Preface to the First Edition
Original German
Wie dieses Buch zu lesen sei, um möglicherweise verstanden werden zu können, habe ich hier anzugeben mir vorgesetzt. — Was durch dasselbe mitgetheilt werden soll, ist ein einziger Gedanke. Dennoch konnte ich, aller Bemühungen ungeachtet, keinen kürzern Weg ihn mitzutheilen finden, als dieses ganze Buch. — Ich halte jenen Gedanken für Dasjenige, was man unter dem Namen der Philosophie sehr lange gesucht hat, und dessen Auffindung, eben daher, von den historisch Gebildeten für so unmöglich gehalten wird, wie die des Steines der Weisen, obgleich ihnen schon Plinius sagte: Quam multa fieri non posse, priusquam sint facta, judicantur? (Hist. nat., 7, 1.)
Je nachdem man jenen einen mitzutheilenden Gedanken von verschiedenen Seiten betrachtet, zeigt er sich als Das, was man Metaphysik, Das, was man Ethik und Das, was man Aesthetik genannt hat; und freilich müßte er auch dieses alles seyn, wenn er wäre, wofür ich ihn, wie schon eingestanden, halte.
Ein System von Gedanken muß allemal einen architektonischen Zusammenhang haben, d. h. einen solchen, in welchem immer ein Theil den andern trägt, nicht aber dieser auch jenen, der Grundstein endlich alle, ohne von ihnen getragen zu werden, der Gipfel getragen wird, ohne zu tragen. Hingegen ein einziger Gedanke muß, so umfassend er auch seyn mag, die vollkommenste Einheit bewahren. Läßt er dennoch, zum Behuf seiner Mittheilung, sich in Theile zerlegen; so muß doch wieder der Zusammenhang dieser Theile ein organischer, d. h. ein solcher seyn, wo jeder Theil ebenso sehr das Ganze erhält, als er vom Ganzen gehalten wird, keiner der erste und keiner der letzte ist, der ganze Gedanke durch jeden Theil an Deutlichkeit gewinnt und auch der kleinste Theil nicht völlig verstanden werden kann, ohne daß schon das Ganze vorher verstanden sei. — Ein Buch muß inzwischen eine erste und eine letzte Zeile haben und wird insofern einem Organismus allemal sehr unähnlich bleiben, so sehr diesem ähnlich auch immer sein Inhalt seyn mag: folglich werden Form und Stoff hier im Widerspruch stehen.
Es ergiebt sich von selbst, daß, unter solchen Umständen, zum Eindringen in den dargelegten Gedanken, kein anderer Rath ist, als das Buch zwei Mal zu lesen und zwar das erste Mal mit vieler Geduld, welche allein zu schöpfen ist aus dem freiwillig geschenkten Glauben, daß der Anfang das Ende beinahe so sehr voraussetze, als das Ende den Anfang, und eben so jeder frühere Theil den spätern beinahe so sehr, als dieser jenen. Ich sage „beinahe“: denn ganz und gar so ist es keineswegs, und was irgend zu thun möglich war, um Das, welches am wenigsten erst durch das Folgende aufgeklärt wird, voranzuschicken, wie überhaupt, was irgend zur möglichst leichten Faßlichkeit und Deutlichkeit beitragen konnte, ist redlich und gewissenhaft geschehen: ja, es könnte sogar damit in gewissem Grade gelungen seyn, wenn nicht der Leser, was sehr natürlich ist, nicht bloß an das jedesmal Gesagte, sondern auch an die möglichen Folgerungen daraus, beim Lesen dächte, wodurch, außer den vielen wirklich vorhandenen Widersprüchen gegen die Meinungen der Zeit und muthmaaßlich auch des Lesers, noch so viele andere anticipirte und imaginäre hinzukommen können, daß dann als lebhafte Mißbilligung sich darstellen muß, was noch bloßes Mißverstehen ist, wofür man es aber um so weniger erkennt, als die mühsam erreichte Klarheit der Darstellung und Deutlichkeit des Ausdrucks über den unmittelbaren Sinn des Gesagten wohl nie zweifelhaft läßt, jedoch nicht seine Beziehungen auf alles Uebrige zugleich aussprechen kann. Darum also erfordert die erste Lektüre, wie gesagt, Geduld, aus der Zuversicht geschöpft, bei der zweiten Vieles, oder Alles, in ganz anderem Lichte erblicken zu werden. Uebrigens muß das ernstliche Streben nach völliger und selbst leichter Verständlichkeit, bei einem sehr schwierigen Gegenstande, es rechtfertigen, wenn hier und dort sich eine Wiederholung findet. Schon der organische, nicht kettenartige Bau des Ganzen machte es nöthig, bisweilen dieselbe Stelle zwei Mal zu berühren. Eben dieser Bau auch und der sehr enge Zusammenhang aller Theile hat die mir sonst sehr schätzbare Eintheilung in Kapitel und Paragraphen nicht zugelassen; sondern mich genöthigt, es bei vier Hauptabtheilungen, gleichsam vier Gesichtspunkten des einen Gedankens, bewenden zu lassen. In jedem dieser vier Bücher hat man sich besonders zu hüten, nicht über die nothwendig abzuhandelnden Einzelheiten den Hauptgedanken, dem sie angehören, und die Fortschreitung der ganzen Darstellung aus den Augen zu verlieren. — Hiemit ist nun die erste und, gleich den folgenden, unerlaßliche Forderung an den (dem Philosophen, eben weil der Leser selbst einer ist) ungeneigten Leser ausgesprochen.
