Section 22
Original German
Metaphysische Grundlage.
Den festen Boden der Erfahrung, welcher bis hieher alle unsere Schritte getragen hat, sollen wir also jetzt verlassen, um in dem, wohin keine Erfahrung auch nur möglicherweise reichen kann, die letzte theoretische Befriedigung zu finden, glücklich, wenn uns auch nur ein Fingerzeig, ein flüchtiger Durchblick zu Theil wird, bei welchem wir uns einigermaaßen beruhigen können. Hingegen was uns nicht verlassen soll, ist die bisherige Redlichkeit des Verfahrens: wir werden nicht, nach der Weise der sogenannten Nach-Kantischen Philosophie, uns in Träumereien gefallen, Mährchen auftischen, durch Worte zu imponiren und dem Leser Sand in die Augen zu streuen suchen; sondern ein Weniges, redlich dargeboten, ist unsere Verheißung.
Das, was bis hieher Erklärungsgrund war, wird jetzt selbst unser Problem, nämlich jenes jedem Menschen angeborene und unvertilgbare, natürliche Mitleid, welches sich uns als die alleinige Quelle nicht-egoistischer Handlungen ergeben hat: diesen aber ausschließlich kommt moralischer Werth zu. Die Weise vieler moderner Philosophen, welche die Begriffe Gut und Böse als einfache, d. h. keiner Erklärung bedürftige, noch fähige, Begriffe behandeln, und dann meistens sehr geheimnißvoll und andächtig von einer „Idee des Guten“ reden, aus welcher sie die Stütze ihrer Ethik, oder wenigstens einen Deckmantel ihrer Dürftigkeit machen25, nöthigt mich, hier die Erklärung einzuschalten, daß diese Begriffe nichts weniger als einfach, geschweige a priori gegeben, sondern Ausdrücke einer Relation und aus der alltäglichsten Erfahrung geschöpft sind. Alles, was den Bestrebungen irgend eines individuellen Willens gemäß ist, heißt, in Beziehung auf diesen, gut: — gutes Essen, gute Wege, gute Vorbedeutung; — das Gegentheil schlecht, an belebten Wesen böse. Ein Mensch, der, vermöge seines Charakters, den Bestrebungen Anderer nicht gern hinderlich, vielmehr, so weit er füglich kann, günstig und förderlich ist, der also Andere nicht verletzt, vielmehr ihnen, wo er kann, Hülfe und Beistand leistet, wird von ihnen, in eben der selben Rücksicht, ein guter Mensch genannt, mithin der Begriff Gut, von dem selben relativen, empirischen und im passiven Subjekt gelegenen Gesichtspunkte aus, auf ihn angewandt. Untersuchen wir nun aber den Charakter eines solchen Menschen nicht bloß in Hinsicht auf Andere, sondern an sich selbst; so wissen wir aus dem Vorhergehenden, daß eine ganz unmittelbare Theilnahme am Wohl und Wehe Anderer, als deren Quelle wir das Mitleid erkannt haben, es ist, aus welcher die Tugenden der Gerechtigkeit und Menschenliebe in ihm hervorgehen. Gehen wir aber auf das Wesentliche eines solchen Charakters zurück; so finden wir es unleugbar darin, daß er weniger als die Uebrigen einen Unterschied zwischen sich und Andern macht. Dieser Unterschied ist in den Augen des boshaften Charakters so groß, daß ihm fremdes Leiden unmittelbar Genuß ist, den er deshalb, ohne weitern eigenen Vortheil, ja, selbst diesem entgegen, sucht. Der selbe Unterschied ist in den Augen des Egoisten noch groß genug, damit er, um einen kleinen Vortheil für sich zu erlangen, großen Schaden Anderer als Mittel gebrauche. Diesen Beiden ist also zwischen dem Ich, welches sich auf ihre eigene Person beschränkt, und dem Nicht-Ich, welches die übrige Welt begreift, eine weite Kluft, ein mächtiger Unterschied: Pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim, ist ihre Maxime. Dem guten Menschen hingegen ist dieser Unterschied keineswegs so groß, ja, in den Handlungen des Edelmuths erscheint er als aufgehoben, indem hier das fremde Wohl auf Kosten des eigenen befördert, also das fremde Ich dem eigenen gleichgesetzt wird: und wo viele Andere zu retten sind, wird das eigene Ich ihnen gänzlich zum Opfer gebracht, indem der Einzelne für Viele sein Leben hingiebt.
Es frägt sich jetzt, ob die letztere Auffassung des Verhältnisses zwischen dem eigenen und dem fremden Ich, welche den Handlungen des guten Charakters zum Grunde liegt, eine irrige sei und auf einer Täuschung beruhe? oder ob dies vielmehr der Fall der entgegengesetzten Auffassung sei, auf welcher der Egoismus und die Bosheit fußt? —
Diese dem Egoismus zum Grunde liegende Auffassung ist, empirisch, streng gerechtfertigt. Der Unterschied zwischen der eigenen und der fremden Person erscheint erfahrungsmäßig als ein absoluter. Die Verschiedenheit des Raumes, welche mich von dem Andern trennt, trennt mich auch von seinem Wohl und Wehe. — Hiegegen wäre jedoch zunächst zu bemerken, daß die Erkenntniß, die wir vom eigenen Selbst haben, keineswegs eine erschöpfende und bis auf den letzten Grund klare ist. Durch die Anschauung, welche das Gehirn auf Data der Sinne vollzieht, also mittelbar, erkennen wir den eigenen Leib als ein Objekt im Raum, und durch den innern Sinn die fortlaufende Reihe unserer Bestrebungen und Willensakte, welche auf Anlaß äußerer Motive entstehen, endlich auch die mannichfaltigen, schwächeren, oder stärkeren Bewegungen des eigenen Willens, auf welche alle inneren Gefühle sich zurückführen lassen. Das ist Alles: denn das Erkennen wird nicht selbst wieder erkannt. Hingegen das eigentliche Substrat dieser ganzen Erscheinung, unser inneres Wesen an sich, das Wollende und Erkennende selbst, ist uns nicht zugänglich: wir sehen bloß nach Außen, Innen ist es finster. Demnach ist die Kenntniß, welche wir von uns selbst haben, keineswegs eine vollständige und erschöpfende, vielmehr sehr oberflächlich, und dem größern, ja, hauptsächlichen Theil nach sind wir uns selber unbekannt und ein Räthsel, oder, wie Kant sagt: Das Ich erkennt sich nur als Erscheinung, nicht nach dem, was es an sich seyn mag. Jenem andern Theile nach, der in unsere Erkenntniß fällt, ist zwar Jeder vom Andern gänzlich verschieden: aber hieraus folgt noch nicht, daß es sich eben so verhalte hinsichtlich des großen und wesentlichen Theiles, der Jedem verdeckt und unbekannt bleibt. Für diesen ist also wenigstens eine Möglichkeit übrig, daß er in Allen Eines und identisch sei.
Worauf beruht alle Vielheit und numerische Verschiedenheit der Wesen? — Auf Raum und Zeit: durch diese allein ist sie möglich; da das Viele sich nur entweder als nebeneinander, oder als nacheinander denken und vorstellen läßt. Weil nun das gleichartige Viele die Individuen sind; so nenne ich Raum und Zeit, in der Hinsicht, daß sie die Vielheit möglich machen, das principium individuationis, unbekümmert, ob dies genau der Sinn sei, in welchem die Scholastiker diesen Ausdruck nahmen.
