1. See, for example, G.W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, para. 104, 139, 142–57, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, I–XVIII, ed. Philipp Marheineke et al. (Berlin: 1832–41), VIII, pp. 210–21; Jubiläumsausgabe [J.A.], I–XXVI, ed. Hermann Glockner (Stuttgart: 1927–40), VII, pp. 226–37; Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (tr. of Philosophie des Rechts, 1 ed., 1821; Kierkegaard had 2 ed., 1833), tr. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 108–10.

2. On the important categories “individual” and “the single individual,” see Journals and Papers, tr. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978–2000), II, 1964–2086 and pp. 597–99; JP VII, pp. 49–50. See also, for example, Eigh-Excerpted from Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, translated by Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Copyright © 1983 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. teen Upbuilding Discourses, Kierkegaard’s Writings, I–XVI, tr. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967–78), V; Fragments, KW VII; Anxiety, pp. 111–13, KW VIII; Postscript, KW XII; Two Ages, pp. 84–96, KW XIV; Discourses in Various Spirits, KW XV; Sickness unto Death, pp. 119–24, KW XIX; Practice, KW XX; Armed Neutrality, KW XXII; On My Work as an Author, KW XXII; The Point of View for My Work as an Author, KW XXII.

3. Hegel, Werke, VIII, pp. 171–209; J.A., VII, pp. 187–225; Philosophy of Right, pp. 86–103 (aufgehoben is translated as “annulled,” para. 139, 141).

4. Hegel, Werke, VIII, p. xix; J.A., VII, p. 16 (ed. tr.). “Moral Forms of Evil. Hypocrisy, Probabilism, Good Intentions, Conviction, Irony, Note to para. 140.” The rubrics are omitted in the table of contents of Philosophy of Right; see note 1 above.

5. See, for example, Hegel, Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Erster Theil, Die Logik, para. 63, Werke, VI, p. 128; J.A., VIII, p. 166; Hegel’s Logic (tr. of Encyclopädie, 3 ed., 1830; the text of the edition Kierkegaard had was of the 3 ed.), tr. William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 97: “But, seeing that derivative knowledge is restricted to the compass of facts, Reason is knowledge underivative, or Faith.” See p. 69 and note 6.

6. Danish det sædelige or Sædelighed, corresponding to the German Sittlichkeit, is here translated as “social morality,” whereas the translation of Sittlichkeit in Hegel is usually “ethical life.” See, for example, Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, para. 141, Werke, VIII, p. 207; J.A., VII, p. 223; Philosophy of Right, p. 103:

Transition from Morality to Ethical Life

141. For the good as the substantial universal of freedom, but as something still abstract, there are therefore required determinate characteristics of some sort and the principle for determining them, though a principle identical with the good itself. For conscience similarly, as the purely abstract principle of determination, it is required that its decisions shall be universal and objective. If good and conscience are each kept abstract and thereby elevated to independent totalities, then both become the indeterminate which ought to be determined.—But the integration of these two relative totalities into an absolute identity has already been implicitly achieved in that this very subjectivity of pure self-certainty, aware in its vacuity of its gradual evaporation, is identical with the abstract universality of the good. The identity of the good with the subjective will, an identity which therefore is concrete and the truth of them both, is Ethical Life.

On morality and the ethical in Kierkegaard’s thought, see JP I, pp. 530–32.

7. Boileau, L’Art poétique, I, 232, Œuvres de Boileau, I–IV (Paris: 1830), II, p. 190; The Art of Poetry, tr. Albert S. Cook (Boston: Ginn, 1892), p. 172: “And in all times a forward scribbling fop / Has found some greater fool to cry him up.”

8. The Trojan War.

9. Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, ll. 446–48; Euripides, tr. Christian Wilster (Copenhagen: 1840), p. 116; The Complete Greek Tragedies, I–IV, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958–60), IV, p. 316 (tr. Charles R. Walker):

[Agamemnon speaking]
O fortunate men of mean,
Ignoble birth, freely you may weep and
Empty out your hearts, but the highborn—
Decorum rules our lives. . . .

10. Menelaus, Calchas, and Ulysses, ibid., l. 107; Euripides, tr. Wilster, p. 104; Greek Tragedies, IV, p. 301.

11. Line reference to Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides, tr. Wilster, p. 125.

12. Jephthah. See Judges 11:30–40.

13. Brutus (Junius) had led the Romans in expelling the Tarquins after the rape of Lucrece. He then executed his sons for plotting a Tarquinian restoration. See Livy, From the Founding of a City (History of Rome), II, 3–5; T. Livii Patavini, Historiarum libri, quæ supersunt omnia, I–V, ed. Augusto Guil. Ernesti (Leipzig: n.d.), I, pp. 75–77; Livy, I–XIV, tr. B. O. Foster (Loeb Classics, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939–59), I, pp. 227–35.

14. See Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, para. 150, Werke, VIII, pp. 214–16; J.A., VII, pp. 230–32; Philosophy of Right, pp. 107–08.

15. See Exodus 19:12.

16. See Mark 3:15–22.

17. See W. G. Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, I–XI (Leipzig: 1798–1819), I, p. 106. The Pythagoreans gave a number of reasons, not wholly satisfying, for this distinction. Odd numbers added successively to the number one give square numbers; even numbers added to the number two give “oblong” numbers. The whole universe is identified with the number one. Even numbers are “unlimited” and therefore are endless (no τλος) and incomplete. See JP V 5616.

18. Docenter (pl.) literally means tutors in the university setting of the time, university teachers who assisted the professors in the teaching of the discipline. The root docere (Latin and Danish) emphasizes the didactic. Here Johannes de Silentio uses the term broadly to include specifically the professors with their detached objectivity, their pontifical evaluations of the past, and their lifetime appointments. See The Point of View, KW XXII.

19. The Virgin Mary is celebrated also in other writings. See, for example, Irony, KW II; Either/Or, I, KW III; Eighteen Discourses, KWV; Fragments, KW VII; Postscript, KW XII; Discourses in Various Spirits, KW XV; Christian Discourses, KW XVII; Practice, KW XX; An Upbuilding Discourse, in Without Authority, KW XVIII; Judge for Yourselves!, KW XXI; The Moment and Late Writings, KW XXIII. See also JP III 2669–74 and p. 814; VII, p. 60.