Die zweite Forderung ist diese, daß man vor dem Buche die Einleitung zu demselben lese, obgleich sie nicht mit in dem Buche steht, sondern fünf Jahre früher erschienen ist, unter dem Titel: „Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde: eine philosophische Abhandlung.“ — Ohne Bekanntschaft mit dieser Einleitung und Propädeutik ist das eigentliche Verständniß gegenwärtiger Schrift ganz und gar nicht möglich, und der Inhalt jener Abhandlung wird hier überall so vorausgesetzt, als stände sie mit im Buche. Uebrigens würde sie, wenn sie diesem nicht schon um mehrere Jahre vorangegangen wäre, doch wohl nicht eigentlich als Einleitung ihm vorstehen, sondern dem ersten Buch einverleibt seyn, welches jetzt, indem das in der Abhandlung Gesagte ihm fehlt, eine gewisse Unvollkommenheit schon durch diese Lücken zeigt, welche es immer durch Berufen auf jene Abhandlung ausfüllen muß. Indessen war mein Widerwille, mich selbst abzuschreiben, oder das schon einmal zur Genüge Gesagte mühsälig unter andern Worten nochmals vorzubringen, so groß, daß ich diesen Weg vorzog, ungeachtet ich sogar jetzt dem Inhalt jener Abhandlung eine etwas bessere Darstellung geben könnte, zumal indem ich sie von manchen, aus meiner damaligen zu großen Befangenheit in der Kantischen Philosophie herrührenden Begriffen reinigte, als da sind: Kategorien, äußerer und innerer Sinn u. dgl. Indessen stehen auch dort jene Begriffe nur noch weil ich mich bis dahin nie eigentlich tief mit ihnen eingelassen hatte, daher nur als Nebenwerk und ganz außer Berührung mit der Hauptsache, weshalb denn auch die Berichtigung solcher Stellen jener Abhandlung, durch die Bekanntschaft mit gegenwärtiger Schrift, sich in den Gedanken des Lesers ganz von selbst machen wird. — Aber allein wenn man durch jene Abhandlung vollständig erkannt hat, was der Satz vom Grunde sei und bedeute, worauf und worauf nicht sich seine Gültigkeit erstrecke, und daß nicht vor allen Dingen jener Satz, und erst in Folge und Gemäßheit desselben, gleichsam als sein Korrolarium, die ganze Welt sei; sondern er vielmehr nichts weiter ist, als die Form, in der das stets durch das Subjekt bedingte Objekt, welcher Art es auch sei, überall erkannt wird, sofern das Subjekt ein erkennendes Individuum ist: nur dann wird es möglich seyn, auf die hier zuerst versuchte, von allen bisherigen völlig abweichende Methode des Philosophirens einzugehen.
Allein der selbe Widerwille, mich selbst wörtlich abzuschreiben, oder aber auch mit anderen und schlechteren Worten, nachdem ich mir die besseren selbst vorweggenommen, zum zweiten Male ganz das Selbe zu sagen, hat noch eine zweite Lücke im ersten Buche dieser Schrift veranlaßt, indem ich alles Dasjenige weggelassen habe, was im ersten Kapitel meiner Abhandlung „Ueber das Sehen und die Farben“ steht und sonst hier wörtlich seine Stelle gefunden hätte. Also auch die Bekanntschaft mit dieser frühern kleinen Schrift wird hier vorausgesetzt.