Wenn an den Aufschlüssen, welche Kants bewunderungswürdiger Tiefsinn der Welt gegeben hat, irgend etwas unbezweifelt wahr ist, so ist es die transscendentale Aesthetik, also die Lehre von der Idealität des Raumes und der Zeit. Sie ist so klar begründet, daß kein irgend scheinbarer Einwand dagegen hat aufgetrieben werden können. Sie ist Kants Triumph und gehört zu den höchst wenigen metaphysischen Lehren, die man als wirklich bewiesen und als eigentliche Eroberungen im Felde der Metaphysik ansehen kann. Nach ihr also sind Raum und Zeit die Formen unsers eigenen Anschauungsvermögens, gehören diesem, nicht den dadurch erkannten Dingen an, können also nimmermehr eine Bestimmung der Dinge an sich selbst seyn; sondern kommen nur der Erscheinung derselben zu, wie solche in unserm, an physiologische Bedingungen gebundenen Bewußtseyn der Außenwelt allein möglich ist. Ist aber dem Dinge an sich, d. h. dem wahren Wesen der Welt, Zeit und Raum fremd; so ist es nothwendig auch die Vielheit: folglich kann dasselbe in den zahllosen Erscheinungen dieser Sinnenwelt doch nur Eines seyn, und nur das Eine und identische Wesen sich in diesen allen manifestiren. Und umgekehrt, was sich als ein Vieles, mithin in Zeit und Raum darstellt, kann nicht Ding an sich, sondern nur Erscheinung seyn. Diese aber ist, als solche, bloß für unser durch vielerlei Bedingungen beschränktes, ja, auf einer organischen Funktion beruhendes Bewußtseyn vorhanden, nicht außer demselben.
Diese Lehre, daß alle Vielheit nur scheinbar sei, daß in allen Individuen dieser Welt, in so unendlicher Zahl sie auch, nach und neben einander, sich darstellen, doch nur Eines und das selbe, in ihnen allen gegenwärtige und identische, wahrhaft seiende Wesen sich manifestire, diese Lehre ist freilich lange vor Kant, ja, man möchte sagen von jeher dagewesen. Denn zuvörderst ist sie die Haupt- und Grundlehre des ältesten Buches der Welt, der heiligen Veden, deren dogmatischer Theil, oder vielmehr esoterische Lehre, uns in den Upanischaden vorliegt.26 Daselbst finden wir fast auf jeder Seite jene große Lehre: sie wird unermüdlich, in zahllosen Wendungen wiederholt und durch mannichfaltige Bilder und Gleichnisse erläutert. Daß sie gleichfalls der Weisheit des Pythagoras zum Grunde lag, ist, selbst nach den kärglichen Nachrichten, die von seiner Philosophie zu uns gelangt sind, durchaus nicht zu bezweifeln. Daß in ihr allein fast die ganze Philosophie der Eleatischen Schule enthalten war, ist allbekannt. Später waren von ihr die Neu-Platoniker durchdrungen, indem sie lehrten διὰ τὴν ἑνότητα ἁπάντων πάσας ψυχὰς μίαν εἶναι (propter omnium unitatem cunctas animas unam esse). Im 9. Jahrhundert sehen wir sie in Europa unerwartet auftreten durch Skotus Erigena, der, von ihr begeistert, sich bemüht, sie in die Formen und Ausdrücke der Christlichen Religion zu kleiden. Unter den Mohammedanern finden wir sie als begeisterte Mystik der Sufis wieder. Aber im Occident mußte Jordanus Brunus es mit einem schmählichen und qualvollen Tode büßen, daß er dem Drange, jene Wahrheit auszusprechen, nicht hatte widerstehen können. Dennoch sehen wir auch die christlichen Mystiker, wider Willen und Absicht, sich in sie verstricken, wann und wo sie auftreten. Spinoza’s Name ist mit ihr identificirt. In unsern Tagen endlich, nachdem Kant den alten Dogmatismus vernichtet hatte und die Welt erschrocken vor den rauchenden Trümmern stand, wurde jene Erkenntniß wieder auferweckt durch die eklektische Philosophie Schellings, der, die Lehren des Plotinos, Spinozas, Kants und Jakob Böhms mit den Ergebnissen der neuen Naturwissenschaft amalgamirend, schleunig ein Ganzes zusammensetzte, dem dringenden Bedürfniß seiner Zeitgenossen einstweilen zu genügen, und es dann mit Variationen abspielte; in Folge wovon jene Erkenntniß unter den Gelehrten Deutschlands zu durchgängiger Geltung gelangt, ja, selbst unter den bloß Gebildeten fast allgemein verbreitet ist.27 Eine Ausnahme machen allein die heutigen Universitätsphilosophen, als welche die schwere Aufgabe haben, dem sogenannten Pantheismus entgegen zu arbeiten, wodurch in große Noth und Verlegenheit versetzt, sie in ihrer Herzensangst bald zu den kläglichsten Sophismen, bald zu den bombastischesten Phrasen greifen, um daraus irgend einen anständigen Maskenanzug zusammenzuflicken, eine beliebte und oktroyirte Rockenphilosophie darin zu kleiden. Kurzum, das Ἓν καὶ παν war zu allen Zeiten der Spott der Thoren und die endlose Meditation der Weisen. Jedoch läßt der strenge Beweis desselben sich allein aus Kants Lehre, wie oben geschehen, führen; obwohl Kant selbst dies nicht gethan hat, sondern, nach Weise kluger Redner, nur die Prämissen gab, den Zuhörern die Freude der Konklusion überlassend.
Gehört demnach Vielheit und Geschiedenheit allein der bloßen Erscheinung an, und ist es Ein und das selbe Wesen, welches in allem Lebenden sich darstellt; so ist diejenige Auffassung, welche den Unterschied zwischen Ich und Nicht-Ich aufhebt, nicht die irrige: vielmehr muß die ihr entgegengesetzte dies seyn. Auch finden wir diese letztere von den Hindus mit dem Namen Maja, d. h. Schein, Täuschung, Gaukelbild, bezeichnet. Jene erstere Ansicht ist es, welche wir als dem Phänomen des Mitleids zum Grunde liegend, ja, dieses als den realen Ausdruck derselben gefunden haben. Sie wäre demnach die metaphysische Basis der Ethik, und bestände darin, daß das eine Individuum im andern unmittelbar sich selbst, sein eigenes wahres Wesen wiedererkenne. Demnach träfe die praktische Weisheit, das Rechtthun und Wohlthun, im Resultat genau zusammen mit der tiefsten Lehre der am weitesten gelangten theoretischen Weisheit; und der praktische Philosoph, d. h. der Gerechte, der Wohlthätige, der Edelmüthige, spräche durch die That nur die selbe Erkenntniß aus, welche das Ergebniß des größten Tiefsinns und der mühseligsten Forschung des theoretischen Philosophen ist. Indessen steht die moralische Trefflichkeit höher denn alle theoretische Weisheit, als welche immer nur Stückwerk ist und auf dem langsamen Wege der Schlüsse zu dem Ziele gelangt, welches jene mit Einem Schlage erreicht; und der moralisch Edle, wenn ihm auch noch so sehr die intellektuelle Trefflichkeit abgeht, legt durch sein Handeln die tiefste Erkenntniß, die höchste Weisheit an den Tag, und beschämt den Genialsten und Gelehrtesten, wenn dieser durch sein Thun verräth, daß jene große Wahrheit ihm doch im Herzen fremd geblieben ist.