20. See Genesis 18:11.

21. See Luke 1:38.

22. See Luke 23:28.

23. On the theme of contemporaneity, see especially Fragments, KW VII.

24 Lessing has somewhere said something similar from a purely esthetic point of view. He actually wants to show in this passage that grief, too, can yield a witty remark. With that in mind, he quotes the words spoken on a particular occasion by the unhappy king of England, Edward II. In contrast he quotes from Diderot a story about a peasant woman and a remark she made. He goes on to say: Auch das war Witz, und noch dazu Witz einer Bäuerin; aber die Umstände machten ihn unvermeidlich. Und folglich auch muss man die Entschuldigung der witzigen Ausdrücke des Schmerzes und der Betrübniss nicht darin suchen, dass die Person, welche sie sagt, eine vornehme, wohlerzogene, verständige, und auch sonst witzige Person sey; denn die Leidenschaften machen alle Menschen wieder gleich: sondern darin, dass wahrscheinlicher Weise ein jeder Mensch ohne Unterschied in den nämlichen Umständen das nämliche sagen würde. Den Gedanken der Bäuerin hätte eine Königin haben können und haben müssen: so wie das, was dort der König sagt, auch ein Bauer hätte sagen können und ohne Zweifel würde gesagt haben [That also was wit, and the wit of a peasant woman, besides; but the situation made it inevitable. And consequently one must not seek the excuse for the witty expressions of pain and sorrow in the fact that the person who said them was a distinguished, well-educated, intelligent, and also witty person; for the passions make all men equal again: but in this, that in the same situation probably every person, without exception, would have said the same thing. A queen could have had and must have had the thought of a peasant woman, just as a peasant could have said and no doubt would have said what the king said there]. See Sämmtliche Werke, XXX, p. 223.

25 . Auszüge aus Lessing’s Antheil an den Litteratur-briefen, Letter 81, Schriften, XXX, pp. 221–23 (ed. tr.).

26. See Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (2 ed., Riga: 1786), for example, pp. 29, 73–74, 85–86; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, I–XXIII (Berlin: 1902–55), IV, pp. 409–10, 433–34, 439; Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 25, 51, 58:

Even the Holy One of the Gospel must be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before He is recognized as such; even He says of Himself, “Why call ye Me (whom you see) good? None is good (the archetype of the good) except God only (whom you do not see).” But whence do we have the concept of God as the highest Good? Solely from the idea of moral perfection which reason formulates a priori and which it inseparably connects with the concept of a free will.

If we now look back upon all previous attempts which have ever been undertaken to discover the principle of morality, it is not to be wondered at that they all had to fail. Man was seen to be bound to laws by his duty, but it was not seen that he is subject only to his own, yet universal, legislation, and that he is only bound to act in accordance with his own will, which is, however, designed by nature to be a will giving universal laws. For if one thought of him as subject only to a law (whatever it may be), this necessarily implied some interest as a stimulus or compulsion to obedience because the law did not arise from his will. Rather, his will was constrained by something else according to a law to act in a certain way. By this strictly necessary consequence, however, all the labor of finding a supreme ground for duty was irrevocably lost, and one never arrived at duty but only at the necessity of action from a certain interest. This might be his own interest or that of another, but in either case the imperative always had to be conditional and could not at all serve as a moral command. This principle I will call the principle of autonomy of the will in contrast to all other principles which I accordingly count under heteronomy. The essence of things is not changed by their external relations, and without reference to these relations a man must be judged only by what constitutes his absolute worth; and this is true whoever his judge is, even if it be the Supreme Being. Morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, i.e., to possible universal lawgiving by maxims of the will. The action which can be compatible with the autonomy of the will is permitted; that which does not agree with it is prohibited. The will whose maxims necessarily are in harmony with the laws of autonomy is a holy will or an absolutely good will.

Kant’s denial of an absolute duty to God transcending rational morality (or a conflation of divine will and the autonomy of man’s rational will) is shared with variations by Fichte, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. In raising the question, Johannes de Silentio runs counter to the dominant ethical thought of the time.

27. The source has not been located.

28. See Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Erster Theil, Die objective Logik, Zweites Buch, II, 3, C, Werke, IV, pp. 177–83; J.A., IV, pp. 655–61; Hegel’s Science of Logic (tr. of W.L., Lasson ed., 1923), tr. A. V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), pp. 523–28; Hegel, Encyclopädie, Logik, para. 140, Werke, VI, pp. 275–81; J.A., VIII, pp. 313–19; Hegel’s Logic, pp. 197–200. See Either/Or, I, KW III.

29. See faith as second immediacy (spontaneity), immediacy after reflection, in Stages, KW XI; Postscript, KW XII; Works of Love, KW XVI; JP II 1123 and pp. 594–95; VII, pp. 48–49, 90.

30. See Hegel, Encyclopädie, Logik, para. 63, Werke, VI, pp. 128–31; J.A., VIII, pp. 166–69; Hegel’s Logic, pp. 97–99, especially, p. 99: “With what is here called faith or immediate knowledge must also be identified inspiration, the heart’s revelations, the truths implanted in man by nature, and also in particular, healthy reason or Common Sense, as it is called. All these forms agree in adopting as their leading principle the immediacy, or self-evident way in which a fact or body of truths is presented in consciousness.” See also Hegel, Philosophische Propädeutik, para. 72, Werke, XVIII, p. 75; J.A., III, p. 97. See JP I 49; II 1096; the latter includes a reference to Hegel.

31. See John 6:60.

32. See C. G. Bretschneider, Lexicon Manuale Graeco-Latinum in Libros Novi Testamenti, I–II (Leipzig: 1829), II, p. 87.

33. The reference is to the practice of standing for the reading of the Gospel text for the day.

34. See Genesis 4:2–16.

35. Johannes de Silentio reckons that Abraham was married at the age of thirty and that Isaac was born when Abraham was one hundred.

