Who are you? Tu quis es? This is an unfathomable question. I plunged deeply into it at the end of June 1945 as Eduard Spranger, the famous philosopher and teacher, awaited my response to a questionnaire. On this occasion he told me that my lectures were extremely spirited but that I myself—my personality and my essence—remained opaque. That was a serious accusation, which meant: what you think and say may be interesting and clear; but what you are, your self, your essence, is murky and unclear.
I was shocked by this. What use are the most beautiful lectures, what help the clearest concepts, what use is the mind? It is a matter of essence. Or of being and existence. In short, a difficult problem, not yet solved by philosophy, descended upon my soul. Is transparency of thinking even compatible with opacity of essence? And how are such contradictions possible? Age-old and highly modern contradictions stung me and sank in: thought and being, knowledge and life, intellect against instinct, mind against soul, whole sequences of such antitheses ran wildly through my mind.
What should I now do? Should I strive to become transparent? Or should I try to deliver the proof that I am in reality not so opaque but rather—at least for benevolent radiographers [Durchleuchter]—fully transparent?
I looked at my interrogator and thought: Who are you, in fact, to question me? Whence your superiority? What is the essence of power that empowers and emboldens you to pose such questions to me—questions that are intended to challenge me and thus are, in their final effect, only snares and traps?
Such counterquestions were obvious. But it does not suit me to pose counterquestions. My essence may by opaque, but in any case it is defensive. I am a contemplative person and may tend to sharp formulations, but not in order to take the offensive or the counteroffensive. My essence is slow, soundless, and pliable, like that of a calm river—like the Mosel: tacito rumore Mosellae [“under Mosella’s quiet rustle”].
But I am weak on the defensive as well. I have too little practical interest in myself and too much theoretical interest in the ideas of my opponent, even when they appear as prosecutors. I am too curious about the intellectual presuppositions of each accusation, each charge, and each accuser. For this reason I am neither a good defendant nor a good prosecutor. Nevertheless, I still prefer to be a defendant rather than a prosecutor. The j’accuse types may play their role on the world stage. To me, the prosecutorial is even more sinister than the inquisitorial. Perhaps in my case this can be traced back to theological roots. For Diabolus means “the prosecutor.”1
I am lost if my opponent is very vicious and I am not very good. But this was not the case here. My questioner meant to be strict but not vicious. I, on the other hand, did not mean anything. I wanted and expected nothing from him. I was happy to see him again, for my old love for him had not yet been extinguished. For this reason I could see him, while he did not see me. He was completely imbued with the sense of being right and of having been proven right. He was therefore filled with the sense of being right in every regard: ethically, philosophically, pedagogically, historically, and politically. All that was right, all that rightness could provide, iusta causa and res iudicata, was on his side.
I know as a jurist what that means. I know the small tragedy of human righteousness [Rechthabens]. I also know European international law and its history. I am today—Quincy Wright notwithstanding—the only teacher of law on this earth who has recorded and experienced the problem of just war, including unfortunately civil war, in all of its depth and causes. Thus I also know the great tragedy of human dogmatism.
Therefore I am defenseless. Defenseless but in no sense destroyed. Many years ago I had shown this man—this philosopher and teacher across from whom I now sat as a person he had called into question—all the honor and devotion of my soul. In memory of this time and in the knowledge that I have never done or wished anything evil upon him, I answered him as you answer a philosopher, not a questionnaire. I said to him: my essence may well not be fully transparent, but my case can be named with the help of a name discovered by a great poet. It is the poor, unworthy, and yet nevertheless authentic case of a Christian Epimetheus.
From this answer, however, no further conversation ensued.
Summer 1945