakai logos, kai apodeiksis kai pistis - V, Viii, 7).

So Plot inus speaks, but reason is silent ; it has lost its strength andknows not what to reply. It feels that, say what it may, its words will notmake the slightest impression. That which the One creates standsabove reason. In fact , that which exists cannot be "deduced" f rompremises, but comes when and how it pleases. Plot inus, who has lef treason far below him, now conceives the world in quite a dif ferentfashion. He tells us of his experiences in enigmat ic, unaccustomedwords. He himself did not get used at once to living and breathing inthis atmosphere of the eternally ungrounded. The soul does not easilyresolve to leave earth behind her. She yearns back, "she fears to standbefore nothingness" (phobeîtai mê ouden echêi - VI, iX, 3). But at last"then she leaves all knowledge... and as though carried on the samewave of the spirit and lif ted up by its swell, she suddenly (eksaiphnês)sees without knowing how" (VI, vii, 36). We shall not meet the last , thesupremely real, the supremely necessary on those ways which we canguess by conclusions. Tote de chrê heôrakenai pisteuein, hotan hêpsychê eksaiphnês phôs labêi [But then indeed we must believe thatwe have seen, when light suddenly dawns upon the soul" - V, iii, 17.)Reason led to the ways which could be foreseen, and led Plot inus towisdom. He f led before wisdom, f led before reason and reached the"suddenly" which was grounded on nothing, had no roots in the earth.And this "suddenly" with everything which it brought seemed to himdesirable and wondrous in comparison with wisdom and with that whichwisdom had given him. What use has he for earth and f irm ground whoneeds no support? What need has he of foresight and presupposit ionswho has approached God? For reason, t ruth was bound up for alleternity with the idea of necessity, of a certain compelling, immutableorder. Reason fears the unexpected, fears f reedom and the "suddenly"- and has every reason to fear. Plot inus knows this; reason daredforsake God (ho noûs... apostênai de pôs toû henos tolmêsas - VI, ix, 5),and af ter terrifying man with imagined horrors of chaos and with otherthreats (toioutôi to phtheiresthai, hôi kai to paschein) made him anapostate f rom that t rue reality created by the "suddenly" which is rich ingrace and inexhaust ible in creat ive power. Man, having trusted himselfto reason, began to see his summum bonum in the f ruits of reason, toesteem only that which came ex sua potestate, and to forget the gif tsshowered on him from on high. The awakening out of the spell camethrough the same "suddenly," and as unexpectedly as the best thingsin life always come.

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Zeller, unlike all other commentators on Plotinus, had the courage to say ofhim that his philosophy breaks with the Hellenic tradition, and that "thephilosopher had lost absolute confidence in his thought." Zeller clearly did notobserve what a fatal admission lurked in his words. Then one can trust one'sthought, or one can also not trust it? Then reason has to justify itself, show itstitle, its justus titulus? Husserl says: "We shall not let ourselves be convincedthat a thing which is logically and geometrically nonsensical ispsychologically possible" (Logical Inquiries, II, 215). But here precisely thatwhich is logically nonsensical, as Plotinus' example shows, has proved itselfpsychologically, i.e., really, possible: this is just what Zeller, conscientiousas he is, is pointing out. In other words, the bounds of the possible andimpossible are not fixed by reason. There is a judge and lawgiver abovereason, and philosophy cannot remain a "rational" philosophy insofar as itseeks the rhidzômata pantôn (the roots of all things); it must be epekeina noûkai noêseôs (beyond reason and knowledge). But how escape reason and itsdominion? How arrive at the true sources of being?

We remember that Plotinus could not "depart from" reason. He had todrameîn hyper tên epistêmên, soar aloft above knowledge, leave the ground towhich reason chains us. One cannot "soar aloft" with discussions and proofs.All attempts at "deductions from premises" hamper flight. We need somethingelse of a quite different nature from proofs and the self-evident truths which liebehind proofs. We need a daring which knows no compromise, asks noquestions, never looks behind. Only such a courage, only a mysterious faith inoneself and one's higher destiny (me praestantioris sortis esse), a faith whichreplaces the humble submission inculcated by wisdom, could give Plotinus thedaring and the strength to begin his supreme and final battle, his agôn megistoskai eschatos, with the thousand years' tradition of philosophy. Sometimes hisego, terrorized, hypnotized, almost paralyzed by wisdom, sees in self-renunciation the highest ideal and, in order to gain praises from wisdomsuppresses all vital impulses. It does not weep, it does not laugh, it is notwroth; reason and reason's truths seem to be eternal and invincible truths. Butthen comes the awakening, the spell woven by dream is broken, and man nowspeaks free and imperious. It is not that Plotinus has lost trust in reason - nay,he makes of reason his servant and slave.