36. The allusion is to certain Hebrew consonants that can serve also to indicate certain vowel sounds. Kierkegaard, following Jacob Christian Lindberg, Hovedreglerne af den hebraiske Grammatik (2 ed., Copenhagen: 1835), pp. 8, 17–18, and the interpretation given in Ludvig Beatus Meyer, Fremmed Ordbog (Copenhagen: 1837), uses metaphorically the Danish version of matres lectionis or literae quiescibiles: Hvile-Bogstaver. According to Lindberg and Meyer, such a consonant may be sounded as a consonant, or, quiescent, it may “rest” [hvile] in the vowel indicated while it remains unsounded as a consonant. Here Johannes de Silentio seems to have inverted the relationship. See Either/Or, I, KW III; JP II 2263; V 5378.

37. Fabius Maximus (d. 203 B.C.), who in 217 B.C. fought against Hannibal and was named Cunctator (Latin: delayer) because of his deliberate tactic of harassing Hannibal’s troops but never joining battle.

38. Danish Du, the familiar second-person singular pronoun, used (as in German) in addressing family members and close friends. In English, “thou” is a relic of the same form, but current ecclesiastical usage endows it with the distance and solemnity of the old formal second-person plural form.

39 May I once again throw some light on the distinction between the collisions of the tragic hero and of the knight of faith. The tragic hero assures himself that the ethical obligation is totally present in him by transforming it into a wish. Agamemnon, for example, can say: To me the proof that I am not violating my fatherly duty is that my duty is my one and only wish. Consequently we have wish and duty face to face with each other. Happy is the life in which they coincide, in which my wish is my duty and the reverse, and for most men the task in life is simply to adhere to their duty and to transform it by their enthusiasm into their wish. The tragic hero gives up his wish in order to fulfill this duty. For the knight of faith, wish and duty are also identical, but he is required to give up both. If he wants to relinquish by giving up his wish, he finds no rest, for it is indeed his duty. If he wants to adhere to the duty and to his wish, he does not become the knight of faith, for the absolute duty specifically demanded that he should give it up. The tragic hero found a higher expression of duty but not an absolute duty.

40. See Matthew 6:34.

41. Christian Olufsen, Gulddaasen, II, 10 (Copenhagen: 1793), p. 64.

42. Deuteronomy 13:6–7, 33:9; Matthew 10:37, 19:29. The final copy has 1 Corinthians 7:11 in parentheses.

43. On the conception of man as a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal, see, for example, The Concept of Irony, KW II; Either/Or, II, KW IV; The Concept of Anxiety, KW VIII; Stages, KW XI; Postscript, KW XII; The Point of View, KW XXII; JP I 55; VI 5792.

Excerpted from Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, translated by Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Copyright © 1980 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

44. See “the first self,” Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, KWV.

45. See “the deeper self,” ibid.

46. See The Concept of Anxiety, KW VIII; Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, KW XVIII. See Historical Introduction, p. xii.

47. An individual as a psycho-somatic duality is “in himself ”; in relating itself to itself, the duality is “for itself.” See pp. 13–14. Cf. Sartre’s en soi and pour soi. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), pp. 73–220, 617–28.

48. See JP IV 4030.

49. See Fragments, KW VII.

50. See Mark 9:48.

51. Aut Caesar aut nihil, the motto of Caesar Borgia. See Stages, KW XI.

52. Plato, Republic, X, 608 c–610; Platonis quae extant opera, I–IX, ed. F. Astius (Leipzig: 1819–32), V, pp. 79–85.

53. JP III 3567.

54. On derivation and freedom, see JP II 1251.

55. On the significance of speaking, see, for example, Fear and Trembling, KW VI.

56. J. G. Fichte, Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre, Sämmtliche Werke, I–XI (Berlin, Bonn: 1834–46), I, 1, pp. 386–87. Fichte regarded the “productive power of the imagination” as the source of the concept of the external world (the Not-I) and of the basic categories of thought.

See Anti-Climacus, Practice in Christianity, KW XX, where Indbildingskraft (also “imagination” in English) is used to stress the relation of the ethical and imagination, “the capacity for perfecting (idealizing)” (p. 178).

57. Each of the sixty members had a horn fashioned for a particular note, which was played only at appropriate times.

58. See Luke 10:42.

59. See Matthew 16:26.

60. See, for example, Plato, Philebus, 30 a; Platonis opera, III, p. 316.

61. “Necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the union of possibility and actuality” (Hegel, Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Erster Theil, Die Logik, Werke, VI, para. 147, p. 292; J.A., VIII, p. 330; Hegel’s Logic, tr. William Wallace [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], p. 208).

62. See Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27, 14:36; Luke 1:37.

63. King Midas. Ovid, Metamorphoses, XI, 85–145; Opera quœ extant (Leipzig: 1828).

64. Freely quoted from Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, II, Scholium to Propositio 43; Opera philosophica omnia, ed. A. Gfroerer (Stuttgart: 1830). See Fragments, KW VII; Prefaces, KW IX.

65. See Diogenes Laertius, II, 5, 31; Diogen Laërtses vitis philosophorum (Leipzig: 1833; ASKB 1109), p. 75; Diogen Laërtses filosofiske Historie, I–II, tr. Børge Riisbrigh (Copenhagen: 1812; ASKB 1110–11), I, p. 70; Stages, KW XI; Postcript, KW XII; Two Ages, p. 10, KW XIV; JP IV 4267.

66. The paragraph is a token of Kierkegaard’s polemic against Hegelianism and other system building that dissolves the individual into the whole and is thereby indifferent to individual existence, that of the thinker himself and of others. See, for example, Fragments, KW VII; Postscript, KW XII; on Socrates, JP IV 4267.

67. See “The Anxiety of Spiritlessness,” The Concept of Anxiety, KW VIII (SV IV 363–66).

68. See Irische Elfenmärchen (T. C. Croker, Fairy Tales and Traditions of the South of Ireland, I–III [London: 1825–28]), tr. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (Leipzig: 1826), p. lxxxiii.

69. See Augustine, The City of God, XIX, 25; Sancti Aurelii Augustini . . . opera, I–XVII (Bassani: 1797–1804); Fragments, KW VII.