Die dritte an den Leser zu machende Forderung endlich könnte sogar stillschweigend vorausgesetzt werden: denn es ist keine andere, als die der Bekanntschaft mit der wichtigsten Erscheinung, welche seit zwei Jahrtausenden in der Philosophie hervorgetreten ist und uns so nahe liegt: ich meyne die Hauptschriften Kant's. Die Wirkung, welche sie in dem Geiste, zu welchem sie wirklich reden, hervorbringen, finde ich in der That, wie wohl schon sonst gesagt worden, der Staaroperation am Blinden gar sehr zu vergleichen: und wenn wir das Gleichniß fortsetzen wollen, so ist mein Zweck dadurch zu bezeichnen, daß ich Denen, an welchen jene Operation gelungen ist, eine Staarbrille habe in die Hand geben wollen, zu deren Gebrauch also jene Operation selbst die nothwendigste Bedingung ist. — So sehr ich demnach von Dem ausgehe, was der große Kant geleistet hat; so hat dennoch eben das ernstliche Studium seiner Schriften mich bedeutende Fehler in denselben entdecken lassen, welche ich aussondern und als verwerflich darstellen mußte, um das Wahre und Vortreffliche seiner Lehre rein davon und geläutert voraussetzen und anwenden zu können. Um aber nicht meine eigene Darstellung durch häufige Polemik gegen Kant zu unterbrechen und zu verwirren, habe ich diese in einen besondern Anhang gebracht. So sehr nun, dem Gesagten zufolge, meine Schrift die Bekanntschaft mit der Kantischen Philosophie voraussetzt; so sehr setzt sie also auch die Bekanntschaft mit jenem Anhange voraus: daher es in dieser Rücksicht rathsam wäre, den Anhang zuerst zu lesen, um so mehr, als der Inhalt desselben gerade zum ersten Buche gegenwärtiger Schrift genaue Beziehungen hat. Andererseits konnte, der Natur der Sache nach, es nicht vermieden werden, daß nicht auch der Anhang hin und wieder sich auf die Schrift selbst beriefe: daraus nichts anderes folgt; als daß er eben sowohl, als der Haupttheil des Werkes, zwei Mal gelesen werden muß.
Kants Philosophie also ist die einzige, mit welcher eine gründliche Bekanntschaft bei dem hier Vorzutragenden geradezu vorausgesetzt wird. — Wenn aber überdies noch der Leser in der Schule des göttlichen Platon geweilt hat; so wird er um so besser vorbereitet und empfänglicher seyn, mich zu hören. Ist er aber gar noch der Wohlthat der Veda's theilhaft geworden, deren uns durch die Upanischaden eröffneter Zugang, in meinen Augen, der größte Vorzug ist, den dieses noch junge Jahrhundert vor den früheren aufzuweisen hat, indem ich vermuthe, daß der Einfluß der Sanskrit-Litteratur nicht weniger tief eingreifen wird, als im 15. Jahrhundert die Wiederbelebung der Griechischen: hat also, sage ich, der Leser auch schon die Weihe uralter Indischer Weisheit empfangen und empfänglich aufgenommen; dann ist er auf das allerbeste bereitet zu hören, was ich ihm vorzutragen habe. Ihn wird es dann nicht, wie manchen Andern fremd, ja feindlich ansprechen; da ich, wenn es nicht zu stolz klänge, behaupten möchte, daß jeder von den einzelnen und abgerissenen Aussprüchen, welche die Upanischaden ausmachen, sich als Folgesatz aus dem von mir mitzutheilenden Gedanken ableiten ließe, obgleich keineswegs auch umgekehrt dieser schon dort zu finden ist.
Aber schon sind die meisten Leser ungeduldig aufgefahren und in den mühsam so lange zurückgehaltenen Vorwurf ausgebrochen, wie ich doch wagen könne, dem Publikum ein Buch unter Forderungen und Bedingungen, von denen die beiden ersten anmaaßend und ganz unbescheiden sind, vorzulegen, und dies zu einer Zeit, wo ein so allgemeiner Reichthum an eigenthümlichen Gedanken ist, daß in Deutschland allein solche jährlich in drei Tausend gehaltreichen, originellen und ganz unentbehrlichen Werken, und außerdem in unzähligen periodischen Schriften, oder gar täglichen Blättern, durch die Druckerpresse zum Gemeingute gemacht werden? zu einer Zeit, wo besonders an ganz originellen und tiefen Philosophen nicht der mindeste Mangel ist; sondern allein in Deutschland deren mehr zugleich leben, als sonst etliche Jahrhunderte hintereinander aufzuweisen hatten? wie man denn, frägt der entrüstete Leser, zu Ende kommen solle, wenn man mit einem Buche so umständlich zu Werke gehen müßte?
