If the paradox and the understanding meet in the mutual understanding of their difference, then the encounter is a happy one, like erotic love’s understanding—happy in the passion [IV 216] to which we as yet have given no name and which we shall not name until later. If the encounter is not in mutual understanding, then the relation is unhappy, and the understanding’s unhappy love, if I dare call it that (which, please note, resembles only the unhappy love rooted in misunderstood self-love; since the power of chance is capable of nothing here, the analogy stretches no further), we could more specifically term offense.
At its deepest level, all offense is a suffering.*3 Here it is similar to that unhappy love. Even when self-love (and does it not already seem to be a contradiction that love of self is suffering?) announces itself in the rashest exploit, the amazing deed, it is suffering, it is wounded, and the pain of the wound gives this illusory expression of strength that resembles action and can easily delude, especially since self-love conceals this most of all. Indeed, even when it thrusts down the object of love, even when it self-tormentingly disciplines itself to callous indifference and tortures itself in order to show indifference, even when it indulges in triumphant frivolousness over success in doing this (this form is the most deceptive)—even then it is suffering.
So it is also with offense. However it chooses to express itself, even when it gloatingly celebrates the triumph of spiritlessness, it is always a suffering. No matter if the offended one is sitting crushed and staring almost like a beggar at the paradox, petrifying in his suffering, or even if he arms himself with mockery and aims the arrows of his wit as if from a distance—he is nevertheless suffering and is not at a distance. No matter if the offense came and took the last crumb of comfort and joy from the offended one or if it made him strong—offense is nevertheless a suffering. It has struggled with the stronger, and his posture of vigor has a physical analogy to that of someone with a broken back, which does indeed give a singular kind of suppleness.
We can, however, very well distinguish between suffering offense and active offense, yet without forgetting that suffering offense is always active to the extent that it cannot altogether [IV 217] allow itself to be annihilated (for offense is always an act, not an event), and active offense is always weak enough to be incapable of tearing itself loose from the cross to which it is nailed or to pull out the arrow with which it is wounded.*
But precisely because offense is a suffering in this manner, the discovery, if it may be put this way, does not belong to the understanding but to the paradox, for just as truth is index sui et falsi [the criterion of itself and of the false],5 so also is the paradox, and offense does not understand itself** but is understood by the paradox. Thus, although the offense, however it expresses itself, sounds from somewhere else—indeed, from the opposite corner—nevertheless it is the paradox that resounds in it, and this indeed is an acoustical illusion. But if the paradox is index and judex sui et falsi [the criterion of itself and of the false], then offense can be regarded as an indirect testing of the correctness of the paradox, for offense is the erroneous accounting, is the conclusion of untruth, with which the paradox thrusts away. The one offended does not speak according to his own nature8 but according to the nature of the paradox, just as someone caricaturing another person does not originate anything himself but only copies the other in the wrong way. The more deeply the expression of offense is couched in passion (acting or suffering), the more manifest is the extent to which the offense is indebted to the paradox. So the offense is not the origination of the understanding—far from it, for then the understanding must also have been able to originate the paradox. No, the offense comes into existence with the paradox; if it comes into existence, here [IV 218] again we have the moment, around which everything indeed revolves. Let us recapitulate. If we do not assume the moment, then we go back to Socrates, and it was precisely from him that we wanted to take leave in order to discover something. If the moment is posited, the paradox is there, for in its most abbreviated form the paradox can be called the moment. Through the moment, the learner becomes untruth; the person who knew himself becomes confused about himself and instead of self-knowledge he acquires the consciousness of sin etc., 9for just as soon as we assume the moment, everything goes by itself.
From the psychological point of view, offense will now have very many shadings within the category of the more active and the more passive. To describe these is not the interest of this deliberation, but it is nevertheless important to maintain that all offense is in its essence a misunderstanding of the moment, since it is indeed offense at the paradox, and the paradox in turn is the moment.
The dialectic of the moment is not difficult. From the Socratic point of view, the moment is not to be seen or to be distinguished; it does not exist, has not been, and will not come. Therefore, the learner himself is the truth, and the moment of occasion is merely a jest, like an end-sheet half-title that does not essentially belong to a book. And the moment of decision is foolishness,10 for if the decision is posited, then (see above) the learner becomes untruth, but precisely this makes a beginning in the moment necessary. The expression of offense is that the moment is foolishness, the paradox is foolishness—which is the paradox’s claim that the understanding is the absurd but which now resounds as an echo from the offense. Or the moment is supposed to be continually pending; one waits and watches, and the moment is supposed to be something of great importance, worth watching for, but since the paradox has made the understanding the absurd, what the understanding regards as very important is no distinguishing mark.