70. This view of suicide holds for the Stoics but not, for example, for Socrates and Plato. See Phaedo, 61-62.

71. Anachronism.

72. See The Concept of Anxiety, KW VIII.

73 An occasional psychological observation of actual life will confirm that this idea, which is sound in thought and consequently shall and must prove to be correct, does in fact prove to be correct, and it will confirm that this classification embraces the entire actuality of despair; for only bad temper, not despair, is associated with children, because we are entitled only to assume that the eternal is present in the child ατα δύναμιν [potentially], not to demand it of him as of the adult, for whom it holds that he is meant to have it. I am far from denying that women may have forms of masculine despair and, conversely, that men may have forms of feminine despair, but these are exceptions. And of course the ideal is also a rarity, and only ideally is this distinction between masculine and feminine despair altogether true. However much more tender and sensitive woman may be than man, she has neither the egotistical concept of the self nor, in a decisive sense, intellectuality. But the feminine nature is devotedness, givingness, and it is unfeminine if it is not that. Strange to say, no one can be as coy (and this word was coined especially for women), so almost cruelly hard to please as a woman—and yet by nature she is devotedness, and (this is precisely the wonder of it) all this actually expresses that her nature is devotedness. For precisely because she carries in her being this total feminine devotedness, nature has affectionately equipped her with an instinct so sensitive that by comparison the most superior masculine reflection is as nothing. This devotedness on the part of woman, this, to speak as a Greek, divine gift and treasure, is too great a good to be tossed away blindly, and yet no clear-sighted human reflection is capable of seeing sharply enough to use it properly. That is why nature has looked after her: blindfolded, she instinctively sees more clearly than the most clear-sighted reflection; instinctively she sees what she should admire, that to which she should give herself. Devotedness is the one unique quality that woman has, and that is also why nature took it upon itself to be her guardian. That is the reason, too, why womanliness comes into existence only through a metamorphosis; it comes into existence when woman’s illimitable coyness expresses itself as feminine devotedness. By nature, however, woman’s devotedness also enters into despair, is again a mode of despair. In devotion she loses herself, and only then is she happy, only then is she herself; a woman who is happy without devotion, that is, without giving her self, no matter to what she gives it, is altogether unfeminine. A man also gives himself—and he is a poor kind of man who does not do so—but his self is not devotion (this is the expression for feminine substantive devotion), nor does he gain his self by devotion, as woman in another sense does; he has himself. He gives himself, but his self remains behind as a sober awareness of devotion, whereas woman, with genuine femininity, abandons herself, throws her self into that to which she devotes herself. Take this devotion away, then her self is also gone, and her despair is: not to will to be oneself. The man does not give himself in this way, but the second form of despair also expresses the masculine form: in despair to will to be oneself.

The above pertains to the relation between masculine and feminine despair. But it is to be borne in mind that this does not refer to devotion to God or to the God-relationship, which will be considered in Part Two. In the relationship to God, where the distinction of man-woman vanishes, it holds for men as well as for women that devotion is the self and that in the giving of oneself the self is gained. This holds equally for man and woman, although it is probably true that in most cases the woman actually relates to God only through the man.

74. See, for example, Postscript, KW XII; JP I 372, 407.

75. Goethe, Faust, Part I, Sc. IV (Mephistopheles); Goethe’s Werke, I-LV (Stuttgart, Tübingen: 1828–33), XII, p. 91.

76. “We Trojans, with Ilium and all its Teucrian glory, / Are things of the past” (Virgil, Aeneid, II, 325; The Aeneid of Virgil, I–II, tr. C. Day Lewis [London: Hogarth Press, 1954], I, p. 40).

77. In the Danish there is a play on the two expressions: at hele (to heal) and Hæler.

78 And therefore it is linguistically correct to say: to despair over the earthly (the occasion), of the eternal, but over oneself. For this again is another expression for the occasion of despair, which, according to the concept, is always of the eternal, whereas that which is despaired over can be very diverse. We despair over that which binds us in despair—over a misfortune, over the earthly, over a capital loss, etc.—but we despair of that which, rightly understood, releases us from despair: of the eternal, of salvation, of our own strength, etc. With respect to the self, we say both: to despair over and of oneself, because the self is doubly dialectical. And the haziness, particularly in all the lower forms of despair and in almost every person in despair, is that he so passionately and clearly sees and knows over what he despairs, but of what he despairs evades him. The condition for healing is always this repenting of, and, purely philosophically, it could be a subtle question whether it is possible for one to be in despair and be fully aware of that of which one despairs.

79. See The Point of View, KW XXII.

80. Richard the Third, IV, 4; Shakespeare’s Werke, tr. Schlegel and Tieck, III, p. 339.

81. Genesis 1:1.

82. See Matthew 16:19.

83. See Either/Or, II, KW IV.

84. See The Point of View, KW XXII.

85 Moreover, lest it be overlooked, from this point of view one will see that much of what in the world is dressed up under the name of resignation is a kind of despair: in despair to will to be one’s abstract self, in despair to will to make the eternal suffice, and thereby to be able to defy or ignore suffering in the earthly and the temporal. The dialectic of resignation is essentially this: to will to be one’s eternal self and then, when it comes to something specific in which the self suffers, not to will to be oneself, taking consolation in the thought that it may disappear in eternity and therefore feeling justified in not accepting it in time. Although suffering under it, the self will still not make the admission that it is part of the self, that is, the self will not in faith humble itself under it. Resignation viewed as despair is thus essentially different from the despair of not willing in despair to be oneself, for in despair one does will to be oneself, but with the exclusion of something specific in regard to which one in despair does not will to be oneself.

86. Probably a reference to the third legend in the story of Rübezahl. I. A. Musäus, Volksmärchen der Deutschen, I–V (Gotha: 1826), II, pp. 62–63; Musœus Folkeœventyr, I–III, tr. F. Schaldemose (Copenhagen: 1840), II, pp. 65–66.

87. Shame.

88. Inertia.

Excerpted from Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann. 2000 Modern Library Edition. Copyright © 1995 by Mrs. Hazel Kaufmann. Reprinted by permission of Modern Library.

89. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, section 257.

90. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was probably the most widely read English philosopher of his time. He applied the principle of evolution to many fields, including sociology and ethics.

91. Cf. Twilight of the Idols, section 231.

92. Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862), English historian, is known chiefly for his History of Civilization (pp. 1857ff.). The suggestion in the text is developed more fully in section 876 of The Will to Power.

