First of all, Johannes Climacus juxtaposed this thesis with thesis no. two, that in order to begin to philosophize one must have doubted. He easily perceived that they did not say the same thing, for while the first defined doubt as the beginning of philosophy, the second defined doubt as something that preceded the beginning. Since one of the several reasons for having turned his attention to these theses was that they might shed some light on the connection between the thesis de omnibus dubitandum est and philosophy and thereby more or less brighten his prospects of entering into philosophy, thesis no. one naturally made him happy, for it seemed to be the closest way. It did not speak of doubt as something preceding philosophy but taught that in doubt one is at the beginning of philosophy.
2For him it was a strange idea that doubt is part and parcel of philosophy. It seemed to him that what happened with thesis no. one was the opposite of what happened with thesis no. three. The latter seemed to be a historical thesis but on closer examination proved to be a philosophical thesis, even if he failed to understand it as such. At first glance, thesis [IV B 1 127] no. one appears to be a philosophical thesis, since it speaks of philosophy in general, but on closer examination it seems historical. It states that philosophy begins with a negative principle, but this implies a polemic against not only this or that which lies outside of philosophy but also against a principle in philosophy. Since it plainly would be absurd to polemicize against nothing, this presupposes an antecedent. If this antecedent is not a principle, then the polemic is unworthy of philosophy—indeed, then the thesis is not negative but positive, for if in my polemic I merely rule out the heterogeneous, then my thesis actually is not a polemic but an enunciation of something higher that I have. But the thesis cannot be ignorant of this polemic against something homogeneous, for although a positive principle, as direct and immediate, can be ignorant of what it excludes, a negative principle never can be. Thus the thesis itself admits an antecedent philosophical principle.
If philosophy had begun with a positive principle, it would have been totally impossible to deduce this consequence with respect to the historical. To the best of his knowledge, the Greeks taught that philosophy begins with wonder [Forundring].3 A principle such as that cannot give rise to any historical consequence whatsoever. If a later thinker made the same assumption, we would be utterly unjustified in drawing the conclusion that he thought one should begin with wonder over the fact that Plato and Aristotle had wondered. Wonder is plainly an immediate category and involves no reflection upon itself. Doubt, on the other hand, is a reflection-category. When a later philosopher said: Philosophy begins with wonder—he was straightway in continuity with the Greeks. They had wondered, and he also wondered; they perhaps had wondered about one thing, and he wondered about something else. 4But every time a later philosopher repeats or says these words: Philosophy begins with doubt—the continuity is broken, for doubt is precisely a polemic against what went before. The more important the person is who [IV B 1 128] repeats the thesis, the more chasmal the break, whereas in the other case the more important the person is who repeats that thesis, the more it is confirmed and strengthened. Admittedly, in the first case as well, the thesis is strengthened by repetition, but it was strengthened explicitly in order to separate.
The more he thought through the thesis, the more historical and the more identical with no. three it proved to be; thus, by a reverse process, he arrived at the same point as before. But this was not enough; he also discovered a new difficulty. He was well able to comprehend that an individual could take it into his head to doubt, but he could not understand how it could occur to him to say this to another person, least of all as advice (it would be another matter if it were said to deter), for if the other person was not too slow, he might very well say, “Thank you, but please forgive me for also doubting the correctness of that statement.”5 Now, if the first person in his happiness over the second person’s expression of gratitude were to tell a third person that they were in agreement about doubting everything, he actually would be making a fool of the third person, since their agreement was nothing more than a wholly abstract expression of their disagreement, unless each was so disrespectful as to consider the other as nothing, which would be a new contradiction, since the one who had advanced the thesis certainly must have considered himself as something but also considered the other as something, since he wanted to initiate him into it. Nor could the first person become angry over the second person’s conduct, for he could not, of course, want him to be of a 6less perfect nature than he himself and above all could not want him to be inconsistent, no more than Anaxarchus of old, who, having fallen into a deep ditch, became angry with Pyrrho, who walked by without helping him out, but on the other hand praised him for it, because it proved that they truly agreed that a philosopher ought to be indifferent and unsympathetic.7
[IV B 1 129] Although Johannes could certainly adhere to this, his mental constitution was such that he did not have the courage to be that consistent with regard to acclaimed truths. 8Even if it would be inconsistent for a genius to require this of someone, it nevertheless was consistent for a poor student to do it. He was well aware of the imperfection in the way he appropriated truth, but he still did not wish to abandon the thesis for that reason. He tried once again to think it over in order to see how he could enter into relation to it. As yet it was not the thesis itself he wanted to think through, for he first of all had to find out if he could successfully enter into relation to it. Therefore, he did not ask questions like these: Is doubt as the beginning of philosophy a part of philosophy or is it the whole of philosophy? If it is a part, what, then, is the other part? Could it be certainty? Are these parts forever separated? How can we speak of a whole if its parts exclude one another? What Epicurus had sophistically maintained about the fear of death seemed to him to apply here—namely, that one should not concern oneself about it, because when I am, death is not, and when death is, I am not.9 Was there something that united these two parts into a whole? He did not ask questions such as these but on the contrary asked about the single individual’s relation to that thesis.