Truth lies epekeina noû kai noêseôs. This is no break with ancientphilosophy, as Zeller says; it is a challenge to reason. This means that whatreally is, is not determined by reason's self-evidences, nor, indeed, byanything, but that it itself determines all things. The field of what really is, is afield of boundless freedom, not of a "rational" freedom such as man imposedon God Himself, but an unlimited, composed of those self-willed "suddenlies"which in Plotinus have taken the place of the former eks anankês. When reason"retreated" at Plotinus' demand it became clear that true being is not containedin that which lies "in our power," not in the "good," but in that which liesbeyond the bounds of our possibilities, and that the morning and the eveningstars are lovelier than moderation and justice. Or perhaps, indeed mostprobably, the opposite happened: when Plotinus felt that that which we createhas only a conditional and relative value, while the real true value, to timiôtaton- and this is the true reality - lies in that which is not created by us: then camethe awakening, then he saw that in the sublime sub specie aeternitatis layconcealed the fundamental lie and fatal error of the human race. In renouncingwisdom he tore himself free from the earth to which all cling so convulsively.What need has he of earth under his feet, who now has wings?



Plotinus lost confidence in reason, in the philosophia vera, the truth whichexercises compulsion; he saw in reason, which had dared forsake the One, thebeginning of evil and he proclaimed that a supreme, final battle awaited thesoul. Can philosophy stand aside from this battle? Can it continue to seekrefuge in the shadow of morality and soothe itself with the traditional subspecie aeternitatis? People have done so, and still do so today. Husserl isright: we are offered wisdom in the place of philosophy. Hegel himself, forwhom nothing apparently existed outside objective truth, saw in morality thebeginning of philosophy. He writes in his Logic, which is also an ontology:"The return from the particular, finite existence to existence as such, in all itsabstract universality, is to be considered the first requisite of theory and evenof practice... Man must raise himself up to this abstract universality in which itis.... indifferent to him, whether he is or is not: is, that is, in finite life (for astate, definite existence is meant) or not, etc. - even, si fractus illabatur orbis,impavidum ferient ruinae" (if the earth, falling to pieces, were to slip away,still the crashing ruins will strike him unafraid). This means: morality first, thenphilosophy. To "think" we must renounce ourselves, our own living entity.After all that we have quoted here it will hardly be necessary to explain thatthe truth which follows morality is not original but derived and secondary.

When the philosopher begins with the imperative "that man shall raisehimself up to this abstract universality" he will end by setting ethics in theplace of ontology. The whole of nineteenth-century philosophy started fromSpinoza's sub specie aeternitatis or Hegel's "man shall raise himself up."Nietzsche's appearance in Germany and Dostoevsky's in Russia was an echoof this. Nietzsche proclaimed, or "shouted aloud" if you will, his "beyondgood and evil" and his "master morality." When he succeeded in shaking offHegel's and Spinoza's "man shall," he, like Plotinus, lost confidence in reason;he saw that the philosopher cannot seek his truths in the quarter where themathematician learns that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to tworight angles. He saw that our synthetic a priori judgments, which are generallyheld as firmly established for all eternity, are the falsest imaginable. And asthough in obedience to Plotinus' command pheugômen dê philên es patrida [letus flee then to the beloved fatherland] (I, vi, 8), he fled, fled without a lookbehind, before the gifts of reason. He fled even before modern Christianitywhich, in order to live in understanding with reason, had changed itself of itsfree will into morality. Yes, it will be said, and he dashed to his "blonde beast"- and that is surely atavism? But are we not rather inclined to see atavism evenin Plato's anamnêsis?