Da ich gegen solche Vorwürfe nicht das Mindeste vorzubringen habe, hoffe ich nur auf einigen Dank bei diesen Lesern dafür, daß ich sie bei Zeiten gewarnt habe, damit sie keine Stunde verlieren mit einem Buche, dessen Durchlesung ohne Erfüllung der gemachten Forderungen nicht fruchten könnte und daher ganz zu unterlassen ist, zumal da auch sonst gar Vieles zu wetten, daß es ihnen nicht zusagen kann, daß es vielmehr immer nur paucorum hominum seyn wird und daher gelassen und bescheiden auf die Wenigen warten muß, deren ungewöhnliche Denkungsart es genießbar fände. Denn, auch abgesehen von den Weitläuftigkeiten und der Anstrengung, die es dem Leser zumuthet, welcher Gebildete dieser Zeit, deren Wissen dem herrlichen Punkte nahe gekommen ist, wo parador und falsch ganz einerlei sind, könnte es ertragen, fast auf jeder Seite Gedanken zu begegnen, die Dem, was er doch selbst ein für allemal als wahr und ausgemacht festgesetzt hat, geradezu widersprechen? Und dann, wie unangenehm wird Mancher sich getäuscht finden, wenn er hier gar keine Rede antrifft von Dem, was er gerade hier durchaus suchen zu müssen glaubt, weil seine Art zu spekuliren zusammentrifft mit der eines noch lebenden großen Philosophen [1], welcher wahrhaft rührende Bücher geschrieben und nur die kleine Schwachheit hat, Alles, was er vor seinem funfzehnten Jahre gelernt und approbirt hat, für angeborne Grundgedanken des menschlichen Geistes zu halten. Wer möchte alles dies ertragen? Daher mein Rath ist, das Buch nur wieder wegzulegen.
Allein ich fürchte selbst so nicht loszukommen. Der bis zur Vorrede, die ihn abweist, gelangte Leser hat das Buch für baares Geld gekauft und frägt, was ihn schadlos hält? — Meine letzte Zuflucht ist jetzt, ihn zu erinnern, daß er ein Buch, auch ohne es gerade zu lesen, doch auf mancherlei Art zu benutzen weiß. Es kann, so gut wie viele andere, eine Lücke seiner Bibliothek ausfüllen, wo es sich, sauber gebunden, gewiß gut ausnehmen wird. Oder auch er kann es seiner gelehrten Freundin auf die Toilette, oder den Theetisch legen. Oder endlich er kann ja, was gewiß das Beste von Allem ist und ich besonders rathe, es recensiren.
2 F. H. Jacobi.
Und so, nachdem ich mir den Scherz erlaubt, welchem eine Stelle zu gönnen in diesem durchweg zweideutigen Leben kaum irgend ein Blatt zu ernsthaft seyn kann, gebe ich mit innigem Ernst das Buch hin, in der Zuversicht, daß es früh oder spät Diejenigen erreichen wird, an welche es allein gerichtet seyn kann, und übrigens gelassen darin ergeben, daß auch ihm in vollem Maaße das Schicksal werde, welches in jeder Erkenntniß, also um so mehr in der wichtigsten, allezeit der Wahrheit zu Theil ward, der nur ein kurzes Siegesfest beschieden ist, zwischen den beiden langen Zeiträumen, wo sie als parador verdammt und als trivial geringgeschätzt wird. Auch pflegt das erstere Schicksal ihren Urheber mitzutreffen. — Aber das Leben ist kurz und die Wahrheit wirkt ferne und lebt lange: sagen wir die Wahrheit.
(Geschrieben zu Dresden im August 1818.)
Musean translation
Mouseia's complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the three prefaces, the four books with paragraphs 1 to 71, and the appendix on Kant, made directly from the corrected German text of the third edition (Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1859), with the printed page consulted wherever a reading was in doubt. Footnote numbers are this edition's own, assigned in reading order, so note calls and the notes they point to can differ; a few notes the scan cut short end where the printed page ends.
I have set myself here to state how this book is to be read, if it is to have any chance of being understood.—What it is meant to communicate is a single thought. Yet for all my efforts I could find no shorter way of communicating it than this whole book.—I hold that thought to be what has been sought for so very long under the name of philosophy, and whose discovery is, for that very reason, held by the historically educated to be as impossible as the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, although Pliny had already told them: Quam multa fieri non posse, priusquam sint facta, judicantur? (Hist. nat., 7, 1.)
According to the side from which one regards that one thought to be communicated, it shows itself as what has been called metaphysics, as what has been called ethics, and as what has been called aesthetics; and indeed it would have to be all of these, if it were what I, as already admitted, take it to be.
A system of thoughts must always have an architectonic coherence, that is, one in which a part always supports another, but the other does not in turn support the first; in which the foundation-stone in the end bears all the rest without being borne by them, and the summit is borne without bearing. A single thought, on the other hand, however comprehensive it may be, must preserve the most perfect unity. If, for the sake of communicating it, it nevertheless allows itself to be broken into parts, then the connection of these parts must again be an organic one, that is, one in which every part sustains the whole just as much as it is held by the whole; in which none is first and none last; in which the whole thought gains in clarity through each part, and even the smallest part cannot be fully understood unless the whole has already been understood beforehand.—A book, meanwhile, must have a first line and a last, and to that extent will always remain very unlike an organism, however much its content may resemble one: consequently form and matter will here stand in contradiction.
