APPENDIX I
Notes and Sketches for the Lecture Course
Augustine, “Confessiones”—“confiteri,” “interpretari”
[on § 7 b]
“Interpretation” as a determinately characterized interpretation of oneself, in such a way that that in front of which one becomes familiar to “oneself” is not only the empty “in-front-of,” but leads the authentic interpreting, making it precisely something special. “Special”—[that means here:]
—concretely naming possible stages of the interpretations in formal indication;
—then showing how the confiteri [confessing] is motivated in its basic starting point: quaestio mihi factus sum [I have become a question to myself].
Grasping the theological-philosophical “writings”—Sermones, Epistolae [sermons, letters], polemical pieces, and so forth—from this viewpoint as what has been interpreted determinately in communal-worldly complexes of experience and in the surrounding-worldly state of knowledge.
To what extent a new lead [Duktus] enters the theological concepts, to what extent this tendency succumbs not only to the Church, but to Greek antiquity!
On the Destruction of Confessiones X
[on § 7 b]
Memoria not radically, existentially, as enactment, but Greek, falling in regard to the content, not how “it was” with him and how it “is” in a “was,” but separately, what is present in itself, that truth has its “standing” [Bestand] unchanged, toward which he then throws himself away and into which he orders himself. But in this, always radically existential movements.
Enactmental Complex of the Question
[on § 8 b]
How the self wins its existence, and in what existence consists, already through the searching: placing oneself somehow before God or vita beata [the happy life]. In searching, it places itself in the absolute distance, and tries to win the distance. Explicated phenomenologically?
“The criterion for the self is always: that directly before which it is a self; but that in turn is the definition of ‘criterion.’ ”1
“The greater the conception of God, the more self there is; the more self, the greater the conception of God.”2
Tentatio [Temptation]
[on § 12 a]
[The tentatio is] no event, but an existential sense of enactment, a How of experiencing. What is it about? The sense in which experiencing is encountered. Not such that it is present self-sufficiently, significantly, not in absorption, but that a “possibility” is experienced, that significance refers, in terms of content, toward something else, cf. “conflict.” Experiencing possibility, living in the open, keeping open, opening authentically. Prestruction [Praestruktion]—”intentionality.”
The How of the breaking apart of tentatio. “Authentically” forming. For whom is it truly present in the enactmental renewal? For those who radically become “questions” to themselves. An opening in relation to oneself. Possibility is the true “burden.” Difficult! Vita = tentatio [Life = temptation]. (Experiencing tentatio—“passing,” “falling”—does not simply happen, but is experienced. What I do with it! Whether I appropriate it in such a way that it opens up only possibilities? The falling, the ability to fall and the future of falling, increase the anxiety and reveal: disco [I learn]!)
In this context, how is Augustine's “classification” and sequence of stages to be explicated? Increase? of “possibilities,” of “burden” (phenomenon of the “transitus” [transition]). In how far? Insofar as solid reality disappears and freedom—in terms of content—becomes more one's own. That is, the modes of tentatio in which it becomes accessible.
Experiencing possibility, which means viewing oneself fully in enactment in misery, that it “is” stronger, and that existing means to live radically in possibility, and also “objectively”: “being left open” [dahin “gestellt sein”]. Receiving existence!
Significances of the surrounding world, communal world, self-world—“limits of life”—negligible in the face of anxiety, of possibility.
I. Being honest in the face of possibility.
II. Administering, in an orderly manner, the discoveries of honesty.
[Oneri mihi sum (I am a burden to myself)]
[on § 12 a]
“Cum inhaesero tibi ex omni me […] et viva erit vita mea” [When I will have adhered to you with my whole self…and my life shall be truly alive].3 My life is authentic life, I exist. When I adhere to you, with the last part of myself, when I put everything radically onto you—vita erit tota plena te [my entire life will be full of you]—all relations of life, the whole facticity permeated by you, enacted in such a way that all enactment is enacted before you.
Since that is not the case, “oneri mihi sum,”4 I am a burden to myself, fall back, non sublevas [not lifted up]. I fall away from there and am unable to authentically search. (How this is connected to what came before.)
The “burden” lies in the “strife” [Widerstreit] in which I live, contendunt [in strife]: laetitia flendae—maerores laetandi [regrettable joys—joyful sorrows].5 Do I not live in joys about which I should weep, and sorrows about which I should rejoice; they are at strife.6 “Et ex qua parte stet victoria nescio” [And on which side is the victory, I do not know].7
“Contendunt maerores mei mali cum gaudiis bonis” [My sorrows over my evil and my good joys are in strife with one another].8 Sinful sorrow, despair—optimistic joy.9—Vulnera non abscondo [I do not hide the wounds]: being torn apart.