The same outbreak came in Dostoevsky's soul; he tells us about it in hisUnderground. He too was carried away beyond good and evil, beyondHegel's first "theoretical and practical requisite." Sub specie aeternitatis seemsto him the embodiment of horror and nonsense. All "lovely and sublimethings," he says, "have lain heavy enough on my back during my forty years oflife." The moment he had convinced himself that there was no necessitywhatever to "raise oneself up to universality" he answered all morality'sdemands with laughter and scorn. Not only has he not the slightest intention offulfilling any demands whatever, but he begins to make them himself. "I want,"he says, "my caprice to be guaranteed," I want "to live according to my stupid(irrational) will," etc. Accordingly his thought went another way. Even "twicetwo is four" ceased to impress him. "'Twice two is four' is in my opinionsimply an impertinence! 'Twice two is four' is a lout; he plants himself acrossour path, arms akimbo, and spits on the ground." Like Nietzsche and Plotinus,Dostoevsky also ceased to "believe" that a living being can be dominated by alifeless truth, when it was revealed to him that he was praestantioris sortis. TheUnderground is a critique of pure reason, if you will, but far more radical thanKant's. Kant started from the postulate that metaphysics must offer proofs, likegeometry and other sciences. Dostoevsky goes further; he opens up thequestion whether there is any need for these proofs, whether mathematicsgives the norma veritatis. Therefore he does not even argue, he does notanswer, he does not think it worth an answer, he laughs, scorns, mocks. Themoment he sees a very sublime truth or a quite unshakable principle, he makes along nose, sticks out his tongue, and far surpasses Aristotle himself inboldness; for Aristotle, although, as we know, he used arguments of this sortagainst Plato and Heraclitus, never dared mention them in his logic.Dostoevsky felt that we should and can drameîn hyper tên epistêmên (soarabove knowledge). Zeller could have said of him, too, that he lost confidencein reason.



But if it has come about, both in ancient days and in our own times, for mento lose confidence in reason, can we construct theories of knowledge on thebasic principle that there is and can be no other power beside reason? Is itpermissible to the philosopher to seek the norma veritatis in strict science?

This brings us back to Hering's objection. In his estimation the "Awakening"of which I spoke in my Memento Mori - Plotinus', Nietzsche's, andDostoevsky's awakenings - is no concern of the phenomenologist. "As forphenomenology and its doctrine of the cogitationes, in the well-knownredaction its strength lies precisely in the fact that it takes for the theme of itsinquiries the pure consciousness, for which the difference between homodormiens (man asleep) and homo vigilans (man awake) in the sense used heredoes not exist. That which says ego cogito, ego existo, is Husserl's pure ego."If this were so, if the ego cogito meant one and the same thing in Plotinus andSpinoza, in Dostoevsky and Hegel, in him who sleeps and him who wakes,phenomenology could triumph. But to reach this end we should have, as weknow, first to bring all these egos, to look on life sub specie aeternitatis, or "torise to universality." Can phenomenology be sure of achieving this? Weremember how Plotinus, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, answer reasoned arguments.It will be objected that scorn and coarse mockery are no rejoinder. But I repeatonce again that Aristotle himself took refuge in such methods when he couldfind no other reply to Heraclitus and Plato, and that in Plotinus reason had to"retreat" in the end. This means that phenomenology has power only over anego tamed and chastened by wisdom. It says ego cogito but operates on the egocogitat. It seeks for the essence, i.e., it tries to entice the human egos into the"field of logical reason." With tyros this succeeds, but the more experiencedegos take flight in all directions at the first attempt to pen them into a generalconception. They know that once they accept the challenge to battle on thefield of logical reason they are lost. Not only will mockery and scorn beillicit weapons there, but one will also not be allowed either ridere or lugere,and particularly not detestari. Les vérités de la raison or the veritates aeternaecome into their rights, and that is the end forever of that "unexpected," of that"suddenly" of which Plotinus has given us such a glorious account. Men willthen be subjected to the law of continuity, which, if we are to believe Leibniz,is as unshakable as the law of contradiction [1] then the "suddenly" will bestamped once and for all with the reproach of being a Deus ex machina.