It follows of itself that, in such circumstances, there is no other counsel for penetrating the thought set forth than to read the book twice, and the first time with great patience—a patience to be drawn only from the freely granted belief that the beginning presupposes the end almost as much as the end presupposes the beginning, and likewise every earlier part the later almost as much as the later the earlier. I say “almost”: for it is by no means altogether so; and whatever could possibly be done to place first that which is least in need of being elucidated by what follows, as indeed whatever could contribute to the greatest possible ease of comprehension and clarity, has been done honestly and conscientiously. Indeed, to a certain degree this might even have succeeded, if the reader, as is very natural, did not in reading think merely of what is said at any given moment but also of the possible consequences to be drawn from it. For then, in addition to the many contradictions that are really present with the opinions of the age and, presumably, of the reader, so many other anticipated and imaginary ones may be added that what is still mere misunderstanding must present itself as lively disapproval; and one recognizes it for misunderstanding all the less, since the laboriously achieved clarity of the presentation and distinctness of the expression, though they never leave the immediate sense of what is said in doubt, cannot at the same time state its relations to everything else. Therefore the first reading requires, as I said, patience, drawn from the confidence that on the second one will see much, or everything, in an entirely different light. Moreover, the earnest striving for complete and even easy intelligibility, in a very difficult subject, must justify my repeating myself here and there. The very structure of the whole, organic and not chain-like, made it necessary at times to touch on the same passage twice. This same structure, and the very close interconnection of all the parts, also did not permit the division into chapters and paragraphs, otherwise so valuable to me, but compelled me to rest content with four main divisions, four viewpoints, as it were, of the one thought. In each of these four books one must be especially on guard against losing sight, over the particulars that must necessarily be treated, of the main thought to which they belong and of the progress of the whole exposition.—With this the first demand has now been made, and, like the following ones, an indispensable one, upon the reader who is ill disposed toward the philosopher, precisely because the reader is a philosopher too.
The second demand is this: that one read the introduction to the book before the book itself, although it does not stand in the book but appeared five years earlier, under the title “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Philosophical Treatise.”—Without acquaintance with this introduction and propaedeutic a real understanding of the present work is altogether impossible, and the content of that treatise is everywhere presupposed here as though it stood in the book. Moreover, had it not already preceded this work by several years, it would not properly stand before it as an introduction but would have been incorporated into the first book; and that book, now lacking what is said in the treatise, shows a certain imperfection through these very gaps, which it must always fill by appealing to that treatise. Yet my aversion to copying myself out, or to laboriously presenting once more in other words what had already been said sufficiently, was so great that I preferred this course, even though I could now give the content of that treatise a somewhat better presentation, above all by purging it of certain concepts that spring from my then excessive captivity in the Kantian philosophy, such as categories, outer and inner sense, and the like. Yet even there those concepts stand only as a side matter, because until then I had never really engaged deeply with them, and so quite out of contact with the main point; hence the correction of such passages in that treatise will come about of itself in the reader’s thoughts, through acquaintance with the present work.—But only if one has fully recognized, through that treatise, what the principle of sufficient reason is and means, to what its validity extends and to what it does not; and that it is not the case that this principle comes before all things, and only in consequence and in conformity with it, as its corollary, so to speak, the whole world exists; but that it is rather nothing more than the form in which the object, of whatever kind, always conditioned by the subject, is everywhere known, insofar as the subject is a knowing individual: only then will it be possible to enter upon the method of philosophizing attempted here for the first time, a method wholly different from all that have gone before.
But the same aversion to copying myself out word for word, or else, having already taken the better words for myself, to say the very same thing a second time in other and worse ones, has occasioned a second gap in the first book of this work, in that I have left out everything that stands in the first chapter of my treatise “On Vision and Colors” and that would otherwise have found its place here verbatim. So acquaintance with this earlier little work too is presupposed here.
The third demand to be made upon the reader could in the end even be presupposed tacitly: for it is none other than acquaintance with the most important phenomenon to have appeared in philosophy for two thousand years, and one that lies so near to us: I mean the principal writings of Kant. The effect they produce in the mind to which they really speak I find indeed, as has been said before, to be very much comparable to the operation for cataract on the blind; and if we wish to carry the simile further, my aim may be described by saying that I wished to put a pair of cataract glasses into the hands of those on whom that operation has succeeded, and for the use of which that operation itself is therefore the most necessary condition.—Much as I therefore proceed from what the great Kant has achieved, the earnest study of his writings has nonetheless let me discover significant errors in them, which I had to sift out and present as untenable, in order to be able to presuppose and apply the true and excellent part of the teaching, freed from them and purified. But so as not to interrupt and confuse my own exposition with frequent polemic against Kant, I have put this in a separate appendix. Much as my work, in accordance with what has been said, presupposes acquaintance with the Kantian philosophy, so much does it also presuppose acquaintance with that appendix; hence in this respect it would be advisable to read the appendix first, all the more as its content bears precisely on the first book of the present work. On the other hand, by the nature of the case, it could not be avoided that the appendix too should here and there refer to the work itself; from which nothing else follows than that it, just as much as the main part of the work, must be read twice.