„Die Individuation ist real, das principium individuationis und die auf demselben beruhende Verschiedenheit der Individuen ist die Ordnung der Dinge an sich. Jedes Individuum ist ein von allen andern von Grund aus verschiedenes Wesen. Im eigenen Selbst allein habe ich mein wahres Seyn, alles Andere hingegen ist Nicht-Ich und mir fremd.“ — Dies ist die Erkenntniß, für deren Wahrheit Fleisch und Bein Zeugniß ablegen, die allem Egoismus zum Grunde liegt, und deren realer Ausdruck jede lieblose, ungerechte, oder boshafte Handlung ist. —
„Die Individuation ist bloße Erscheinung, entstehend mittelst Raum und Zeit, welche nichts weiter als die durch mein cerebrales Erkenntnißvermögen bedingten Formen aller seiner Objekte sind; daher auch die Vielheit und Verschiedenheit der Individuen bloße Erscheinung, d. h. nur in meiner Vorstellung vorhanden ist. Mein wahres, inneres Wesen existirt in jedem Lebenden so unmittelbar, wie es in meinem Selbstbewußtseyn sich nur mir selber kund giebt.“ — Diese Erkenntniß, für welche im Sanskrit die Formel tat-twam asi, d. h. „dies bist Du“, der stehende Ausdruck ist, ist es, die als Mitleid hervorbricht, auf welcher daher alle ächte, d. h. uneigennützige Tugend beruht und deren realer Ausdruck jede gute That ist. Diese Erkenntniß ist es im letzten Grunde, an welche jede Appellation an Milde, an Menschenliebe, an Gnade für Recht sich richtet: denn eine solche ist eine Erinnerung an die Rücksicht, in welcher wir Alle Eins und dasselbe Wesen sind. Hingegen beruft Egoismus, Neid, Haß, Verfolgung, Härte, Rache, Schadenfreude, Grausamkeit sich auf jene erstere Erkenntniß, und beruhigt sich bei ihr. Die Rührung und Wonne, welche wir beim Anhören, noch mehr beim Anblick, am meisten beim eigenen Vollbringen einer edlen Handlung empfinden, beruht im tiefsten Grunde darauf, daß sie uns die Gewißheit giebt, daß jenseit aller Vielheit und Verschiedenheit der Individuen, die das principium individuationis uns vorhält, eine Einheit derselben liege, welche wahrhaft vorhanden, ja, uns zugänglich ist, da sie ja eben faktisch hervortrat.
Je nachdem die eine oder die andere Erkenntnißweise festgehalten wird, tritt, zwischen Wesen und Wesen, die φιλια oder der νεικος des Empedokles hervor. Aber wer, vom νεικος beseelt, feindlich eindränge auf seinen verhaßtesten Widersacher, und bis in das Tiefinnerste desselben gelangte; der würde in diesem, zu seiner Ueberraschung, sich selbst entdecken. Denn so gut wie im Traum in allen uns erscheinenden Personen wir selbst stecken, so gut ist es im Wachen der Fall, — wenn auch nicht so leicht einzusehen. Aber tat-twam asi.
Das Vorwalten der einen oder der andern jener beiden Erkenntnißweisen zeigt sich nicht bloß in den einzelnen Handlungen, sondern in der ganzen Art des Bewußtseyns und der Stimmung, welche daher beim guten Charakter eine von der des schlechten so wesentlich verschiedene ist. Dieser empfindet überall eine starke Scheidewand zwischen sich und allem Außer ihm. Die Welt ist ihm ein absolutes Nicht-Ich und sein Verhältniß zu ihr ein ursprünglich feindliches: dadurch wird der Grundton seiner Stimmung Gehässigkeit, Argwohn, Neid, Schadenfreude. — Der gute Charakter hingegen lebt in einer seinem Wesen homogenen Außenwelt: die Andern sind ihm kein Nicht-Ich, sondern „Ich noch ein Mal“. Daher ist sein ursprüngliches Verhältniß zu Jedem ein befreundetes: er fühlt sich allen Wesen im Innern verwandt, nimmt unmittelbar Theil an ihrem Wohl und Wehe, und setzt mit Zuversicht die selbe Theilnahme bei ihnen voraus. Hieraus erwächst der tiefe Friede seines Innern und jene getroste, beruhigte, zufriedene Stimmung, vermöge welcher in seiner Nähe Jedem wohl wird. — Der böse Charakter vertraut in der Noth nicht auf den Beistand Anderer: ruft er ihn an, so geschieht es ohne Zuversicht: erlangt er ihn, so empfängt er ihn ohne wahre Dankbarkeit: weil er ihn kaum anders denn als Wirkung der Thorheit Anderer begreifen kann. Denn sein eigenes im fremden Wesen wieder zu erkennen, ist er selbst dann noch unfähig, nachdem es von dort aus sich durch unzweideutige Zeichen kund gegeben hat. Hierauf beruht eigentlich das Empörende alles Undanks. Diese moralische Isolation, in der er sich wesentlich und unausweichbar befindet, läßt ihn auch leicht in Verzweiflung gerathen. — Der gute Charakter wird mit eben so vieler Zuversicht den Beistand Anderer anrufen, als er sich der Bereitwilligkeit bewußt ist, ihnen den seinigen zu leisten. Denn, wie gesagt, dem Einen ist die Menschenwelt Nicht-Ich, dem Andern „Ich noch ein Mal“. — Der Großmüthige, welcher dem Feinde verzeiht und das Böse mit Gutem erwidert, ist erhaben und erhält das höchste Lob; weil er sein selbsteigenes Wesen auch da noch erkannte, wo es sich entschieden verleugnete.
Jede ganz lautere Wohlthat, jede völlig und wahrhaft uneigennützige Hülfe, welche, als solche, ausschließlich die Noth des Andern zum Motiv hat, ist, wenn wir bis auf den letzten Grund forschen, eigentlich eine mysteriöse Handlung, eine praktische Mystik, sofern sie zuletzt aus der selben Erkenntniß, die das Wesen aller eigentlichen Mystik ausmacht, entspringt und auf keine andere Weise mit Wahrheit erklärbar ist. Denn daß Einer auch nur ein Almosen gebe, ohne dabei auf die entfernteste Weise etwas Anderes zu bezwecken, als daß der Mangel, welcher den Andern drückt, gemindert werde, ist nur möglich, sofern er erkennt, daß er selbst es ist, was ihm jetzt unter jener traurigen Gestalt erscheint, also daß er sein eigenes Wesen an sich in der fremden Erscheinung wiedererkenne. Daher habe ich, in der vorigen Abtheilung, das Mitleid das große Mysterium der Ethik genannt.
Wer für sein Vaterland in den Tod geht, ist von der Täuschung frei geworden, welche das Daseyn auf die eigene Person beschränkt: er dehnt sein eigenes Wesen auf seine Landsleute aus, in denen er fortlebt, ja, auf die kommenden Geschlechter derselben, für welche er wirkt; — wobei er den Tod betrachtet, wie das Winken der Augen, welches das Sehen nicht unterbricht.
Der, dem alle Andern stets Nicht-Ich waren, ja, der im Grunde allein seine eigene Person für wahrhaft real hielt, die Andern hingegen eigentlich nur als Phantome ansah, denen er bloß eine relative Existenz, sofern sie Mittel zu seinen Zwecken seyn oder diesen entgegenstehen konnten, zuerkannte, so daß ein unermeßlicher Unterschied, eine tiefe Kluft zwischen seiner Person und allem jenem Nicht-Ich blieb, der also ausschließlich in dieser eigenen Person existirte, dieser sieht, im Tode, mit seinem Selbst auch alle Realität und die ganze Welt untergehen. Hingegen Der, welcher in allen Andern, ja in Allem, was Leben hat, sein eigenes Wesen, sich selbst erblickte, dessen Daseyn daher mit dem Daseyn alles Lebenden zusammenfloß, der verliert durch den Tod nur einen kleinen Theil seines Daseyns: er besteht fort in allen Andern, in welchen er ja sein Wesen und sein Selbst stets erkannt und geliebt hat, und die Täuschung verschwindet, welche sein Bewußtseyn von dem der Uebrigen trennte. Hierauf mag, zwar nicht ganz, aber doch zum großen Theil, die Verschiedenheit beruhen zwischen der Art, wie besonders gute und überwiegend böse Menschen die Todesstunde entgegennehmen. —
In allen Jahrhunderten hat die arme Wahrheit darüber erröthen müssen, daß sie paradox war: und es ist doch nicht ihre Schuld. Sie kann nicht die Gestalt des thronenden allgemeinen Irrthums annehmen. Da sieht sie seufzend auf zu ihrem Schutzgott, der Zeit, welcher ihr Sieg und Ruhm zuwinkt, aber dessen Flügelschläge so groß und langsam sind, daß das Individuum darüber hinstirbt. So bin denn auch ich mir des Paradoxen, welches diese metaphysische Auslegung des ethischen Urphänomens für die an ganz anderartige Begründungen der Ethik gewöhnten occidentalisch Gebildeten haben muß, sehr wohl bewußt, kann jedoch nicht der Wahrheit Gewalt anthun. Vielmehr ist Alles, was ich, aus dieser Rücksicht, über mich vermag, daß ich durch eine Anführung belege, wie jene Metaphysik der Ethik schon vor Jahrtausenden die Grundansicht der Indischen Weisheit war, auf welche ich zurückdeute, wie Kopernikus auf das von Aristoteles und Ptolemäos verdrängte Weltsystem der Pythagoreer. Im Bhagavad-Gita, Lectio 13; 27, 28, heißt es, nach A. W. v. Schlegels Uebersetzung: Eundem in omnibus animantibus consistentem summum dominum, istis pereuntibus haud pereuntem qui cernit, is vere cernit. — Eundem vero cernens ubique praesentem dominum, non violat semet ipsum sua ipsius culpa: exinde pergit ad summum iter.