Numquid non tentatio est vita humana—sine ullo interstitio? [Is not human life all temptation—without intermission?] Finding oneself between these possibilities that impose themselves, and over which one does not reign.—The comfortable ones do not see this; rather, one is the replacement of the other; they let themselves be borne in an unemphasized light-heartedness and tepidness. But those who experience it seek to fix the end, to gain a stand.
Certamen: in multa defluximus [Strife: scattered into the many]. Hope-less.—Thus, iubes continentiam. Tota spes mea non nisi in magna valde continentia tua [You command continence. All my hope is nowhere but in Your very great continence].10
Out of the dispersion. And this dispersion is founded in like manner in the basic tendency of timere [fearing] and desiderare [desiring]. Both lie in the concern for the secular; and that is one's own irruere—defluere [rushing into—being scattered]: gliding down, sinking down, in the sense of slackening.
In the defluxus, I give myself, and create for myself, a situation that is, in a determinate sense, closed, a situation that carries a possibility in itself, but its tendency is directed toward delectatio [delight], bustling activity; only insofar as it is present does timere and desiderare emerge.
“Prospera in adversis desidero, adversa in prosperis timeo” [In adversity I desire prosperity, in prosperity I fear adversity].11 Because in experience I have a certain knowledge of how things always go (according to what came before), and because I somehow always stand within experiences, a fallen historical knowledge in tending toward delectatio.
Experience is somehow always co-present in desiderium, situs anima (as vox) media [desire, lying in the middle of the soul (as voice)]. There is no medius locus,12 ubi non sit tentatio [middle place, where there is no temptation]. In how far? What is this? Nescio in qua parte stet victoria [I do not know on which side is the victory].
Maerores laetandi—laetitia flendae—maerores mei mali cum gaudiis bonis [joyful sorrows—regrettable joys—my sorrows over my evil and my good joys]—and, in addition: nescio [I do not know].
1. Conflict within factical life itself—in the defluere—the unrest—being thrown.
2. Conflict within oneself again easy[?]. (Timor—maeror laetandus [Fear—joyful sorrow]. Or is it maeror malus [evil sorrow]? Do I have it such that I ought to rejoice in it? Laetitia flendae [regrettable joys] or gaudium bonum [good joys]? Is it a joy about which I ought to weep?)
3. Nescio [I do not know], where victory is; I do not know what will be and what the outcome will be. (Tentatio and the historical. How the historical raises itself to the nescio—how I experience myself—quastio factus sum [I have become a question].—”Conflict” objective, it is […],* which […]** historical horizon—existential intentionality. The taking-a-stance itself, the How of appropriation, of the taking-along in timere and desiderare is conflictual, and these in turn are in conflict among themselves.
[on § 13 a]
Reaching back to iubere continentiam (et iustitiam) [commanding continence (and justice)]13—related to the concupiscentia that turns in three directions (following 1 John 2:15, 16, 17): 1. concupiscentia carnis [desire of the flesh], 2. concupiscentia oculorum [desire of the eyes], 3. ambitio saeculi [secular ambition].
Malitiae diei [the evils of the day]. They are present and tempting as deliciae [delights] and suavitates [loveliness], and one turns them into enjoyments, whereas they are really the danger for me. What is base pulls down, turns the will into a servant, and has it confirm the falling as what is authentic. What does this complex of movements mean factically, historically, existentially? (What happens and occurs; and what I enact.—No juxtaposition, but existential-phenomenologically[?] the authentic facticity, not biologically, objectively isolated, but concrete life, “marriage”[?]—eating, drinking, meals, “teatime”—concrete, surrounding-worldly significance.
Temptation lurks precisely in what belongs to my facticity, what is with me and in which I am. “Temptation is historically present.”
Vita = tentatio tota [Life = all temptation]. In the factical, I slide into possible self-individuations.
Against the opening up of possibilities, against the genuine self-possession and being of vita, delectatio [life, delight]. (Chapter 32: experience as historical; tentatio belongs here, to be interpreted, contrarily, on the basis of tentatio toward the historical. Experience—opening up tentatio, but nescio [I do not know] what will be.—Existential motivation of the destruction […]* from the basic experience of being-hidden-from-oneself and concealing oneself again in life—the blocking off.)