Kant’s philosophy, then, is the only one with which a thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what is to be set forth here.—If, however, the reader has besides lingered in the school of the divine Plato, they will be the better prepared, and the more receptive, to hear me. But if they have even become partakers of the benefit of the Vedas, access to which, opened to us by the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage this still young century has to show over earlier ones, since I suspect that the influence of Sanskrit literature will penetrate no less deeply than the revival of Greek literature did in the fifteenth century: if, I say, the reader has also already received the consecration of primeval Indian wisdom and taken it up receptively, then they are best of all prepared to hear what I have to present. It will then not strike them as foreign, or even hostile, as it does many others; for I would like to maintain, if it did not sound too proud, that each of the individual and detached utterances which make up the Upanishads could be derived as a consequence from the thought I have to communicate, although by no means is the converse the case, that this thought is already to be found there.
But most readers have already started up impatiently and broken out into the reproach so laboriously held back for so long: how can I dare to lay before the public a book under demands and conditions of which the first two are presumptuous and quite immodest, and this at a time when there is such a general wealth of original thoughts that in Germany alone they are made common property each year by the printing press in three thousand substantial, original and wholly indispensable works, and besides in countless periodicals, or even daily papers? at a time when there is above all not the slightest lack of quite original and profound philosophers, but when in Germany alone more of them live at once than other ages could show in several centuries running? how, asks the indignant reader, is one ever to get through, if one must go to work so circumstantially with a single book?
Since I have not the slightest thing to set against such reproaches, I hope only for some thanks from these readers for having warned them in good time, so that they may lose no hour over a book whose perusal, without fulfillment of the demands made, could bring no profit and is therefore to be left off altogether; the more so as there is in any case every chance, indeed much to bet, that it cannot please them, that it will rather always be only paucorum hominum, and must therefore wait calmly and modestly for the few whose unusual way of thinking would find it palatable. For, quite apart from the prolixities and the exertion that it demands of the reader, what educated person of this age, whose knowledge has come close to that glorious point where paradoxical and false are quite one and the same, could bear to meet on almost every page with thoughts that flatly contradict what they have themselves once and for all settled as true and established? And then, how unpleasantly many a reader will find themselves disappointed, on finding here no mention at all of what they believe they absolutely must look for here, because their way of speculating coincides with that of a great philosopher still living [1], who has written truly touching books and whose one small weakness is to hold everything learned and approved before the age of fifteen to be innate fundamental thoughts of the human mind. Who would want to bear all this? Hence my advice is simply to put the book away again.
But I fear that even so I shall not get free of them. The reader who has got as far as the preface that turns them away has bought the book for cash, and asks what is to compensate them?—My last refuge is now to remind them that a book, even without actually reading it, can be put to use in many ways. It can, like many others, fill a gap in their library, where, neatly bound, it will certainly look well. Or they can lay it on the dressing table or tea table of their learned lady friend. Or, finally, they can—what is certainly the best of all, and what I particularly advise—review it.
2 F. H. Jacobi.
And so, having permitted myself the jest, to which in this thoroughly equivocal life hardly any page can be too serious to grant a place, I hand over the book in deep earnest, in the confidence that sooner or later it will reach those to whom alone it can be addressed, and for the rest calmly resigned that it too will meet in full measure the fate that in every kind of knowledge, and so the more in the most important, has always fallen to truth, for which only a brief festival of victory is ordained, between the two long periods in which it is condemned as paradoxical and slighted as trivial. The former fate, moreover, usually strikes its author as well.—But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
(Written at Dresden in August 1818.)
Plain English translation
Mouseia's complete machine-assisted Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same corrected German text of the 1859 third edition, then reviewed section by section against that German base and corrected, with the printed page consulted wherever a reading was in doubt. Footnote numbers are this edition's own, assigned in reading order, so note calls and the notes they point to can differ; a few notes the scan cut short end where the printed page ends.
I have set myself the task of explaining here how this book should be read if there is to be any chance of understanding it.—What the book is meant to communicate is a single thought. Yet in spite of every effort, I could find no shorter way to communicate it than this whole book.—I believe this thought is what people have been searching for, for a very long time, under the name of philosophy. That is exactly why people with a historical education consider it as impossible to find as the philosopher’s stone, even though Pliny already told them: Quam multa fieri non posse, priusquam sint facta, judicantur? (Hist. nat., 7, 1.)