Bei diesen Andeutungen zur Metaphysik der Ethik muß ich es bewenden lassen, obwohl noch ein bedeutender Schritt in derselben zu thun übrig bleibt. Allein dieser setzt voraus, daß man auch in der Ethik selbst einen Schritt weiter gegangen wäre, welches ich nicht thun durfte, weil in Europa der Ethik ihr höchstes Ziel in der Rechts- und Tugendlehre gesteckt ist, und man was über diese hinausgeht nicht kennt, oder doch nicht gelten läßt. Dieser nothwendigen Unterlassung also ist es zuzuschreiben, daß die dargelegten Umrisse zur Metaphysik der Ethik noch nicht, auch nur aus der Ferne, den Schlußstein des ganzen Gebäudes der Metaphysik, oder den eigentlichen Zusammenhang der Divina Commedia absehen lassen. Dies lag aber auch weder in der Aufgabe, noch in meinem Plan. Denn man kann nicht Alles in Einem Tage sagen, und soll auch nicht mehr antworten, als man gefragt ist.
Indem man sucht, menschliche Erkenntniß und Einsicht zu fördern, wird man stets den Widerstand des Zeitalters empfinden, gleich dem einer Last, die man zu ziehen hätte, und die schwer auf den Boden drückt, aller Anstrengung trotzend. Dann muß man sich trösten mit der Gewißheit, zwar die Vorurtheile gegen sich, aber die Wahrheit für sich zu haben, welche, sobald nur ihr Bundesgenosse, die Zeit, zu ihr gestoßen seyn wird, des Sieges vollkommen gewiß ist, mithin, wenn auch nicht heute, doch morgen.
25 Der Begriff des Guten, in seiner Reinheit, ist ein Urbegriff, „eine absolute Idee, deren Inhalt sich im Unendlichen verliert“.
Bouterweck, praktische Aphorismen, S. 54.
Man sieht, er möchte aus dem schlichten, ja, trivialen Begriff Gut am liebsten einen Διϊπετης machen, um ihn als Götzen im Tempel aufstellen zu können.
26 Die Aechtheit des Oupnekhat war auf Grund einiger, von Mohammedanischen Abschreibern beigefügter und in den Text gerathener Randglossen angefochten worden. Allein sie wird vollkommen vindicirt von dem Sanskrit-Gelehrten F. H. H. Windischmann (dem Sohn) in seinem Sancara, sive de theologumenis Vedanticorum, 1833, p. XIX, ebenfalls von Bochinger, De la vie contemplative chez les Indous, 1831, p. 12. — Sogar der des Sanskrits unkundige Leser kann sich, durch Vergleichung der neueren Uebersetzungen einzelner Upanischaden, von Rammohun Roy, Poley und selbst der von Colebrooke, wie auch der neuesten von Röer, deutlich überzeugen, daß der von Anquetil streng wörtlich ins Lateinische übertragenen Persischen Uebersetzung des Märtyrers dieser Lehre, Sultans Daraschakoh, ein genaues und vollkommenes Wortverständniß zum Grunde gelegen hat; hingegen jene Andern sich großentheils mit Tappen und Errathen geholfen haben, daher sie ganz gewiß viel ungenauer sind. — Näheres hierüber findet man im zweiten Bande der Parerga, Kap. 16, §. 184.
27 On peut assez longtems, chez notre espèce,Fermer la porte à la raison.Mais, dés qu’elle entre avec adresse,Elle reste dans la maison,Et bientôt elle en est maîtresse.
Volt.
Musean translation
Machine-assisted Musean translation made directly from the complete 1860 German edition, including its quotations, author’s notes, prize question and judgment. Source-language reviewed.
Metaphysical Foundation.
We must now leave the firm ground of experience that has supported every step we have taken so far, to seek our final theoretical satisfaction where no experience can ever possibly reach, fortunate if we receive even a hint, a fleeting glimpse, with which we can find some measure of peace. What must not leave us, however, is the honesty of our procedure up to this point. We will not, in the manner of so-called post-Kantian philosophy, indulge in fantasies, serve up fairy tales, seek to overawe the reader with words and throw dust in his eyes. Our promise is a little, honestly offered.
What has served until now as our ground of explanation itself becomes our problem: that natural compassion, innate in every human being and impossible to eradicate, which has proved to be the sole source of nonegoistic actions; and these alone possess moral worth. Many modern philosophers treat the concepts of good and evil as simple concepts, that is, as neither requiring nor admitting of explanation, and then generally speak with great mystery and reverence of an “idea of the good,” which they make the support of their ethics, or at least a cloak for its poverty.25 Their practice obliges me to interpose the explanation that these concepts are anything but simple, let alone given a priori: they express a relation and are drawn from the most everyday experience. Everything that accords with the strivings of any individual will is called good in relation to that will—good food, good roads, a good omen; the opposite is called bad, or, in living beings, evil. A person whose character makes him reluctant to hinder the strivings of others, and instead, so far as he reasonably can, favorable and helpful to them—who therefore does not harm others, but offers them help and support wherever he can—is called by them, in precisely the same respect, a good person. Thus the concept of good is applied to him from the same relative, empirical standpoint, situated in the subject who receives the action. But if we examine such a person's character not merely in relation to others, but in itself, we know from what has gone before that the virtues of justice and human kindness arise in him from an entirely immediate concern for the well-being and suffering of others, whose source we have recognized as compassion. If we return to what is essential in such a character, we undeniably find it in this: he makes less of a distinction between himself and others than other people do. In the eyes of a malicious character this distinction is so great that another's suffering is an immediate pleasure, which he therefore seeks without any further advantage to himself, indeed even against his own advantage. In the egoist's eyes the same distinction is still great enough for him to use great harm to others as a means of obtaining a small advantage for himself. For both, then, there is a wide gulf, a mighty distinction, between the I, which is confined to their own person, and the not-I, which embraces the rest of the world. “Let the world perish, so long as I am safe” is their maxim. For the good person, by contrast, this distinction is by no means so great; indeed, in acts of nobility it appears to be abolished, since another's welfare is advanced at the expense of one's own, and so the other's I is placed on an equal footing with one's own. And where many others are to be saved, one's own I is wholly sacrificed to them, as the individual gives his life for the many.