This increases more and more so that the most uncanny power of tentatio opens [itself] precisely in the most radical, genuine self-concern, so that only here has the most radical situation of self-experience been won, in a direction of consideration in which the self knows neither in nor out—quaestio mihi factus sum [I have become a question to myself]. Cf. end of chapter 40! (In the end, “what I am,” my “facticity” is the strongest temptation and the counter-attack on my existence and existing; it is the self-projection toward oneself of the genuine possibilities—that is, more precisely, the concern for this complex of enactment; in it, I move in a somehow falling manner.)
Tentatio
[on § 13 a, b]
Concupiscentia: a direction in itself, directions of concrete, factical experience, of the full self-facticity of life.
The direction of experiencing indicates: something possible, opens up possibilities; but only if they are experienced as directions, that is, if the facticity of life itself lives in a directed enactment—as directed. The “as directed” may be illuminated in different ways; as always, in the “as directed,” that is = “directed thus” it is a to-ward and an away-from. The “away-from” is itself co-experienced, and with it so is the “away-from-what.” (The possession—one which understands radically—of the “as” in the quaestio sibi fieri [being made a question]: a sense-genetically, factically enacted connection between the “as” in a merely objective, absolute taking-cognizance-of—somehow also possessing it carelessly, but pushing it away at the same time—and the authentic approach to the “as,” that is, to one-self.)
The tempting or the being-tempted is an experiencing in which an experiential direction, as thus directed in itself—by virtue of its full sense in this full facticity—tempts this facticity and addresses while attracting it, searchingly preferring it in the self-direction, and indeed in such a way that the authentic cura [concern] is lost in this. (This curare in every concupiscentia into which the individual “lets himself enter” [“ein-läβt”]14—letting oneself go and enter—leads into the significance of the world, delightful, curious selfsignificance. In this, the “wherein,” whereinto, itself has a pull [fortziehend]. The letting-go is now itself led; it only keeps alive the direction in general—“further,” “more”—but it leads into the world, and indeed into the historical facticity; therewith, the latter undergoes a shrinking and “finally opens up” [“geht letztlich auf”].)
The authentic cura [concern] is factically somehow present in the “away-from” and the “away-from-what,” for life, which is in general so far advanced that it stands at all in temptation, that is, a life that somehow searches its facticity and that has a clarity of its own.
Two principally different interpretations of molestia [trouble]: they are connected to the possibility of seeing the occurring phenomena at all.
1. Molestia as a characteristic [Beschaffenheit] or objective equipment, as objective burden, standing there and operating as a thing. (A hardening [?] of oneself in this: making disappear through objective means—casting off and removing—one's own being itself a condition [Zustand], an objective characteristic.)
2. Molestia as “opportunity” of seriousness, an opportunity with oneself, pre-forming it as such first of all, rendering it experienceable to myself as facticity, grasping it existentially, possessing life in memory and experiencing in this way, increasing the seriousness. (Bringing oneself to encounter, and forming out, the existential possibility as the authentic one.)
It is entirely lop-sided to represent the radical self-possession as a hyper-reflected solipsism, or something like it. The self “is” the self of the full historical facticity, the self in its world, with that in which it lives; thus, the “possessing” in conformity to its relational multiplicity and its multiplicity of enactment—not only multiplicity, but historical factical connection; and the “possession” is no temporary, quietistic and leisurely one, but is enactment-historical.
Only in this “opportunity” formed in the existential enactment: “opportunity” is a character of enactment, […].* The giving of existential sense also for the “existentially full objectivity” (fate, predestination, etc.) that has been experienced for existence.
The authentic concept of “facticity” cannot be determined on the basis of an objectivity that has been posited in advance and that is grasped attitudinally, but in the existentially enacted interpretation of a How of “being” from the existentially experienced content.
The Phenomenon of tentatio
[on § 13 c]
[The tentatio] arises (The How of arising belongs to it, as an experiencing viewed phenomenologically; not objectively, [as] material, biological emergence, which has no tentative meaning.) from experiences that open up into significances whose following and enactment of appropriation belong themselves to historical factical existence; they also make up existence. Thus they are really placed in the genuine enactment of existence which stands in the possibility of falling so that of the seemingly authentic enactments of existence—deliciae, hilaritas [delights, hilarity], one's own choosing and deciding—the factical […]** molestiae [troubles] are turned, through seemingly genuine enactments of existence, into false, non-genuine significances.
The significance can be placed away in different ways, for example, being unmarried; as the opposite: not eating or drinking.