93. Nietzsche’s first publication, in 1867 when he was still a student at the University of Leipzig, was an article in a leading classical journal, Rheinisches Museum, on the history of the collection of the maxims of Theognis (“Zur Geschichte der Theognideischen Spruchsammlung”). Theognis of Megara lived in the sixth century B.C.

94. Greek: good, brave. Readers who are not classical philologists may wonder as they read this section how well taken Nietzsche’s points about the Greeks are. In this connection one could obviously cite a vast literature, but in this brief commentary it will be sufficient to quote Professor Gerald F. Else’s monumental study Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1957), a work equally notable for its patient and thorough scholarship and its spirited defense of some controversial interpretations. On the points at issue here, Else’s comments are not, I think, controversial; and that is the reason for citing them here.

“The dichotomy is mostly taken for granted in Homer: there are not many occasions when the heaven-wide gulf between heroes and commoners even has to be mentioned. ³⁰ [Still, one finds ‘good’ (esthloi) and ‘bad’ (kakoi) explicitly contrasted a fair number of times: B366, Z489, I319, . . .] In the . . . seventh and sixth centuries, on the other hand, the antithesis grows common. In Theognis it amounts to an obsession . . . Greek thinking begins with and for a long time holds to the proposition that mankind is divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ and these terms are quite as much social, political, and economic as they are moral. . . . The dichotomy is absolute and exclusive for a simple reason: it began as the aristocrats’ view of society and reflects their idea of the gulf between themselves and the ‘others.’ In the minds of a comparatively small and close-knit group like the Greek aristocracy there are only two kinds of people, ‘we’ and ‘they’; and of course ‘we’ are the good people, the proper, decent, good-looking, right-thinking ones, while ‘they’ are the rascals, the poltroons, the good-for-nothings . . . Aristotle knew and sympathized with this older aristocratic, ‘practical’ ideal, not as superior to the contemplative, but at least as next best to it” (p. 75).

95. Greek: bad, ugly, ill-born, mean, craven.

96. Greek: cowardly, worthless, vile, wretched.

97. Greek: good, well-born, gentle, brave, capable.

98. Bad.

99. Greek: black, dark.

100. Quoted from Horace’s Satires, I.4, line 85: “He that backbites an absent friend . . . and cannot keep secrets, is black, O Roman, beware!” Niger, originally “black,” also came to mean unlucky and, as in this quotation, wicked. Conversely, candidus means white, bright, beautiful, pure, guileless, candid, honest, happy, fortunate. And in Satires, I.5, 41, Horace speaks of “the whitest souls earth ever bore” (animae qualis neque candidiores terra tulit).

101. Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) was one of the greatest German pathologists, as well as a liberal politician, a member of the German Reichstag (parliament), and an opponent of Bismarck.

102. Good.

103. Listed in Harper’s Latin Dictionary as the old form of bonus, with the comment: “for duonus, cf. bellum.” And duellum is identified as an early and poetic form of bellum (war).

104. The cure developed by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914, American) consisted primarily in isolation, confinement to bed, dieting, and massage.

105. Geistreich.

106. Geist.

107. Zurückgetretensten.

108. Under this sign.

109. One asks.

110. Resentment.

111. All of the footnoted words in this section are Greek. The first four mean wretched, but each has a separate note to suggest some of its other connotations. Deilos: cowardly, worthless, vile.

112. Paltry.

113. Oppressed by toils, good for nothing, worthless, knavish, base, cowardly.

114. Suffering hardship, knavish.

115. Woeful, miserable, toilsome; wretch.

116. Unblest, wretched, luckless, poor.

117. Wretched, miserable.

118. To be unlucky, unfortunate.

119. Misfortune.

120. To do well in the sense of faring well.

121. High-born, noble, high-minded.

122. Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749–1791), was a celebrated French Revolutionary statesman and writer.

123. Among equals.

124. Scheusslichen.

125. This is the first appearance in Nietzsche’s writings of the notorious “blond beast.” It is encountered twice more in the present section; a variant appears in section 17 of the second essay; and then the blonde Bestie appears once more in Twilight of the Idols, “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind,” section 2. That is all. For a detailed discussion of these passages see Kaufmann’s Nietzsche, Chapter 7, section III: “. . . The ‘blond beast’ is not a racial con-avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness: the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings—they all shared this need. cept and does not refer to the ‘Nordic race’ of which the Nazis later made so much. Nietzsche specifically refers to Arabs and Japanese . . .—and the ‘blondness’ presumably refers to the beast, the lion.”

Francis Golffing, in his free translation of the Genealogy, deletes the blond beast three times out of four; only where it appears the second time in the original text, he has “the blond Teutonic beast.” This helps to corroborate the myth that the blondness refers to the Teutons. Without the image of the lion, however, we lose not only some of Nietzsche’s poetry as well as any chance to understand one of his best known coinages; we also lose an echo of the crucial first chapter of Zarathustra, where the lion represents the second stage in “The Three Metamorphoses” of the spirit—above the obedient camel but below the creative child (The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 138f.).

Arthur Danto has suggested that if lions were black and Nietzsche had written “Black Beast,” the expression would “provide support for African instead of German nationalists” (Nietzsche as Philosopher, New York, Macmillan, 1965, p. 170). Panthers are black and magnificent animals, but anyone calling Negroes black beasts and associating them with “a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture,” adding that “the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness,” and then going on to speak of “their hair-raising cheerfulness and profound joy in all destruction,” would scarcely be taken to “provide support for . . . nationalists.” On the contrary, he would be taken for a highly prejudiced critic of the Negro.

No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche. For all that, it is plain that in this section he sought to describe the behavior of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Goths and the Vandals, not that of nineteenth-century Germans.

126. Thucydides, 2.39. In A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, vol. II (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1956; corrected imprint of 1966), p. 118, A. W. Gomme comments on this word: “in its original sense, ‘ease of mind,’ ‘without anxiety’ . . . But ease of mind can in certain circumstances become carelessness, remissness, frivolity: Demosthenes often accused the Athenians of rhathymia . . .”

127. Entsetzliche.

128. If the present section is not clear enough to any reader, he might turn to Zarathustra’s contrast of the overman and the last man (Prologue, sections 3–5) and, for good measure, read also the first chapter or two of Part One. Then he will surely see how Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984—but especially the former—are developments of Nietzsche’s theme. Huxley, in his novel, uses Shakespeare as a foil; Nietzsche, in the passage above, Homer.