The question now is whether this latter conception of the relation between one's own I and another's, which underlies the actions of a good character, is mistaken and rests on an illusion; or whether this is rather true of the opposite conception, on which egoism and malice rest.—
The conception underlying egoism is strictly justified empirically. In experience the distinction between one's own person and another's appears absolute. The difference of place that separates me from the other also separates me from his well-being and suffering.—Against this, however, we should first observe that our knowledge of our own self is by no means exhaustive or clear to its deepest ground. Through the intuition that the brain carries out on the data of the senses, and thus indirectly, we know our own body as an object in space; through inner sense we know the continuous sequence of our strivings and acts of will that arise on the occasion of external motives; and finally we know the manifold movements, weaker or stronger, of our own will, to which all inward feelings can be traced. That is all: for knowing is not itself known in turn. The actual substrate of this whole appearance, however, our inner essence in itself, that which itself wills and knows, is inaccessible to us. We look only outward; within, it is dark. Thus our knowledge of ourselves is by no means complete and exhaustive, but very superficial; for the greater, indeed the principal, part, we are unknown to ourselves and a riddle. Or, as Kant says: the I knows itself only as appearance, not according to what it may be in itself. In that other part, which falls within our knowledge, each person is indeed completely different from every other; but it does not yet follow that the same holds for the great and essential part that remains hidden and unknown to each. For this part, then, at least the possibility remains that it is one and identical in all.
On what do all plurality and numerical difference among beings rest?—On space and time: through these alone are they possible, since the many can be thought and represented only as either side by side or one after another. Now, because the many of the same kind are individuals, I call space and time, insofar as they make plurality possible, the principle of individuation, without troubling over whether this is precisely the sense in which the Scholastics used the expression.
If anything in the revelations that Kant's marvelous depth of thought has given the world is indubitably true, it is the transcendental aesthetic: the doctrine, that is, of the ideality of space and time. Its foundation is so clear that no objection with even an appearance of validity has been brought against it. It is Kant's triumph and belongs to the very few metaphysical doctrines that can be regarded as genuinely proved, as actual conquests in the field of metaphysics. According to it, then, space and time are the forms of our own faculty of intuition. They belong to that faculty, not to the things known through it, and therefore can never be determinations of things in themselves. They belong only to their appearance, as alone this is possible in our consciousness of the external world, a consciousness bound to physiological conditions. But if time and space are foreign to the thing in itself, that is, to the world's true essence, plurality must necessarily be foreign to it as well. Consequently, in the countless appearances of this world of the senses it can still be only one, and only that one, identical essence can manifest itself in them all. Conversely, what presents itself as a many, and thus in time and space, cannot be the thing in itself, but only appearance. As such, however, appearance exists only for our consciousness, which is restricted by many kinds of conditions and indeed rests on an organic function; it does not exist outside that consciousness.
This doctrine—that all plurality is only apparent; that in all the individuals of this world, however infinitely numerous they appear, one after another and side by side, there manifests itself only one and the same truly existing essence, present and identical in them all—this doctrine was certainly here long before Kant, indeed, one might say, has always been here. To begin with, it is the chief and fundamental doctrine of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, lies before us in the Upanishads.26 There we find this great doctrine on almost every page, tirelessly repeated in countless turns of phrase and illustrated by manifold images and similes. That it also lay at the foundation of the wisdom of Pythagoras cannot be doubted, even from the meager accounts of his philosophy that have reached us. That it alone contained almost the whole philosophy of the Eleatic school is universally known. Later the Neoplatonists were imbued with it, teaching that “because of the unity of all things, all souls are one” (on account of the unity of all, all souls are one). In the 9th century we see it appear unexpectedly in Europe through Scotus Eriugena, who, inspired by it, strives to clothe it in the forms and expressions of the Christian religion. Among the Mohammedans we find it again as the impassioned mysticism of the Sufis. But in the West Giordano Bruno had to pay with a shameful and agonizing death for his inability to resist the urge to proclaim this truth. Nevertheless, we also see Christian mystics become entangled in it, against their will and intention, whenever and wherever they appear. Spinoza's name is identified with it. Finally, in our own day, after Kant had destroyed the old dogmatism and the world stood aghast before its smoking ruins, this insight was revived by the eclectic philosophy of Schelling. Amalgamating the teachings of Plotinus, Spinoza, Kant, and Jakob Böhme with the results of modern natural science, he hastily put together a whole to meet, for the time being, his contemporaries' urgent need, and then played it out in variations. As a result, this insight has won general acceptance among Germany's scholars and has become almost universally familiar even among the merely educated.27 The only exceptions are today's university philosophers, who have the difficult task of working against so-called pantheism. Plunged thereby into great distress and embarrassment, in their anguish they reach now for the most pitiful sophisms, now for the most bombastic phrases, to patch together some respectable masquerade costume in which to clothe a favored and imposed distaff philosophy. In short, “the one and all” has in every age been the fools' mockery and the wise person's endless meditation. Yet a strict proof of it can be given only from Kant's doctrine, as above—although Kant did not himself give it, but, in the manner of skillful speakers, offered only the premises and left his listeners the pleasure of the conclusion.
If, then, plurality and separateness belong only to mere appearance, and it is one and the same essence that presents itself in everything alive, the conception that abolishes the distinction between I and not-I is not the mistaken one: rather, its opposite must be. We also find the Hindus giving this latter conception the name Maya, that is, appearance, illusion, phantasm. It is the former view that we have found underlying the phenomenon of compassion, and compassion itself to be its real expression. It would therefore be the metaphysical basis of ethics, consisting in one individual's immediately recognizing in the other his own self, his own true essence. Practical wisdom, then—acting justly and doing good—would coincide exactly in its result with the deepest teaching of theoretical wisdom at its furthest reach; and the practical philosopher, that is, the just, the benevolent, the noble person, would merely express in action the same insight that results from the theoretical philosopher's greatest profundity and most laborious inquiry. Yet moral excellence stands higher than all theoretical wisdom, which is always only fragmentary and reaches by the slow path of inference the goal that moral excellence attains at a stroke. The morally noble person, however lacking in intellectual excellence, reveals through his actions the deepest insight, the highest wisdom, and puts the most brilliant and learned person to shame if the latter's conduct betrays that this great truth has remained foreign to his heart.
“Individuation is real; the principle of individuation, and the difference among individuals that rests on it, is the order of things in themselves. Every individual is a being fundamentally different from all others. In my own self alone do I have my true being; everything else, by contrast, is not-I and foreign to me.”—This is the knowledge to whose truth flesh and bone bear witness, which underlies all egoism, and whose real expression is every unloving, unjust, or malicious act.—
“Individuation is mere appearance, arising through space and time, which are nothing more than the forms of all the objects of my cerebral faculty of cognition, conditioned by that faculty; hence the plurality and difference of individuals are also mere appearance, that is, present only in my representation. My true, inner essence exists in every living being as immediately as it reveals itself to me alone in my self-consciousness.”—This knowledge, whose established expression in Sanskrit is the formula tat-twam asi, that is, “this is you,” is what breaks forth as compassion; on it therefore rests all genuine, that is, disinterested virtue, and its real expression is every good deed. It is this knowledge, at the deepest level, to which every appeal to gentleness, to human kindness, to mercy in place of justice is directed; for such an appeal is a reminder of the respect in which we are all one and the same being. Egoism, envy, hatred, persecution, harshness, revenge, pleasure in another's suffering, and cruelty, by contrast, appeal to that first knowledge and find reassurance in it. The emotion and delight we feel on hearing of a noble action, still more on seeing it, and most of all on performing it ourselves, rest at the deepest level on the certainty it gives us that beyond all the plurality and difference of individuals presented to us by the principle of individuation lies a unity that truly exists and is indeed accessible to us, since it has just emerged as a fact.
Depending on which of these two ways of knowing is held to, there appears between one being and another either the love or the strife of Empedocles. But someone animated by strife who advanced in hostility upon his most hated adversary and penetrated to that adversary's deepest interior would, to his surprise, discover himself there. For just as in a dream we ourselves are within every person who appears to us, so it is when we are awake—though not so easy to see. But tat-twam asi.