Still, it is decisive for its meaning that it can be experienced as such: being firmly attached to a certain apprehension of value.
The danger of the axiologization of the connections of phenomena is as fateful as the theoretical-regional forming-out—by the way, these two go together.
In how far the tentatio is a genuine existential.
Light
[on § 13 f]
“Multimodo allapsu blanditur mihi aliud agenti, et eam non advertenti. Insinuat autem se ita vehementur, ut si repente subtrahatur [transitus!], cum desi-derio requiratur; et si diu absit, contristat animum.” [Gliding by in many forms, enticing me while I am busy with something else, taking no notice of it. For it insinuates itself so forcibly, if it is withdrawn suddenly (transition!), it is sought with longing; and if it is absent for long, it makes the soul sad.]15 Falling, significant possession. (“Non autem sentio sine quo esse aut aequo animo, aut aegre possim, nisi cum abfuerit.” [For I cannot know whether my soul can be balanced or upset to be without something, unless it is absent.]16)
“Ipsa est lux, una est, et unum omnes qui vident et amant eam.” [This is the light, it is one, and one are all those who see it and love it.]17
“Foras sequentes [homines] quod faciunt.” [Outwardly (humans) follow what they make.]18
“Quem invenirem qui me reconciliaret tibi?” [Who could be found to reconcile me to You?]19 Depravity—far from God.
Molestia. “Hic esse valeo, nec volo; illic volo, nec valeo; miser utrobique.” [Here I am able to stay, but I do not wish it; there I wish to be, but I am not able—miserable in both places.]20 That, being by myself, I move away from You fur ther and further.
Anxiety before one's ownmost deceiver within oneself.
Weaning oneself from the calculations of significance!
In Augustine, not everything breaks through clearly! Because he attached himself too temptingly in frui [enjoyment], but within it!
“Guilt is a more concrete conception, which becomes more and more possible in the relation of possibility to freedom.”21 “But whoever becomes guilty also becomes guilty of that which occasioned the guilt. For guilt never has an external occasion, and whoever yields to temptation is himself guilty of the temptation.”22
Deus lux
[on § 13 g]
Deus lux [God the light]: highest object and highest self-brightness—”knowledge.”
Deus dilectio [God the love]: authentic existing.
Deus summum bonum [God the highest good]: the highest good; object of valuing.
Deus incommutabilis substantia [God the unchangeable substance]: cognizing search for subsistence! Subsisting in itself, derived sense of substance.
Deus summa pulchritudo [God the highest beauty]: highest beauty of joyful contemplation.
In every determination, a different point of departure, of access, of determining within the access. The “whence” of the means of determination, the How of forming-out.
Here in the old conceptual framework, there frameworks used in novel ways and re-formed, now new points of departure.
Since the basic tendency is still Greek—as is philosophy up to the present day—there is no destruction. Mere so-called critique of knowledge does not help here.
Problem: U[nity] and m[ultiplicity] of the connections of the access enactment. Origin—their facticity authentically, meaningfully enacted. Less psychologically, classification in general. Regional schemata of order, transcendental ideas are not only insufficient, but obstruct the problematic.
The tentatio in our interpretation—but an opportunity to lead toward decisive phenomena—molestia.
(Formae—concupiscentia carnis, oculorum [forms—desire of the flesh, of the eye]—not according to capacity, III especially shows.)
Tentatio: in carne—per carnem [Temptation: in the flesh—
through the flesh]
[on § 14 a]
I. The temptation of uti [use], of the dealing-with, in the cupiditas oblectandi (in carne) [lust of entertainment (in the flesh)], taking-delight-in, comfort, calculation of significance, pretending-to-oneself, more precisely: pretending one significance before the other one and, in this, wriggling oneself out of the noose. (Direction: letting the significance force itself upon oneself.) Saving oneself in the uncovering and ascertaining of one possibility of delight, even if that were one's own neediness and uncertainty.
II. The temptation of knowledge (curiosity)—per carnem: leading is a selfly intention. Ideas inventive[?].
(I) in a certain sense—mediating—cannot be gotten rid of. Palpable molestia. But easier precisely because of this, for they can be found more easily in the singular as falling.
The others conceal themselves more, to the extent that in the end, I discover in myself the most difficult tentatio.
[A Comparison of the Three Forms of tentatio]
[on § 15 a]
Explicating on the basis of the three formae [forms].
Tentatio: What for23—away from what. How is the falling conceived, and what does it mean existentially? To what extent objective, constative, normative (theoretizingly, attitudinally)? To what extent factical, selfly, existential, in the manner of enactment?
