(Critical Studies in German Idealism 19) Stéphane Symons-The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics-Brill Academic Publishers (2015)

The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics
Critical Studies in German

Idealism
Series Editor
Paul G. Cobben
Advisory Board
Simon Critchley Paul Cruysberghs Rzsa Erzsbet Garth Green

Vittorio Hsle Francesca Menegoni Martin Moors Michael Quante
Ludwig Siep Timo Slootweg Klaus Vieweg
VOLUME 15
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/csgi

The Marriage of Aesthetics
and Ethics
Edited By
Stphane Symons
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Symons, Stphane (Philosopher)

The marriage of aesthetics and ethics / by Stephane Symons.
pages cm. (Critical studies in German idealism, ISSN 1878-9986 ; volume 15)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-29882-8 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN 978-90-04-29881-1 (e-book) 1.Ethics. 2.Aesthetics.
3.Arts and morals. 4.ArtMoral and ethical aspects. 5.Idealism, German. 6.Marriage. 7.Friendship.
I. Title.
BJ46.S96 2015
170dc23
2015023725
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual Brill typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1878-9986
isbn 978-90-04-29882-8 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-29881-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive,
Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents
Contributorsvii
Introduction1
Stphane Symons
Part 1
Friendship and Love
1 A Bushel of Salt: On Aesthetics and Ethics in Friendship9

Karl Verstrynge
2 Recapturing the Self: Montaigne on Friendship, Self-Knowledge,

and the Art of Living27
Vincent Caudron
3 The Singularity of Friendship: On Kierkegaard and Friends46

Anne Christine Habbard
4 A Garon has the Whole World for a Bride Or: On the Bliss
of Marriage63
Walter Jaeschke
Part 2
Aesthetics and Ethics in the Context of German Idealism
5 Remember that All Poetry is to Be Regarded as a Work of Love:

Ethics and Aesthetics in Schleiermacher81
Andreas Arndt
6 Hegels Concept of Pathos as the Keeper of the Marriage between

Aesthetics and Ethics95
Paul Cobben
7 In Search of a Second Ethics: From Kant to Kierkegaard110

Paul Cruysberghs
vi contents
8 The Kantian Sublime: A Feeling of Superiority?151

Gerbert Faure
9 Kants Transcendental Reflection: An Indispensable Element

of the Philosophy of Culture169
Simon Truwant
10 Adornos Response to Kierkegaard: The Ethical Validity

of the Aesthetic?185
Margherita Tonon
Part 3
Post-Hegelian Thinkers on Art and Aesthetics
11 The Aesthetic Act as Interface between Theory and Praxis203

Baldine Saint Girons
12 Leap into the Surface: Photography, Repetition,

and Recollection220
Stphane Symons
13 Jonny Greenwood vs. Johannes Brahms: Alliances and Displacement

in There Will Be Blood234
Marlies De Munck
14 Pathology and the Search for a Modern Ethics in the Writings

of Robert Musil251
Stijn De Cauwer
15 The Gnostic Sur in Surrealism: On Transcendence and Modern

Art276
Willem Styfhals
Index296
Contributors
Andreas Arndt
is Professor at the Humboldt-Universitt in Berlin and at the Berlin-
Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. His most recent book is the
2013 volume Friedrich Schleiermacher als Philosoph.
Vincent Caudron
studied philosophy and international and comparative politics at KU Leuven.
He is currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy
(Husserl Archives) at KU Leuven, where he also teaches a course on philo-
sophical methodology. His research focuses on the concepts of human nature,
autonomy, and self-knowledge in early modern French philosophy.
Stijn De Cauwer
is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Foundation Flanders. His
book A Diagnosis of Modern Life: Robert Musils Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
as a Critical-Utopian Project was published in 2014 by Peter Lang.
Paul Cobben
is Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University in The Netherlands. His publi-
cations focus mainly on practical philosophy, combining a systematic and his-
torical approach. Among his books are Das endliche Selbst (1999), Das Gesetz
der multikulturellen Gesellschaft (2002), Hegel-Lexikon (ed.), (2006), The Nature
of the Self: Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality (2009), Institutions
of Education: Then and Today (ed.) (2010), and The Paradigm of Recognition:
Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death (2012).
Paul Cruysberghs
is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven. He has pub-
lished widely on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sren Kierkegaard, as well as
on aesthetics in general. He has also edited numerous volumes on Hegel for
Akademie Verlag (Berlin).
Marlies De Munck
obtained her PhD in philosophy from KU Leuven and is currently a member of
the Department of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp. Her main research
interests are aesthetics and the philosophy of music.
viii contributors
Gerbert Faure
holds a PhD from the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven. His doctoral thesis
investigated the relationship between the concept of morality and the con-
cept of free will. Other research topics include the philosophical relevance of
Richard Wagners operas and the experience of meaning in art.

is a former student of the cole Normale Suprieure in Paris and Matre de
Confrences in philosophy at the University of Lille, France. She is currently
visiting professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
in Pakistan. She has worked extensively on Sren Kierkegaard, and her current
focus is on political philosophy and the philosophy of space.
Walter Jaeschke
is the Director of the Hegel Archives at Ruhr University Bochum, and he is in
charge of the publication of the collected works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel. His most recent book publication is Die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie
nach Kant: Systeme der reinen Vernunft und ihre Kritik 17851845 (2012, co-
authored with Andreas Arndt).

is Professor of Aesthetics and specialises in seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century thought. She teaches at the Universit de Paris X, Nanterre, and is a
member of the Institut Universitaire de France.
Willem Styfhals
is a PhD student in philosophy at KU Leuven and is a member of the Institute of
Philosophys Centre for Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Culture. Currently,
he is also a research fellow at the Research Foundation Flanders. His doctoral
research focuses on the notion of Gnosticism in postwar German theories of
secularisation. He is interested in twentieth-century intellectual history and
continental philosophy. More specific areas of interest include the philosophy
of history, the philosophy of religion, the theory of secularisation, and modern
Jewish thought.
Stphane Symons
is Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture at the Institute
of Philosophy, KU Leuven. He works mainly on nineteenth- and twentieth-
century continental thought. His book Walter Benjamin: Presence of Mind,
Failure to Comprehend was published in 2013 by Brill.
contributors ix
Margherita Tonon
obtained her PhD in philosophy from KU Leuven. She is the author of For
the Sake of the Possible: Negative Dialectics in Kierkegaard and Adorno (forth-
coming 2015), is co-editor (with Alison Assiter) of Kierkegaard and the Political
(2012), and has written numerous articles on German Idealism and criti-
cal theory, with specific reference to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sren
Kierkegaard, and Theodor Adorno. She currently lives and lectures in Limerick,
Ireland.
Simon Truwant
is a doctoral researcher at KU Leuven and a research fellow at the Research
Foundation Flanders. His research focuses on the philosophy of Immanuel
Kant and its influence on the thought of Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, and
Emmanuel Levinas.
Karl Verstrynge
is Professor of Philosophy and Applied Ethics in the Department of Philosophy
and Moral Sciences and the Department of Communication Studies at the Free
University of Brussels (VUB). He is currently President of the Centre for Ethics
and Humanism, Chairman of the editorial board of Kierkegaard Werken, and
co-editor of the periodical Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook (Walter De Gruyter).
His publications focus mainly on existentialism (most notably Kierkegaard),
existentialist themes, and media-related ethical issues.
Introduction
Stphane Symons
In his essay Vermeer in Bosnia, the American writer and essayist Lawrence
Weschler looks back on a short visit that he made, in the mid-1990s, to the
Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague. After taking in the endless reports
of witnesses, who recount the most horrible experiences one can(not) imagine,
Weschler sits down with the president of the court, the Italian jurist Antonio
Cassese. His foremost question is how one can possibly maintain ones san-
ity if one is confronted on a daily basis with the greatest evil that can come
as a result of human actions. Ah, Cassese answered with a smile, you see,
as often as possible I make my way over to the Mauritshuis Museum, in the
center of the town, so as to spend a little time with the Vermeers.1 Cassese
adds to this that Vermeers paintings radiate a centeredness, a peacefulness,
a serenity and, in Weschlers words, a sufficiency, a sense of perfectly equi-
poised grace.2 What is most intriguing to Weschler is that Vermeer painted his
images of calm and peacefulness when all Europe had, in fact, become Bosnia,
that is, when violence and destruction were wreaking havoc on an unprece-
dented scale throughout the entire continent. It now seemed to me, writes
Weschler, sitting among the Vermeers that afternoon at the Mauritshuis, that
that was precisely what the Master of Delft had been about in his lifes work:
At a tremendously turbulent juncture in the history of his continent, he had
been findingand yes, inventinga zone filled with peace, a small room, an
intimate vision [...] and then breathing it out.3
Forty years earlier, in a text that is equally touching, the Ukraine-born author
Vasily Grossman had already recounted a similar experience. Grossman is
standing in front of Raphaels The Sistine Madonna, which, having been looted
from the Dresden Art Gallery during World War II, is now being exhibited in
Moscows Pushkin Museum for one last time before being returned home to
Germany. The year is 1955: 1945 is but a mere breath away, and none of the
events that will ultimately lead to 1989 can already be anticipated. Grossman,
who was among the first to write about the concentration camps (his text The
Hell of Treblinka (late 1944) was one of the first articles in any language about
1 Lawrence Weschler, Vermeer in Bosnia, in Vermeer in Bosnia (New York: Pantheon Books,
2004), 14.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., 18.
koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 5|doi .63/9789004298811_002

2 Symons
the Nazi death camps), cannot turn away from Raphaels image. My confusion
of feeling, he writes,
was nothing like the days of tears and joy I had known when I first read
War and Peace at the age of fifteen, nor did it resemble what I had felt
when I listened to Beethoven during a particularly somber and difficult
time of my life. And then I realized that the vision of a young mother with
a child in her arms had taken me back not to a book, not to a piece of
music, but to Treblinka [...] It was she, treading lightly on her little bare
feet, who had walked over the swaying earth of Treblinka; it was she who
had walked from the station, from where the transports were unloaded,
to the gas chambers. I knew her by the expression on her face, by the look
in her eyes. I saw her son and recognized him by the strange, un-childlike
look on his own face. This was how mothers and children looked, this was
how they were in their souls when they saw, against the dark green of the
pine trees, the white walls of the Treblinka gas chambers.4
What is most moving in Grossmans account is that this image of a child being
held forward to meet his fate is described as a reminder that, even during
the cruelest of times, what is human in man has not been allowed to perish.
Indeed, for Grossman, The Sistine Madonna shares in the very darkest days of
human history, but it emerges from them unscathed: Having set out to meet
the most extreme form of violence, it has not succumbed to it. The painting,
writes Grossman, tells us how precious, how splendid life has to be, and that
no force in the world can compel life to change into some other thing that,
however it may resemble life, is no longer life. The power of life, the power of
what is human in man, is very great, and even the mightiest and most perfect
violence cannot enslave this power: it can only kill it. This is why the faces of
mother and child are so calm: they are invincible. Lifes destruction, even in
our iron age, is not its defeat.5
The present volume is dedicated to this complex relationship between art
and morality or, to put it differently, to the issue of whether and how the beau-
tiful can relate to the good. These discussions are as old as Western thought in
general, and, moreover, they have rarely disappeared from sight, usually hold-
ing on to the central position that Plato had bestowed on them long ago. It is, of
course, hardly remarkable that the long history of these discussions has done
4 Vasily Grossman, The Sistine Madonna, in The Road, ed. Robert Chandler (New York: New
York Review Books, 2010), 16869.
5 Ibid., 17273.
Introduction 3
nothing to take away the complexity of the issues that are at stake. Quite the
contrary, it seems that the rare attempt to solve these problems once and for
all has only amounted to ever new ones, opening up novel fields of inquiry. Leo
Tolstoy, for instance, has famously argued that what is beautiful is not just irre-
ducible to what is good, but, what is more, that both are to be sharply opposed
to each other: While the good presupposes the capacity to set aside ones per-
sonal interests and intimate longings, the beautiful indicates the very realm
where these are being played out. Nevertheless, despite this strict separation
between the beautiful and the good, almost no other author has gone so far in
forging a connection between aesthetics and ethics (and religion), since, for
Tolstoy, [b]y calling up the feelings of brotherhood and love in people under
imaginary conditions, religious art will accustom people to experiencing the
same feelings in reality under the same conditions.6 Artistic creation denotes
a capacity to communicate and thus to bring together and unify or, in short, to
build up an ethos or community. A century earlier, Kants use of the concept of
the symbolic to indicate the complexity of the relationship between the beau-
tiful and the good was therefore already a particularly apt one. Beauty, that is,
cannot be said to represent the good in a direct manner, and art cannot for
this reason be said to illustrate or exemplify the ethically valuable, as if what
would ultimately count in a work of art is the moral lesson that we can draw
from it. Indeed, if there is anything to be learnt from the specific power that,
after all these centuries, still clings to the works of old masters such as Raphael
and Vermeer, it is precisely that what is truly good does not survive the attempt
to make it real in an immediate manner. That is to say, the serenity and grace of
The Sistine Madonna and the calm splendour of the View of Delft do not grant
a positive and direct view on what is good, and they do not give us any moral
advice. Not even these images will ever be able to shake off the reference to the
dark and troubled world in which they have continued to exist for hundreds
of years. Still, images such as these have managed to carve out a (negative)
space that cannot be reduced to the vicissitudes pertaining to the realm we
have come to call historyeven though they cannot be simply detached from
them either. For this reason, the discussion about the beautiful and the good
inevitably leads to the question of love. For, as we already know from Platos
Symposium, on account of the complex and indirect nature of the relation-
ship between the beautiful and the good, a midpoint is desperately longed
for. Love is this midpoint: not a divine or supra-human love that has always
remained remote from the realm in which we live our ordinary lives (in short,
6 Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (London: Penguin
Books, 1995 [1897]), 166.
4 Symons
not the love that Raphael and Vermeer are traditionally associated with), but a
love that can only be called human because it continues to be experienced in
a world that, in fact, does not seem to deserve it. Such a love is never simply a
given, and it will never be regarded as evident: It is, on the contrary, always to
a certain extent in excess of itself, since nowhere in this world does it seem to
find a firm ground to justify its continued existence. Still, such love is human
precisely because it can do away with any authority coming from elsewhere:
It does not need the backing of anything supra-human or supra-historical
to survive. Such love is a love in spite of all, and it manages to mediate
between the beautiful and the good, between the world at hand and the uni-
verse we long for, precisely because it knows how to measure the distance
between both. Raphaels Sistine Madonna is indeed, as Grossman puts it, a
part of our life; she is our contemporary [...] She has walked alongside us; she
has traveled for six weeks in a screeching train, picking lice out of her sons soft,
unwashed hair.7
The present volume deals with these historical and complex debates in a
threefold manner. The first part of the volume is dedicated to a discussion of
the nature of love and friendship. Karl Verstrynge, Vincent Caudron, Anne
Christine Habbard, and Walter Jaeschke deal with the many philosophical
stakes that the concepts of friendship and love come together with, drawing
from authors and philosophers from Aristotle to Derrida, from Montaigne
to Kierkegaard, and from Hegel to Blanchot. The second part of the volume
explores the crucial importance of the connection between aesthetics and
ethics in the philosophy of German Idealism in the broad sense of that term.
Andreas Arndt, Paul Cobben, Paul Cruysberghs, Gerbert Faure, Simon Truwant,
and Margherita Tonon focus on the significance of this discussion in the works
of, amongst others, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Cassirer,
and Adorno. The third part of the volume is dedicated to analyses of specific
works of art and artists. Baldine Saint Girons, Stphane Symons, Marlies De
Munck, Stijn De Cauwer, and Willem Styfhals explore the ethical relevance of
artistic activity itself and the connection between ethical issues and aesthetic
issues in such artistic genres as photography, film, music, literature, and the
visual arts.
A number of people have played a crucial role in realising this ambitious
project, and so the final paragraph of this introduction has therefore been
reserved for a word of thanks. First of all, thanks are due to Paul Cruysberghs, in
whose honour these texts were written and brought together. During a career
of more than forty years, Paul has taught thousands of students, introduced
7 Grossman, The Sistine Madonna, 17071.