While his soul was pregnantly pondering this question (that is, as long as he could not question, thought twined itself alarmingly around him, but as soon as he began to ask questions, he was happy and extricated himself from thought inasmuch as thought developed for him in dialogue), he one day heard one of the philosophizers, apropos of that thesis, say, “This thesis does not belong to any particular philosopher; it is a thesis from the eternal philosophy, 11which anyone who wishes to give himself to philosophy must embrace.” He noted clearly how these words stirred the listeners; he himself felt blissfully agitated by the communicative vibrations [IV B 1 130] of the enthusiasm. He hurried home happier than Robinson Crusoe when he had found Friday. On the way, he repeated the words to ensure that his memory would not deceive him.
The eternal philosophy, he said to himself, the eternal philosophy—what does that mean? It is a glorious designation, and no designation of philosophy can be too glorious; but the more glorious the designation becomes, the more obvious and clear it presumably becomes. The eternal philosophy. Is it the philosophy that is unconcerned with time? In that case, it is indeed the most abstract philosophy, so abstract that it has neither beginning nor end. Yet it cannot be that, inasmuch as that thesis speaks of a beginning. Is it the philosophy that has history in itself as the blessed transfiguration of philosophy’s richly substantial life, a transfiguration best compared to what everyone, once one’s life is ended, expects in eternity? If that is what it is, then, strictly understood, one can only expect it. —Already his soul began to be discouraged; those inspiring and powerful words were so faithless! Yet he still had faith in the latter part of the statement: “Anyone who wishes to give himself to philosophy must embrace this (that is, the eternal philosophy).” But the speaker had not said a single word concerning how one is to go about doing this. Of what use was it to find out that there is an eternal philosophy that everyone should embrace if everyone did not learn how to go about doing it or if no one at all learned it, if at least none of the listeners had learned more than he? And yet it pained him; he thought the words to be so beautiful that he could not stop listening to them, just as one sadly gazes after the wild geese flying in the sky. Anyone who wants to belong to that world must join them, and yet no one has ever been seen flying with them.
The words had not helped him to make any advance. On the contrary, after more careful consideration, they seemed to end precisely where he was at the point of beginning before [IV B 1 131] he even heard them; for that was precisely what he wanted to investigate, how the single individual must relate to that thesis, and, consequently, how the single individual must embrace philosophy. He was well aware that this concurrency was scarcely encouraging for him, because the explanation could be that he was standing and was supposed to begin where others had already ended. This accounted for the likeness. In just the same way, the end of a mathematical demonstration fully resembles the beginning. The one who begins says, for example: The square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. The one who ends says exactly the same, only adding: quod erat demonstrandum [which was to be demonstrated]. 12It pained him that the philosophizers behaved in that way. It was shameful of them that they never explained something—there could be someone, after all, who needed it.