The different modes of molestia attach[?] to “necessity,” levels of sense of facticity. To what extent a connection between the “what for”? To what extent an “increase”? Whither, in what direction?
In I. and II., each time an attitude!24 In III., self-concern, but self-concern viewed from attitude and from what has been accomplished for the world in attitude!
The transference of the tentatio-like significance from the specially experienced content (I) to the relation, or in the direction of the relation (needs[?] the peculiar concealment […].*) The relation as such is the source of enjoyment, of the falling (III).
Axiologization
[on § 15 b–d]
The giving-in (sin).
The getting-lost.
Not-giving-in: Overcoming (faith). Cf. Luther, de tripl. and de dupl., 1518; iustitia [justice]: F[…]** teutonice. Factical complex of enactment: “for the sake of God,” “from” love of God, that is (phenomenologically), existence “wanting”-God, that is, wanting to gain the authentic enactment as existential. Decisive is here not a preference of values, the axiologized separation is a th[eoretical] misinterpretation of the real phenomenon, but: existential concern (enactment of existence).
Faith:(1) genuine, radical self-love (absolute egoism)
(2) genuine, absolute love of God (absolute “surrender”)
In this authentic existence, the most radical fear is constitutive of concern.
But the being-“absolute” is not to be dissolved in being-“universal,” in the law, but radical, concrete, historical being-the-individual.
The orientation toward the axiologized summum bonum [highest good], etc., turns the whole conduct into a near-aestheticism in yet another sense: not only as attitude, but as delectatio [delight].
By contrast, the historical problematic of enactment: gaining the terrible, the difficult, the questionable (quaestio), or what is to be indicated in the communication[?]. In giving in, one steals away from this, and axiologization as attitude is a concealed giving-in.
Cf. Augustine, Confessiones X c. […]* on dispersion in prayer (monstrosity—however, not the most radical execution in Augustine—consideration of misericordia [mercy].)
[Agnosce ordinem]
[on § 15 c]
“Agnosce ordinem, quaere pacem. Tu Deo, tibi caro. Quid justius? quid pulchrius? Tu majori, minor tibi: servi tu ei qui fecit te, ut tibi serviat quod factum est propter te. Non enim hunc ordinem novimus, neque hunc ordinem commendamus. Tibi caro et tu Deo; sed, Tu Deo, et tibi caro. Si autem contemnis Tu Deo, nunquam efficies ut Tibi caro. […] Primo ergo te subdas Deo; deinde illo docente te et adjuvante praeliris.” [Observe order, seek peace. You belong to God, your flesh to you. What more just, what more beautiful? You to Him that is greater, he that is less to you: serve Him who made you, so that that which was made for you may serve you. For we do not know nor commend this order. “Your flesh to you, and you to God,” but “you to God, and your flesh to you.” For if you despise “You to God,” you will never bring about “your flesh to you.” (…) First, then, submit yourself to God; then, with Him to teach you and encourage you, fight.]25
An order of value-ranks, and a correspondingly axiologized forming-out, fails here entirely in regard to the authentic interpretation.
It becomes clearer and clearer how the tentatio and the modes of enactment of coping [Fertigwerdens], on the one hand, aim at a certain direction and mode of enactment of selfly experiences, on the other, on a higher level of an interpretation given by Augustine himself, how they aim at determinately regulated modes of making decisions.
Tentatio: meaning on the basis of an order—order of value-ranks—(“modern”)—Augustine apparently the question about this, whether genuine or not. Greek. Theorization directed in a certain way (being interwoven [with the] Greek-Platonic).
Axiologization directed in a certain way (incommutabile [unchangeable] and summum bonum [highest good]; and the whole order on the basis of this), which can become even more fateful because it also pays attention to precisely those phenomena that are crucial in a certain regard.
These orders present in Augustine, explicitly—cf. De doctrina christiana.
For the interpretation of the Confessiones, however, do not move forward in this direction, but stay with the way in which they are secured there; the existential predelineation is to be grasped from there, and attempt to depart the destruction already here.
In this, however, the axiological view in Augustine is not only attached, but holds sway throughout all considerations. Cf. De doctrina christiana.
[on § 15 c]
Having validity in the communal world: being loved and feared in order to enjoy this for oneself, that is, one takes oneself to be important firstly as the one who is “superior,” and secondly, as the one who is so valuable that he is esteemed by others.
One views oneself in this entirely in the eyes and tendencies of the others. One takes oneself apart, elevates oneself.