The predominance of one or the other of these two ways of knowing is revealed not only in individual actions, but in the entire character of consciousness and mood, which is therefore so essentially different in the good character from that in the bad. The latter feels a strong dividing wall everywhere between himself and everything outside him. The world is for him an absolute not-I, and his relation to it is hostile from the outset: thus the fundamental note of his mood becomes spite, suspicion, envy, and pleasure in others' suffering.—The good character, by contrast, lives in an external world of the same nature as his own essence. Others are not for him not-I, but “I once more.” His original relation to everyone is therefore friendly: he feels inwardly akin to all beings, shares immediately in their well-being and suffering, and confidently assumes the same concern in them. From this arise the deep peace within him and that confident, tranquil, contented mood through which everyone feels at ease in his presence.—The evil character does not trust in others' help when he is in need. If he calls for it, he does so without confidence; if he obtains it, he receives it without true gratitude, because he can scarcely understand it except as the effect of others' foolishness. For even after his own essence has made itself known from within another's by unmistakable signs, he remains incapable of recognizing it there. This is the real source of what is outrageous in all ingratitude. The moral isolation in which he essentially and inescapably finds himself also makes him prone to despair.—The good character will ask others for help with as much confidence as he is conscious of his own readiness to help them. For, as I have said, to the one the human world is not-I, to the other “I once more.”—The magnanimous person who forgives his enemy and returns good for evil is sublime and receives the highest praise because he still recognized his very own essence where it decisively denied itself.
Every wholly pure act of beneficence, every completely and truly disinterested act of help, which as such has the other's distress alone as its motive, is, when we inquire to its deepest ground, actually a mysterious action, a practical mysticism: for ultimately it springs from the same knowledge that constitutes the essence of all genuine mysticism, and it cannot truthfully be explained in any other way. For someone to give even alms without having, in the remotest way, any other aim than to lessen the want oppressing the other is possible only insofar as he recognizes that what now appears before him in that sorrowful form is he himself—that is, insofar as he recognizes his own essence in itself in the other's appearance. That is why, in the preceding part, I called compassion the great mystery of ethics.
Someone who goes to his death for his country has freed himself from the illusion that confines existence to his own person. He extends his own essence to his countrymen, in whom he lives on, indeed to their coming generations, for whom he acts; and in doing so regards death as a blink of the eyes, which does not interrupt sight.
Someone for whom all others have always been not-I—indeed, who at bottom considered only his own person truly real, and regarded others merely as phantoms to which he granted only a relative existence, insofar as they could serve as means to his ends or stand in their way, so that an immeasurable difference, a deep gulf, remained between his person and all that not-I—someone, then, who existed exclusively in this person of his own, sees in death all reality and the whole world perish with his self. By contrast, someone who saw in all others, indeed in everything that has life, his own essence, his own self, whose existence therefore flowed together with the existence of everything alive, loses through death only a small part of his existence. He continues in all the others, in whom he has always recognized and loved his essence and his self, and the illusion vanishes that separated his consciousness from that of the rest. On this may rest, not entirely but to a great extent, the difference between the ways in which especially good and predominantly evil people meet the hour of death.—
In every century poor truth has had to blush because it was paradoxical, though it is not her fault. She cannot take on the shape of the universal error enthroned above her. Sighing, she looks up to her protecting god, time, who beckons her toward victory and glory, but whose wingbeats are so vast and slow that the individual dies before they are done. Thus I too am well aware of the paradoxical character this metaphysical interpretation of the primal phenomenon of ethics must have for educated Western readers, accustomed as they are to quite different foundations of ethics; yet I cannot do violence to the truth. All I can bring myself to do on this account is to show by a quotation that this metaphysics of ethics was already the fundamental view of Indian wisdom thousands of years ago. I point back to it as Copernicus pointed back to the Pythagoreans' system of the world, displaced by Aristotle and Ptolemy. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lectio 13; 27, 28, according to A. W. von Schlegel's translation, we read: “He who sees the same supreme lord abiding in all living beings, not perishing when they perish, truly sees.—And seeing the same lord everywhere present, he does not harm himself through his own fault: from there he proceeds to the highest path.”
I must leave these suggestions toward a metaphysics of ethics here, although one significant step in it still remains to be taken. But that presupposes that we had also gone a step further in ethics itself, which I was not permitted to do, since in Europe the highest goal set for ethics is the doctrine of right and virtue, and anything beyond this is unknown or at least unacknowledged. It is to this necessary omission, then, that we must attribute the fact that the outlines of a metaphysics of ethics presented here do not yet reveal, even from afar, the keystone of the whole edifice of metaphysics, or the true connection of the Divine Comedy. But that lay neither in the question nor in my plan. For one cannot say everything in a single day, and should not answer more than one has been asked.
When we seek to advance human knowledge and insight, we will always feel the resistance of the age, like that of a load we had to pull, pressing heavily on the ground and defying every effort. Then we must console ourselves with the certainty that, though we have prejudices against us, we have truth on our side. Once her ally, time, has joined her, she is perfectly certain of victory—if not today, then tomorrow.
25 The concept of the good, in its purity, is a primal concept, “an absolute idea whose content loses itself in infinity.”
Bouterweck, Practical Aphorisms, p. 54.
We see that he would like nothing better than to make the simple, indeed trivial, concept of good into something fallen from heaven, so he could set it up as an idol in the temple.
26 The authenticity of the Oupnekhat had been challenged on the strength of a few marginal glosses added by Mohammedan copyists and incorporated into the text. But it is fully vindicated by the Sanskrit scholar F. H. H. Windischmann (the son) in his Shankara, or On the Theological Doctrines of the Vedantists, 1833, p. XIX, and likewise by Bochinger, On the Contemplative Life Among the Hindus, 1831, p. 12.—Even a reader without Sanskrit can clearly satisfy himself, by comparing the more recent translations of individual Upanishads by Rammohun Roy, Poley, and even Colebrooke, as well as the latest by Röer, that the Persian translation by Sultan Dara Shikoh, the martyr to this doctrine, which Anquetil translated into Latin with strict literalness, rested on an exact and complete understanding of the words; whereas those others largely made do with groping and guesswork, and are therefore certainly much less accurate.—Further details can be found in the second volume of Parerga, ch. 16, §. 184.
27 Among our kind, for quite a time,We can shut the door on reason.But once she deftly makes her entrance,She stays within the house,And soon becomes its mistress.
Volt.
Plain English translation
Independent, machine-assisted Plain English translation made directly from the complete 1860 German edition and its embedded passages. Source-language reviewed.
Metaphysical foundation.
We must now leave the firm ground of experience, which has supported every step we have taken so far. We are to find our final theoretical satisfaction in a region that no experience could possibly reach. We will be fortunate if we gain even a hint, a passing glimpse, that gives us some peace. But what must not leave us is the honesty of our approach so far. We will not follow the so-called post-Kantian philosophy by indulging in fantasies, serving up fairy tales, trying to impress through words, and throwing dust in the reader’s eyes. Our promise is a little, honestly offered.