Introduction 5
the writings of Hegel and Kierkegaard to dozens of colleagues and scholars,

commented on numerous works for the Dutch Kierkegaard edition, and helped
organise the academic research on German Idealism in the Low Countries.
What is more, Paul has successfully gone through all three of Kierkegaards
stages (in both directions, it sometimes seems), all the while remaining a sup-
portive and generous presence at the Institute of Philosophy of KU Leuven
and KULAK (Kortrijk). I thank him for this and wish him all the best with his
present and future endeavours. Many and sincere thanks are also due to Paul
Cobben for his support of and confidence in this project from a very early
stage onward; to Ryan Wines, Joris Spigt and Erica Harris for their transla-
tions; to Laura Smith and Samuel OConnor Perks for their proofreading; and
to Meghan Connolly, Michael Helfield and Michael J. Mozina for their profes-
sional assistance in preparing the manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank all
the contributors for the texts they have written and their permission to include
them in this volume.
part 1
Friendship and Love

CHAPTER 1
A Bushel of Salt: On Aesthetics and Ethics

in Friendship
Karl Verstrynge
Addressing philosophers or a philosophical public with an essay on friend-

ship is a remarkable thing to do. It is remarkable for different and perhaps
contradictory reasons. First of all, when one is elaborating on the nature of
friendship in front of an audience or a reading public of philosophers, one
may be doing something quite obvious, if not entirely self-evident. Along with
Giorgio Agamben, one may claim that philosophers have a natural interest in
the theme of friendship.1 According to the Italian philosopher, the intimacy
between friendship and philosophy is such that the very activity of the phi-
losopher (i.e., the philos), the love of and longing for wisdom, presupposes
a loving friendship and thus situates friendship at the very heart of philoso-
phy. Indeed, the relation between philosophers and the wisdom they aim to
achieve can be described in terms of friendship: Like a friend, wisdom is cher-
ished and looked forward to, but we must always keep in mind that it cannot be
claimed or possessed, that it escapes us the very moment we claim it, and that
we should be receptive to it and avoid trying to dominate itjust like a friend
should be supported and welcomed, not controlled, manipulated, or taken for
granted. Hence, from the very early roots of philosophy on, the privileged con-
text for discussing the nature of philosophy, according to Agamben, is when
one is entre amis. One may wonder, however, whether the professional and
academic philosophers of our age still have the freedom and the uninhibited
state of mind to carry out that task among friends, and with Agamben we
may ask whether this consubstantiality of friendship and philosophy has not
fallen apart.
A second reason, however, that makes it remarkable to address a philosoph-
ically minded public with reflections on the nature of friendship is the very
presence of friends (at least one friend, for whom this liber amicorum has been
compiled) within the (reading) public. A certain philosophical tradition has
strong reservations about the possibility of discussing the nature of and the
1 Giorgio Agamben, Friendship, Contretemps 5 (2004): 27. With regard to all other works
cited in this paper, all translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

10 Verstrynge
grounds for friendship when friends are around. When casting a glance at the
history of philosophy, it is striking that a returning theme in many reflections
on friendship concerns how it is impossible for friends to make explicit what
it is that turns one another into friends. Among friends, so that philosophi-
cal tradition claims, the reasons for friendship cannot be uttered or broached
without harming the friendship itself. Talking with a friend about the reasons
for ones friendshipwhich, as we just saw, is in many ways a philosophical
actmeans putting ones friendship at risk. All the great canonical medita-
tions on friendship,2 as Jacques Derrida characterised them, find out that
something unutterable, something that resists all explanation, is situated at
the very heart of friendshipor should we write (at least preliminarily) the
very heart of true friendship?
What is it that makes a philosophical talk about friendship, in the midst of
friends, wicked, harsh, and perhaps impossible? Can one discuss the theme
of friendship; can one justifiably try to unravel the nature of friendship when
friends are around? Is one able to utter words about friendships true, ambiv-
alent, and perhaps unutterable nature when, in the presence of friends, the
very existence of that friendship is (probably) at risk? And if the discussion of
friendship is built on sandy ground, then how can friends avoid the abyss that,
in spite of their friendship, will open up beneath them?
1 Lower and Perfect Friendships
The most influential chapters on the theme of friendship in philosophys long

and storied history are no doubt those written by Aristotle. By distinguish-
ing three basic kinds of friendship, the Greek philosopher set the tone for an
understanding of friendship that has spread over several philosophical tradi-
tions and that still resonates, albeit at different pitches, in present-day debates
about its nature. In Books VIII and IX of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle starts
his meditation on friendship with a consideration of those friendships that are
situated on a lower level and that are predominantly based on either utility or
pleasure.3 The friends belonging to the former category, whose relationship is
2 Jacques Derrida, Politiques de lamiti (Paris: Galile, 1994), 322. English translations are from
G. Collins, trans., Politics of Friendship (London and New York: Verso, 2005).
3 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1156a5ff. References to Aristotles works are from Immanuel
Bekker, ed. Aristotelis Opera, Vols. IV (Berlin: Academia Regia Borussica, 183170). English
translations are from W.D. Ross, ed. The Works of Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1966).
A Bushel Of Salt 11
based on utility, do not love each other in their own right, but only in so far as
they can both profit from each other. The same goes for the friends belonging
to the latter category, whose relationship is based on pleasure. They like each
other and spend time together not for the excellence of each others character,
but only for the pleasure they experience in each others company. According
to Aristotle, it is obvious that both of these inferior and merely instrumental
species of friendship are not likely to last a long time: If, by accident, their
underlying conditions were to changea friend might well lose his money, his
power, his charm, or his witthen the friendship would surely perish.
These lowerone is inclined to say improperforms of friendship stand
in contrast to what the Nicomachean Ethics describes as perfect friendships.
Perfect friends do not seek benefit from each other, nor do they rely on each
other for an external or accidental matter; rather, they wish well to their
friends for their sake.4 This qualitative differenceelsewhere Aristotle des-
ignates perfect friendship as first friendship,5 a friendship that comes logi-
cally first, because it serves as a criterion and a directive for all lesser forms of
friendshipis also reflected in the amount of perfect friendships that can be
found: Excellent friendship is not granted to everyone and appears to be a rare,
almost exceptional phenomenon. It is reserved for people who are intrinsically
good and for friends who resemble each other in their virtuous characters. And
since virtue, as the basic condition for friendships highest stage, is not a capac-
ity that is easily or naturally attained, but one that requires persistent exer-
cise and habit, virtuous characters are hard to find. Hence, the engagement in
perfect friendship equally turns out to be a difficult achievement. In addition,
Aristotle also points out that other circumstances limit the number of perfect
friendships. External and trivial conditions may lead to the impossibility of
putting perfect friendship into practice. Some friends may be so lucky as to
live in each others company, but those who are separated by a lasting physical
distance and who are not able to perform activities typically associated with
friendship risk forgetting and neglecting their friendship. Furthermore, before
entering into perfect friendship, one has to ensure that the other party is vir-
tuous and worthy of ones friendship and ones trust, all of which takes time,
effort, and practice. For similar practical reasons, Aristotle warns the reader
that complete friendship cannot be possible with many people. There is some
sort of natural numerus clausus involveda maximum enrollment, if you
willwhen it comes to the number of perfect friends,6 for it is hard to test and
4 Ibid., 1156b10.
5 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1238a30.
6 Cf. Derrida, Politiques de lamiti, 14ff.
12 Verstrynge
invest in many people at the same time, andsimilar to being in lovethe

feeling of friendship is naturally directed toward a very limited number of per-
sons at one time. But although perfect friendships are seldom seen and hard to
achieve, perfect friends may be assured of a lasting and enduring friendship.
Since virtue, the very basis for perfect friendship, proceeds from a firm and
unchangeable character,7 perfect friends are guaranteed a stable foundation
on which to build a lasting relationship.
2 O My Friends, There is No Friend
If we are to believe Aristotle, first and perfect friendship is rather difficult

to obtain. It takes time, effort, and even good fortune, and once such a pre-
cious relationship is established, the constant care and devotion one needs to
maintain it is staggering. However, those lesser forms of friendship, living on
mutual utility or pleasure, are also difficult to maintain. Friendships of utility
are weighed down by continuous calculation and pursuit of profit, and friends
who rely on each others pleasure-seeking company experience all too often
the short-lived nature of all worldly and vain relationships.
According to Michel de Montaigne, these constant deliberations and wor-
ries were the reason why Aristotle was rather hesitant about the possibility of
lower forms of friendshipif not about friendship altogether. In his famous
Essays, the French humanist penned his influential treatise On Friendship as
a memorial to and exposition of his remarkable friendship with the deceased
painter tienne de La Botie. In line with Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics,
and inspired by Ciceros De Amicitia, Montaigne makes a similar distinction
between vulgar and valuable friendships and reflects upon their conditions.
When describing the irreconcilable differences between perfect and imperfect
friendships, he quotes Aristotle explicitly. It is striking, however, that when dis-
cussing the possibility of these friendships, he refers to a strange and puzzling
remark that, according to Montaigne, the venerable Greek philosopher would
have used repeatedly: O my friends, there is no friend (O mes amis, il ny a
nul ami).8 The utterance is strange and puzzling, since friendship seems to
be both confirmed and denied in a single breath. How can one address ones
friends and deny their friendship in simultaneously? The statement is also
questionable because it cannot be traced to any of Aristotles known works.
7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a30.

8 Michel de Montaigne, uvres Compltes T.II (texte du manuscrit de Bordeaux) (Paris:
L. Conard, 1924), 204.
A Bushel Of Salt 13
Montaigne gives no clear reference to a specific work and appears to have

quoted this puzzling statement from memory. Still, this lack of reference is not
surprising, since no expert has been able to find the quote verbatim in the
works of the Stagirite. The closest anyone has come thus far is to locate a simi-
lar expression written by Aristotle in his Eudemian Ethics, which runs as fol-
lows: The man who has many friends has no friend.9 In fact, it was Diogenes
Laertius who, in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, first connected
a phrase similar to Montaignes O my friends, there is no friend to Aristotle:
The man who has friends has no friend [...] this sentiment is to be found also
in the seventh book of the Ethics. These apophthegms, then, are attributed to
him [Aristotle].10
How are we to understand and interpret this puzzling quotation, O my
friends, there is no friend? For reasons weve already discussed, Aristotle has
pointed out that it is not possible to have numerous true friends. Therefore, it
could very well be the case that Montaigne has quoted the Greek philosopher
somewhat carelesslyeven though he clearly managed to express the idea
that perfect friendship has quantitative limitations. And yet, is this really what
Montaigne had in mind when he quoted that enigmatic (so-called) Aristotelian
phrase? Maybe he had something else in mind about the nature of friendship
and was simply using Aristotle to lend a semblance of authority to his claim.
Unfortunately, Montaignes own writings do not shed more light on Aristotles
alleged words (O, my friends, there is no friend), leaving the reader puzzled by
such a paradoxical note on the very essence of friendship. Taking the quotation
to heart after having read his essay, one finds friendships possibility affirmed
(O, my friends), while at the same time it is denied (there is no friend). In
order to find some meaning in the quotation, the reader probably imagines an
old and despairing sage (Aristotle), surrounded by his friends, looking back at
the friendships that have accompanied him throughout his lifeonly to con-
clude desperately that in the end not a true friend among them can be found.
Or, in a similar but less dramatic spirit, one could imagine Montaigne him-
self weeping among friends over his true friendship with tienne de La Botie
(O my friends), a friendship that seems only to have gained strength and cer-
tainty from the moment the latter had died (there is no friend).
On the occasion of Montaignes essay, quite a fascination with Aristotles
(alleged) enigmatic words began to appear. Apparently, the quotation of the
Stagirite cannot merely be attributed to an act of carelessness on Montaignes
9 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1245b20.

10 Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, trans. C.D. Yonge
(London: H.G. Bohn, 1853), 189 (= V, 21).
14 Verstrynge
part; rather, it seems to touch upon a susceptibility, an aporia, or even an inef-

fability situated at the very heart of friendship. Not by accident, a number of
philosophers with considerable renown in the history of philosophy, such as
Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Maurice Blanchot, have commented
upon Aristotles alleged words, attempting to harmonise them with their own
convictions about friendships very being. One of the most recent and extensive
elaborations on Aristotles alleged lament is no doubt that of Jacques Derrida.
In his Politics of Friendship (1994), he extensively dwells on what he calls
Aristotles performative contradiction:11 O my friends, there is no friend.
According to Derrida, Montaignes quotation is in line with a number of reflec-
tions on friendship that belong to the experience of mourning, to the moment
of loss of the friend or of friendship.12 In one way or another, these authors
apart from Montaigne, Derrida explicitly names Cicero, Blanchot, and Georges
Bataillehave focused on the disintegration and failure of friendship. Central
to the understanding of Montaignes quotation, according to Derrida, is the
thought that the very attempt to make the grounds and reasons for friendship
explicit also threatens to kill it. Maybe this is, in the end, what Montaignes
puzzling quotation teaches us: When addressing a friend about ones friend-
ship (O, my friend), the friendship becomes lost (there is no friend).
In Derridas careful analysis of what it is that turns friends into friends,
some kind of silence seems to play a crucial role in finding the just name of
friendship.13 He thereby especially draws attention to the remarks of Nietzsche,
who, in the form of parody, catches up with Montaignes aphorism, turning
the second half of the quotation into the plural: O my friends, there are no
friends.14 In Human All Too Human, Nietzsche quotes these words, which are
equally attributed to Aristotle, on two occasions. But according to Nietzsche,
these words, that deny friendship from the moment upon which friends are
addressed, can only ring true when one fails to face an essential condition of
friendship. When broaching the topic of friendship, so he claims, it is crucial to
understand that such human relationships rest on the fact that a certain few
things are never said, indeed that they are never touched upon.15 Hence, there
are possible grounds for friendship, in opposition to what Aristotles alleged
words suggest, but creating and preserving those grounds means that one is
11 Derrida, Politiques de lamiti, 44.

12 Ibid., 322.
13 Ibid., 67.
14 Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, in Nietzsche Werke IV.2, ed. G. Colli
and M. Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967), 269 (= I, 376).
15 Ibid.
A Bushel Of Salt 15
conscious of the fact that there are things between friends that cannot and
may not be spoken aloud. Nietzsche goes on to ask the rhetorical question: Are
there men who cannot be fatally wounded, were they to learn what their most
intimate friends really know about them?16 Some things cannot be spoken
of without harming and eventually destroying the friendship at hand, for if
friends were to find out, probably like Aristotle did when uttering his alleged
words, that their friendship is based simply on trivialities and the illusion of
deep mutual feelings and opinions, then the friendship gets lost.
Nietzsches insights motivate Derrida to discuss the foundation of friend-
ship as a bottomless bottom. He writes:
Friendship does not keep silence, it is preserved by silence. From its first
word to itself, friendship inverts itself [...] Friendship tells the truth
and this is always better left unknown. The protection of this custody
guarantees the truth of friendship, its ambiguous truth, that by which
friends protect themselves from the error or the illusion on which friend-
ship is founded [...] So you had better keep silent about this truth of
truth.17
Friendship, in other words, rests on the condition and the preservation of this
paradox, on the assumption of remaining silent about the very things one can-
not share as a friend. It is clear for Derrida that the discovery of this abyssal
truth of friendship runs counter to our spontaneous and deep-rooted under-
standings and contradicts our ontological assurances,18 as he calls them,
which conceive of friendship in terms of symbiosis or fusion, striving toward a
fullness of being between friends. It is therefore not surprising that Montaigne
expresses his friendship only after the death of his close friend de La Botie
and that the perfection of which he speaks can only be uttered when the
friend is no longer around, when speaking out no longer threatens to harm the
friendship. Montaigne reasons from that common andin Derridas view
defective understanding of friendship when he clarifies that in the friendship
of which I speak, our souls mingle and blend with each other into such all-
encompassing togetherness that they efface the seam that joined them and
cannot find it again.19 Along with Derrida, one may wonder whether his rendi-
tion of Aristotles quotation, O my friends, there is no friend, did not spring
16 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 73.
19 Montaigne, uvres compltes, 199.
16 Verstrynge
from the disenchanting illusions typical of a friendship that rests on symbiosis

or fusion: From the day that I lost him, I have only led a sorrowful and lan-
guishing life. And the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead
of administering anything of consolation, double my affliction for his loss.
We were halves throughout, and to that degree I think that by outliving him,
I defraud him of his part.20
Friends should keep silent about what constitutes their friendship. The very
reasons that turn them into friends might be too trivial and destructive for their
friendship that strives toward some kind of fullness. All a true friend has to do
in order to be one is tacitly agree to remain silent on the reasons for the friend-
ship. He must have learned to be silent in order to remain your friend,21 so the
reader finds out in Human All Too Human. But is this Nietzschean device not
also problematic? His words seem to break down, collapsing under their own
weight to the extent that they cannot even be a device: Their utterance already
raises the question it anxiously seeks to avoid. Friends know too much, too
much for their friendship to endure, when they truthfully seek to answer the
most fundamental questions about their friendship. It seems that some sort of
forgetfulness, a certain blindness, and perhaps some kind of light-mindedness
is needed in friendship in order to finally avoid Aristotles alleged lament from
ringing true: O my friends, there is no friend.
3 The Unavowable Community of Friends
If silence is an essential feature of friendship, then, at the end of the day, is

there anything essential left for friends to share apart from trivia and the
simple enjoyment of each others company? The French writer, philoso-
pher, and critic Maurice Blanchot acknowledges that defining what is at the
heart of friendship resists the act of friendship itself and that it reveals a gap
that friends, in seeking to overcome it, cannot overcome. In his essay The
Unavowable Community (1983)the title is a reference to his legendary friend
Georges Bataille, in whose praise this piece of writing came aboutBlanchot
writes: Friendship, it is true, is difficult to define: [...] friendship from one to
another, as the passage and affirmation of a continuity starting from the neces-
sary discontinuity.22 Blanchots thoughts on friendship express a close affin-
ity with Nietzsches remarks. Time and again, he opposes an interpretation of
20 Ibid., 205.
21 Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 269 (= I, 376).
22 Maurice Blanchot, La communaut inavouable (Paris: Les ditions de minuit, 1983), 42.
A Bushel Of Salt 17
friendship as a relationship in which friends spiritually fuse with one another

and strive to share as much as possible. For Blanchot, it is crucial for friendship
that a secret is kept, that friends resist their inclination to reveal the basis and
function of their relationship.
What is it that makes two individuals true friends? Can the precise reasons
forand the very beginning offriendship be made explicit? In a beautiful
little essay, For Friendship (1996), dedicated to all his friends,23 Blanchot
claims that we might well be able to name the reasons for the ending of a
friendship, but wonders whether we can really determine when it starts.
Looking back at the friendships in his life, Blanchot testifies: We were friends
and we didnt know it (On tait amis et on le savait pas).24 When reflecting
on friendships beginnings, all one can conclude is that there is no friendship
at first sight and that, instead, it is rather a little by little, a slow work of time
(Il ny a pas de coup de foudre de lamiti, plutt un peu peu, un lent travail du
temps).25
This inability to name the reasons for friendship, the hidden presence of
something that cannot be uttered or explained at the very heart of friendship,
turns true friendship into a remarkable kind of togetherness. Quoting Georges
Bataille, Blanchot considers friendship to be paradoxically a community of
those who do not have a community,26 an unavowable community, a com-
munity that may not and cannot speak its name. With this remarkable view,
Blanchot equally contradicts our general and deep-rooted understandings of
friendship, which describes it in terms of symbiosis, fusion, or spiritual entan-
glementas Montaigne did.
Their refusal to consider friendship in terms of symbiosis, fusion, or spiri-
tual entanglement turns Nietzsche, Blanchot, and Derrida into natural allies.
Blanchots paradoxical understanding of friendship as the affirmation of a
continuity starting from the necessary discontinuity,27 Derridas praise of
Nietzsches nerve to recommend separation28 as a basis for friendshipall
these reflections shed a similar light on Aristotles alleged complaint and clar-
ify it by claiming that, in talking about ones friendship and in attempting to
explain it, the friendship gets lost.
23 Maurice Blanchot, Pour lamiti (Paris: Fourbis, 1996), 7.