But that is misera vita [the miserable life].—”Hinc fit vel maxime non amare te, nec caste timere te.” [Hence especially it comes that men do not love You nor fear You in purity].26 Through this, the authentic and highest love, directed at You, is impaired. Through this, the pure fear, directed at You, is endangered.
“Tu superbis resistis.” [You resist the proud.]27 You resist, because they do not really stand by You but run away from You and, in fear, prefer something else to You.
To prefer: axiologizing, transferring everything to one plane—objects of value. Precisely the decisive complexes of enactment are covered up, and especially the transitions.
Through the axiologization, the character of calculation, leveling, and ordering posits itself in the self-conception, interpretation, and conceptuality (placing in a direction: ordering), that is, the authentic concern is disfigured and viewed as concealed calculation[?]. The emphasis of meaning and the origin of explication do not lie in the authentic and historical enactment.
“Propter quaedam humanae societatis officia necessarium est amari et timeri ab hominibus.” [Because certain offices in human society make it necessary to be loved and feared by people.]28 The obligations, services, and relations in human society, however, render these communalworldly relations necessary. But: “instat adversarius verae beatitudinis nostrae” [the adversary of our true happiness threatens us].29 Possibility of a falsa beatitudo [false happiness]! “Libeatque nos amari et timeri, non propter se, sed pro te” [It becomes our pleasure to be loved and feared not for Your sake, but instead of You].30 (Facticity of having an attitude that is significant in the communal world. “Not for oneself alone” in a different sense.)
“Quotidiana fornax nostra est humana lingua.” [Our daily furnace is the human language.]31 Language as the manner of enactment of communal-worldly (concrete factical) experiencing. “Et multum timeo occulta mea (Ps. XVIII, 13), quae norunt oculi tui, mei autem non. Est enim qualiscumque in aliis generibus tentationum mihi facultas explorandi me; in hoc pene nulla est.” [And I much fear my secrets (Ps. 18:13), which your eyes know, but mine do not. For in other kinds of temptations, I have the capacity for self-examination, but in this matter almost none.]32
Every kind of temptation has a certain, corresponding How of explorare [examining]. According to each “level” and significance in which the tentatio is possessed in its full sense, the grasping and interpretation is easier or more difficult: easier, if it is even more objectifiable; more difficult, if we are dealing with the self-interpretation, and the self-possession can cover itself up more and more temptingly, and can move in surrogates. (Through this, the tentatio even more dangerous.)
[Four Groups of Problems]
1. Tentatio:33 problematic of enactment with regard to the self. Basic sense of the self as historical.
2. Defluere:34 multum—unum [Flowing down, scattering: many—one]. Molestia—facticity.
3. Quaestio mihi factus sum [I have become a question to myself]: insecurity, conflict, becoming questionable, authentic manner of becoming a question to oneself. What this expresses? “Possibility.” (Decisive is the How: The phenomena push themselves increasingly into the complexes of the enactment of sense. All the content receives its sense from there.—Problem: how I experience myself insofar as I experience tentatio. What kind of concern for facticity! Can be […],* accidental, objective, objective measure of value—axiologization, cf. Augustine himself!)
4. Tentatio—basic orientation in a certain, axiological forming-out.
Moving away from God, increasing the distance. In the question of possessing God: The more he advances toward the authentic conditions of enactment, the more dangerous these conditions turn out to be, in hostility to themselves.
Discussion of Rom. 1:20: basic structure delineated, that is, this passage in particular for the vestibule [Vorbau] of Greek philosophy (theoretical and practical). Yet it did not remain there, but precisely in Augustine the following is decided: (1) total ignorance of Augustine himself (casting off of the Plotinian, of the historical era), (2) misunderstanding of the Christian—reaching back to Augustine.
There where every serious attempt at a radical appropriation of the soil—cultural history—is lacking, there is not the slightest right to even start uncovering the essential views.
Today's unhealthy, non-genuine religious fraud (here metaphysical curiosity—with the gesture of inwardness): it is revealing that it falls into the trap of surrogate appearances.
Only indicate scientifically the cultural-historical connections, no apologies for Christianity.
Sin
What is base has its power in pulling toward itself, in blocking authentic understanding and in obscuring it.
Understanding passes on to the side of the will, follows the falling inclination and even confirms that this is what is authentic.
Christian complex of motivation:
1. Not understanding what is right,
2. Not wanting to understand,
3. Not wanting.
The human being[?] […]* what is not genuine, although he understood what is right, has the authentic defiance.