Once again he was ready to follow the inclination of his own thinking, and the question was already on his lips when again he heard another call, a seemingly very important observation made by one of the philosophizers. The thesis that philosophy begins with doubt was on the whole a frequent subject of discussion. Now he heard that the beginning of philosophy is threefold:13 The absolute beginning14 is that concept which is also the end of the system, the concept of absolute spirit;15 the objective beginning is the concept of absolutely indeterminate being,16 the most simple determinant that exists [existere]; the subjective beginning is the work of consciousness, by which this elevates itself to thinking or to positing the abstraction.
This observation made a good impression on Johannes. To him it seemed to be dependable and credible, and even if it did not have the intoxicating power of enthusiasm, it seemed to have clarity and level-headedness. Nevertheless, he was struck by the fact that this observation, which was supposed to shed light on that thesis about philosophy’s beginning with doubt, to that end explained that the beginning of philosophy was threefold and named each part separately—yet none [IV B 1 132] of these beginnings carried the designation naming it as phi-losophy’s beginning with doubt. If he were to interpret this to mean that philosophy had four beginnings and that the fourth was doubt, then he was in the awkward position of having to assume that the explanation had explained everything but not what he wanted explained. He was well aware that if any of the beginnings mentioned was the one in question, it had to be the third, because reflecting about philosophy’s absolute and objective beginning had to be left to those who had already become philosophers. The subjective beginning, however, was certainly the one with which the individual started from not having been a philosopher to become a philosopher. Consequently, this was the one about which he was asking, for he was not, after all, asking about the relation of that thesis to philosophy but about his relation to that thesis and his thereby possible relation to philosophy.
“The subjective beginning,” it was said, “is the work of consciousness by which this (that is, the consciousness) elevates itself to thinking or to positing the abstraction.” This seemed very beautiful to him, particularly very uplifting, but his consciousness still was not lifted up by it. If this was supposed to be the beginning about which he was talking, then it was obscure to him why it now was put in a positive form instead of the usual negative form. He was well aware that one could arrive at the same place by elevation and by doubt, but still the continuity would be altogether different. If, for example, a person elevated himself above sense perception in order to philosophize and someone else for the same reason doubted sense perception, both perhaps would arrive at the same place, but the movements would be different, and the movement, of course, was what he was asking about in particular. Moreover, since to elevate oneself is a positive principle, no historical consequence could be drawn from it with regard to an earlier philosophy, as can be drawn from the principle of doubt. Is the intention, then, that these two expressions—to elevate oneself and to doubt—are supposed to be identical? That would surely be unreasonable, since they are not identical. Why use two expressions, then? Why explain the more difficult expression by an easier [IV B 1 133] expression that also explained something entirely different and consequently did not explain what it was supposed to explain? The expression he heard repeated again and again was: Philosophy begins with doubt. The other expression he heard far less frequently. Must, then, the thesis be a misunderstanding and, on the other hand, the explanation be the thesis? But that would be inconceivable, and even if it were the case, it would presumably have its meaning as a thesis but would itself need an explanation, because to say: The beginning is the act by which one begins—that is not much of an explanation. What kind of act it is and how the single individual becomes capable of carrying it out must be defined more explicitly.
He decided, then, to begin where he was at the point of beginning earlier and to follow the wish of the question just as he sensed it in his soul.
To that end, he asked whether that thesis had existed [existeret] at all times in the temporal sense so that everyone had known it in substance, even though no one had enunciated it as a thesis. Would it hold for that thesis as it holds for the thesis: Man is mortal? —Did it state something people had always done without being conscious of it? Was it something immediately inherent in human nature? For example, if no one had ever explained what it is to wonder, every human being would still have done it. —Had the thesis existed in the eternal sense at all times but had been discovered in time? Does it hold for that thesis as it holds for mathematical theses—namely, that when they are discovered they are discovered in their eternity? —Would it continue to exist in the eternal sense at all times just as a philosophical thesis does? —Would the personality of the one who discovered the thesis become a matter of indifference after the thesis was discovered, as is the case with mathematical and metaphysical theses? —Would it be of importance to the thesis that people knew the personality [IV B 1 134] of the one who had enunciated it? For example, we would still require acquaintance with the personality of the speaker with respect to religious theses and also, up to a point, with respect to an ethical thesis, for anyone could state a religious or an ethical thesis, but it would not necessarily follow that in everyone’s mouth it would become a religious or an ethical thesis, unless it were assumed that it makes no difference whether it was Christ who declared that he was God’s son or any human being whatsoever, or that it makes no difference whether it was a person who actually knew himself who said “Know yourself” or any human being whatsoever. The thesis, to be sure, would be the same, and yet it would become something else—that is, in the one case it would become a thesis, in the other mere chatter—whereas with respect to a mathematical thesis it makes no difference whether it is Archimedes or Arv17 who enunciates it, provided only that it is enunciated correctly. In the one case, personality does nothing and in the other, everything, just as in civil life anyone may formally be a guarantor, and yet it makes an absolute difference who the guarantor is.