129. Gewürm suggests wormlike animals; wimmelt can mean swarm or crawl but is particularly associated with maggots—in a cheese, for example.

130. Unerquicklich.

131. Allusion to Romans 13:1–2.

132. The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them.—To be precise, what we find in Summa Theo logiae, III, Supplementum, Q. 94, Art. 1, is this: “In order that the bliss of the saints may be more delightful for them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, it is given to them to see perfectly the punishment of the damned.” Ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat, et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte intueantur.

133. Nietzsche quotes Tertullian in the original Latin. This footnote offers, first, an English translation, and then some discussion.

“Yes, and there are other sights: that last day of judgment, with its everlasting issues; that day unlooked for by the nations, the theme of their derision, when the world hoary with age, and all its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? what my derision? Which sight gives me joy? which rouses me to exultation?—as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exultation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. What world’s wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their followers that God had no concern in aught that is sublunary, and were wont to assure them that either they had no souls, or that they would never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered with shame before the poor deluded ones, as one fire consumes them! Poets also, trembling not before the judgment-seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ! I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors, much more ‘dissolute’ [another translation has “much lither of limb”] in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of beholding the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows; unless even then I shall not care to attend to such ministers of sin, in my eager wish rather to fix a gaze insatiable on those whose fury vented itself against the Lord. ‘This,’ I shall say, ‘this is that carpenter’s or hireling’s son, that Sabbath-breaker, that Samaritan and devil-possessed! This is He whom you purchased from Judas! [Quaestuaria means prostitute, not carpenter: see Nietzsche’s parenthesis above.] This is He whom you struck with reed and fist, whom you contemptuously spat upon, to whom you gave gall and vinegar to drink! This is He whom His disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said He had risen again, or the gardener abstracted, that his lettuces might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants!’ What quaestor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favour of seeing and exulting in such things as these? And yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination. But what are the things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and which have not so much as dimly dawned upon the human heart? Whatever they are, they are nobler, I believe, than circus, and both theatres, and every race-course.” [Translation by the Rev. S. Thelwall.] There are two standard translations of Tertullian’s De Spectaculis. One is by the Rev. S. Thelwall in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, edited by the Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D., in volume III: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (American Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition, Grand Rapids, Mich., Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957). The other translation is by Rudolph Arbesmann, O.S.A., Ph.D., Fordham University, in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, in the volume entitled Tertullian: Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works (New York, Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959, Imprimatur Francis Cardinal Spellman).

In the former edition we are told in a footnote to the title that although there has been some dispute as to whether the work was written before or after Tertullian’s “lapse” from orthodoxy to Montanism, “a work so colourless that doctors can disagree about even its shading, must be regarded as practically orthodox. Exaggerated expressions are but the characteristics of the author’s genius. We find the like in all writers of strongly marked individuality. Neander dates this treatise circa A.D. 197.” And in a footnote to the last sentence quoted by Nietzsche, which concludes the last chapter of the treatise, we read: “This concluding chapter, which Gibbon delights to censure, because its fervid rhetoric so fearfully depicts the punishments of Christ’s enemies, ‘appears to Dr. Neander to contain a beautiful specimen of lively faith and Christian confidence.’ ”

In the latter edition we are informed that “De Spectaculis is one of Tertullian’s most interesting and original works” (p. 38). And chapter 30, which Nietzsche quotes almost in its entirety, omitting only the first four lines, is introduced by a footnote that begins (and it continues in the same vein): “Tertullian gives here a colorful description of the millennium, picturing the feverish expectation of an early return of Christ . . .”

It is noteworthy that the Protestant edition finds the work “so colourless,” while the Roman Catholic edition considers it “colorful”—and neither of them evinces any sensitivity to what outraged Nietzsche or Gibbon.

Edward Gibbon’s comments are found in Chapter XV of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans, on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age. But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture the far greater part of the human species. . . . These rigid sentiments, which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony. . . . The Christians, who, in this world, found themselves oppressed by the power of the Pagans, were sometimes seduced by resentment and spiritual pride to delight in the prospect of their future triumph. ‘You are fond of spectacles,’ exclaims the stern Tertullian; ‘except the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh . . .’ ”

134. This remark which recalls Beyond Good and Evil, section 200, is entirely in keeping with the way in which the contrast of master and slave morality is introduced in Beyond Good and Evil, section 260; and it ought not to be overlooked. It sheds a good deal of light not only on this contrast but also on Nietzsche’s amor fati, his love of fate. Those who ignore all this material are bound completely to misunderstand Nietzsche’s moral philosophy.

135. Having said things that can easily be misconstrued as grist to the mill of the German anti-Semites, Nietzsche goes out of his way, as usual, to express his admiration for the Jews and his disdain for the Germans.

136. Disposed of.

137. Anmerkung.

138. Schlechtes Gewissen is no technical term but simply the common German equivalent of “bad conscience.” Danto’s translation “bad consciousness” (Nietzsche as Philosopher, New York, Macmillan, 1965, pp. 164 and 180) is simply wrong: Gewissen, like conscience, and unlike the French conscience, cannot mean consciousness.

There are many mistranslations in Danto’s Nietzsche. Another one, though relatively unimportant, is of some interest and relevant to the Genealogy: Schadenfreude—a German word for which there is no English equivalent—is not quite “the wicked pleasure in the beholding of suffering” (p. 181) or “in the sheer spectacle of suffering: in fights, executions, . . . bullbaiting, cockfights, and the like” (p. 174). In such contexts the word is utterly out of place: it signifies the petty, mischievous delight felt in the discomfiture of another human being.

139. Inertia.

140. Positives Hemmungsvermögen.

141. Clean slate.

142. See also Human, All-Too-Human, section 96; Mixed Opinions and Maxims, section 89; and The Dawn, section 18, all of which are included in the present volume. Dawn, section 16, is included in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 76. The German phrase is die Sittlichkeit der Sitte, the morality of mores.

143. The parenthetical statement is the contrary of Kant’s view. When it was written, it must have struck most readers as paradoxical, but in the twentieth century it is apt to seem less paradoxical than Kant’s view. The Lonely Crowd (by David Riesman, with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney; New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1950) has popularized a Nietzschean, non-Kantian conception of the autonomous individual, who is contrasted with the tradition-directed (Nietzsche’s morality of mores), the inner-directed (Kant, for example), and the other-directed (Nietzsche’s “last man”).