“Therefore, interpreted Christianly, sin has its roots in willing, not in knowing, and this corruption of willing embraces the individual's consciousness.”35
That the sin is before God is precisely what is positive about it.
The category of sin is the category of individuality.
Axiologization
[on § 17]
In understanding facticity, its questionability and the enactment of question-ability, what surfaces is the fatefulness, and inappropriateness for existence, of the axiologization. (And very strongly present in Augustine in particular. Precisely that which Scheler retains must be eliminated, that is, he does not understand the problem radically enough.)
Preferring—spurning—being indifferent.
This is basically bustling activity with God, which takes the easy path; and one only has to follow essential insights.
But here there is no trace at all of the authentic sense of the enactment of love.
What is precisely crucial is to constantly have a radical confrontation with the factical, and not to flee. In order to attain existence, I precisely must have it.
This having precisely means living in it, but not giving in, not even overcoming it comfortably and axiologically.
The sense of existential overcoming. The sense of facticity.
Holding on to, appropriating, in a genuinely factical manner, the worldly or the experiential relation and enactment. This means neither “valuing positively,” since this is not at issue and is a misinterpretation (“Luther” and misunderstanding), nor “making compromises,” which likewise is now merely an inferior bustling activity (Catholicism!).
Trying to gain that facticity that “forms” existence.
Correspondingly, “molestia” is to be determined existentially: not “burden”—ascetically-Greek, but opportunity of seriousness. I precisely must only preform the molestia itself in the first place, not falsely overcome it.
[Molestia]
[on § 17]
Being the singular one—being under the ownmost, strictest “observation.”
The molestia—”radically forming” mine as molestia—determinate complex of enactment.
To appropriate, in the manner of enactment, the moles [burden] as what is pulling down [Abziehendes], not letting it stand as a thing and as “nature,” but grasping the sense of facticity and enacting it existentially and understanding it thus historically in memory and expectation. Giving life this existential facticity and brightness, that is, increasing the seriousness!
[Exploratio]
The How and the possibilities of the enactment of the exploratio are different also in the How in which the tentationes are encountered. They can be massively emphasized and become clear. They can be entirely hidden and protect themselves by means of the enactment of experience itself in which they lie.
Explorare: simultaneously concerns and comprises within itself the “seeing” of:36 “quantum assecutus sim posse refrenare animum meum” [how much I have succeeded in being able to refrain my soul].37 That I see, that is, the exploratio is easier if and insofar as this tentatio:38 “cum eis rebus careo, vel voluntate, vel cum absunt” [when I do without those things, either willingly of when they are absent].39 Res [things]: the contents of the tentatio.40 In being free of that: “Tunc enim me interrogo, quam magis minusve mihi molestum sit non habere” [Then I ask myself how troublesome it is to me not to have them].41
“Divitiae vero quae ob hoc expetuntur, ut [serviant] alicui trium istarum cupiditatum […], si persentiscere non potest animus utrum eas habens contemnat, possunt et dimitti, ut se probet” [As for riches which are sought for this, that they may (serve) one in one of those three lusts (…), if the soul cannot discern whether it condemns having them, that can be tested by giving them away].42
Possibility of seeing the being free, the overcoming and the having overcome, the understanding of who I “am” and what I “can.”
But when it comes to “praise,” how may the possibility of doing without it be tested? Quid in carendo laudis possum explorandum male vivendum est. “At si bonae vitae bonorumque operum comes et solet et debet esse laudatio, tam comitatum ejus, quam ipsam bonam vitam deseri non oportet.” [What is explored in being able to do without praise is an ill life. “If praise is the usual and proper companion of a good life and of good works, we ought to renounce it as little as we ought to renounce the good life itself.”]43
The danger of tentatio and the prevention of the (genuine) exploration must precisely be enacted.—The laus [praise] as comes [companion]—libido carnis, voluptas [lust of the flesh, pleasure] […]*—also comes?—but how?
The abesse [being absent] of laus can only be accomplished by living without disgrace, opening ourselves to disgrace and scorn. For we are supposed to strive for bonam vitam [the good life], in bonum […].** Non autem sentio [But I do not know]—the possibility of doing without—, nisi cum (somehow) abfuerit [unless it will (somehow) have been absent.]
[Anxiety]
Letting the corresponding possibilities encounter! Corresponding to that which I experience in a worldly manner!