What kind of a personality should the person be who is supposed to enunciate it? Would he have to be a talented person, and would talent be sufficient to authorize that person to enunciate the thesis? To enunciate a mathematical thesis requires mathematical talent. The person who could enunciate it would prove that he had talent, and if the inanity were to be imagined (something that is always inane by reason of the perfect immanence of the talent in the presentation) that someone devoid of talent could do it, the thesis would retain just as much its truth, its mathematical truth—that is, its essential truth—just as in daily life a bond payable to the bearer is just as sound whether a rich man or a poor man holds it, whether a thief or the legitimate owner possesses it. Not so with religious and ethical theses. If a two-year-old child could be taught a mathematical thesis,* it would [IV B 1 135] be essentially just as true in the child’s mouth as in the mouth of Pythagoras. If we taught a two-year-old child to say these words, “I believe that there is a God” or “Know yourself,” then no one would reflect on those words. 18Is talent itself, then, not the adequate authority?19 Do not religious and ethical truths require something else, or another kind of authority, or, rather, what we do actually call authority, for we do, after all, make a distinction between talent and authority? If someone has enough talent to perceive all the implications in such a thesis, enough talent to enunciate it, it does not follow that he himself believes it or that he himself does it, and insofar as this is not the case, he then changes the thesis from a religious to a historical thesis, or from an ethical to a metaphysical thesis.
Now it was clear to him that if philosophy was not supposed to have four beginnings (and even in that case the conclusion would remain the same), then this thesis [philosophy begins with doubt] would have to belong to the subjective beginning, as was also clear from the fact that it would be shadowboxing to talk about an objective doubt, for an objective doubt is not doubt but deliberation. Therefore, this thesis, no more than any philosophical thesis, could not make any claim to mathematical necessity, or to philosophical necessity, either, as any thesis in the absolute and objective philosophy does. This thesis, then, had to be of such a nature that the person who was supposed to enunciate it had to discover it, had to have talent, had to have authority.
At this point, Johannes Climacus perceived that some questions would turn out to be the other side of the previous questions. With these, he could be brief. So he asked whether that thesis, once it was enunciated, would promptly have validity, whether one intended it or not, just as with the thesis about human mortality? —Would it have validity with such necessity that, by denying it, one would expose oneself to the inverse conclusion, just as someone who denies a [IV B 1 136] mathematical thesis must be prepared for the conclusion that he does not have a head for mathematics?20—Was the thesis, just like a mathematical thesis, indifferent to how many enunciated it: did it neither gain nor lose thereby?—
The question to which he gave special attention was: Is the thesis merely to be enunciated, or does it actually need to be received? A mathematical thesis is merely to be enunciated, for only when one has received it in such a way that one can enunciate it oneself, only then has one received it—otherwise it does not exist at all for that person. This he explained by way of the abstract nature of mathematics. Is that thesis not of the same order because of its negativity? Does not the negative specifically lack continuity, without which no communication and no reception is conceivable? Would it not be an illusion to give negativity the appearance of having continuity? 21In the sphere of thought, is not the negative what evil is in the sphere of freedom and thus, like evil, without continuity?