24 Ibid., 9.
25 Ibid., 9.
26 Blanchot, La communaut inavouable, 45.
27 Ibid., 42.
18 Verstrynge
4 Friendship and Preferential Love
When dealing with those great canonical meditations on friendship, there is

one author we probably should not leave out of the conversation, not in the
least on the occasion of the theme of this book. In the works of the Danish
philosopher Sren Kierkegaard, the theme of friendship somehow occupies a
special placespecial since Kierkegaards considerations of friendship tend
to reflect, in a way, what is essentially at stake in his authorship and because
he positions himself (on more than one occasion) in the line of those think-
ers whom we have just commented upon. Even though there is no explicit
reference to Kierkegaards account of friendship in Derridas or Blanchots
meditations,29 the philosophers notion of friendship ties in with the idea that
true friendship involves the existence of a contradictory kind of continuity or
togetherness between the friends.
Before hinting at those similarities, it needs to be mentioned that
Kierkegaards account of friendship is firmly embedded in a theological frame-
work that may not fit in with the views of Nietzsche, Blanchot, and Derrida.
Kierkegaards most explicit views on friendship are translated as Christian
Deliberations in the Form of Discourses30 and are published under the title
Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger). This book, which is bereft of any
pseudonymous cover and generally considered as a piece of writing offered
to the reader with [his] right hand,31 contains the philosophers most elabo-
rate reflections on the theme of friendship. Kierkegaard distinguishesin no
uncertain termsfriendship and all kinds of erotic love from the Christian
conception of love as love for ones neighbour. Above all, friendship boils down
to a kind of self-love or a preferential kind of love: Erotic love and friend-
ship are preferential love and the passion of preferential love; Christian love
is self-denials love.32 In contrast with neighbour-love, which for Kierkegaard
29 Even though Blanchot hints at Kierkegaard when suggesting that the title for Marguerite
Durass novel La maladie de la mort may be derived from Kierkegaards The Sickness
Unto Death (cf. Blanchot, La communaut inavouable, 58), no further visible traces of
Kierkegaard are to be found in his book.
30 SKS, 9.7/WL, 1. References to Kierkegaards texts are first to the critical Danish edition,
namely, Sren Kierkegaard Skrifter (SKS), ed. Niels Jrgen Cappelrn et al. (Kbenhavn:
Gads Forlag, 19972012), and second to the Hong translation, that is, Kierkegaards
Writings, 26 Vols. ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 19782000). The abbreviations for the English translations are derived from the
titles of Kierkegaards works.
31 SKS, 16.21/POV, 36.
32 SKS, 9.59/WL, 52.
A Bushel Of Salt 19
is essentially directed at otherness, friendship has its roots in the ego, and its
claims of uniqueness can only result in a false or defective form of relationship:
Just as self-love selfishly embraces this one-and-only self that makes it

self-love, so also erotic loves passionate preference selfishly encircles this
one-and-only beloved, and friendships passionate preference encircles
this one-and-only friend. For this reason, the beloved and the friend are
called, remarkably and profoundly, to be sure, the other self, the other
Isince the neighbor is the other you, or, quite precisely, the third party
of equality.33
Kierkegaards outspoken resistance to the idea of true friendship as a form of

fusion has been brought up already at the very beginning of his authorship,
albeit in a strictly pseudonymous setting. In Either/Ors first, aesthetical part,
the message is clear: Guard, then, against friendship.34 This warning advises
one to avoid friendship on the grounds that one becomes absorbed in another
person. For the aesthete, the signs and rituals of friendship all boil down to
the same process: One drinks dus, one opens an artery, mingles ones blood,
and the friendship has not arrived at its highest form until Sallusts definition
Idem velle, idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia (Agreement in likes and dis-
likes, this and this only is what constitutes true friendship) rings true.35 All
this does not mean, however, that one should stay clear of amicable relations
altogether. The aesthetes unconditional advice to stay away from friendship is
more refined: Relationships can take a deeper turn now and then, provided
that one alwayseven though keeping the same pace for a timehas enough
reserve speed to run away from them.36
At first sight, Kierkegaards dichotomy between friendships preferential
love and the love of ones neighbour has a different foundation when com-
pared to the reasons for the aesthetes disapproval of friendship. In Works of
Love, the main remedy for self-centered human relationships is to reintroduce
the essentially Christian without which the intoxication of self-esteem
is said to be at its peak.37 The aesthetes aversion to deep or true friend-
ship has a different cause. His warnings are mainly directed at the perils of
boredom, which he thinks all friendships ultimately suffer from. As the root
33 Ibid., 9.60/53.
34 SKS, 2.284/EO, 1.295.
35 Ibid.
36 SKS, 2.285/EO, 1.29596.
37 SKS, 9.62/WL, 56.
20 Verstrynge
of all evil,38 boredom is a threat to lifes endless variety of possibilities

possibilities that the aesthetical life-view by all means aims to instil and pre-
serve. Thus understood, the self-centered aesthetical life-view is nothing but a
part of the position Kierkegaard criticises in Works of Love. All kinds of friend-
ship or forms of erotic love can in the end be reduced to an aesthetically and
selfishly motivated either/or: Either I exist and am the highest, or I do not
exist at all, either all or nothing.39
Accordingly, Kierkegaards criticism in Works of Love even holds for the ethi-
cal position of Judge Vilhelm in Either/Ors second part. In an attempt to open
up the enclosed and self-centered sphere of the aesthete, Vilhelm discovers in
the ethical the essential point of departure for friendship.40 Ethics, assum-
ing that it is the meaning of life and actuality that a person becomes open,41
is a condition for friendship, since it enables the friends to unite (fuse) in a
life-view. When openness results in a unified life-view, so the Judge assures us,
friendship lasts even if the friend dies, inasmuch as the transfigured friend
lives on in the other.42 But even though the ethical view on friendship corrects
the aesthetical reservation and tendency to close oneself off, it equally ruins
the otherness of the friend: That new selfish self Kierkegaard so ardently crit-
icises in Works of Love is just as much a result of friendship in an ethical sense
as it is in an aesthetical sense. Friends, united in their common life-view, not
only close themselves off from otherness, thereby installing exclusion on their
turn, they also tend to deny each others singularity as well as each others dif-
ferences, which could possibly tear them apart.
It is precisely this fear of fusion that turns both Kierkegaard and the aesthete
into fellow critics ofat leastour general understandings of friendship.
Both may have different, if not opposed, reasons for their objections against
friendship, but they speak with one voice in arguing against preferential and
exclusive kinds of relationships between human beings based on a deep unity
shared between them.
38 SKS, 2.275/EO, 1.285.

39 SKS, 9.52/WL, 45.
40 SKS, 3.303/EO, 2.321. Vilhelm refers here explicitly to the authority of Aristotle, who
made friendship the point of departure for his entire ethical view of life (SKS, 3.304/EO,
2.322).
41 Ibid., 3.304/2.322.
42 Ibid., 3.30304/2.32122.
A Bushel Of Salt 21
5 Aesthetics and Ethics in Friendship
Kierkegaard, so it seems, shrinks back from friendship when he intends to

deliberate upon the highest [form of] love43 (neighbourly love), since basi-
cally in friendship the friends absorb each other and exclude all other persons.
Out of drive and inclination, the self gets intoxicated [beruset] in the other
I, upon which the friends are united in a new selfish self.44 This concep-
tion of friendship to which Kierkegaard is referring echoes an Aristotelian con-
ception that sees in a friend nothing but the prolongation of a self-relation:
Friendly relations with ones neighbors, and the marks by which friendships
are defined, seem to have proceeded from a mans relations to himself.45 For
Aristotle, as we have seen, friendship in its highest form develops between
men (women do not seem to be a concern of his) of a virtuous character and
reflects the good life. And just as perfect friendship reflects virtue, so too self-
lovefrom an Aristotelian perspectiveis a perfect and solid ground for any
kind of virtuous relationship: Therefore [...] the good man [...] is related to
his friend as he is to himself, for his friend is another self [...] the extreme of
friendship is likened to ones love for oneself.46
With his criticism of friendship understood as a form of self-love,
Kierkegaard seems to be in agreement with Blanchot, who extends this criti-
cism to the Greek conception of philia as such. When reflecting on friends and
friendship, he declares, with reference to Emmanuel Levinas, that the Greek
philia is reciprocity, exchange of the Self with the Self, but never openness to
the Other, [never a] discovery of the Other as being responsible for him, recog-
nition of his pre-excellence [...] enjoyment of his Height, of what places him
always closer to the Good than Me.47
Kierkegaard and Blanchot, however different the traditions they embody,
are basically of one mind with regard to the problematic structure of one kind
of friendship, that is, the Greek understanding of it: In the name of friendship,
friends always risk passing over the otherness of the other in search of a con-
tinuation or prolongation of ones own self. But in line with the Aristotelian
approach, they connect their analysis of friendship with a crucial dimension
43 SKS, 9.52/WL, 45.

44 Ibid., 9.623/56.
45 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1166a13.
46 Ibid., 1166a302.
47 Blanchot, Pour lamiti, 35.
22 Verstrynge
of the human condition. If for Aristotle primary and full friendship48 contrib-
utes to an ethical achieving of actuality, and is for that reason also reflected in
all other kinds of virtuous relationships (such as family life or politics), then for
Kierkegaard and Blanchot as well friendship teaches us something about the
ethical task of being human as such.
Kierkegaards fear of fusion, such as the Greek conception has at its core,
bears reference to an insight that touches upon one of the very central ideas
that can be found in his authorship. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript
(1844), his pseudonym Johannes Climacus deliberates upon the difference
between an ethical and an aesthetical relation to otherness: By not asking aes-
thetically [...] about actuality, but asking only ethically about actuality [...]
every individual is ethically set apart by himself. [...] For existing ethically, it is
an advantageous preliminary study to learn that the individual human being
stands alone.49 In Johannes Climacuss view (and one may say in Kierkegaards
own view as well), each ethical task refers ultimately to ones own personal
and actual being and to the individual, the concrete person, as the ultimate
instance in which the ethical task and demand is rooted. Thus understood,
intersubjective relations do not and cannot occasion or ground the ethical
task, since they would infect the ethical meaning of the one carrying out that
task: [...] ethically there is no direct relation between subject and subject.50
To put it differently, the only thing we share as ethical beings is that we cannot
share our ethical and existential responsibility (and with this view, of course,
the whole realm of Kierkegaards indirect communication is connected). This
ethical task runs counter to each aesthetic approach or life-view, which leans
on a mere disinterested relation to actuality or reducing the existential and
ethical task to the realm of possibility, namely, that which could and ought to
have occurred.51 This disinterestedness, this distance from the concreteness of
being, inherent in all aesthetic ideality, equally separates individuals, inducing
the aesthete in Either/Or to advise people (as mentioned above) to always keep
enough reserve speed to run away from relationships. But ethical ideality starts
from a fundamental interest in actuality; it is an interiority infinitely inter-
ested in existing,52 even if that interiority has singularity, and for that reason
loneliness, at its core.
48 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1157a31 (translation altered).

49 SKS, 7.295/CUP, 1.323.
50 Ibid., 7.293/1.321.
51 Ibid., 7.290/1.318.
52 Ibid., 7.296/1.325.
A Bushel Of Salt 23
For Kierkegaard, an optimal and normative53 relationship between indi-

viduals has both distance and unity as its basic conditions. Only when peo-
ple are united on the basis of an ideal distance54 can a truthful relationship
between them come about. It is precisely this solitude in togetherness, this
unanimity of separation55 (being alone together, as it were) that draws us
from Kierkegaard to Blanchot. Also, in Blanchots writings one finds solitude
as the heart or the law for fraternity.56 For him, as well, silence is the very basis
for true communication, leading him to approve of Batailles community of
those who do not have a community as a description for all essential together-
ness. In (ethical) relation to otherness, the other is what I cannot reach,57 is
what escapes me, making me believe in an irreplaceable singularity.58
In Blanchots view, the phenomenon of friendship expresses that essential
solitariness in a remarkable, if not extreme, way. It is precisely in the practice
of friendship that individuals seem to discover that irreducible singularity in
their very attempt to overcome it: Thus is and should friendship be, it dis-
covers the unknown that we are, and it discovers the encounter of our own
solitude that we cannot experience ourselves.59 In a major work, which gets
its title from the very concept itself, Blanchot probably gives his most explicit
consideration of friendship. There, the relation between friends is qualified as
a relation
that does not allow us to speak of our friends, but only to them; it does
not allow us to make them the theme of our conversations (or articles),
but it is the movement of the understanding in which, speaking to us,
they keep, even in moments of greatest familiarity, their infinite distance,
that fundamental separation from which that what separates becomes a
relation.60
In line with Kierkegaard, Blanchot expresses a fear of fusion in friendship, inas-

much as it risks passing by that irrevocable moment of solitariness in subjec-
tivity that is the very occasion for an ethical relation to the other. Friendship,
53 SKS, 8/TA, 623.

54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
57 Maurice Blanchot, Lcriture du dsastre (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 36.
58 Ibid., 28.
60 Maurice Blanchot, Lamiti (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 328.
24 Verstrynge
in its essential form, can and may only be an expression for that common
strangeness,61 articulating the anarchical and primal ground of all human rela-
tionships. Hence, for both Kierkegaard and Blanchot friendship becomes an
impossible relation, a relation that cannot and may not speak its name, since
it no longer has that ontological assurance of a possible common ground.62
6 A Bushel of Salt
O my friends, there is no friend. When taking Kierkegaards and Blanchots

insights into account, Aristotles alleged words seem to have expressed more
than the dubious origin of the quotation leads one to suspect. Addressing our
friends about our friendship, uttering just one word about our friendshipan
act which makes it the object of reflection and considerationis already one
word too many, for it threatens the friendship the very moment it is expressed.
It is here that the Kierkegaardian idea of reflection as the angel of death63
rings true: Reflecting upon friendship attempts to grasp the friend; it kills the
friendship and its care-free immediacy through the act of reflection itself. In
the words of one of my friends and colleagues: Reflection indeed is the imme-
diacys angel of death. It puts its content at a distance and turns it into an
object.64
Let me, however, for some final words return to Aristotle, whose ponder-
ations on the theme of friendship have been the occasion for those great
canonical meditations on friendship that we have discussed. As mentioned at
the very beginning of this paper, the Stagirite considers the practice of friend-
ship, especially first or perfect friendship, to be a difficult exercise. Virtuousness
of character, being the ethical precondition for the highest friendship, is no
doubt the most demanding test for perfect friendship. But Aristotle also lists
other conditions that, even if they do not require a high standard for ones
character, are just as difficult to fulfill because they touch upon some sort of
unavoidable arbitrariness: living in each others area, having time at ones dis-
posal, the presence of a kind of balance between partners (e.g., social status,
61 Ibid.
62 Cf. G.L. Bruns, Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997), 12021.
63 SKS, 2.49/EO, 1.41.
64 P. Cruysberghs, Must Reflection be Stopped? Can It be Stopped? in Immediacy and
Reflection in Kierkegaards Thought, ed. P. Cruysberghs, J. Taels, and K. Verstrynge (Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 2003), 18.
A Bushel Of Salt 25
merit, beauty).65 One of those contingent conditions is what Aristotle meta-

phorically characterises as eating a bushel of salt together. Perfect friends are
rare, so he writes in his Eudemian Ethics, for a friend is not to be had without
trial or in a single day, but there is need of time and so the bushel of salt has
become proverbial.66 Friends, in order to become perfect friends, need to have
gone through difficult times and circumstances, need to learn to know each
other not only in prosperous times but also throughout times of misfortune
and adversity that have provoked and will provoke their friendship.
One only wonders what undertone this bushel of salt will have when the
alleged words O my friends, there is no friend are taken into consideration.
Perhaps the ultimate bushel of salt friends should eat with each other is the
mutual, silent and difficult agreement not to turn their friendship into an object
of reflection and ponderation. For philosophers, who have their very being in
the practice of reflexivity and abstraction, this task might be all the more dif-
ficult and salty. Conversely, their wisdom and natural relation to the theme of
friendship, taken as our point of departure, might just as well bring them some
kind of blissful forgetfulness, a frivolity or light-heartedness toward each other
that knows how to disguise what may not be uttered and that succeeds in keep-
ing those reflective angels of death at a distance. Here, perhaps, the essential
task of aesthetics for friendship comes to light: finding and safeguarding that
difficult balance between reflection and fusion; installing a forgetful (perhaps
second) immediacy in the company of friends; and bearing lightly the infi-
nite, lonely ideality of the ethical task that puts any friendly relation to the test.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. Friendship. Contretemps 5 (2004): 27.

Bekker, Immanuel, ed. Aristotelis Opera. Vols. IV. Berlin: Academia Regia Borussica,
183170.
Blanchot, Maurice. Lamiti. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.
. Lcriture du dsastre Paris: Gallimard, 1980.
. La communaut inavouable. Paris: Les ditions de minuit, 1983.
. Pour lamiti. Paris: Fourbis, 1996.
65 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1157b 25ff.

66 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1238a. See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1156b 256:
Such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know
each other till they have eaten salt together.
26 Verstrynge
Bruns, G.L. Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997.
Collins, G. trans. Politics of Friendship. London and New York: Verso, 2005.
Cruysberghs, P. Must Reflection be Stopped? Can It be Stopped? In Immediacy
and Reflection in Kierkegaards Thought, edited by P. Cruysberghs, J. Taels, and
K. Verstrynge, 1124. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003.
Derrida, Jacques. Politiques de lamiti. Paris: Galile, 1994.
Kierkegaard, Sren. Kierkegaards Writings. 26 Vols. Edited by Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19782000.
. Sren Kierkegaard Skrifter. Edited by Niels Jrgen Cappelrn et al. Copenhagen:
Gads Forlag, 19972012.
Laertius, Diogenes. The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, translated by
C.D. Yonge. London: H.G. Bohn, 1853.
Montaigne, Michel de. uvres Compltes T.II (texte du manuscrit de Bordeaux). Paris:
L. Conard, 1924.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. In Nietzsche Werke IV.2, edited
by G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967.
Ross, W.D., ed. The Works of Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.
CHAPTER 2
Recapturing the Self: Montaigne on Friendship,

Self-Knowledge, and the Art of Living
Vincent Caudron
1 Introduction: An Exceptional Friendship
From both a historicalanthropological and an autobiographical point of

view, Montaignes travel journal that recounts his journey to Italy between
October 1580 and November 1581 is a very interesting document.1 Not only
does it contain detailed and accurate descriptions of the enormous variety of
local customs and habits that he encountered, it alsodue to the fact that
Montaigne never intended to publish his journalgives a valuable, even voy-
euristic glimpse into the life and personality of its author. Montaigne draws a
disarming picture of his impressions, physical ailments, and bad habits; the
way he relates his agony from kidney stones is unusually outspoken and unre-
served. His surprisingly graphic and explicit descriptions inform the reader of
how clear or cloudy his urine is, how much gravel he releases, and how
windy he feels.
Amidst these jarring descriptions, however, Montaigne also somewhat
unexpectedly expresses intense grief over the loss of his best friend, tienne
de La Botie, who most likely died of the plague eighteen years earlier.2 His
sadness does not appear to have been a single instance of loss and sorrow, but
rather a red thread that ran throughout his entire life. One touching passage in
which Montaigne describes his life after the death of La Botie as smoke and
ashes, a night dark and dreary is particularly telling:
For in truth if I compare all the rest of my lifealthough by the grace of

God I have lived it sweetly and easily, exempt (save for the death of such
a friend) of grievous affliction in full tranquility of mind, contenting
1 Michel de Montaigne, The Journal of Montaignes Travels in Italy: In Italy by Way of Switzerland
and Germany in 1580 and 1581, ed. William George Waters (London: BiblioLife, 2009), 252.
2 tienne de La Botie worked as a magistrate at the court of Bordeaux, where he met
Montaigne in 1557. Besides his famous Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, he wrote a couple of
sonnets.