(Delectatio—gaudere velle. [Delight—wanting to enjoy.] What is other. Something is missing. With this, already placed in possibility, even if entirely in worldly falling. But even here, there is still something of the genuine existential movement—in the twitching, as it were.)
“Attacks of anxiety”
“historically”—enacted—preserving the earlier ones
to open—possibilities—itself historically. “Anxiety discovers fate.”44
The experience of directionless anxiety: No direction from the authentic self. Anxiety itself directs.
The selfly directed anxiety: direction. Free of the preference for worldly significances. In anxiety, “fearing them” is driven out.
T[erm]: “anxiety” not better the directionless fear of significance! “Fear” [Furcht] the real anxiety: reverence [Ehrfurcht].
[The Counter-Expected? (Wider-wärtige), the Temptation, the Appeal (Anfechtung)]
The counter-expected, “counter to the expectation”: the relation posited from significance to significance within the falling direction of experience.
The temptation (ethical): The “lowly” one lures, and seeks to pull down what is “higher.” (Being pulled away in the factical direction of significance.)
The Appeal (religious): What is higher (jealously, as it were) limits the individual away from itself, increases with religiosity. The absolute's own resistance. (Being pushed back in concern already requires existing! How?—How does concern encounter us, and how is it characterized? What does being-pushed-back mean in enactment?)
On the Destruction of Plotinus
Since, in the end, factical existence is crucial, and in it, destruction is lived and has meaning, everything to be destructed is, in the end, to be explicated as to its How. That is, the task is: precisely to see the unspoken lead [Duktus] that one does not gain as long as one lives only in the “matter” itself, for example by discussing it (improving, re-forming, and the like).
One can only “see” the unspoken lead in an authentic (existential) foreconception itself. And what is crucial is precisely to observe the steps sharply and not let oneself be seduced by any convention in this.
1. S. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, p. 79.
2. Ibid., p. 80.
3. Confessiones X 28, 39; PL 32, p. 795.
4. Ibid.
5. Burden: the falling apart, splintering. No continuity, existence.
6. and this concerns: gaudium/maeror (vita) [joy/sorrow (life)]
7. Confessiones X 28, 39; PL 32, p. 795.
8. Ibid.
9. and these are not superficial moods.
10. Editor's note: The original has “misericordia” instead of “continentia.”
11. Confessiones X 28, 39; PL 32, p. 796.
12. No medius locus between opposites.
* [Two words illegible.]
** [One word illegible.]
13. “Genuine” positing of value! Decus iustum [just virtue]. “Nam qui non [intus] agitis [aliquid bona], non vos haec movent” [As for you who are not driven by (something good within yourselves), you are not moved by this] (Confessiones X, chapter 33, 50). Condition of understanding!
* [One word illegible.]
14. T[erm]
* [One word illegible.]
** [One word illegible.]
15. Confessiones X 34, 51; PL 32, p. 800 f.
16. Confessiones X 37, 60; PL 32, p. 805.
17. Confessiones X 34, 52; PL 32, p. 801.
18. Confessiones X 34, 53; PL 32, p. 801.
19. Confessiones X 42, 67; PL 32, p. 807.
20. Confessiones X 40, 65; PL 32, p. 807.
21. S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 109.
22. Ibid.
23. Whither: to amor sui, superbia [love of oneself, pride], loss of existence (objective). Because existence is what?—The Augustinian and a basic sense.
24. Securitas [security]—no timor [fear]!
*[Two words illegible.]
** [One word illegible.]
*[Reference missing.]
25. Enarrationes in Psalmos CLXIII 6; PL 37, p. 1860.
26. Confessiones X 36, 59; PL 32, p. 804.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Confessiones X 37, 60; PL 32, p. 804.
32. Ibid.
33. The How is decisive, but in the concretion.
34. Concrete facticity.
* [One word illegible.]
* [One word illegible.]
35. S. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, p. 95.
36. Dealing with, but not falling into! Without compromises!—No remaining habit, objectively acquired property, but only in anxiety—carrying possibility before oneself.—Possibility of doing without.
37. Confessiones X 37, 60; PL 32, p. 804.
38. According to what moments of sense including within themselves the possibility of Non-[…]* sense. *[One syllable illegible.]
39. Confessiones X 37, 60; PL 32, p. 804 f.
40. But what does this mean here: experiencing the factical? Situational character—I am not always attached to them in the same sense. Whence the change in the “always”?
41. Confessiones X 37, 60; PL 32, p. 805.
“Attacks of anxiety”
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
* [One word illegible.]
** [Two words illegible.]
44. S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, p. 159.