What has explained things up to this point now becomes our problem itself: that natural compassion which is inborn in every human being and cannot be erased, and which we have found to be the only source of unselfish actions. Only such actions have moral value. Many modern philosophers treat the concepts of good and evil as simple concepts, meaning ones that neither need nor allow explanation. They then usually speak very mysteriously and reverently about an “idea of the good,” which they make the support of their ethics, or at least a cover for its poverty.25 Their approach forces me to explain here that these concepts are anything but simple, much less given a priori. They express a relationship and are drawn from the most everyday experience. Anything that agrees with the efforts of some individual will is called good in relation to it: good food, good roads, a good omen. The opposite is called bad, or, in living beings, evil. A person whose character makes them unwilling to obstruct other people’s efforts, and instead favorable and helpful to them as far as reasonably possible—someone who therefore does not hurt others, but helps and supports them wherever possible—is called a good person by those others for exactly the same reason. So the concept of good is applied to this person from the same relative, experience-based standpoint, located in the person on the receiving end. But if we examine such a person’s character not just in relation to others, but in itself, we know from the preceding discussion that their virtues of justice and love for other people arise from a wholly direct concern for others’ well-being and suffering, whose source we have identified as compassion. If we go back to what is essential in such a character, we undeniably find it in this: this person makes less of a distinction between themselves and others than other people do. In the eyes of a malicious character, this distinction is so great that another person’s suffering is a direct pleasure. They therefore seek it without any further advantage to themselves, and even against their own advantage. In the eyes of an egoist, the same distinction is still great enough for them to use great harm to others as a means of gaining a small advantage for themselves. For both, then, there is a wide gulf, a powerful distinction, between the I, confined to their own person, and the not-I, which includes the rest of the world. “Let the world perish, as long as I am safe” is their rule. For a good person, by contrast, this distinction is by no means so great. Indeed, in acts of generosity it seems to disappear: another person’s well-being is advanced at the cost of one’s own, so that the other person’s I is put on the same level as one’s own. And where many others must be saved, one’s own I is sacrificed to them completely, as one person gives their life for many.
The question now is whether this last way of understanding the relationship between one’s own I and another’s, which underlies the actions of a good character, is mistaken and based on a deception. Or is that true instead of the opposite understanding, on which egoism and malice rest?—
The understanding that underlies egoism is strictly justified by experience. In experience, the distinction between oneself and another person appears absolute. The difference in spatial location that separates me from the other person also separates me from their well-being and suffering.—Against this, however, the first thing to note is that our knowledge of our own selves is by no means exhaustive or clear down to its final ground. Through the perception that the brain produces from the data of the senses, and thus indirectly, we know our own body as an object in space. Through the inner sense, we know the ongoing series of our efforts and acts of will that arise in response to external motives. Finally, we also know the many weaker or stronger movements of our own will to which all our inner feelings can be traced. That is all: for knowing itself is not in turn known. What actually underlies this whole appearance, our inner nature in itself, the very thing that wills and knows, is not accessible to us. We look only outward; inside it is dark. So our knowledge of ourselves is by no means complete and exhaustive. Instead, it is very superficial. For the greater part—indeed, the main part—we are unknown to ourselves and a riddle. Or, as Kant says, the I knows itself only as appearance, not as what it may be in itself. In the other part, the one that enters our knowledge, each of us is certainly completely different from everyone else. But it does not yet follow that the same holds for the large and essential part that remains hidden and unknown to each of us. At least the possibility therefore remains that this part is one and the same in everyone.
What is the basis of all multiplicity and numerical difference among beings?—Space and time. Only these make it possible, since we can think of and represent many things only as either side by side or one after another. Now, many things of the same kind are individuals. So I call space and time, insofar as they make multiplicity possible, the principle of individuation, without worrying whether this is exactly the sense in which the Scholastics used that expression.
If anything in the insights that Kant’s astonishing depth of thought gave the world is unquestionably true, it is the transcendental aesthetic: the doctrine that space and time are ideal. Its basis is so clear that no objection with any appearance of validity has been found against it. It is Kant’s triumph and one of the very few metaphysical doctrines that can be regarded as genuinely proved, as actual conquests in the field of metaphysics. According to it, then, space and time are the forms of our own faculty of perception. They belong to this faculty, not to the things known through it, and therefore can never be characteristics of things as they are in themselves. They belong only to the appearance of those things, as this alone is possible in our consciousness of the outside world, which is tied to physiological conditions. But if time and space do not belong to the thing in itself, that is, to the true nature of the world, then multiplicity necessarily does not belong to it either. Consequently, even in the countless appearances of this world of the senses, it can only be one. Only the one and identical being can manifest itself in them all. Conversely, what presents itself as many, and therefore in time and space, cannot be the thing in itself, but only appearance. As such, appearance exists only for our consciousness, which is restricted by many conditions and indeed rests on an organic function. It does not exist outside that consciousness.
This doctrine—that all multiplicity is only apparent, that in all the individuals of this world, however infinitely many appear one after another and side by side, only one and the same truly existing being manifests itself, present and identical in them all—certainly existed long before Kant. Indeed, one might say it has always existed. First of all, it is the chief and fundamental teaching of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose doctrinal part, or rather esoteric teaching, we have in the Upanishads.26 There we find this great teaching on almost every page. It is tirelessly repeated in countless turns of phrase and explained through many images and comparisons. Even from the scant reports of his philosophy that have reached us, there can be no doubt at all that it also lay at the foundation of the wisdom of Pythagoras. Everyone knows that almost the entire philosophy of the Eleatic school was contained in this doctrine alone. Later the Neoplatonists were steeped in it, teaching “that because all things are one, all souls are one” (that because of the unity of all things, all souls are one). In the 9th century we see it unexpectedly appear in Europe through Scotus Eriugena, who, inspired by it, tries to dress it in the forms and expressions of the Christian religion. Among the Muslims we find it again as the inspired mysticism of the Sufis. But in the West, Giordano Bruno had to pay with a disgraceful and agonizing death for being unable to resist the urge to state this truth. Nevertheless, we also see Christian mystics become entangled in it against their will and intention, whenever and wherever they appear. Spinoza’s name is identified with it. Finally, in our own day, after Kant had destroyed the old dogmatism and the world stood in alarm before its smoking ruins, this insight was revived by the eclectic philosophy of Schelling. He combined the teachings of Plotinus, Spinoza, Kant, and Jakob Böhme with the results of modern natural science. He hurriedly assembled a whole to satisfy his contemporaries’ urgent need for the time being, then played it through with variations. As a result, this insight has gained general acceptance among German scholars and has become almost universally known even among the merely educated.27 The only exceptions are today’s university philosophers. They have the difficult task of working against so-called pantheism. This puts them in great distress and embarrassment, and in their anxiety they reach now for the most pitiful sophistries, now for the most bombastic phrases, to patch together some respectable costume in which to dress an approved and officially imposed spinning-wheel philosophy. In short, “the One and All” has always been the fools’ joke and the wise person’s endless subject of meditation. Yet a strict proof of it can be given only from Kant’s doctrine, as was done above. Kant himself did not do this, but, like a clever speaker, gave only the premises, leaving his listeners the pleasure of drawing the conclusion.
If multiplicity and separateness therefore belong only to mere appearance, and it is one and the same being that presents itself in everything alive, then the understanding that removes the distinction between I and not-I is not the mistaken one. Rather, the opposite understanding must be mistaken. We also find the Hindus calling this latter understanding Maya, meaning appearance, deception, illusion. We have found the former view to underlie the phenomenon of compassion, and indeed found compassion to be its actual expression. It would therefore be the metaphysical basis of ethics, and would consist in one individual directly recognizing in another themselves, their own true being. In that case, practical wisdom—acting justly and doing good—would agree exactly in its result with the deepest teaching of theoretical wisdom at its furthest reach. The practical philosopher, meaning the just, charitable, generous person, would express through action only the same insight that is the result of the theoretical philosopher’s deepest thought and most laborious research. Yet moral excellence stands higher than all theoretical wisdom. The latter always remains fragmentary and reaches by a slow chain of inferences the goal that moral excellence reaches at once. Through their actions, a morally noble person, however much they may lack intellectual excellence, displays the deepest insight and highest wisdom. They put the greatest genius and most learned scholar to shame if that person’s actions reveal that this great truth has remained foreign to their heart.