28 Caudron
myself with the natural endowments which I was born with and not
going about looking for othersif I compare it, I say, to those four years
which it was vouchsafed to me to enjoy in the sweet companionship and
fellowship of a man like that, it is but smoke and ashes, a night dark
and dreary. Since the day when I lost him [...] I merely drag wearily on.
The very pleasures which are proffered me do not console me: they
redouble my sorrow at his loss.3
Obviously, there is nothing strange about grief for a deceased friend, yet the
scope and intensity of Montaignes affliction seem to reveal something impor-
tant about the impact that the brief, intense friendship with La Botie had
on him. Given that Montaigne never expressed a comparable state of sor-
row over the loss of his brother, father, or five deceased daughters, one can-
not help but wonder what it was that made his relationship with La Botie so
unique and existentially far-reaching. This issue has sparked a vivid debate in
the extensive literature on Montaigne. Based on the rather explicit language
that the two friends tended to use to describe each other and their relation-
ship, one may speculate that their mutual affection was sexual in nature. Yet,
seeing as Montaigne consistently differentiates between sensual relationships
and friendships, this hypothesis is implausible.4 Rather, the terms that they
use to characterise their relationship are meant to refer to the Renaissance
ideal of ancient friendship, by which both Montaigne and La Botie were fas-
cinated. In one of his sonnets, for instance, La Botie compares Montaigne
with Alcibiades, while Montaigne, in his turn, alludes to La Boties Socratic
features.5
3 Michel de Montaigne, On Affectionate Relationships, in Michel de Montaigne, The Complete

Essays, ed. and trans. M.A. Screech (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 217. Hereafter referred to
as Essays.
4 Cf. S. Frampton, When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know She Is Not Playing with Me?
Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life (London: Faber & Faber, 2011) and S. Bakewell, How
to Live or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (London:
Chatto & Windus, 2010).
5 Alcibiades was an aristocratic rhetorician and lived in Athens in the first half of the fifth
century BC. He was part of the inner circle of Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, and
he was known for his interest in bodily beauty and pleasure. At the end of Platos Symposium,
he declares his love for his friend Socrates, a declaration that has generally been seen by phi-
losophers as an example of a relationship that focuses on the person as the object of love and
does not instead seek to transcend the object and strive towards the Platonic idea (or form)
of love.
Recapturing The Self 29
A more philosophically rewarding approach to the matter, then, is in

orderone which would start from Montaignes apparent reluctance to philo-
sophically account for his friendship with La Botie. It is quite an intriguing
observation that Montaigne, when asked to explain his friendship with La
Botie, responded somewhat evasively: because it was him: because it was
me. Mediating this union there was, Montaigne writes, beyond all my rea-
soning, beyond all that I can say specifically about it, some inexplicable force
of destiny.6 Struck by the exceptional force of their bond and mutual affec-
tion, he admittedly wonders what made their friendship so extraordinary in
comparison to other, more superficial friendships and human relationships
that he had. At no time, however, does he give a rational explanation for it.7
In his famous essay on friendship, for example, he ponders over the beginning
of their friendship and its spontaneity and intensity, yet he never attempts to
break it down or analyse it in terms of reasons and motivations. Why not?
Given the striking comparison between his life before and after La Boties
death, I shall try to determine the existential meaning that this friendship may
have had for Montaigne both during La Boties lifetime and after La Boties
demise. This approach will allow me to understand Montaignes apparent
unwillingness to explain this friendship while also enabling me to shed some
light on the influence it had on him, particularly on his art of living, which he
developed in the Essays. In the first part of this paper, I will explore Montaignes
conception of friendship as a pure, harmonious, and exclusive relationship
between two souls as a way of accounting for his unexpected refusal to explain
the amity between them. The second part builds on the first and consists in a
phenomenological exploration of the interpersonal and intrapersonal mean-
ing of friendship. More specifically, I will show that friendship is a highly
personal experience for Montaigne, which consists in a pure and immediate
relation between the subject and himself. Accordingly, I argue that the Essays
are Montaignes imposing endeavour to recapture something of this relation
that he had lost with the demise of his soul mate. Therefore, I conclude that
the influence of La Botie and Montaignes friendship on the Essays is much
greater than the standard readings of the text have allowed and that the friend-
ship between these two men should be understood as a seminal experience
that stimulated Montaigne into pursuing a form of authentic self-involvement
that is at the core of his famous art of living.
6 Essays, 212.
7 Essays, 207: So many fortuitous circumstances are needed to make it, that it is already some-
thing if Fortune can achieve it once in three centuries.
30 Caudron
2 Montaignes Concept of Friendship
In the famous essay on friendship that he wrote around 1576, Montaigne

explores the unique nature of true friendship by distinguishing it from other
human relationships such as those based on natural kinship, family ties, and
sensual desire. As a starting point, Montaigne notices that all of these relation-
ships observe certain pre-established patterns or even templates that inevi-
tably reduce the other to a role or aspect rather than see the other as a total
person. Montaigne refers to the fact that most human relationships are sym-
bolic relationships in which all participants embody a pre-defined role that
determines not only their actions but their self-understanding as well. Family
ties are a good example of relations that happen according to rather strict
patterns and roles. They are indeed highly symbolic relationships. A mother
daughter relationship, for instance, implies a pattern that is essential in order
for a real motherdaughter relationship to exist. Of course, one cannot deny
that there is an indelible natural bond between both, yet it is just as clear
that this natural bond is not a sufficient condition for a symbolically mean-
ingful motherdaughter relationship to come into being. When the relation
between mother and daughter is not symbolically installed and acted upon,
their relationship cannot transcend the natural facticity that links them. In
fact, this natural dependency is not even a necessary condition for a mother
daughter relationship to exist; one only need look at adoptive relationships
or African multi-mother relationships between a child and a community of
women to illustrate this point. One can play different roles depending on what
relation one is involved inI can be both a father to my son and a son to my
fatheryet within a given relationship my role is defined by the pattern of that
particular relationship. The pattern of a fatherson relationship, for example,
requires a form of respect that is crucial for this type of relationship and that
cannot be suspended without also vitiating or even terminating the relation-
ship altogether. A father who takes his son for a close friend and shares his
most intimate thoughts with him breaks through the pattern of their relation-
ship and creates unease; in a way, he steps out of character and asks for the
relationship to be reassessed. Whats more, the fact that one can play very dif-
ferent roles according to different relationships may well be the reason why
some people fall prey to great anxiety when patterns that are not easily rec-
onciled begin to intersect. For instance, social events bring together individu-
als who play considerably different and possibly conflicting roles among one
another. In these settings, it may be challenging for the individual to assume
the right role.
These roles are essential for the existence and dynamics of a relationship.
My expectations and conduct toward another as well as her expectations
and conduct toward me are determined by the pattern of the relationship. It
provides stability, perhaps even certainty, but it also determines what is mor-
ally permitted and prohibited without inferring these norms from an objec-
tive state of affairs. For instance, it goes without saying that a teacher should
not seduce one of her students, since the pattern of their relation essentially
excludes this type of behaviour. However, when the same two persons meet
each other under different circumstances, a new relation with a different pat-
tern may permit such behaviour. Hence, the pattern, as it were, shatters the
unity of a person by determining which aspects of that person matter and
which do not. A family tie, for example, not only reduces the other to a role
(father, mother, son, daughter, etc.), but by doing so, it unavoidably fragments
that individuals totality as a person. When one appears in the fixed capacity of
ones role, it becomes impossible to relate to that individual as a whole person.
In conclusion, relationships that materialise along symbolic patterns (i.e., most
human relationships) by definition exclude a mutual connection between two
persons as persons, given that the role that is implied in these relationships
inevitably reduces them to a certain aspect or quality of themselves.
Montaigne, then, considers friendship to be an outstanding relationship
compared to other human relationships. First and foremost, true friendship is
marked by an absence of these patterns and ensuing reductions that are found
in other human relationships. According to Montaigne, in fact, true friendship
has no pattern at all; it does not reduce the other to certain aspects of her
personality, but consists in the exclusive relation between the singular totali-
ties of two persons. Rather than fixing someone in a pre-established role, a
true friendship allows a person to break loose from all her symbolic determi-
nations, transcend all given patterns, and signify herself as a person, that is,
as a singular totality. Thus, Montaignes decision to not explain the origins of
or motives behind his friendship with La Botie is much more a principled
refusal than an epistemological or philosophical inability, since every attempt
to rationalise their friendship would damage his pure commitment to the sin-
gularity of La Botie. If Montaigne had indeed attempted to confer a certain
rationale to their friendship by breaking it down into concrete motives or des-
ignating some of La Boties specific traits that moved him to friendship, he
would have caused irrevocable damage to their friendship. By indicating spe-
cific character traits, Montaigne would not only have fragmented the totality
of La Boties personality (hence degrading and even ending their friendship),
but would have also unavoidably weakened their bond by subjugating it to
32 Caudron
identifiable requirements that could just as easily be met by other people. By

subjecting friendshipas an exclusive relationship between two personsto
identifiable conditions, there is nothing that can stop it from languishing or
even coming to an end when a third person that embodies the valued prop-
erties to an even higher degree appears. Conditionalising friendly bonds may
even subjugate them to the laws of competition; one may feel compelled to
desperately express those qualities which one thinks the friendship depends
on. In short, true friendship as an unconditional commitment to the singu-
larity of the other as a person is radically incompatible with a rationalisation
of it in terms of motives and reasons. Montaignes famous because he was,
because I was ought to preserve the pureness of their extraordinary amity:
This friendship, Montaigne explains, has no ideal to follow other than itself;
no comparison but with itself. There is no one particular considerationnor
two nor three nor four nor a thousand of thembut rather some inexplicable
quintessence of them all mixed up together.8
However, Montaignes refusal to rationalise his friendship with La Botie
in order to express his unconditional commitment to the singularity and
unique wholeness of his friend seems to unexpectedly open up the possibility
for their friendship to be reduced to a radically contingent, even superficial,
connection. By absolutising true friendshipthat is, by denying it any kind
of rationalisationMontaigne may very well want to prevent his friendship
from becoming susceptible to the aforementioned risks of conditionalisation.
Quite paradoxically, however, by doing so he seems to dissociate his friendly
affection for La Botie from his friends very personality. Montaignes refusal
to rationally explain the nature of true friendship to preserve its extraordinari-
ness and fortuity contaminates their bond with a contingency that contradicts
the extraordinary importance he attaches to it. If ones friendship with person
X is immune to every attempt at rationalisation, there seems to be nothing that
can prevent one from befriending any random person instead of a true friend.
If a bond of friendship with X is such that it cannot be accounted for by reasons
and that it can only be accounted for on the basis of Xs unique singularity,
why would one befriend X and not Y? Given the fact that Montaigne seems
to consider La Boties being a unique singularity as a sufficient condition for
their friendship, there may literally be no reason whatsoever for a friendship
between two particular persons to come about. Since every person has a singu-
larity of his own by virtue of his unique individuality, one may be led to think
that Montaignes account of friendship allows for a radical contingency.
8 Essays, 212.
Put differently, Montaignes absolutisation of true friendship, that is, his

refusal to rationalise it, has the side effect of reducing friendship to a contin-
gent and elusive relationship. Under these circumstances, the process of genu-
inely befriending someone as well as the dynamics and form of a genuine, true
friendship are highly elusive. However, it may be valuable to keep this thought
in mind: The most meaningful experiences in a persons life are characterised
by a contingency, even a heteronomy, that is not easily expressed through
the all-transcending significance we confer on them. For instance, religious
belief is highly significant yet can be thought of as highly arbitrary, in so far
as it depends on contingent factors like culture, time, and space. Likewise, the
love for our children is characterised by an uncontrollable contingency; even
though the love in itself is as unconditional as it is endless, the object of it
is given to us rather than autonomously chosen. In that sense, Montaignes
refusal to explain his friendship with La Botie should be understood as the
acknowledgement of the elusiveness and vulnerability of his bond with La
Botie and thus as his grateful acceptance of the gift of friendship. He willingly
subordinates their friendship to inexplicable and uncontrollable powers, even
fate, and accepts it as a gracious gift that he shouldnt try to control or appro-
priate himself. Put another way, the singularity of the other is both a sufficient
and a necessary condition for friendship, and it is precisely this necessity that
makes true friendship as meaningful as it is vulnerable.
3 Friendship as a Relation to the Self: A Phenomenological Approach
Montaignes refusal to rationally explain his friendship with La Botie does not
prevent him from carefully examining the meaning of this bond and impact
that it had on him. Fully in line with his scepticism and its attentive emphasis
on personal experience, the way he experienced his friendship with La Botie
serves as a starting point for his philosophical explorations on the topic. First,
Montaigne focuses his attention on the friendship bond as a relationship, that
is, as a mutual and pure involvement with the singular self of the other. At the
core of this experience, he finds a seamless connection of two selves brought
together into one simple unit:
Since the day when I lost him [...] I merely drag wearily on. The very
pleasures which are proffered me do not console me: they redouble my
sorrow at his loss. In everything we were halves: I feel I am stealing his
share from him: [...] I was already so accustomed to being, in everything,
one of two, that I now feel I am no more than a half.
34 Caudron
In the friendship which I am talking about, souls are mingled and con-
founded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins
them together so that it cannot be found.
There is no one particular considerationnor two nor three nor four
nor a thousand of thembut rather some inexplicable quintessence of
them all mixed up together which, having captured my will, brought it to
plunge into his and lose itself and which, having captured his will, brought
it to plunge and lose itself in mine with an equal hunger and emulation.
I say lose itself in very truth; we kept nothing back for ourselves: nothing
was his or mine.9
Montaigne doesnt refer to an incorporation or dissolution of the other into

himself that one would expect to find in a sexual relationship between lov-
ers or a loving (or mystic) relationship with God. Such a disappearance of the
other would be in contradiction with the notion of friendship as an involve-
ment with the singularity of the other and would even terminate the friendship
bond altogether. Rather, by talking about a seamless connection between two
persons, Montaigne means that a true friendship is experienced as a relation-
ship that remains undisturbed by external elements, that is, elements or fac-
tors that as such do not pertain to the selves of both friends. Every element that
does not belong to the singularity of the individual herself stays at the fringes
of the friendship bond. Women and children, for example, dont play signifi-
cant roles in the friendship bond that links Montaigne to La Botie, since they
remain external to the selves of both friends. Its obviously an important fea-
ture of someones life to be a father or a husband, yet according to Montaigne,
as far as the friendship bond in itself is concerned, it doesnt really matter who
these children concretely are (their names, characters, ages, genders, etc.) for
the self of the father. They remain external to the self in the sense that they do
not significantly modify its unique singularity. In this respect, the only aspect
that counts is the fact that one is a father or husband; whom of is secondary.
Phenomenologically, the complete absence of externality manifests itself
as the experience of an intuitive certainty about the self of the other. Since
friendship consists in an involvement with the naked self of the otherexter-
nal obstacles like family commitments, sexual desires, and material interests
are excluded from the friendship bondthere are no hindrances left that can
come in the way of ones intimate conviction about the authenticity of the
other. Put differently, friendship is experienced as an immediate and authentic
certainty regarding the self of the other:
9 Essays, 217, 21112, and 212. (My emphasis).

All the arguments in the world have no power to dislodge me from the
certainty which I have of the intentions and decisions of my friend. Not
one of his actions could be set before meno matter what it looked
likewithout my immediately discovering its motive. Our souls were
yoked together in such unity, and contemplated each other with so ardent
an affection, and with the same affection revealed each to each other
right down to the very entrails, that not only did I know his mind as well as
I knew my own but I would have entrusted myself to him with greater assur-
ance than to myself.10
True friends, for example, do not fall prey to the gnawing fear of offending each
other, nor do they have any doubt about each others intentions and impres-
sions. Needless to say, Montaigne does not construe this certainty as a kind
of rational knowledge that one can acquire post-factum, seeing as such ratio-
nalisation is fallible and, moreover, inherently liable to be coloured by surges
of self-deception, self-love, or wishful thinking. More accurately, Montaigne
has some sort of intimate understanding in mind that is formal in nature
and that could be compared to what Blaise Pascal famously called lesprit du
coeur.11 Rather than really knowing what my friends intentions are, I can be
certain, thanks to my intuitive certainty about his intentions, that, whatever
intentions he has, they are pure and sincere: But for our kind, in which we are
dealing with the innermost recesses of our minds with no reservations, it is
certain that all of our motives must be pure and sure to perfection.12 He takes
me for who I am and by doing so he provides a setting of trust and security in
which I can be myself.
Second, Montaigne shifts his focus to an aspect of the friendship bond that
has been (comparatively) little discussed. After having explored the phenom-
enological dimension of friendship as an extraordinary relationship between
two persons (see above), he concentrates on the impact that friendship has
on each individual as a constitutive and essential part of the bond. Central to
this aspect of Montaignes phenomenological exploration of friendship is the
idea that friendship generates a setting or constellation in which an individual
10 Essays, 213. (My emphasis).