144. The German equivalent of “guilt” is Schuld; and the German for “debt(s)” is Schuld(en). “Innocent” is unschuldig; “debtor” is Schuldner; and so forth. This obviously poses problems for an English translation of this essay; but once the point has been clearly stated, no misunderstandings need result. Nietzsche’s claims obviously do not depend on the double meaning of a German word; nor are they weakened by the fact that in English there are two different words, one derived from an Anglo-Saxon root, the other from Latin.

145. If they have secured more or less, let that be no crime.

146 . Of doing evil for the pleasure of doing it.

147. “Debts or guilt”: “Schulden.”

148. Nietzsche, as usual, furnishes a page reference to the first edition—in this instance, pp. 117ff., which would take us to the middle of section 194 and the following section(s); and German editors, down to Karl Schlechta, give the equivalent page reference. But 117 is plainly a misprint for 177, which takes us to section 229—beyond a doubt, the passage Nietzsche means.

149. Section 113 is quoted and analyzed in Kaufmann’s Nietzsche, Chapter 6, section II. Both repay reading in connection with the passage above, to avoid misunderstanding.

150. The nostalgia of the cross.

151. A prophetic parenthesis.

152. Misery. Originally, exile.

153. Woe to the losers!

154. Sich selbst aufhebend. And in the next sentence Selbstaufhebung has been translated as self-overcoming. Similarly, aufzuheben in the middle of section 13, below, and aufgehoben in section 8 of the third essay have been rendered “overcome.” See also III, section 27, with note. Aufheben is a very troublesome word, though common in ordinary German. Literally, it means “pick up”; but it has two derivative meanings that are no less common: “cancel” and “preserve” or “keep.” Something picked up is no longer there, but the point of picking it up may be to keep it. Hegel made much of this term; his use of it is explained and discussed in Walter Kaufmann, Hegel (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1965; Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1966), section 34—and a comparison of Hegel and Nietzsche on this point may be found in Kaufmann’s Nietzsche, Chapter 8, section II.

155. The theme sounded here is one of the central motifs of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Cf. Dawn, section 202: “. . . Let us eliminate the concept of sin from the world—and let us soon dispatch the concept of punishment after it! May these exiled monsters live somewhere else henceforth and not among men—if they insist on living and will not perish of disgust with themselves! . . . Shouldn’t we be mature enough yet for the opposite view? Shouldn’t we be able to say yet: every ‘guilty’ person is sick?—No, the hour for that has not yet come. As yet the physicians are lacking above all . . . As yet no thinker has had the courage of measuring the health of a society and of individuals according to how many parasites they can stand . . .” (See The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 85–88.) Cf. also Zarathustra II, “On the Tarantulas”: “That man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope . . .” (ibid., p. 211). Many other pertinent passages are cited in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, Chapter 12, sections II and V.

156. Rache.

157. Gerechtigkeit.

158. Eugen Dühring (1833-1901), a prolific German philosopher and political economist, was among other things an impassioned patriot and anti-Semite and hated the cosmopolitan Goethe and the Greeks. He is remembered chiefly as the butt of polemical works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and of scattered hostile remarks in Nietzsche’s writings.

159. Recht.

160. Gesetz.

161. Recht.

162. Unrecht.

163. The cause of the origin.

164. Hatred of rule or government.

165. On Spencer, see the note in section 3 of the first essay, above.

166. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95), the English biologist and writer, fought tirelessly for the acceptance of Darwinism. In 1869 he coined the word agnosticism, which Spencer took over from him. Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), the author of Brave New World (1932), and Julian Huxley (born 1897), the biologist, are T. H. Huxley’s grandsons.

167. A superb epigram that expresses a profound insight. Cf. The Wanderer and His Shadow, section 33, included in the present volume, pp. 159ff.

168. Uberladen.

169. Kuno Fischer (1824–1907), professor at Heidelberg, made a great reputation with a ten-volume history of modern philosophy that consists of imposing monographs on selected modern philosophers. One of the volumes is devoted to Spinoza.

170. Sting of conscience.

171. For a good reason.

172. Joy.

173. Verinnerlichung. Cf. Freud.

174. Irgendein Rudel blonder Raubtiere, eine Eroberer-und Herren-Rasse: Francis Golffing, in his translation, spirits away both the blond beasts of prey and the master race by rendering these words “a pack of savages, a race of conquerors.” Cf. section 11 of the first essay, above, with its three references to the blonde Bestie, and note 3 of section 11. See also Kaufmann’s Nietzsche, Chapter 10, “The Master-Race.”

175. Schulden zu haben.

176. Das Schuldgefühl.

177. Des Schuldgefühls.

178. Schuldbewusstseins.

179. Gefühl, Schulden . . . zu haben.

180. First cause.

181. Unschuld.

182. Der Glaube an unsern “Glaübiger”: the creed in our “creditor”—or: that one credits our “creditor.”

183. Odyssey, I, line 32ff.

184. Cf. Ecce Homo, Chapter I, section 5, and Sartre’s play The Flies, which was decisively influenced by Nietzsche, as I have shown in “Nietzsche Between Homer and Sartre: Five Treatments of the Orestes Story” (Revue Internationale de Philosophie, LXVII, 1964, pp. 50–73). See also my Tragedy and Philosophy, section 51.

185. Selbsttierquälerei: Tierquälerei really means cruelty to animals or, literally, animal torture; hence Nietzsche’s coinage suggests that this kind of self-torture involves mortification of the animal nature of man.

186 Both the author of the Notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictitious. Nevertheless, such persons as the author of such memoirs not only may, but must, exist in our society, if we take into consideration the circumstances which led to the formation of our society. It was my intention to bring before our reading public, more conspicuously than is usually done, one of the characters of our recent past. He is one of the representatives of a generation that is still with us. In this extract, entitled Underground, this person introduces himself and his views and, as it were, tries to explain those causes which have not only led, but also were bound to lead, to his appearance in our midst. —FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

Excerpted from Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky, translated by David Magarshack. 1992 Modern Library Edition. Reprinted by permission of Modern Library.