Depending on which side you look at this one thought from, it shows up as what people have called metaphysics, as what they have called ethics, and as what they have called aesthetics. And of course it would have to be all of these, if it is what I, as I have already admitted, take it to be.
A system of thoughts must always have an architectural structure. That means one in which each part supports another, but the other does not also support the first. The foundation stone finally supports all the rest without being supported by any of them, and the top is supported without supporting anything. A single thought, on the other hand, however wide-reaching it may be, must keep the most perfect unity. If it can still be broken into parts to make it communicable, then the connection between those parts must again be organic. That means each part sustains the whole just as much as the whole holds it up. No part is first and none is last. The whole thought becomes clearer through every part, and even the smallest part cannot be fully understood unless the whole has been understood beforehand.—A book, however, has to have a first line and a last line. To that extent it will always remain very unlike an organism, however much its content may resemble one. So form and material are in conflict here.
It follows of itself that, in these circumstances, there is no way into the thought set out here except to read the book twice. The first time calls for a great deal of patience. That patience can only come from a freely given belief that the beginning presupposes the end almost as much as the end presupposes the beginning, and that every earlier part likewise presupposes the later ones almost as much as they presuppose it. I say “almost,” because it is by no means entirely so. I have done honestly and conscientiously everything that could be done to put first whatever depends least on being explained by what follows. I have done the same for everything that could make the book as easy to grasp and as clear as possible. I might even have succeeded to some degree, if readers did not, quite naturally, think as they read not only about what is said at each point but also about what might follow from it. That adds so many anticipated and imaginary contradictions to the many real contradictions with the opinions of the time (and presumably with the reader’s own) that what is still only a misunderstanding has to look like strong disapproval. The reader recognizes it as a misunderstanding all the less because the clear presentation and distinct expression I worked hard to achieve never leave the immediate meaning of what is said in doubt, yet cannot also state its relations to everything else at the same moment. So, as I said, the first reading calls for patience, drawn from the confidence that on the second reading you will see much, or everything, in a quite different light. Besides, the serious effort to be fully understandable, and even easily understandable, on a very difficult subject must justify a repetition here and there. The organic structure of the whole, which is not a chain, already made it necessary at times to touch the same passage twice. This same structure, and the very close connection of all the parts, also did not allow the division into chapters and sections, which I would otherwise value highly. It forced me to leave it at four main divisions, four viewpoints, so to speak, of the one thought. In each of these four books one has to take special care not to lose sight of the main thought they belong to, or of the progress of the whole presentation, because of the details that have to be dealt with along the way.—This, then, is the first demand, and like the ones that follow it, it is indispensable. I make it of a reader who is ill disposed toward the philosopher, precisely because the reader is a philosopher too.
The second demand is this: that before reading the book you read its introduction. It is not in the book. It appeared five years earlier, under the title “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Philosophical Essay.”—Without knowing this introduction and preparatory study, a real understanding of the present work is quite impossible, and the content of that essay is presupposed everywhere here as if it were part of the book. In fact, if it had not already come out several years before this book, it would not really stand in front of it as an introduction. It would be built into the first book. That book now lacks what the essay says, and this lack already makes it incomplete in a certain way. It always has to fill the gaps by referring to the essay. But my reluctance to copy myself, or to laboriously say again in other words what had already been said well enough once, was so great that I chose this way. I chose it even though I could now present the content of that essay somewhat better, above all by cleaning it of certain concepts that come from my then excessive entanglement in Kant’s philosophy: the categories, outer and inner sense, and the like. Even there, though, these concepts appear only as side matter, quite apart from the main point, because up to then I had never really gone deeply into them. So getting to know the present work will correct such passages of that essay in the reader’s mind quite by itself.—But only if that essay has given you a complete grasp of what the principle of sufficient reason is and means, how far its validity reaches and where it does not, and that this principle is not first of all things, with the whole world following from it as its corollary; rather it is nothing more than the form in which the object (which is always conditioned by the subject, whatever kind of object it is) is known everywhere, insofar as the subject is a knowing individual: only then will it be possible to enter into the way of philosophizing that is attempted here for the first time and that departs completely from all earlier ones.
But the same reluctance to copy myself word for word, or else, after I had used up the better words, to say exactly the same thing a second time in other and worse ones, has caused a second gap in the first book of this work. I have left out everything that is in the first chapter of my essay “On Vision and Colors,” which would otherwise have found its place here word for word. So familiarity with that earlier little work is also presupposed here.