11 Blaise Pascal, Penses, ed. Louis Lafuma (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1963), n. 101 and n. 424:
Cest le coeur qui sent Dieu et non la raison. Voil ce que cest que la foi. Dieu sensible au
coeur, non la raison. In his Penses, Pascal distinguishes between lesprit de gometrie
and lesprit de finesse, in which context lesprit de finesse refers to une connaissance du
coeur et de linstinct as a capacity of the heart that consists in mans unique capacity to
grasp things not only rationally (lesprit de gomtrie) but intuitively as well.
12 Essays, 216.
36 Caudron
relates to himself in a direct and unmediated way. Similar to the manner in

which a friendship bond consists of a pure and open relationship between the
selves of two different people, friendship similarly enables each individual to
engage himself in an unmediated relationship. Thus, while Montaigne identi-
fies the direct and pure commitment to the others self as a necessary condi-
tion of true friendship, this is accompanied by each individual having a direct
and pure relationship with himself as well. Evidently, one cannot sincerely
relate to the other without also opening up to himself, since sincerity and hon-
esty toward another person presuppose the same attitude of openness toward
oneself. For instance, I cannot share how I really feel about a given political
issue with you without first knowing myself what I actually feel about it.
However, one has to be careful not to construe the connection between
friendship and self-knowledge as a temporal connection. Montaigne does not
mean that one starts with a certain type of self-knowledge and self-under-
standing that one subsequently decides to share with someone he deems
worthy of his friendship. Such a relationship would be no friendship at all, at
least not if the beginning of the relationship was constituted by this decision.
Rather, Montaigne considers the link between true friendship and pure self-
involvement to be a dynamic process without an assignable ending or begin-
ning. Much more than a temporal connection or an active decision, a form
of self-understanding organically grows as the friendship bond comes to the
fore. As a matter of fact, a bond can only become true friendship when both
friends open up to each other. For this generous and unconditional opening-up
to develop, it is necessary for each individual to open up to himself, although
one should keep in mind that the coming about of such a transparent relation
of the individual to himself is more a necessary side-effect of the friendship
bond than it is an active decision on which the friendship bond hinges. Much
more than demanding one to disclose himself, the friendship bond creates a
setting in which one feels comfortable about engaging in a direct relationship
with oneself. In that sense, the friend enables one to liberate oneself, to gain
insight and establish a direct connection with ones deepest, innermost reality.
My deeper and otherwise concealed self is, as it were, reflected in the eyes of
my friend, who stimulates me into self-discovery and personal development.
It is clear that such a relationship by no means reduces the other to a mirror
that merely reflects the information he is given. A friendship is not a narcissis-
tic but a hermeneutical relationship; trying to get to know oneself (se conna-
tre) requires a genuine effort not to try to recognise oneself (se reconnatre),
or so Montaigne says.13 The dynamic that constitutes a real friendship bond
13 L. Brunschvicg, Descartes et Pascal: Lecteurs de Montaigne (Neuchtel: ditions de la

Baconnire, 1945), 14.
allows me to get to know myself because of the fact that it requires all veils
to come down, including those behind which I consciously or unconsciously
hide my self. Since the reciprocity of friendship imperatively demands that
both friends no longer be veiled behind mists of self-love or apparent virtue,
the same openness with which I reveal myself to the other also reveals me to
myself. On account of the fact that I am one of the two constituting parts of
our friendship, my self will inevitably be disclosed to me if I allow our friend-
ship to develop and flourish. Accordingly, in this intimate disclosure, one
experiences a growing intuitive certainty about ones self that is impossible
to attain autonomously. In that sense, Montaigne understands friendship not
only to be a form of communication that enables the self to relate to itself
and gain self-knowledgea discussion with a friend does not only enrich
me as an individual, but it is also liable to allow me to develop a much more
nuanced form of self-understanding by daring to, say, open up or answer his
questionsbut also a relation that is characterised by an accrued form of
certainty and reassurance about ones self. The absolute sincerity that char-
acterises our friendship and thus our discussion provides a setting in which
all barriers can disappear and in which a deeper self-understanding can be
fostered. This also has a therapeutic dimension. Since friendship consists in a
mutual commitment and dynamic of self-development and self-understand-
ing, it provides a form of self-assurance that Montaigne considers to be the
highest good of morality. Consequently, as I will show in the next paragraph, La
Boties influence on Montaigne should first and foremost be considered along
the lines of Montaignes desire to regain such a dynamic of self-understanding
and such a (subsequent) form of self-assurance that he had when his friend
was still alive.
4 La Boties Influence on Montaigne
Armed with this brief phenomenological exploration of Montaignes experi-

ence of self-knowledge and self-assurance, it is now possible to understand
the significance of his friendship with La Botie for the art of living devel-
oped in the Essays. At first sight, the very existence of the Essays seems to
be closely linked to La Botie. In fact, there is a strong case to be made that
Montaigne, who initially didnt intend to write the Essays, sought solace and
distraction from his intense grief by reading the ancient authors and by writ-
ing his essays. Moreover, La Botie has had a manifest influence on Montaigne
as far as his philosophical ideas are concerned. Both in form and in content
there is a remarkable resemblance between De la servitude volontaire, La
Boties politicophilosophical treatise dealing with political power in general
38 Caudron
and the mystery of tyrannical rule in particular, and the Essays. Not only does
La Botie deal with topics one finds at the heart of the Essays (i.e., habit,
nature, friendship, and inner freedom), but he also anticipates, as far as form
is concerned, in his De la servitude volontaire the loose and disorderly arrange-
ment of Montaignes magnum opus. In addition, one can see how the stoic
humanistic philosophy that La Botie practiced throughout his life echoes
throughout the earlier Essays: The influence on Montaigne is clear. In fact,
the Essays could even be considered to be the written record of Montaignes
attempt to develop a personal philosophy of life inspired by La Boties ideal of
ancient wisdom and to adopt a modified type of stoicism as a cure for his para-
lysing fear of death.14 Montaigne seems to confirm this last interpretation him-
self in a letter he wrote to his father in 1572. In this letter, in which he recounts
the last days and death of La Botie, Montaigne describes his friend as a soul
filled with tranquility, peace and security (une me pleine de repos, de tran-
quillit et dassurance).15 Above all, Montaigne admits, he admires La Boties
great strength of mind (grandeur de courage) and the generosity (magna-
nimit) with which La Botie not only led his life but also faced his destiny on
his deathbed; Montaignes admiration for La Botie is clearly inspired by the
stoic determination the latter shows while facing his approaching death.
However, there is more to the link between La Botie and the Essays than
the above suggests, and that is Montaignes self-orientated experience of their
mutual friendship (see above). It is indeed impossible to grasp La Boties
influence on Montaignes art of living when one only takes into account
Montaignes admiration for his friends strength of mind toward death.
Admittedly, Montaigne sought a remedy for his fear of death in Stoicism. Yet,
one would overlook a crucial aspect of La Boties influence on Montaigne by
reducing his impact on the Essays to the adoption of a stoic attitude toward
mortality, seeing as the essays of the third book in particular contain a moral
teaching that exalts the good life as the highest moral good. Instead of reading
the Essays as Montaignes personal approach to Stoicism inspired by his friend
14 Cf. P. Villey, Montaigne. Textes choisis et comments par Pierre Villey (Paris: Plon, 1912), 23:
Or leffort principal de Montaigne en mditant ses Essais sera prcisment de sassimiler
les doctrines de la sagesse antique et de les faire passer dans sa pratique quotidienne.
(The most important effort Montaigne makes in the Essays consists in an attempt to
assimilate ancient doctrines of wisdom and to put them into practice in his daily life).
(My translation).
15 Michel de Montaigne, Hommage La Botie, in Michel de Montaigne, Oeuvres Compltes.
Prface dAndr Maurois. Texte tabli et annot par Robert Barral en collaboration avec
Pierre Michel (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1967), 54648.
La Botie, one should focus on Montaignes art of living as being opposed to an

art of dying. The fact that Montaigne continues to be inspired by the memory
of his friendship with La Botie, even while shifting away from Stoicism toward
a more vitalistic philosophy of life, should make us broaden the question of the
meaning of their friendship for the Essays.
In order to understand La Boties influence on the Essays, one must first
take into account the experience of self-knowledge and the ensuing self-assur-
ance that I described above. In this vein, let us look at Montaignes intense
awareness of the instability and volatility of his own mind. Montaignes fixa-
tion on the uncontrollable spontaneity of the mind indeed runs as a red thread
throughout the Essays. For instance, he finds that his best ideas pop into his
head at the most inappropriate moments, or he remarks that he is invariably
moved by the book he is reading, no matter how strong this book contradicts
his own ideas or ideas that were expressed in books that he had read before.16
It is particularly when his mind is thrown back on itself that Montaigne
notices that he inevitably risks falling prey to a relentless maelstrom of capri-
cious whims and crazed fantasies that are beyond his control. One could link
the way Montaigne describes his mind to the way the imagination may disrupt
ones rationality, yet Montaignes concept of the uncontrollable mind seems to
be all-encompassing. No effort at reasonable and critical thinking is immune
to the disruptive potential of lesprit. Both in his search for truth as well as in
his endeavours to live a morally good life, his mind is liable to subvert his every
effort and intention. For instance, in the Essays Montaigne hints at the emo-
tion of remorse (le repentir); even when one deploys all of his faculties to try
to make the best decision possible in a given situation, theres nothing that can
prevent one from falling prey to gnawing doubt and even remorse at having
made the wrong choice. Above all in moral and religious issues, Montaigne
perceives the unlimited variety of mental twists and turns that constantly
flood and disrupt his mind as a source of annoyance, uncertainty, and even
impotence.
In stark contrast to this uncertainty and anxiety stands La Boties noble
attitude of peace of mind and stability on the one hand and the experience of
self-knowledge and self-assurance on the other. As far as La Botie as a moral
model is concerned, the fact that Montaigne uses the term magnanimous
(magnanimit) to describe his friends attitude is revealing. Not only does it
denote a kind of noble-mindedness toward someone in a weak or inferior posi-
tion, but in Montaignes French it also refers to a way of being of the soul that is
16 For example, ideas he has expressed in On Idleness and ideas expressed by the Roman
poet Virgil in one of his works.
40 Caudron
characterised by an attitude of certainty or even greatness in difficult circum-

stances. The fact that La Botie manages to keep as courageous and steadfast
on his deathbed as he had during his life proves to Montaigne what the human
soul is capable of. By training and self-improvement, Montaigne notices, it
becomes possible for the human soul to increase its resilience and perfection
so that no occasion is able to disturb or discompose it any longer. Accordingly,
the key to understanding the full range of La Boties influence on the Essays
lies in the fact that La Boties life and death convince Montaigne of what the
soul is capable of, that is, developing an art of living that is characterised by
peace of mind and steadfastness. In this sense, the touching passage in which
Montaigne promises a dying La Botie that he will follow his way of life can be
understood as Montaignes commitment to perfecting his soul through an art
of living.
Unlike La Boties philosophy of life, though not in opposition to it,
Montaignes art of living is fuelled by the desire to live appropriately (
propos), meaning that one should learn to live correctly in all circumstances by
training and perfecting ones judgement. Given Montaignes all-encompassing
scepticism and hence the absolute unknowability of moral truths, ones inten-
tion to judge and consequently act as well as one can is the only moral sup-
port one can rely on. Whenever one judges and acts accordingly, however, one
exposes oneself nolens volens to doubt, remorse, and even anxiety, since there
is no objective standard of truth that one can refer to. Montaigne therefore
defends the concept of self-development as a moral obligation; indeed, given
the absence of objective moral standards on the one hand and the unques-
tionable moral imperative to perfect oneself (to be as good a human being
as one can be) on the other, it is a logically valid deduction to claim that the
development and understanding of the self is a necessary component of the
morally good life. This is especially true because the individuals being singula-
rised as a unique self serves as the only possible moral support. In the absence
of objective moral laws, the only thing that one can do is act according to what
one really is. Thus, Montaignes art of living consists of installing an authen-
tic and therefore morally valuable relation of the individual to himself; not
only is such an authentic relation morally speaking the only possible option,
it is also the sole way out of the relentless doubt and anxiety by which one is
disturbed.17 La Boties influence on the Essays then is twofold. First, as I have
17 Note that this conclusion presupposes two premises that Montaigne accepts without
systematically arguing for. First, he accepts the intrinsic goodness of nature as a whole
and of human nature in particular. Relating to ones self and following it in good faith
means relating to your own nature and hence experiencing what is morally good. Second,
shown above, a strong case can be made for saying that Montaigne was struck
by La Boties magnanimity both during his life and when facing death. And
second, the content of Montaignes art of living is characterised by a desire
for the assurance and peace of mind he already experienced in his friendship
with La Botie and therefore can be linked to an authentic relation to himself.
Noteworthy is the fact that this second way in which La Botie influenced the
Essays is not only in line with the first, but also deepens and enriches it.
Thus, by searching for the self that he lost when La Botie died, Montaigne
attempts to recapture something of himself, and this attempt contains a
double moral statement. First, it is clear that Montaigne situates the core of
the moral experience in the intentions or will of the individual. As far as the
inner experiences of the individual are concerned, perfecting ones judgement
based on authentic self-knowledge is a moral obligation. Every quest for an
authentic realisation of ones singular self, however, is destined to fall short
in comparison to the experience of pure self-involvement that one can have
in a true friendship. This logically implies that perfect involvement with ones
self is inevitably dependent on the other as a friend. The friends irreplaceable
singularity is characterised by something that resists every attempt at ratio-
nalisation and instrumentalisation, yet, paradoxically, I am dependent on that
friend in order to perfect the moral imperative of sincere and authentic self-
involvement. With regard to the relationship between friendship and moral-
ity, we must therefore conclude that Montaigne considers friendship to be a
moral ideal that escapes the grasp of the individual. The power of friendship
indicates a moral direction: the pure commitment both to oneself and to the
other that characterises friendship as a regulative, moral ideal that one should
pursue indefinitely. The realisation of the morally good life presupposes a
never-ending effort to pursue a pure relationship to ones self, yet for the final
completion of this relationship, one inevitably remains radically dependent
on the gift of the other.
Second, Montaigne clearly differentiates between individual morality and
social and political ethics. Whereas one must continue to search for self-
knowledge as far as ones intentions and moral and practical judgements
are concerned, one should conform and rely on the existing social customs
and political laws as far as daily life is concerned. In that sense, Montaigne
subscribes to a long philosophical tradition that exalts the moral worth of
Montaigne situates the core of the moral experience in the intentions or the will of the
individual. Perfecting ones judgement, therefore, is a moral obligation as far as the inner
experiences of the individual are concerned. Regarding social and political ethics, one
should rely on customs and human laws as they are.
42 Caudron
true friendship above laws and customs based on convention. In contrast to

Aristotle and Cicero, Montaigne even foresees the possibility of a collision
between morality and friendship, since according to him, a friendly engage-
ment void of hypocrisy and secret agendas creates commitments that may
conflict with the existing political morality. Obviously, this does not mean that
Montaigne simply has no concern for moral norms, laws, and mannersfrom
a pragmatic approach, they are both useful and necessaryrather, given their
contingency and their vulnerability to window-dressing and appearances, he
excludes them from being at the core of true virtue and morality: Rare is the
life which remains ordinate even in privacy. Anyone can take part in a farce and
act the honest man on the trestles: but to be right-ruled within, in your bosom,
where anything is licit, where everything is hiddenthats what matters.18
5 Conclusion: Recapturing the Self as the Essence of Montaignes

Art of Living
As we have seen in the phenomenological exploration of the friendship expe-

rience, Montaigne experiences his mutual and sincere affection for La Botie
as a feeling of absolute certainty about the will and intentions of both his
friend and himself. Although one shouldnt construe this type of certainty as
a form of certainty about the content of these intentions, there is at least an
intuitive certainty that these intentions are sincere. Concerning ones own self,
the fact that a true friendship bond presupposes the absence of all veils and
camouflages toward ones own self implies that one can also experience an
intense and comfortable degree of certainty concerning ones own self. My
involvement with a friend is accompanied by a form of self-involvement that
is characterised by a high degree of certainty and conviction about myself. In
his friendship with La Botie, Montaigne stood in a direct and pure relation to
himself that had a comforting and soothing impact on his mental unrest and
anxiety. Given his high sensibility to his own doubts and uncertainties, we can
now understand the art of living that he developed in the Essays as an attempt
to re-establish this kind of authentic self-involvement. With La Boties death,
Montaigne not only lost his best friend, but also lost himself. In that sense,
the art of living that Montaigne develops in the Essays takes the form of a
search for his true self as self-knowledge and self-understanding; they form
a never-ending attempt to recapture something of the singular self that La
Botie loved and that eluded Montaigne with the latters death. Accordingly,
18 Essays, 911.
in On Vanitythe essay par excellence in which he dwells on the project of

the EssaysMontaigne explicitly describes the project of self-discovery that
underpins the Essays as the search for his true self as La Botie had known it:
Only he [La Botie] knew the true image of myself, but he took it with him.
That is the reason why I subject myself to such an intense scrutiny.19
When Montaigne opens the Essays with the warning that the self-portrait
it contains is only for personal and private purposes, one should take him
literally.20 At least at their core, the Essays are both a moral treatise and an
attempt by Montaigne to recover the self that he once experienced in his
friendship with tienne de La Botie. La Botie not only serves as an example
of greatness and fortitude, but he also, more profoundly, was someone through
whom Montaigne experienced a pure commitment to himself that he would
continually try to reconstitute in his search for peace of mind and mental ease.
In this sense, there is a moral absoluteness to friendship that results in an
ideal of self-development, a concept that Montaigne will pursue throughout
the Essays. Whats more, the experience of a true and pure self as revealed in
friendship is at the literal beginning and ending of the Essays: As a point de
depart, Montaigne experiences a commitment to his true self in his friendship
with tienne de La Botie that he will tirelessly pursue as le point darriv of the
morally good life.
More concretely, in the absence of his friend and therefore in the absence of
his pure self, Montaigne depends on the various manifestations through which
his self reveals itself to him as the hidden substrate of his consciousness and
mental life. Accordingly, the process of self-understanding that Montaigne
undertakes in the Essays consists in the endless observation of an infinite
variety of what one could call Abschattungen (reflections) of the self. In a
way, Montaigne seeks to understand who he really is by observing the ever-
changing manifestations of himself in the most diverse situationsnot a as
treasure hunter who continues digging until he has found what hes looking
for, but rather as an artist who constantly tries to capture new impressions and
snapshots of his object. As if they were a laboratory, the Essays constitute a set-
ting in which Montaigne literally puts himself to the test (essayer) in order to
observe which aspects of his self come to the fore. Accordingly, his method is
radically subjective and even egocentric; Montaigne approaches all of reality
from his own, strictly individual perspective: For many years now the target of
19 The quote appears in the manuscript of the 1588 edition of On Vanity. (My translation).
However, it is mentioned in Essays, 1112, n. 106.
20 Essays, lxiii: You have here, Reader, a book whose faith can be trusted, a book which
warns you from the start that I have set myself no other end but a private family one.
44 Caudron
my thoughts has been myself alone; I examine nothing, I study nothing but me;
and if I do study myself, it is so as to apply it once to myself, or more correctly,
within myself.21
One shouldnt therefore be surprised that Montaigne worked on the Essays
for over twenty years without ever regarding them as completed. Realising that
the vibrant versatility of his self would inevitably exceed his existing writings,
Montaigne never stopped adding passages and making changes as more and
more aspects of his self came to be revealed along the course of his life. He
firmly opposed a concept of the self as a deeper reality that would eventually be
fully uncovered; rather, as we can deduce from his take on things in the Essays,
Montaigne construes the self as an active construct, that is, a reality that takes
the form of an autonomously shaped and hence always retractable contraction
of the multitude of experiences through which it timidly and incompletely
reveals itself. In that sense, the Essays conceived of as a set of experiments on
the self or as a search for self-knowledge are manifestly linked to Montaignes
seminal experience of his self that characterised his friendship with La Botie.
They are both a firm acknowledgement of the selfs elusiveness and a sincere
attempt to recapture something of its morally valuable dimension.
References
Bakewell, S. How to Live or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at
an Answer. London: Chatto & Windus, 2010.
Botie, tienne de La. The Politics of Obedience: Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.
Edited by Murray N. Rothbard. New York: Free Life Editions, 1975.
Brunschvicg, L. Descartes et Pascal: Lecteurs de Montaigne. Neuchtel: ditions de la
Baconnire, 1945.
Frampton, S. When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know She Is Not Playing with
Me? Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life. London: Faber & Faber, 2011.
Montaigne, Michel de. Hommage La Botie. In Michel de Montaigne, Oeuvres
Compltes. Prface dAndr Maurois. Texte tabli et annot par Robert Barral en col-
laboration avec Pierre Michel. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1967.
. On Affectionate Relationships. In Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays.
Edited and Translated by M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
. On Idleness. In Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays. Edited and
Translated by M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
21 Essays, 424.
. On Vanity. In Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays. Edited and Translated

by M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
. The Journal of Montaignes Travels in Italy: In Italy by Way of Switzerland and
Germany in 1580 and 1581. Edited by William George Waters. London: BiblioLife,
2009.
Pascal, Blaise. Penses. Edited by Louis Lafuma. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1963.
Plato. Symposium. Edited by Benjamin Jowett. New York: The Modern Library, 1996.
Villey, P. Montaigne. Textes choisis et comments par Pierre Villey. Paris: Plon, 1912.
CHAPTER 3
The Singularity of Friendship: On Kierkegaard

and Friends
1 Introduction
Sren Kierkegaard appears as a most unlikely candidate for a philosophical

investigation of the notion of friendship. Friendship? Aristotle, Cicero, and
Michel de Montaigne all come to mind, but Kierkegaard? Personal relation-
ships in his work revolve mainly around amorous games, heart-wrenching
breakups, unrequited love, and high-pitched eroticism, or, on the contrary,
around placid and immensely boring marriages. In contradistinction to such
misguided dealings, Kierkegaard also presents us with the sublime and ago-
nisingly perfect normative ideal of neighbourly love, agap. In comparison,
good old friendship is roundly disregarded either as a cynical manipulation
of the other, or, in the Works of Love, as an injudicious preferential treatment
amounting to self-love, whose credentials are even shakier than those of erotic
love, eros.
Yet, friendship appears everywhere in Kierkegaards authorship. Most of the
pseudonymous works are addressed to, or narrate stories about, friends, while
the non-pseudonymous authorship is always dedicated to a friend (besides
everything else she or he may be). In effect, the authorship abounds with
friends whose task is to talk about their friends (Constantin Constantius, Judge
Vilhelm, the narrator of Fear and Trembling, among others); there can be little
doubt that friendship as a theme figures prominently in Kierkegaards work,
which may even be described as a cartography of friendship. My contention on
this theme is threefold.
First, Kierkegaard allows us to think about friendship with renewed vigour.
More specifically, his formulation of friendship as a dialectics of vision helps us
understand something fundamental about friendship and its gift.
Second, Kierkegaards theory of the self is uniquely suited to explore the
paradoxes and possibilities of friendship. Conversely, friendship opens unique
* To Paul, of course.