187. The censor so mangled this chapter that Dostoevsky later complained that he was made to contradict himself several times. (D.M.)

188 ein Sein—TR.

189 The relation of Da-sein to death; death itself—its arrival—entrance, dying.

190. The difference between whole and sum, holon and pan, totum and compositum is familiar to us ever since Plato and Aristotle. Of course, the systematics of the categorial transformation already contained in this division is not yet recognized and conceptualized. For the beginning of a detailed analysis, cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 2, third investigation: “On the Doctrine of Wholes and Parts.”

191 death as dying.

192. Der Ackermann aus Böhmen, ed. A. Bernt and K. Burdach, in Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation: Forschungen zur Geschichte der deutschen Bildung, ed. K. Burdach, vol. 3, part 2 (1917), chap. 20, p. 46.

193 That is, the interpretation of fundamental ontology.

194 If we are talking about human life, otherwise not—“world.”

195. Cf. E. Korschelt’s comprehensive portrayal, Lebensdauer, Altern und Tod, 3rd edition, 1924, especially the rich bibliography, pp. 414ff.

196. The anthropology developed in Christian theology—from Paul to Calvin’s meditatio futurae vitae—has always already viewed death together with its interpretation of “life.” Dilthey, whose true philosophical tendencies aimed at an ontology of “life,” could not fail to recognize its connection with death. “And finally, the relation which most deeply and universally defines the feeling of our Da-sein—that of life toward death, for the limitation of our existence by death is always decisive for our understanding and our estimation of life.” Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, 5th edition, p. 230. Recently G. Simmel has also explicitly related the phenomenon of death to the definition of “life,” however without a clear separation of the biological and ontic from the ontological and existential problematic. Cf. Lebensanschauung: Vier metaphysische Kapitel, 1918, pp. 99–153. For the present inquiry, compare especially K. Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 3rd edition, 1925, pp. 299ff. and especially 259–70. Jaspers understands death by following the guidelines of the phenomenon of the “borderline situation” developed by him, whose fundamental significance lies beyond any typology of “attitudes” and “worldviews.”

R. Unger took up Dilthey’s suggestions in his work Herder, Novalis und Kleist: Studien über die Entwicklung des Todesproblems im Denken und Dichten von Sturm und Drang Zur Romantik, 1922. Unger offers a major reflection on Dilthey’s questions in the lecture: Literaturegeschichte als Problemgeschichte: Zur Frage geisteshistorischer Synthese, mit besonderer Beziehung auf W. Dilthey (Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft, Geisteswiss. Klass I.1, 1924). Unger (pp. 17ff.) sees clearly the significance of phenomenological investigation for a more radical foundation of the “problems of life.”

197 But care presences out of the truth of being.

198. L. N. Tolstoi in his story “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch” has portrayed the phenomenon of the disruption and collapse of this “one dies.”

199 I.e., but not only Angst and certainly not Angst as a mere emotion.

200. Les Chemins de la Liberté, M. Sartre’s projected trilogy of novels, two of which, L’Age de Raison (The Age of Reason) and Le Sursis ( The Reprieve) have already appeared.—Translator’s note.

201. A “being-with” others in the world.—Trans.

202. Sartre’s own word, meaning subject to sudden changes or transitions.—Trans.

203 From the point of view of the relative value of truth. On the other hand, from the point of view of virile behavior, this scholar’s fragility may well make us smile.

204 Let us not miss this opportunity to point out the relative character of this essay. Suicide may indeed be related to much more honorable considerations—for example, the political suicides of protest, as they were called, during the Chinese revolution.

205 I have heard of an emulator of Peregrinos, a post-war writer who, after having finished his first book, committed suicide to attract attention to his work. Attention was in fact attracted, but the book was judged no good.

206 But not in the proper sense. This is not a definition, but rather an enumeration of the feelings that may admit of the absurd. Still, the enumeration finished, the absurd has nevertheless not been exhausted.

207 Apropos of the notion of exception particularly and against Aristotle.

208 It may be thought that I am neglecting here the essential problem, that of faith. But I am not examining the philosophy of Kierkegaard or of Chestov or, later on, of Husserl (this would call for a different place and a different attitude of mind); I am simply borrowing a theme from them and examining whether its consequences can fit the already established rules. It is merely a matter of persistence.

209 I did not say “excludes God,” which would still amount to asserting.

210 Let me assert again: it is not the affirmation of God that is questioned here, but rather the logic leading to that affirmation.

211 Even the most rigorous epistemologies imply metaphysics. And to such a degree that the metaphysic of many contemporary thinkers consists in having nothing but an epistemology.

212 A.—At that time reason had to adapt itself or die. It adapts itself. With Plotinus, after being logical it becomes æsthetic. Metaphor takes the place of the syllogism.

B.—Moreover, this is not Plotinus’ only contribution to phenomenology. This whole attitude is already contained in the concept so dear to the Alexandrian thinker that there is not only an idea of man but also an idea of Socrates.

213 I am concerned here with a factual comparison, not with an apology of humility. The absurd man is the contrary of the reconciled man.

214 Quantity sometimes constitutes quality. If I can believe the latest restatements of scientific theory, all matter is constituted by centers of energy. Their greater or lesser quantity makes its specificity more or less remarkable. A billion ions and one ion differ not only in quantity but also in quality. It is easy to find an analogy in human experience.

215 Same reflection on a notion as different as the idea of eternal nothingness. It neither adds anything to nor subtracts anything from reality. In psychological experience of nothingness, it is by the consideration of what will happen in two thousand years that our own nothingness truly takes on meaning. In one of its aspects, eternal nothingness is made up precisely of the sum of lives to come which will not be ours.

216 The will is only the agent here: it tends to maintain consciousness. It provides a discipline of life, and that is appreciable.

217 What matters is coherence. We start out here from acceptance of the world. But Oriental thought teaches that one can indulge in the same effort of logic by choosing against the world. That is just as legitimate and gives this essay its perspectives and its limits. But when the negation of the world is pursued just as rigorously, one often achieves (in certain Vedantic schools) similar results regarding, for instance, the indifference of works. In a book of great importance, Le Choix, Jean Grenier establishes in this way a veritable “philosophy of indifference.”