“Individuation is real. The principle of individuation and the difference between individuals that rests on it are the order of things as they are in themselves. Each individual is a being fundamentally different from all others. Only in my own self do I have my true existence; everything else, by contrast, is not-I and foreign to me.”—This is the understanding whose truth flesh and bone bear witness to, which underlies all egoism, and whose actual expression is every unloving, unjust, or malicious action.—
“Individuation is mere appearance, produced through space and time, which are nothing more than the forms of all the objects of my brain’s faculty of knowledge, forms conditioned by that faculty. Therefore the multiplicity and difference of individuals are also mere appearance: they exist only in my representation. My true inner being exists in every living thing just as directly as it reveals itself to me alone in my self-consciousness.”—This understanding, for which the formula tat-twam asi, that is, “this is you,” is the standard expression in Sanskrit, is what breaks through as compassion. All genuine, that is, unselfish virtue therefore rests on it, and every good deed is its actual expression. Ultimately it is to this understanding that every appeal for kindness, for love of others, for mercy instead of strict justice is directed. Such an appeal reminds us of the respect in which we are all one and the same being. Egoism, envy, hatred, persecution, harshness, revenge, pleasure in others’ suffering, and cruelty, by contrast, appeal to the first understanding and find reassurance in it. We feel moved and delighted when we hear about a noble action, still more when we see one, and most of all when we do one ourselves. At the deepest level, this feeling rests on the action’s giving us certainty that beyond all the multiplicity and difference of individuals that the principle of individuation sets before us, there is a unity among them. This unity truly exists and is even accessible to us, since it has just appeared in actual fact.
Depending on which of these two ways of understanding we hold to, either the love or the strife of Empedocles appears between one being and another. But if someone filled with strife were to attack their most hated enemy and penetrate to that enemy’s deepest inner core, they would be surprised to discover themselves there. For just as we ourselves are present in all the people who appear to us in dreams, the same is true when we are awake, though it is not so easy to see. But tat-twam asi.
The predominance of one or the other of these two ways of understanding shows itself not only in individual actions, but in the whole character of a person’s consciousness and mood. These are therefore essentially different in a good character from what they are in a bad one. The latter everywhere feels a strong dividing wall between themselves and everything outside them. To them the world is an absolute not-I, and their relation to it is hostile from the start. As a result, the basic tone of their mood is spite, suspicion, envy, and pleasure in others’ suffering.—A good character, by contrast, lives in an outside world of the same nature as their own being. Other people are not a not-I to them, but “I once again.” So their original relation to everyone is friendly. They feel inwardly related to all beings, take a direct interest in their well-being and suffering, and confidently assume the same interest on their part. This produces the deep peace within them and that confident, calm, contented mood which makes everyone feel comfortable in their company.—A bad character does not trust in help from others when in need. If they ask for it, they do so without confidence. If they receive it, they do so without real gratitude, because they can hardly understand it as anything but the effect of others’ foolishness. They are still unable to recognize their own being in another, even after it has made itself known from that other person through unmistakable signs. This is really what makes all ingratitude so outrageous. This moral isolation, in which they essentially and inescapably find themselves, also makes them easily fall into despair.—A good character will ask for help from others with as much confidence as they are aware of their own readiness to help them. For, as I said, to one person the human world is not-I; to the other, “I once again.”—The generous person who forgives an enemy and returns good for evil is sublime and receives the highest praise, because they recognized their very own being even where it decisively denied itself.
Every wholly pure act of kindness, every completely and truly unselfish act of help, which as such has the other person’s need as its only motive, is really, if we investigate down to its ultimate ground, a mysterious action, a practical mysticism. Ultimately it comes from the same understanding that constitutes the essence of all genuine mysticism, and it cannot truthfully be explained in any other way. For someone to give even alms without aiming, in the remotest way, at anything other than relieving the hardship that weighs on the other person is possible only insofar as they recognize that it is they themselves who now appear before them in that sad form. They recognize their own being in itself in the other person’s appearance. This is why, in the preceding part, I called compassion the great mystery of ethics.
Someone who dies for their country has freed themselves from the illusion that confines existence to their own person. They extend their own being to their fellow citizens, in whom they live on, and even to future generations of those citizens, for whom they act. They regard death as the blinking of the eyes, which does not interrupt sight.
Consider the person to whom all others have always been not-I, who at bottom considered only their own person truly real. They saw others, strictly speaking, only as phantoms, granting them merely a relative existence insofar as they could serve or oppose their purposes. Thus an immeasurable difference, a deep gulf, remained between their person and all that not-I. Since they existed exclusively in their own person, they see all reality and the whole world perish with their self in death. By contrast, consider someone who saw their own being, themselves, in all others, indeed in everything alive, so that their existence merged with that of all living things. Through death this person loses only a small part of their existence. They continue in all the others, in whom they have always recognized and loved their being and their self. The illusion that separated their consciousness from everyone else’s disappears. This may explain, if not entirely, at least a large part of the difference between the way especially good people and predominantly evil people face the hour of death.—
In every century, poor truth has had to blush because it was paradoxical, though this is not its fault. It cannot take on the shape of the prevailing error enthroned above all. So it sighs and looks up to its protecting god, Time, who beckons it toward victory and fame, but whose wingbeats are so vast and slow that the individual dies in the meantime. I too am therefore very well aware of how paradoxical this metaphysical explanation of the basic ethical phenomenon must seem to educated Westerners accustomed to entirely different foundations of ethics. But I cannot do violence to the truth. The most I can bring myself to do in this regard is to give a quotation showing how, thousands of years ago, this metaphysics of ethics was already the fundamental view of Indian wisdom. I point back to that wisdom as Copernicus pointed back to the Pythagoreans’ system of the universe, which Aristotle and Ptolemy had displaced. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lectio 13; 27, 28, according to A. W. von Schlegel’s translation, it says: “Whoever sees the same supreme lord present in all living things, not perishing when they perish, truly sees.—And seeing the same lord present everywhere, one does not harm oneself through one’s own fault: from there one proceeds to the highest path.”
I must stop with these suggestions toward a metaphysics of ethics, although a further important step remains to be taken in it. But that step presupposes that we had gone a step further in ethics itself, which I was not allowed to do. In Europe, ethics is assigned its highest goal in the teaching of justice and virtue, and what goes beyond these is either unknown or at least not accepted. It is therefore because of this necessary omission that the outlines of a metaphysics of ethics given here do not yet let us glimpse, even from a distance, the keystone of the whole structure of metaphysics, or the actual coherence of the Divine Comedy. But this was neither part of the question nor of my plan. For one cannot say everything in a single day, and one should not answer more than one is asked.
Whenever we try to advance human knowledge and understanding, we will always feel the resistance of the age. It is like a load we have to pull, pressing heavily on the ground and defying every effort. Then we must take comfort in the certainty that, though prejudice is against us, truth is on our side. As soon as its ally, time, has joined it, truth is completely certain of victory—if not today, then tomorrow.
25 The concept of the good, in its purity, is a basic concept, “an absolute idea, whose content loses itself in infinity.”
Bouterweck, Practical Aphorisms, p. 54.
As we can see, he would like nothing better than to turn the simple, indeed trivial concept good into something fallen from Zeus, so that he could set it up as an idol in the temple.
26 The authenticity of the Oupnekhat had been challenged on the basis of a few marginal comments added by Muslim copyists that had found their way into the text. But it is fully vindicated by the Sanskrit scholar F. H. H. Windischmann (the son) in his Shankara, or On the Theological Doctrines of the Vedantists, 1833, p. XIX, and also by Bochinger, On the Contemplative Life among the Hindus, 1831, p. 12.—Even a reader who knows no Sanskrit can clearly establish the following by comparing the more recent translations of individual Upanishads by Rammohun Roy, Poley, and even Colebrooke, as well as the latest ones by Röer: the Persian translation by Sultan Dara Shikoh, the martyr of this doctrine, which Anquetil translated into Latin with strict literalness, was based on an exact and complete understanding of the words. The others, by contrast, largely made do with groping and guessing, and are therefore certainly much less accurate.—Further details can be found in the second volume of Supplementary Writings, ch. 16, §. 184.
27 Among our species, we can for quite a long timeKeep the door closed to reason.But once it skillfully comes inside,It stays in the house,And soon it is the one in charge.
Volt.
About this section
Section 22 is part of On the Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 23 of 24 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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