The Singularity Of Friendship 47
possibilities for the self; for instance, it may save the individual from anxiety
and despair, besides being a step in the process of singularisation of the self.
I become a self, or I become who I am called to become, through the friend-
ships I build.
Finally, Kierkegaards exploration of friendship and personal relationships
sheds an interesting light on the question of special obligations. While it has
been rejuvenated by thinkers such as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams,
the issue is already broached by Kierkegaard, who was deeply aware of the
tensions and moral paradoxes associated with special obligations: As a mat-
ter of fact, a central moral question throughout his authorship deals with the
dilemma created by the impartiality and impersonality demanded of ethics,
on the one hand, and obligations born out of a specific, singular relationship on
the other. Kierkegaards thorough analysis of the issue is linked to his broader
attempt to reconcile ethics and singularity, and perhaps even to ground ethics
on singularity.
2 A Dialectics of Vision
The topic of friendship emerges, interestingly, in the contradistinction to

Kierkegaards analysis of the demonic. In some famous pages of The Concept
of Anxiety, Kierkegaard analyses the concept of the demonic (anxiety before
the good) as the deepest level of despair. Morally, the sinner is not the worst of
all possible moral options; he still belongs to the sphere of the good, in so far
as evil remains for him a disquieting temptation which he might never man-
age to resist, but which still stands before him on the other side of the moral
divide. Hence, viewed from a higher standpoint, this formation is in the good,
and for this reason it is an anxiety about the evil. The other formation is the
demonic. The individual is in the evil and is in anxiety about the good.1 The
demonic has switched sides: He is both tempted and threatened by goodness,
just as the sinner is tempted and threatened by evil. Goodness, generosity, and
freedom are all external to him: In other words, he is locked in a self-imposed
seclusion, since every communication is a form of the good and might bring
him back to freedom. The demonic is an unfreedom that wants to close itself
1 Sren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and trans. Reidar Thomte, in Kierkegaards
Writings, Vol. 8, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1980), 119. Unless otherwise noted, all references to Kierkegaards work are to Kierkegaards
Writings, 26 Vols., ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 19782000).
48 Habbard
off,2 that wants to caulk all cracks and seal off his prison. Leave me alone in
my wretchedness,3 says the demonic. For Kierkegaard, the demonic, that ulti-
mate stage of despair and spiritual misery, is the rejection of any meaningful
relationship, particularly friendship. The demonic does not want to associate
with, or relate to, anyone, since every relationship would endanger its seclu-
sion. In other words, crossing over from the sphere of the good to the sphere of
evil is to be unable or unwilling to have friends.
Actually, the problem of the demonic is not so much that he doesnt want
to have friends as it is the fact that he genuinely believes that no one can be a
friend at all, to anyone, ever. This is why the demonic is devilishit is because
he is fundamentally mistrustful, and he believes that everyone is doomed like
he himself. Evil is about mistrust:
Mistrust, however, has a preference for evil [...] To believe nothing is the
very border where believing evil begins; in other words, the good is the
object of belief, and therefore someone who believes nothing at all begins
to believe evil. To believe nothing at all is the beginning of being evil
because it shows that one has no good in oneself, since belief is the good
in a person [...] Mistrust cannot maintain knowledge in equilibrium; it
defiles its knowledge and therefore verges on envy, malice, and corrup-
tion, which believes all evil.4
The friendless demonics self-enclosure is a self-imposed prison; he is both pris-

oner and watchman, keeping watch in front of his own prison door and trying
to prevent others from giving. It is not just that he is simultaneously prisoner
and watchman, and that he has thrown away the key; he also patrols around
to ensure that no one befriends anyone and that everyone else is locked up as
well. Having no friends and wanting none is the beginning of evil.
Kierkegaard thus agrees with Aristotle that friendship is a virtue. Having
friends certainly is pleasant and makes life both more significant and more
enjoyable; more fundamentally, however, it is also ethically essential, as it
makes me grow as a person. Kierkegaard seems to go as far as to claim that
friends may act as saviours who may lift one from a state of demonic despair.
Why is that? What is so special about friendly relationships that makes us grow
and become more ourselves?
2 The Concept of Anxiety, 123.

3 Ibid., 137.
4 Ibid., 233ff.
Friendship, like all strong relationships (and perhaps all strong relation-
ships are strong because they contain a core element of friendship), conveys
a strong sense of identity. The other, the friend, underwrites the fact that I am
the one I am, in my singularity. While the solitary demonic loses himself in
abstractionhe is shadowboxing, says Kierkegaardthe friend loves me as
an irreplaceable, singular, and unique self. Friendship is a life-enhancing expe-
rience; it heightens the experience of being alive and of existing. I get to know
myself through the mediation of, and discussions with, my friends. For Ren
Descartes, the transparency of the ego is achieved through the mediation of
Gods veracity; it is because I know God does not lie and is veracious that I can
be absolutely certain of the truth of my ideas. In a strangely similar pattern,
the transparency of the (certainly very differently conceived) self is achieved
through the mediation of my friends veracity. It is because I trust him not to lie
that I can be certain of where I standand of who I am.
How my friend achieves this remarkable result has to do with a certain mode
of seeing. There is in Kierkegaard a transposition of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegels dialectics of recognition,5 whereby I need to be recognised as a free
subject by another free subject in order to achieve objective certainty about
it; recognition implies the reciprocity of the acknowledgement of subjective
freedom (even though the Master and the Slave fail to see it at first). Similarly,
in friendship, I am who I am when the one I recognise as my friend recognises
me as his friend and recognises me as the one I am. I am more myself thanks
to my friends, while the demonic tries to define himself by himself alone. Such
a dialectics of recognition is, in Kierkegaard, transposed into a dialectics of
vision; friendship is the education of vision, as there are distinctly friendly and
unfriendly ways of seeing.6 Being a friend is a mode of seeing othersand of
seeing them in a benevolent manner. Kierkegaard analyses friendly disposi-
tions as uplifting ways of seeing the other. The example of forgiveness, which
Kierkegaard uses again and again, is telling. It is a way of seeingor rather, of
not seeing, of disregardingwhat you see: The unseen is that forgiveness takes
away that which does indeed exist; the unseen is that what is seen is neverthe-
less not seen [...] The one who loves sees the sin he forgives, but he believes
that forgiveness takes it away.7 To forgive is not to forgetI remember what
5 See Arne Grn, Amour et reconnaissance dans Les uvres de lAmour, in Sren Kierkegaard:
Pense et Problmes de lthique, ed. Anne-Christine Habbard and Jacques Message (Lille:
Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2009), 97115.
6 The dialectics of vision appear most clearly in The Works of Love, but it is also expressed in
The Concept of Anxiety, The Book on Adler, and The Sickness unto Death.
7 Works of Love, 29495.
50 Habbard
happened, I see what happened, and yet I do not see itI see it away, I disre-
gard it, acting as if it had not happened; I look away as if I had not seen it. This
ethical Als Ob is trust. The core of friendship lies in this very trust: The one
who loves forgives in this way: He forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin.8
Friendship is about seeing away what I see (forgiveness blotting away the sin),
just as it is about seeing what I cannot see (goodness, generosity, possibilities).
Friends teach me how to seehow to see the good and the positive where
the mistrustful or the lonely sees only dejection and misery. Love, or friend-
ship, is indeed blind, says Kierkegaard, as it deliberately disregards shortcom-
ings and faults. But the friend does not only disregardhe also clairvoyantly
sees new possibilities which were invisible to his friend. When we are down
and desperate, we often fail to see different perspectives and other options,
says Kierkegaard. The future appears foreclosed and doesnt seems like any-
thing but a perpetual erasure of any possibilityI am doomed! This form of
despair sees only dry, gloomy necessity and fatalitynothing seems possible.
Now, this is when friendship matters: The friend shows me that there is still a
possibility there where I see my future as blocked and hopeless. This reopening
of new spaces of possibility is what saves me: When someone faints, we call
for water, eau de Cologne, smelling salts; but when someone wants to despair,
then the word is: get possibility, get possibility, possibility is the only salvation.
A possibilitythen the person in despair breathes again, he revives again, for
without a possibility a person seems unable to breathe.9
The opposite of benevolent vision is not seeing the other at all, which is
how Kierkegaard views arrogance. The arrogant looks at others without seeing
them, or rather, by acting as if he didnt see them; he sees himself as supe-
rior to the one he doesnt see, just as he signals to the others that they should
see themselves as inferior. Jealousy works in a similar fashion: The jealous
see the other in a way that both aggrandises and belittles him. According to
Kierkegaard, envy is secret admiration. That which you see as superior you
will strive to see as inferior. And so admiration is happy self-surrender; envy
is unhappy self-assertion.10 In jealousy, or envy, I see the other as that which
he is not, just as I see myself as eternally striving to reach that which I secretly
admire. Jealousy is thus a form of self-hatred.
8 Ibid., 296.
9 The Sickness unto Death, 389.
10 Ibid., 86.
Kierkegaard thus writes that it is harder to accept being forgiven than to

forgive: Accepting the forgiveness of the one we have offended, now that is an
unbearable humiliation. That is why the offender never forgives.11 The culprit
has something to forgive just as much as the victim; in a way, it is harder to be
the culprit than it is to be the victim. It is difficult not to hate the one we have
harmed, and it is easier to avoid the often condescending gaze of the forgiver.
Kierkegaard was very prescient of the formidable potential self-righteousness
of victims and was well aware of the joys and perils of victimhood, to use Ian
Burumas words.12
Friendship creates space, just as it creates and opens time. Desperation
always believes that it is too latetoo late to change, too late to make amends,
too late to make a difference, too late to act; indeed, desperation is nothing but
the assertion that it is too late. Friendship is virtuous in that the friend can
always reach even the most desperate of all men and tell him: the instant is
still there.13 My friend tells me that the last minute is not the last one, but
always only the penultimate one; that the future still holds something in store
for me; and that it is not over yet. Kierkegaard writes that the most dreadful
reply imaginable is at that time, I could probably have been saved14but
now it is too late. And the friend is the one to say that it is still possible to be
saved now.
Friends save you. And they save you because you believe them to be already
saved. This is how the mysterious reciprocity of friendship operates: Friendship
means believing in salvationat the very least that of our friends, even if we
were to drown in despair. As Alain Cugno poetically writes, contrary to all
those I do not love, and to my own self, [the friend] appears to me as saved,
as evading despair [...] Whether she is despairing or not, she teaches me that,
at least in her case, salvation exists.15 I know salvation is possible because my
friend is already saved; conversely, to believe he is saved is itself to be saved
from the temptation of the enclosing reserve of the demonic.
11 Sren Kierkegaard, Sren Kierkegaards Papirer, ed. P.A. Heiberg et al. (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 19091948; 19681970; 19751978), Pap. X 3 10. (My translation).
12 Ian Buruma, The Joys and Perils of Victimhood, New York Review, April 8, 1999, 48.
13 The Book on Adler, 165.
14 The Concept of Anxiety, 137.
15 Alain Cugno, A quelles conditions peut-on fonder lthique sur la singularit? (paper
presented at the conference SrenKierkegaard, Pense et Problmes de lthique, Universit
de Lille 3, November 2005).
52 Habbard
3 The Double Gift of Friendship
But what exactly is given in friendship? Why is it that no one is able to pre-
cisely define love or friendship, but can only describe its actions? The reason,
according to Kierkegaard, is precisely that love is nothingnothing but the
presupposition of itself in the other. The fundamental action of love is to do
nothingnothing but to suppose that the other is loving:
A teacher presupposes that the pupil is ignorant. A disciplinarian presup-

poses that the other person is corruptedbut someone who loves and
builds up has only one course of action, to presuppose love [...] Love can
and will be treated in only one way, by being loved forth [...] The one
who loves has done nothing but presuppose that love was present in the
ground [...] The more perfect the loving one presupposes the love to be,
the more perfect a love he loves forth.16
What I, as a friend, give is merely to suppose my friend as giving, and this, in

turn, is precisely what makes him give. By acting as if the other was a friend,
I entice him to be one. While God can create love and instil it in someones
heart, all we humans can do (but this is already quite a task!) is to suppose it as
already there. By the mysterious retroactivity of the gift of friendship, I thereby
develop that which I already supposed to be present. To be a friend is to believe
my friend to be one and thereby make him one: To give is to believe others give
and thus lead them to give.
The gift of friendship thus appears to be a repetition, or a redoubling, of a
gift: What I give to my friend is the capacity for him to give in turn. More pre-
cisely, the gift is the redoubling: However destitute, wretched, miserable, or
poor, I can always give the ability to give by supposing love in the other. To be
a friend is to create the space for the other to be a friend in earnest. Socrates
is a good friend to his disciples because, as Kierkegaard stresses in both The
Concept of Irony and The Dialectics of Communication, his greatness lies not
just in attempting to find truth and/or the good, but also in bringing others
to follow the same path of their own volition. For Kierkegaard, all important
things in existence are doubled or repeatedas is the case with friendship:
What I give is the ability for the other to give, this, is what I myself acquire
while giving. Kierkegaard writes: Note the redoubling here: The one who
loves is or becomes what he does. He has or rather acquires what he gives [...]
By giving one acquires and receives just the same as one gives, so that this
16 Works of Love, 217ff.

giving and this receiving are one and the same [...] In this way love is always
redoubled in itself.17
Friendship reveals itself as a form of redoubling: To be a friend is to sup-
pose the other is one. In a famous passage from the Works of Love, Kierkegaard
analyses Peters betrayal of Christ. Christ is a friend to Peter because when the
latter betrays, Christ knows that he himself is in danger of betraying, by judg-
ing, condemning, refusing to forgive, abandoning his friend in his betrayal.
When I think my friend betrays, it is actually me who betrays, as I do not see
that the apparent traitor is the one in jeopardy. The real danger is for Peter,
not for Christwhile Peter is in danger of losing himself and losing his friend-
ship with Christ, Christ saves him by seeing away the sin of betrayal, which
he would have committed had he seen it. Herein lie the duplication and the
reversibility of friendship: When he betrays, I am the one who betrays. You
betray when you think the other betrays youthat is because you failed at
the fundamental test of friendship, namely, to believe the other was actually
a friend and thus to help him be one. The amazing thing about friendship,
therefore, is that it makes you who you area good friend. Everything about
friendship is duplicatedyou give a double gift, the gift of the ability to give,
which gives you the possibility to receive, as a friend.
Like all powerful meditations on personal relationships, Kierkegaards
reflection gives an important place to suffering; suffering is an essential ele-
ment of personal relationships because while everyone can respect me, in
a Kantian sense, and while colleagues, relatives, and acquaintances might
rejoice with me in good times, only my friends will be at my side when I suffer.
Not that others would not want to help me, but the choice of whom I would
want by my side in times of distress is the very discriminant: It is exactly what
makes the person a friend. Suffering should not here be understood merely
as physical pain, or even as mental pain, but as a disempowermentit is the
decrease, or even the destruction, of the capacity to act, of the ability to effec-
tuate or be part of the world. Kierkegaard shows that solicitude, if it is to be
more than a mawkish affability where the self secretly relishes in having been
spared (suave mari magno [...]), cannot be limited to a unilateral gift by the
friend to the passively receiving sufferer: Relief and equality arise from the fact
that, in a way, the capacity to care was opened by the sufferer, who becomes
the locus of initiative. The letters Kierkegaard wrote to his cousin Hans Peter
and his sister-in-law Henriette,18 both bedridden, are significant in this regard:
Suffering does not mean passivity. On the contrary, the sufferer allows others
17 Ibid., 281ff.
18 See, for example, Letters 167 and 196 in Kierkegaards Writings, Vol. 25, 2009.
54 Habbard
to care and show concern, and thus turns out to be the one who gives them the
opportunity to give; the sympathiser is the one who needs the sympathy of the
sufferernot the other way around. This is why sharing pain is ethically more
significant than sharing pleasure. Paul Ricoeur is very Kierkegaardian when
he states that a self brought back to the vulnerability of the mortal condition
can receive from a friends weakness more than he gives of his own strength.19
Being a friend means giving up something of myself, if only through accepting
that something in me is being changed by what I have opened up in the other.
4 Friendship at the Self
This cartography of friendship illustrates what is now widely agreed upon,