The third demand I make of the reader could even be left unspoken. It is nothing other than familiarity with the most important event in philosophy in the last two thousand years, one that lies so close to us. I mean the main works of Kant. I find that the effect they have on a mind they really speak to is very much like a cataract operation on a blind person, as has been said before. If we carry the comparison further, my aim can be described like this: I wanted to put a pair of cataract glasses into the hands of those on whom the operation has succeeded. The operation itself is therefore the necessary condition for using the glasses.—Much as I start from what the great Kant accomplished, serious study of his writings has nevertheless shown me significant errors in them. I had to separate these out and present them as unacceptable, so that I could assume and apply what is true and excellent in his teaching, free of them and purified. But so as not to interrupt and confuse my own presentation with frequent polemic against Kant, I have put that polemic into a separate appendix. Just as my work, as I have said, presupposes familiarity with Kant’s philosophy, it also presupposes familiarity with that appendix. In this respect it would be advisable to read the appendix first, all the more because its content is closely related to the first book of the present work. On the other hand, given the nature of the subject, it could not be avoided that the appendix itself should now and then refer to the work proper. The only conclusion from that is that the appendix, just like the main part of the work, has to be read twice.
Kant’s philosophy, then, is the only one with which a thorough familiarity is directly presupposed for what is to be presented here.—If the reader has also spent time in the school of the divine Plato, the reader will be that much better prepared and more ready to listen to me. And if the reader has also come to share in the benefit of the Vedas, then better still. The access to them that the Upanishads have opened to us is, in my eyes, the greatest advantage this still young century has over earlier ones. I suspect that the influence of Sanskrit literature will cut no less deep than the revival of Greek literature did in the 15th century. So, I say, if the reader has also received the consecration of ancient Indian wisdom and taken it in with an open mind, then the reader is as well prepared as possible to hear what I have to say. It will not strike such a reader as strange, or even hostile, as it does some others. If it did not sound too proud, I would claim that each of the individual, disconnected sayings that make up the Upanishads could be derived as a consequence from the thought I have to communicate, although by no means can this thought, conversely, already be found there.
But most readers have already started up in impatience and burst out with the reproach they have held back with such effort for so long. How can I dare, they ask, to put a book before the public with demands and conditions, the first two of which are presumptuous and quite immodest? And at a time when there is such a general wealth of original thought that in Germany alone it is made common property by the printing press every year in three thousand substantial, original and entirely indispensable works, and besides that in countless periodicals and even daily papers? At a time when there is not the slightest shortage of original and deep philosophers, and more of them are alive at once in Germany alone than other times could show in several centuries one after another? How, the indignant reader asks, is anyone ever to finish reading, if one had to go to such lengths over a single book?
I have nothing at all to say against such reproaches. So I hope only for some thanks from these readers for warning them in good time, so that they do not lose an hour on a book that could do them no good to read without meeting the demands I made, and that should therefore be left alone altogether. There are, besides, plenty of other reasons to bet that it cannot please them, and that it will always be only paucorum hominum and must therefore wait calmly and modestly for the few whose unusual way of thinking would find it enjoyable. For even leaving aside the length and the effort it demands of the reader, what educated person of this age, whose knowledge has come close to the glorious point where paradoxical and false are the same thing, could stand running into thoughts on almost every page that flatly contradict what that person has settled once and for all as true and certain? And then, how unpleasantly disappointed many people will be to find no mention here of what they feel they must look for here above all, because their way of speculating coincides with that of a great philosopher who is still alive [1]. He has written truly touching books, and his one small weakness is that he takes everything he learned and approved before his fifteenth year to be innate basic ideas of the human mind. Who could stand all this? So my advice is simply to put the book down again.
But I fear that even so I will not get rid of them. A reader who has got as far as the preface that turns him away has bought the book for cash and asks what will make up for his loss.—My last refuge is to remind him that a book can be put to use in various ways even without being read. Like many others, it can fill a gap in his library, where, neatly bound, it will certainly look good. Or he can lay it on the dressing table or the tea table of his learned lady friend. Or finally, he can review it. That is surely the best of all, and I especially recommend it.
2 F. H. Jacobi.
And so, having allowed myself the joke (and in this thoroughly ambiguous life hardly any page is too serious to give a joke a place), I hand over the book in deep earnest. I am confident that sooner or later it will reach those to whom alone it can be addressed. For the rest, I calmly accept that it will meet in full measure the fate that has always fallen to truth in every kind of knowledge, and so all the more in the most important kind. Truth is granted only a short festival of victory, between the two long periods when it is condemned as paradoxical and then dismissed as trivial. The first fate usually strikes its author too.—But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
(Written at Dresden in August 1818.)
About this section
Preface to the First Edition is part of The World as Will and Representation, Volume I 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 book 1 of 8 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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