The offense remains outside the paradox, and the basis for that is: quia absurdum [because it is absurd].11 Yet the understanding has not discovered this, since, on the contrary, it is the paradox that discovered it and now takes testimony from the offense. The understanding declares that the paradox is the absurd, but this is only a caricaturing, for the paradox is indeed the paradox, quia absurdum. The offense remains outside the paradox and retains probability; whereas the paradox [IV 219] is the most improbable. Once again, it is not the understanding that discovers it, but the understanding merely parrots the paradox, however strange that may seem, for the paradox itself says: Comedies and novels and lies must be probable, but how could I be probable?12 The offense remains outside the paradox—no wonder, since the paradox is the wonder. The understanding has not discovered this; on the contrary, it was the paradox that ushered the understanding to the wonder stool13 and replies: Now, what are you wondering about? It is just as you say, and the amazing thing is that you think that it is an objection, but the truth in the mouth of a hypocrite is dearer to me than to hear it from an angel and an apostle.14 When the understanding flaunts its magnificence in comparison with the paradox, which is most lowly and despised, the understanding has not originated it, but the paradox itself is the originator who hands over all the splendor to understanding, even the glittering vices (vitia splendida).15 When the understanding wants to have pity upon the paradox and assist it to an explanation, the paradox does not put up with that but considers it appropriate for the understanding to do that, for is that not what philosophers are for—to make supernatural things ordinary and banal?16 When the understanding cannot get the paradox into its head, this did not have its origin in the understanding but in the paradox itself, which was paradoxical enough to have the effrontery to call the understanding a clod and a dunce who at best can say “yes” and “no” to the same thing, which is not good theology.17 So it is with offense. Everything it says about the paradox it has learned from the paradox, even though, making use of an acoustical illusion, it insists that it itself has originated the paradox.
But someone may be saying, “You really are boring, for now we have the same story all over again; all the phrases you put in the mouth of the paradox do not belong to you at all.” —“How could they belong to me, since they do indeed belong to the paradox?” —“Please spare us your sophistry! You know very well what I mean. Those phrases do not belong to you but are very familiar, and everyone knows to whom they belong.” —“Ah, my dear fellow, what you say does not pain me as you perhaps think it does; no, it pleases me immensely, for I admit that I trembled when I wrote them down. I could not recognize myself, could not imagine that I, who as a rule am so diffident and fearful, [IV 220] dared to write anything like that. But if they are not my phrases, tell me, whose are they?”18 —“Nothing is easier. The first is from Tertullian; the second from Hamann; the third from Hamann; the fourth, from Lactantius, is often quoted; the fifth from Shakespeare’s comedy All’s Well That Ends Well, II, 3; the sixth is from Luther; and the seventh is a line in King Lear. As you see, I do know my business and know how to catch you with the stolen goods.” —“Indeed, I see it very well; but tell me this—have not all these men talked about a relation of the paradox to offense, and will you please notice that they were not the offended ones but the very ones who held firmly to the paradox and yet spoke as if they were the offended ones, and offense cannot come up with a more striking expression than that. Is it not peculiar that the paradox thus seems to be taking bread from the mouth of offense and making it an unremunerative art that has no reward for its trouble but is just as odd as an opponent who absentmindedly does not attack the author but defends him? Does it not seem so to you? Yet offense has one advantage: it points up the difference more clearly, for in that happy passion to which we have not as yet given a name the difference is in fact on good terms with the understanding. The difference is necessary in order to be united in some third, but the difference was precisely this—that the understanding surrendered itself and the paradox gave itself (halb zog sie ihn, halb sank er hin [she half dragged him, he half sank down]),19 and the understanding lies in that happy [IV 221] passion that no doubt will receive a name, but this is the least part of it, even though my happiness does not have a name—if only I am happy, I ask no more.”
* Our language correctly terms an uncontrolled emotional state [Affekt] a suffering of the mind [Sinds l i d e l s e], although when using the word “affect” we usually think of the convulsive boldness that astounds us, and because of that we forget that it is a suffering.4 For example, arrogance, defiance, etc.
* Language usage also shows that all offense is a suffering. We say “to be offended,” which primarily signifies only the state, but we synonymously say “to take offense” (the identity of the suffering [Lidende] and the acting). In Greek it is σϰανδαλίζεσθαι. This word comes from σκάνδαλον (offense, affront) and thus means to take affront. Here the direction is clear; it is not the offense that affronts but the offense that takes affront, therefore passively [passivt], even though so actively that it itself takes affront. The understanding, therefore, has not itself originated the offense, for the paradoxical affront that the isolated understanding develops discovers neither the paradox nor the offense.
** In this way the Socratic principle that all sin is ignorance6 is correct; sin does not understand itself in the truth, but this does not mean that it cannot will itself in untruth.7