namely, that Kierkegaards thought is not about the odyssey of a solitary ego
locked in a vertical relation to God; rather, it is a deep reflection on what it
means to relate to others in truthfulness and veracity. In this regard, Kierkegaard
appears to be a deep and original thinker on alterity and intersubjectivity.
Now it is interesting to note that this analysis of friendship as a double and
simultaneous move of receptivity from the other and a gesture toward him
as a double giftrelies on a dialectic of activity and receptivity. This allows
Kierkegaard to avoid both the pitfalls of the work of Edmund Husserl, where
the genesis of intersubjectivity lies within the self, and that of Emmanuel
Levinas, where I am taken hostage by the other. In both cases, the unilaterality
of the move precludes the possibility of the redoubling, as we have described
it, or of a dialectics of vision. Friendship understood as a relationship that
actively transforms the way the self relates to itself presupposes a self that
is defined as a relation from the outset, rather than as a substantially closed
ego which would, as in an afterthought, connect to others; it cannot be a sub-
stantial, fat, circular, self-contained ego. There must be a break in the self for
the occurrence of friendship to arise. It means that the self will be defined as
openness, that is, a being constitutively open to break-ins and essentially, not
accidentally, vulnerable. In other words, as Ricoeur would phrase it, friend-
ship requires a theory of the self which would allow for the possibility of self-
hood (ipse), rather than sameness (idem): a theory in which the self is both a
given and a task that requires commitment and fortitude. Or, as Kierkegaard
puts it in the opening lines of The Sickness unto Death, a self that is defined
19 Un soi rappel la vulnrabilit de la condition mortelle peut reevoir de la faiblesse de

lami plus quil ne lui donne en puisant dans ses propres rserves de force. [Paul Ricoeur,
Soi-mme comme un autre (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1990), 224]. (My translation).
as a relation that relates itself to itself, or it is the relations relating itself to

itself in the relation.20
However, the selfs relationality leads to a deep paradox of existence: If
becoming myself requires commitment and a receptivity to what others give
me, then it means that I depend on exteriority in order to become me. In other
words, if I fail to receive, I may lose out on being me! I cannot not be me, and
yet I can miss out on being me. I may end up missing the mark.
The gift of friendship is the very route to becoming a self. I become what
I am not simply by my own volition, but I do so also thanks to what I receive
from others; it is this relation to others, this election, so to speak, that makes
me the singular self that I am. This is the reason why friendship has a strong
ethical componentwhy, it is a virtue, as Aristotle said. The journey of the self
is a process of singularisation which includes the life-transforming event of
friendship, a receptivity initiated by the other, who releases in me the possibil-
ity of giving. Becoming a self therefore involves the contingent event of being
loved as a friend; contingent because there is no certainty of it ever happening.
What is necessary to become a self is actually contingent. In friendship, I care
about you, but I also care about our relationship and about myself insofar as I
am your friend; we are thrice entwined (a relation relating to itself). Nothing
is as devastating as the loss of a friend, as John Stuart Mill aptly remarked.
Losing a friend is thus a triple loss and goes to the heart of what I am and what
I valuenot just you, but us, and thus me.
This means that identity is perhaps not what matters to the self. The aes-
thete, the player, and the philosopher all consider the self to be a metaphysi-
cal issue, says Kierkegaard. They all view singularity as a question of identity
revolving around the identification of the specific properties of that substance.
What makes me me amounts to certain properties that I have and which you
dont: my special talents, my unique look, and my exasperating faults. The
issue pertains to classic metaphysics: Identity and specific properties distin-
guish one being from another. Kierkegaard, however, disputes this view: What
is so special about me is not my actually not-so-unique and (in any case) insig-
nificant qualities or faults. What makes me the singular self that I am are the
unique ethical obligations that I incur due to the friendships and other per-
sonal relationships I have built. Kierkegaard, who could foresee the pitfalls
of the identity debate, would in a way agree with Derek Parfit that personal
identity is not what matters.21 Kierkegaard shows that ethical concern for
the self sidesteps the issue of identityin the sense either of a metaphysical
20 The Sickness unto Death, 13.

21 Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 255.
56 Habbard
permanence of substance, or of a psychologically enduring sameness. What

matters, therefore, is not identity per se, but the selfhood that arises out of my
commitment and my response to others, or the repetition of my commitment
to become who I have been called by others to become.
5 Special Obligations and Moral Dilemmas
Kierkegaards approach to the issue of friendship therefore sheds light on

an eminently contemporary problem: that of special obligations. How does
one ground and account for the special ethical duties that arise from these
personal, unique relationships which seem to preclude the impartial, agent-
neutral moral point of view?
On the issue of the foundation of special obligations, Kierkegaard unsur-
prisingly refutes the common view that friendships special obligations would
arise from the nature of the obligee, that is, that friendship would only be due
to virtuous friends.22 This is untenable in Kierkegaards eyesif only because
time spent evaluating whether or not your friend deserves to be your friend,
indicates, ipso facto, that you are not his friend. More generally, it seems diffi-
cult to posit that friendships moral obligation would stem from the particular
characteristics of the person to whom one is obliged. In other words, the foun-
dation cannot be the same as an impartial, agent-neutral obligation such as
moral respect, for example, which is owed to any rational being on the grounds
of his humanity or dignity.
Others claim that friendship is merely a particular application of the value
judgement:23 I have reasons to value this relationship, hence I am obligated
to promote this valuein particular, my friendship to you. The claim is that
the very act of valuing certain types of relationships involves seeing ourselves
as having special obligations, or, more broadly, as being bound by an implicit
contract, such as John Lockes tacit consent. But this leaves it entirely up to
the self to determine whether or not a relationship creates an obligation. This
is a problem, since in friendship, as noted earlier, something is initiated by the
other: I am neither the sole initiator of the relationship nor that of the value of
the relationship. Kierkegaard repeatedly uses the paradigm of the promise to
show how each pole of the relationship releases and creates new ethical and
existential possibilities in the other. In other words, Kierkegaards reflection on
22 See, for example, Jennifer Whiting, Impersonal Friends, The Monist 74 (1991): 329.
23 See, for example, Samuel Scheffler, Relationships and Responsibilities, Philosophy and
Public Affairs 26 (1997): 189209.
the relationality of the self allows us to better understand how an obligation

may be founded on a relationship, rather than on either the nature of the obli-
gee or the goodwill or value-setting initiative of the obliged. The relationship
itself grounds the special obligation;24 in so doing it pins me down like a but-
terfly and makes me the irreplaceable, unique self that I am.
Kierkegaard sees the importance of special obligations in determin-
ing the self; yet, evidently special obligations cannot obviate general duties.
Kierkegaards challenge is hence to formulate an ethics which reconciles the
universality and impartiality of Kantian-style ethics with the personal attach-
ment of the double gift of friendship. Now, can ethics address the special
duties that arise from the individuals personal relationships? Or is it destined
to remain in the realm of the impartial, agent-neutral duties, and therefore, in
Michael Stockers words, potentially end up in a moral schizophrenia?25 It
appears that Kierkegaards interest in and thorough analysis of the nature of
moral dilemmas is due to this very concern for the schizophrenic possibilities
of friendship. Indeed, Kierkegaards problem with Kantian ethics is not only a
religious problem with autonomy and the source of obligation: More funda-
mentally, he finds that Kantian ethics cannot accommodate the concrete sin-
gularity of ethical lifeas manifested in the special obligations arising out of
a relationship. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard raises the stakes (as he often
does) by sharpening the dilemma: Is it possible for an action to transgress the
moral law and yet be justifiable? Can ethics not be predicated on impartial-
ity and still be defensible? What should I do if and when special obligations
come to contradict the natural duties to which I am otherwise committed?
Can we reconcile agap with the particularity of the personal relationships we
have built? Moral life is essentially, not accidentally, about moral dilemmas,
and they constitute the greatest challenge to the moral will. Take Jean-Paul
Sartres famous example, in Existentialism is a Humanism, of the young man
torn between his patriotism and his duty to his bedridden mother: moral life
and ethical decisions are primarily about dilemmas.
One may view Fear and Trembling as an elucidation of moral dilemmas and,
more specifically, of the moral dilemmas associated with special obligations.
More generally, moral dilemmas abound in Kierkegaards authorship: for the
young man in The Repetition, whether to marry the young lady or leave her; for
Agamemnon, whether to sacrifice his daughter to appease the Gods or keep
24 Although arguably in Kierkegaards case the mediation of a third termGod or divine

loveis the ultimate guarantee of the foundation.
25 Michael Stocker, The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories, The Journal of
Philosophy 73 (1976): 45366.
58 Habbard
her alive and doom the city; for Abraham, whether to sacrifice his son in obedi-
ence to Gods command or disobey it; for the Delphi fianc to whom the augurs
had predicted a tragedy following his wedding, whether to celebrate the mar-
riage nonetheless or break his promise; for the king in love with the young lady,
whether to elevate her to him or go to her level; for the merman in love with
Agnes, whether to choose hiddenness or disclosure; in the Two Ethico-Religious
Treatises, for the beholder of truth, whether to die for it or refuse to let his fel-
low human beings become guilty of murder; and for Christs contemporary,
whether to choose scandal or choose faith.
A moral dilemma is never answered satisfactorilywhich is why Kierkegaard
adds that ethics inevitably ends up in repentance: You cannot but repent, since
you are doomed to fail at least one of your duties. I have reasons to abide by
one duty, but I have just as many reasons to abide by the otherand I cannot
give satisfactory reasons as to why I should choose this duty over the other.
To do what anyone could do is excellent, no doubt, but what do I do when
I am in a position where only I can do thisand at the expense of another
duty? Special obligations do not carry their own reasons as to why we choose
them. And it is for this reason that we have the risk, the dilemma, and the heart
wrenching debates with ourselves; this is why we inevitably have repentance.
Should I have acted otherwise? Am I guilty or not guilty? (This last question is
a title of another of Kierkegaards famous works). Whatever I do, I will fail one
of my duties. Herein lies the fabric of the self and of the moral life: in the diver-
gence of allegiances. I cannot be only a friend and accept only special obliga-
tions (in which case I wouldnt be a friend anymore); but neither can I accept
only universal, agent-neutral duties, where no one in particular matters to me.
So Kierkegaards question becomes the following: How can we salvage friend-
ship from the harsh hammer of the universal jurisdiction of moralityor, con-
versely, how can we save impartial duties from the tightening vise of special,
private allegiances? A classical dilemma supposes two duties of equal weight,
whereas the special obligations dilemma posits one duty which is unexplain-
ableand yet one is obliged. None of these choices carries moral necessity
it is, strictly speaking, an unjustifiable decision. I cannot justify why I choose
this duty over that one, and the one who has been left behind will very rightly
reproach me for having forsaken him. This is the undecidability of ethical life:
Acting morally entails always being wrong because the multiplicity of my obli-
gations, personal or impersonal, can never be fully satisfied. It seems like the
demands of impartiality and the personal point of view cannot be systemati-
cally reconciled: A self cannot always stand in a non-alienated relationship to
itself. Kierkegaard does not want to abandon universality, yet he is aware of its
difficulty in the chain of reasoning. This is the real tragedy: However good my
will, I will fail because I cannot, in my finitude, accommodate both personal

and impersonal obligations, and I will never be able to justify myself. (God,
on the other hand, can satisfy both his impersonal duties and his special obli-
gations because divinity is exempt from dilemmas). This, Kierkegaard would
argue, is where the fragility, or rather the tragedy, of goodness lies. And there
is no satisfactory solution. I can always rightfully be blamed, as I can always
rightfully be praised. In the experience of the dilemma, the ultimate reason for
my action cannot be made universal, nor can it be made intelligible and trans-
parent: It calls for a singular, archetypal choice made by a singular conscience
which will endorse the responsibility for its decision. Here lies the true mean-
ing of responsibility, according to Kierkegaard: Responsibility arises in a deci-
sion that appears to the outsider as nothing but an arbitrary, subjective, 50/50,
roll of the dice. Indeed, the moment of decision becomes folly.26 Kierkegaards
ethics is concurrent: It is not experienced in the luminous Kantian aura of self-
evidence; much to the contrary, it is lived as a conflict, as the tragic discord of
values and norms.
Now, enclosing myself at this stage is a real possibility. Kierkegaard finds
that in this conflict lies the possible validity of the demonics position since
any decision between the universal jurisdiction of morality and special obliga-
tions becomes unjustifiable, which cancels out duty.
And this is where friendship resurfaces. It might be the source of the moral
conflict, but it also offers its solution. Friendship is ever resourceful. The trag-
edy of moral conscience leads to the repentance of having failed one or the
other of my moral obligations. Now this is the specificity of friendship: The
friend is the one who will somehow accept my decision as being moral, how-
ever severely it might be judged by those who are not my friends. Kierkegaard
mentions the mercifulness of love: Your friend will believe, without requiring
reasons or evidence, that your failing was not due to moral weakness or to
indecisiveness, but to the existence of an unseen moral dilemma, which you
tried to solve as best you could, but which entailed a betrayal either way. He
welcomes you in the very vulnerability of your choices, with the ever-present
risk of misunderstanding. This is perhaps why the mediation of the other is
so important and why friendship is so decisive: A friend, ultimately, will find
the unjustifiability of ones decision not only justifiable, but acceptable, and
he will see, in the apparent immorality of the decision, the possibility of an
effort at morality. The aporia of ethics is that it is anything but universally com-
municable and transparent; but remarkably enough, Kierkegaard also presents
26 Philosophical Fragments, or a Fragment of Philosophy, in Kierkegaards Writings, Vol. 7

(1985), 52.
60 Habbard
us with the means of regenerating the torn consciousness: If the unity of con-
sciousness is still to be made possible, if becoming one can still be held to be
a real existential possibility, it is thanks to the presence of the other, friendly
subject. The agent torn in the dilemma may be blocked by the lack of intel-
ligibility of his own action, and may therefore be condemned to silence, but
his friend can testify to what he has been throughnot in the material aspect
of the case, but in the ethical posture, or the uprightness, of his friend:
Abraham keeps silentbut he cannot speak. Therein lies the distress and
anguish. For if when I speak I am unable to make myself intelligible, then I
am not speakingeven though I were to talk uninterruptedly day and night.
Such is the case with Abraham. He is able to utter everything, but one thing he
cannot say, i.e. say it in such a way that another understands it, and so he is not
speaking.27 I may not be able to make myself intelligible, because I am not able
to speak in my own defence; but my friend can, and he can do so with a power
of conviction that I will never have. My friend is my witness. Herein perhaps
lies the difference between Fear and Trembling and Repetition: not just in the
nature of the ordeal, of course, but also in the nature of the observer and the
status of the discourse on the ordeal. Constantin Constantius claims to under-
stand the young mans inner turmoil, but condemns it and remains cold and
impassive; meanwhile, the narrator of Abrahams story consistently refuses to
judge or criticise Abrahams decision, however shocking it may appear to the
moral observer (and let us not forget Abraham is ready to kill his son); and yet
he talks about it rather abundantly. One of the Three Edifying Discourses pub-
lished the same day as both Fear and Trembling and Repetition emphasises how
observing does not merely consist in discovering, but, just as much, in produc-
ing or activating something. Friendship is like quantum physics; the nature of
the observer is decisive, and the more the object of observation belongs to
the world of spirit, the more important is the way [the observer] is constituted
in his innermost nature.28 The friends observation brings forth his failing
friends turmoil through his act of witnessing and thus appeases itor, at the
very least, lays out a possible future reunification of the moral consciousness
through his narrative.
Coinciding with oneself, becoming contemporary with oneself, is only pos-
sible through the mediation of a friend. A friend might mishear or misunder-
stand me, but he can perhaps also, at times, bear witness to my moral fortitude
and tell my story. Friendship opens the possibility of repetition by allowing the
individual to recover the integrity of a being previously frayed in the moral
27 Fear and Trembling, 130.

28 Eighteen Edifying Discourses, 60.
dilemma: The friend opens, for the self, a way to himself, according to Jean
Nabert.29 The friend produces his own route for his friend to recover his lost
unity through his own appropriation and interpretation of his friends story.
This is why the notions of communication and contemporaneity are tightly
correlated in Kierkegaards mind: Ethical and ethico-religious communication
is not an accidental footnote in the process of my becoming a self; I become
a self by becoming contemporaneous with, or finding the same temporality
as, my friend, to whom I communicate and who in turn is able to communi-
cate about memore than, and better than, I myself can. Abraham may not
speak, but he does communicate; and as The Concept of Anxiety notes, freedom
is always inand anopen communication. I learn what it means to be free
through communicatingto a friend. It might not be the type of communica-
tion that is intelligible and transparent to all, but this is precisely the specific
ability of the friend: He can see, and hear, what others cannot. It is a communi-
cation to which my friend will be able to bear witness. In his diary, Kierkegaard
notes that the instant occurs when the person is here, the person needed;30
and who is more needed than the friend? Becoming myself depends on the
possibility of the person needed to be there, to be co-present, and to hear
me. I am not the proprietor of my existence: My lifes narrative is the work of
my friends.
Perhaps Kierkegaards crucial category of singularity can be read in a new
light: The singularity that truly matters is not so much that of the individual
(which would lead us straight back to a problematic metaphysics of identity),
but to that of the ethical decision as exemplified in the moral dilemma opened
by special obligations. Friendship creates its own ethical problemsthe spe-
cial obligationsbut it also has resources not only to overcome these prob-
lems, but to reunify the self wounded in the process. If repetition is to be made
possible, it can, in the end, only occur through the mediation of another voice,
a friendly voice, telling ones story: The redoubling of friendship allows for a
repetition of the self. Repetition is possible because friendship is the redou-
bling, it is the repetition. This is the difference between the knight of resigna-
tion and the knight of faith mentioned in Fear and Trembling: While the knight
of resignation is resigned to the misunderstandingno one will ever be able
to understand the monstrous dilemma to which he is subjectedthe knight
of faith trusts that someone will listen to him, be able to tell his story, and bear
witness to the fact that he did not act by a lack of ethics, but by an excess;
29 Jean Nabert, Elments pour une thique (Paris: Aubier, 1992), 178.
30 Pap. XI 2 A 405. (My translation).
62 Habbard
he will bear witness to the reasons for the knights actions which the knight
himself could not give.
Herein lies the luminous beauty and the tragic insecurity of friendship.
References
Buruma, Ian. The Joys and Perils of Victimhood. New York Review. April 8, 1999.
Cugno, Alain. A quelles conditions peut-on fonder lthique sur la singularit? Paper
presented at the conference Sren Kierkegaard, Pense et Problmes de lthique,
Universit de Lille 3, November 2005.
Grn, Arne. Amour et reconnaissance dans Les uvres de lAmour. In Sren
Kierkegaard: Pense et Problmes de lthique. Edited by Anne-Christine Habbard
and Jacques Message. 97115. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2009.
Kierkegaard, Sren. Kierkegaards Writings. 26 Vols. Edited by Howard V. Hong and
. Soren Kierkegaards Papirer. Edited by P.A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr et al. Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 19091948; 19681970; 19751978.
Nabert, Jean. Elments pour une thique. Paris: Aubier, 1992.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
Ricoeur, Paul. Soi-mme comme un autre. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1990.
Scheffler, Samuel. Relationships and Responsibilities. Philosophy and Public Affairs 26
(1997): 189209.
Stocker, Michael. The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories. The Journal of
Philosophy 73 (1976): 45366.
Whiting, Jenifer. Impersonal Friends. The Monist 74 (1991): 329.
CHAPTER 4
A Garon has the Whole World for a Bride

Or: On the Bliss of Marriage
Walter Jaeschke
How can fire help that its burning?1 Who would hesitate to answer such a
question? Of course: it cant. After all, gone are the days when a Persian king
could order the sea to be lashed when its strong waves prevent his fleet from
sailing to Greece, delaying his intended conquest by a couple of days.2 Fire
cannot help that it burns, and its innocence also unquestionably applies to
more than simply burning. After all, fire does not only burn something, it incin-
erates it or at least melts it: like a waxen house god that is forgotten next to
a fire that was lit for the annealing of precious vessels3 or perhaps only for
cooking food. Fire lends constancy, it warms, it renders palatable, but it also
disturbsand who would reproach it for that? If it could speak, it would even
advance an important apology in its favour: Whether it warms or disturbs, it
always remains true to its naturethe fire is not to blame, but to blame are
those who come too close to it, whether its beneficent or whether its disturb-
ing potencies become actuality. A century later, in the writings of Friedrich
Nietzsche, this game of question and answer is acted out once more in a liter-
ary way:4 How can the strong help that they are strong? They cant. And there-
fore it would not only be foolish, but also completely absurd, to ask that the
strong disavow their strengththat the eagles pose as lambs, or, indeed, that
fire not burn altogether.
The fire that we are discussing hereas you may have already surmisedis
not the physical phenomenon, but rather the fire of love. Perhaps this erotic fire
is but a physical fire, if only a very special kind. However that may be, to repeat
the question more specifically: How can the fire of love help that it burns? The
answer here is analogical: It cant. It burns where and as long as it desires; often
* Translated from the German by Joris Spigt.