Is the thesis, then, not to be received but merely to be enunciated? Does everyone receive it in such a way that, in the moment he enunciates it, it is to him a matter of indifference from whom he had received it or whether he had received it, since he would not have received it until he himself enunciated it? —Can it be received; can the individual receive it through someone else; is it to be believed? That is, when I, believing, receive a thesis, I cannot grasp it immediately or carry it out; nevertheless, I receive it because I trust the person who enunciates it.22 —Is the thesis perhaps of such a nature that it requires authority in the person who is to enunciate it, trust and submission in the person who is to receive it? —Should it be believed in such a way that the single individual does not do what the thesis says but believes that the other has done it?23 Perhaps a particular philosopher had doubted for all just as Christ suffered for all,24 and is one now only supposed to believe it and not doubt for oneself? In that case, of course, the thesis was not enunciated entirely correctly, for then philosophy would not begin [IV B 1 137] for the single individual with doubt but with the belief that philosopher X had doubted for him. —Should the thesis be appropriated believingly in such a way that the single individual does what it says? Did the person who enunciated it doubt everything so completely that the single individual merely repeats his doubt and, thus believing in the enunciator, makes the motions of doubt just as that one prescribed? With every single individual, would a new element of doubt always be added on for the next one? With respect to that which the earlier individual had been able to doubt, should one believe that he had doubted thoroughly, or would one have to doubt again?
The more Johannes thought about this matter, the more obvious it became to him that this was not the way into philosophy, because that thesis destroyed the very connection. In an old saga, he had read a story about a knight who received from a troll a rare sword that, in addition to its other qualities, also craved blood the instant it was drawn.25 As the troll handed him the sword, the knight’s urge to see it was so great that he promptly drew it out, and then, behold, the troll had to bite the dust. It seemed to Johannes that he must have the same experience with that thesis: when one person said it to another, it became in the latter’s hand a sword that was obliged to slay the former, however painful it was for the latter to reward his benefactor in that way.
The very first person who had primitively26 discovered that one must begin with doubt had not been in that predicament. He presumably had begun as one begins a daring adventure, not knowing whether it would lead him to victory or defeat. But the single individual who is to learn this from another would fall into the predicament, and if his teacher is not quick enough, he is obliged to become a sacrifice to his teaching.
Johannes could not adopt such sanguinary ingratitude, but even if he did gradually acquire the courage for it, he was fully aware that there would be a new difficulty, for as soon as he, against his will (this he dared to say with a good conscience), [IV B 1 138] murdered the master and thus became himself the master, he would not have the slightest benefit from his predecessors but would have either the prospect of becoming the absolute monarch in philosophy (that is, if he were the last to enunciate that thesis and had no successors, consequently absolute monarch over all philosophers, since he himself would be the only one) or the prospect of ending up the same way as his great predecessors. Aller Anfang ist schwer [Every beginning is difficult]—he had always agreed with the Germans on that, but this beginning seemed to him to be more than difficult, and to call it a beginning and to designate it by this category seemed to him to be akin to the way the fox classified being skinned in the category of transition.
Although these deliberations were by no means encouraging to him, Johannes could not help smiling now and then, since smiles and tears, after all, lie close to one another in a strange way. When he, who was such an innocent young person that he might rather be taken for a girl instead of a man, who did not have the heart to hurt a fly, considered that he would be changed into a bloodthirsty Bluebeard who would not cut down stems of grain but immortal philosophers instead, he sensed what a ridiculous figure he would be and that the whole thing could come about only by witchcraft. He certainly understood that a transformation had to take place when someone became a philosopher—but such a transformation!
He decided to let the sword remain in the sheath for the time being and to go on being himself rather than to become a philosopher on that condition.
Whatever else was involved in that thesis [philosophy begins with doubt] and its relation to philosophy, he perceived that this beginning was a beginning that kept one outside philosophy, whether it was assumed that philosophy actually continued to endure even if the single individual by means of his beginning excluded himself from it, or whether it was assumed that this beginning annihilated philosophy, thereby preventing one from entering into it.
[IV B 1 139] The beautiful prospect opened up to him by this thesis had disappeared; he had only one recourse—to assume that this beginning was a beginning that preceded the beginning of philosophy. In that case, thesis no. one was identical with thesis no. two.
* In margin: if a madman recited it.