Plotinus, who "tore himself loose from the earth," asks reason to followhim, and continues the battle not on the firm earth but above it. Will reason takeup the challenge under such conditions? There can be only one answer. Thereis nothing more terrible in the world for reason than to have no ground. It isindeed a priori convinced that this is the supreme terror for every livingcreature. When Kant asked whether metaphysics was possible, he started fromthe presupposition, which seemed to him self-evident, that the aim ofmetaphysics, as of the other sciences, must be well-grounded, compellingtruths, and his critique of pure reason turns into an apology of pure reason.Husserl, who diverges in many places from Kant, is absolutely at one with himin this respect. He believes that reason needs no justification; that, on thecontrary, everything has to justify itself before reason. And the moment heloses this faith (and if that "happened" to Plotinus, there is no guarantee thatsome unexpected "memento" may not rob the most convinced of nationalists ofthe ground under his feet), then what is left of the theory of knowledgefounded on self-evidences? Hering asks me, "Since Shestov knows Germanphilosophy so well, can he really have failed to notice that throughoutphenomenological literature... few philosophic terms occur so frequently as'intuition,' 'view,' 'essence'? Is there any contemporary philosophy, that ofBergson alone excepted, which is so emphatic as phenomenology in basing allknowledge on processes which give rise to views?" Of course I noticed it; itwould be impossible not to notice a thing which leaps to the eye. But intuitionhelps as little as the ego cogito, unless we agree to renounce ready-madepresuppositions, or rather, if we still place these presuppositions before everycogito and all intuition; and this is what "illimitability of reason" surely means.

Bergson permitted himself the most violent attacks on reason; he saysomewhere: Notre raison incurablement présomptueuse s'imagine posséder pardroit de naissance ou par droit de conquête... tous les éléments de la vérité. (Ourincurably presumptuous reason imagines that it possesses by right of birth orby right of conquest... all the elements of truth.) In another place he says,almost like Plotinus: Le raisonnement me clouera toujours à la terre ferme.(Reasoning will always nail me to firm ground.) But Bergson himself begins to



waver and tries to retreat when the moment has come to drameîn hyper tênepistêmên (to soar above knowledge), when he feels that the earth is givingway under his feet. He fears that a philosophy which trusts too much to its ownresources, tôt ou tard sera balayée par la science (will sooner or later be sweptaway by science). With Bergson, just as with Husserl, intuition has noindependent rights. It takes refuge, and must take refuge, under the protectionof reason, for only reason, with its unshakable a priori, can save it from allsorts of arbitrary and "sudden" things. Read Bergson's L'Évolution créatricewhere he discusses ordre et désordre, and you will convince yourself that thisis another declaration of the sovereign rights of reason; not quite so solemn,but in essence little different from what Husserl says in his Philosophy as StrictScience, and what Plotinus expressed in the formula archê oûn logos. Thereproaches of hostile critics notwithstanding, reality in Bergson neveremancipates itself from the watchful and strict guardianship of reason.

Here I can end. Hering had ground enough to return to the protection of thesub specie aeternitatis and to ask for help of the wisdom which Husserlrejected. Husserl, one may assume, will agree to no compromise and willcontinue to maintain that there is and can be no other power beside reason; thatwhat is logically and geometrically nonsensical is psychologically, i.e.,realiter, impossible; that reason has the right to summon truth before its forum,to call on truth to show its title, etc.; for only under such conditions canphilosophy be a strict science. My task has consisted in showing that reasonhas not the power which it claims. That which is logically nonsensical ispsychologically possible. Truth gets through life without showing any sort ofdocumentary titles. And individual living men who have awakened from theenchanted sleep of thousands of years of a priori and have reached the desiredfreedom do not in their search for truth turn to that quarter whither Spinozaturned to learn what is the sum of the angles of a triangle. Truth does not need asupport, as though it could not carry itself. The ultimate truth, that for whichphilosophy seeks, that which is to timiôtaton for living men, comes "suddenly."It knows no compulsion and compels none. Tote de chrê heôrakenai pisteuein,hotan hê psychê eksaiphnês phôs labêi [but then indeed we must believe that wehave seen IT, when a light suddenly dawns on the soul]. This is where Plotinuswas brought by Greek philosophy, that philosophy which had tried for athousand years to subdue the human spirit to reason and necessity; that is whyPlotinus began his last and mighty battle. We can, of course, turn away fromPlotinus; we can renounce the last battle and continue to look upon the worldand life sub specie aeternitatis, and in our flight before the arbitrary"suddenlies" shut ourselves up in the ideal world of moral existence, andrefuse to step forth into the freedom of real life. We can bow beforenecessity and compelling truth and give out ethics for ontology. In that case,however, we must not only forget Plotinus; we must also forget everythingthat Husserl, in his brilliant works, has told us with such extraordinary animationabout wisdom and specific relativism.

[1] "L'Entendement humain", avant-propos: C'est une de mes grandes maximeset des plus vérifiées, que la nature ne fait jamais de sauts. J'appellai cela la loi dela continuité. [It is one of my great and best established maxims that naturenever makes any leaps. I shall call this the law of continuity].

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