1 He, 382.
2 See Herodotus, The Histories, VII.35.
3 He, 6.
4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), Sec. 1,13.

64 Jaeschke
it burns especially intensely where it receives no nourishment, and perhaps it

may ultimately consume itself. And when the fire burns, it does not ask about
social convention and it certainly does not ask about the teachings of the phi-
losophising upholder of moral standards, who wants to subject human beings
to their self-fabricated tyrannical disciplinarian, to reason, and, from his
philosophical chair, with his categorical imperatives, to command everyone to
be something that they have never been.5 But why should one be tyrannised by
those teachingsor: Why do we have to be so bound and pay for every drip
of lust with doleful outcry!6 This is indeed not evident at all. And thus, then,
the fire of love speaks (and I quote, of course, still from the same book): Am I
culpable, for wanting to be united with beauty, where I find it? Is this not the
noblest drive of our spirit? Is he not wretched, god forsaken, who does not have
this drive, does not exercise it? In what kind of world do I live in which this
would be a natural vice? It is the mere civil order, spoiling people! And, against
this restrictive civil order, the one burning in love appeals to the divine Plato
and prays to him to realise his republic, where at least man and wife are holy
and free with their love.7
It is of course questionable whether it is so obvious that Platos state should
be thought of as a more attractive option than modernitys civil order. In one
respect, this view has a good grounds (or perhaps nothing but the appearance
of a good ground): Platos state is unfamiliar with the restriction of sexual-
ity to civic marriageand even such civic marriage is, for the free spirit of
the one burning in love, the living death. Death: This is most certainly not
the least, but rather the most definitive form of disruption. The fire therefore
is not that which disrupts, but the civil order itself that human beings have
established to domesticate multiple forms of fire, including the fire of love: In
truth, the civil order is that which disrupts. And other than fire, one can very
well ask whether this civil order can refrain from causing disruption. Of course,
it is guilty of that disruption, since it is a mere civil order and therefore an
artificial order and not nature.
However, once this mechanism of disruption is seen as contradictory to
nature, there is actually no grounds at all for letting marriage, as living death,
continue to actualise its disruptive effects. The way out of this prison would
then be wide open; when the objectand I consciously say the objectof
love finds himself trapped in such captivity, then that would, should the need
arise, give him cause to swing himself over the wall of this prison, with an
5 Ibid., 121.
6 Ibid., 108.
7 Ibid., 111.
A Garon Has The Whole World For A Bride 65
inspired meglio ancora and a sneering laugh, like Don Giovanni in the epony-
mous opera. And only once that is achieved can the laterat first only sound-
ing rebelliously triumphantstatement of the Protestant pastor Friedrich
Schleiermacher that a garon has the whole world for a bride8 prove itself
to be an exclamation that is already restricted, broken, and even castrated by
the mere civil juridical and moral order. Leaving this point to one side, we
can see that this exclamation does not just contain a beacon of libertinism: It is
in truth a somewhat helpless attempt to console oneself in an uncomfortable
situation and give oneself the assurance that there will one day be freedom
from the unfortunate situation of having the world for a bride and that the
bliss of marriage will one day be enjoyed.
Nevertheless, why would only the garon have the whole world for a
bride? It is only possible under the artificial, unnatural conditions of the reign
of the civil order that the privilege to have the whole world for a bride would
be restricted to the garonbut why? Where on the other side one, following
ones nature, asserts ones natural right to everythingwhere the power to
enjoy gives right to every thing, the unnatural character of this fatal restric-
tion is perspicuous. Insisting on this (higher?) right of nature, the one entirely
subjected and overwhelmed by irresistible love, who has approached his
belovedfinely named Lucindevia an illicit path, seeks to set aside her
scruplesby means of an argumentation, that is not foreign to seducers (as
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would later put it):9 Why can two people like
us not be together without sin! Why must there always be a wall of bricks and
clothes and mechanical society between us? And he implores her: Imagine
how the blessed are in heaven, and how our first parents were. All of this
walls, clothes, and civil morality as suchonly functions when one belongs to
the crowd.10 Due to its repression, the unnatural civil order may always reveal
itself as the natural order.
And so the fire burns, innocent by nature, and, just as naturally, it leaves
behind a trailof destruction. Who would want to painstakingly sum up and
list, like a bookkeeper, all who lose their lives due to the fire of love throughout
the course of this bookwhether it be by their own fire or by someone elses
that crosses their path! In the overall balance of the human race, their lives
8 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (hereinafter KGA), Sec. V, Vol. 8:

Briefwechsel 18041806 (Briefe 18312172), ed. Andreas Arndt and Simon Gerber (Berlin
and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 7.
9 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen Wood, trans.
H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),164, Addition.
10 He, 117.
66 Jaeschke
are by no means worth mentioning furthersince for every murdered one,

at least one new human being comes into existence, and nature furthermore
has no problems with the fact that among most of the new citizens of earth,
very few, among their family and friends, know who their real father is. The fire
burns, destroys, and creates new thingsuntil it is carried onto the blissful
islands, on which the fire, under the conditions of a new environment, a new
religion, and a new climate, loses none of its heat but all of its disturbing power
because it now burns beyond the mere civil order and, free from its restric-
tions, only blazes all the more brightly. But in fact, it blazes not entirely with-
out restriction: Onefiguring as civilrestriction remains intact. The fire
can burn to ones hearts content wherever it so desires, yet it may not forge its
path with forcebut actually there is no reason at all now for it to do so. And
so, then, the fiery streams of love, coming from so many regions, finally flow
together in this place, where they form, to adopt a catchy phrase dating from
the early years of Romanticism, an interesting scrambled egg.11 However, it is
then not really interesting anymore, equally not surprising, and least of all a
pity that the book ends with serving these scrambled eggs.
One could assume that the author in this way spoke his only and last word
about loveand that would not be wrong, but it would also not be completely
right. Because one ingredient does not let itselfcontrary to the course of
the books narrativebe mixed into the scrambled eggs: the episode with
Lucinde. Lucinde is, to a high degree, lucky enough to be such that many have
caught on fire due to her, and are lustful up to the point of infatuation for her
Ambrosia and Nectar.12 Yet such lustfulness and infatuation barely affect her:
Lucindes love is of a different kind. She refuses to partake in the game of catch-
ing on fire, getting scorched, and being incinerated, the process of ever-increas-
ing ignition and equally rapid extinguishing. She also loves, but her love is of
such a type and strength that even the fire, which otherwise does not bother to
care about the object that it disturbs, experiences its own limits with respect
to itthe fire retreats powerlessly in the face of this love in both moments of
the narrative, separated by a long interval, where the fire could have seized the
object for which it so ardently burned. Later on, Lucindes loveso entirely
differentleads her to an extremely blissful marriage.13 The bliss of love
which is at the same time the bliss of marriageis thus also found on this side
of the blissful islands, and hencewho would have still expected it?even
under the conditions of the civil order.
11 Friedrich Schlegel to Friedrich Schleiermacher (after 20 July 1798) [KGA, Sec. V, Vol. 2, 363].
12 He, 108.
13 Ibid., 391.
A good decade before Wilhelm Heinses Ardinghello and the Blissful Islands14
we have up until now spoken of the plot of this book, as you have undoubtedly
recognizedwhen the Sturm und Drang period was at its peak and when
Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Werther came out, another book was published.
It was not quite as stormy asand even less stressful thanHeinses work,
but in its time it was just as influential, despite the fact that we have almost
forgotten about it today. It went by the succinct title On Marriage.15 The oppo-
sition between the two books could not have been greater. Nevertheless, sur-
prising similarities can be noted, albeit all on a formal level: Both books were
published anonymously, and, another curiosity, both authors appear to have
learned their subject matter from hearsay rather than from experiences in
their personal lives. It was in each case a garon who, in the first case, wrote
about love, and in the second case, about marriage. In addition, what makes the
matter philosophically juicy, is that in the first case, the author was a garon
from the circle of friends of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, who was anything but
happy about Heinses literary libertinism, and in the second case, the author
was part of the circle of friends of an even more famous thinker, Immanuel
Kant. It turns out, then, that the author of On Marriage was Theodor Gottlieb
von Hippel, who was a criminal counselor when his book had first been pub-
lished and who was later the mayor of Knigsberg in Prussia. So much for the
similarities; the fabulae docent of both works are strictly opposed each other:
While the first sings the song of love, the second sings the song of marriage.
Nevertheless, much is said about love in the second book, just as in the first
book much is said about marriage. In Ardinghello and the Blissful Islands, there
are ephemeral tangencies, even if they only serve to show the phenomenon of
mutual repulsion. In On Marriage, love has pleasure as its highest enda
point which Heinse would not contest; the difference between the two authors
concerns the question of whether or not such pleasure is actually a legiti-
mate highest end. For Heinse, the answer to that question is self-evident; for
Hippel, however, precisely because love targets pleasure, love is a transient
need, a stroll to get some exercise.16 And against putting love on a pedestal,
Hippel stresses that the real joy of living on earth is the true philosophers
14 Wilhelm Heinse, Ardinghello and the Blissful Islands: An Italian Story from the Sixteenth
Century (Lemgo: Meyer, 1787). (Referred to in this paper as He).
15 Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, Collected Works. Vol. 5. On Marriage (Berlin: G. Reimer,
1828). (Referred to in this paper as Hi).
16 Hi, 108.
68 Jaeschke
stone that one cannot find except in marriage.17 This comment notwithstand-
ing, Hippel, too, does not bluntly deny that marriage entails a certain moment
of enforcementa concept that for instance finds expression in the ques-
tion he asks an adulterer: Who forced you to join the monastery of marriage?
Were you not long enough in the novitiate? The monastery of marriagefor
Heinse, it is the living death; for Hippel, it is the presupposition for a real
joy of living on earth. And what is more: Heinse ships his genius society, hun-
gry for love if not outright love-crazed, to the blissful islands, to the Aegean
shores, where they, far from the civil order of enforcement, can live the escap-
ist life of which they dreamed. Hippel, by contrast, leaves the partners of mar-
riage to the shores of the Baltic Sea (or wherever they are staying) because
marriage brings everything out of the region of genius into the railway of
common life, and those who walk there are the truly blessed (beati), since
only by staying on the middle path can one practice to bear life with all of its
points and clauses and stay the same throughout spring, summer, autumn and
winter.18 The blissful islands of the truly blessed are, as it were, everywhere
where marriage is taken seriously and is recognised as the decisive moment
that structures human life. And whoever is not able to recognise that fact and
act accordingly can just as well save himself the trip to Naxos and Paros, as he
would find yonder nothing other than that from which he flees.
Denouncing the pretenses of geniuses, the praise of the middle path of com-
mon lifeor, to speak with a sharp tongue, the praise of mediocrityall of
this does not exactly make the hearts and senses of contemporary readers beat
faster. Does the advocate of love, enthused and hungry for love, not appear
all the more attractive, all the more modern in the eyes of the boring,
indeed even sulky advocate of marriage? There is no doubt as to what choice
the Homeric Paris would have made with respect to this dual constellation,
at the crossroads of love and marriage, although he would presumably have
met with the same disastrous consequences that resulted from his decision
in favour of Aphrodite. Even a more intensive study of Hippels On Marriage
would probably not have changed the Trojans decision, not merely due to the
(still relevant) reason that Hippel mentions, namely, that even stupid eyes, by
means of the magnifying glass of hermeneutics, tend to find all that ought to
17 Ibid., 114.
18 Ibid., 191.
be found.19 In that case, it would still have been demonstrated that, for Hippel,
marriagedespite all the hymns of praise that he sings for itis in fact not
the highest end, but rather a means: a means to people states, populate them
as they said back then, in view of the interest to promote common prosperity
by means of civil labourand one can additionally suspect another goal: to
fill the ranks of the regiments again that were thinned out by numerous wars.
Yet, the decision at hand is perhaps not as easily made as it has been sug-
gested. The strict code of morals to which Hippel binds the couples once they,
upon expiration of their novitiate, finally commit to entering the monastery of
marriage, cannot be easily relativised or wholly ignored. Above all, the Biblical
tradition constitutes the background of such morals, both the command be
fruitful and multiply as well as you shall not commit adulteryHippel alto-
gether equates adultery with perjury.20 But here, it is not only the Biblical
tradition that speaks: Some of his phrases are reminiscent of the philosopher
to which the later mayor of Knigsberg had listened to as a student and with
whom he would later have close social contact: Kant, who had a strict concep-
tion of morality. A Kantian spirit inhabits Hippels monastery of marriage.
One does not have to find apt or even attractive that which Kant elaborated on
marriage in his Metaphysics of Morals.21 That, however, would not relativise the
strict demand of the moral law. And that this demand, made from the heights
of a chair in philosophy, does not accept how man is by naturebut how man
should be as a moral being, even if he has never been so and perhaps never will
be sois ultimately the entire meaning of a normative ethics, even if Heinse
contests this, alleges that nature suffices, and seeks to detract nature from the
demands of moral reason.
There is another aspect that precedes the parting of the ways of love and
marriage, or more precisely, love la Heinse and marriage la Hippel: the
image that they respectively draw up of the relation between man and woman.
The fact that this relation is not symmetrical for both authorsas they are
both men from the late eighteenth century(!)does not call for long confes-
sions and apologies. From our current perspective, this can offend someone,
but that is how it was back then, and it was moreover based on a conviction
that dates back to prehistoric timesand how much that has really changed
19 Ibid., 10607.
20 Ibid., 104.
21 Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, in Kants gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VI, ed. The
Prussian Academy of Sciences (Berlin. G. Reimer, 1797), 277 (=24). Marriage is a contract
concerning the conjunction of two persons of different sexes to ensure [lebenswierig]
mutual possession of the properties of each others gender.
70 Jaeschke
since that time is, as it is generally known, a topic of discussions that do not
seem to want to end and perhaps cannot end in principle. Despite the com-
mon basis for both authors ideas, which lies not simply in the fact that both
of them allocate roles specific to each gender, but also in their asymmetrical
evaluation of these roles, there are still some striking differences between their
accounts.
Hippels image of the woman is a mixture of some of his own observations
and assessments with traditional beliefs. He founds his plea for marriage
among other things on the belief that, for the woman, entering into marriage
is an act of liberation from the slavery in the house of her parents.22 Slavery
in the house of the parentsthis unquestionably sounds quite harsh, and it
is surely in many cases disproportionately harsh. Yet overall, this phrase might
describe the state of affairs back then quite realistically. The fate of the unmar-
ried womanand in fact she would, back then, not really count as a woman,
but rather as a strange genderless hermaphrodite between girl and woman(!)
in the house of her parents was, back in the day, indeed undesirable. And when
that role would finally come to its natural end with the death of the parents,
then that which would follow it would in most cases be a further step in the
direction of slavery.23 For this reason, Hippel also speaks of a liberation that,
by virtue of the step of marriage, womans natureaccording to his concep-
tion thereofbecomes realised: her nature which makes her destined for
marriage and raising children. Here lies the core of the asymmetry between
man and woman: The step into marriage is a step into the monastery of mar-
riage for the man, whereas that step is an act of liberation for the woman by
virtue of the fact that she becomes that which she is by her very nature. Out of
this different assessment of nature follow asymmetries concerning how both
sexes comport themselves toward each other. Even when the garon can have
the whole world for a bride, there is still one practical restriction in effect
for him (at least insofar as he deduces far reaching concessions from his not
yet restricted legal status): Polygyny is not advisable; polyandry, however, is
one of the darkest vices in the world.24 And this asymmetry still remains after
entering into marriage: Mans word, according to Hippel, binds him, whereas
22 Hi, 12021.
23 This can be surmised from the biography of Christiane Hegel, even though she undoubt-
edly was extolled from the normal course of events. See Alexandra Birkert, Hegels
Schwester: Auf den Spuren einer ungewhnlichen Frau um 1800 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke,
2008).
24 Hi, 120.
the woman binds her nature.25 The man, one could continue to elaborate, fol-
lows his nature when he commits adultery, yet breaches his oathbut that
is also highly punishable in the eyes of Hippel (who was, after all, a criminal
counselor). The prohibition of adultery therefore applies to both sexes with
full severity, but it applies for different reasons and therefore also in different
moral respects: in the former case as a breach of oath and in the latter case
as an infringement of nature. Whether or to what extent a womans nature
itself could have been shaped by historical allotment of gender roles is not yet
an issue for Hippel; however, as we noted above, it was not yet an issue for his
contemporaries and for thinkers for a long time to come. Notwithstanding this
fact, a more characteristic and very sympathetic feature of Hippel is that in the
later and more comprehensive editions of his bookfrom 1790 onwardhe
no longer conceives of the presumed difference of the roles that are bound to a
specific sex as implying asymmetry in the legal status of the sexes. Nature may
have allotted them different roles, but in their unnatural, moral lives, they hold
the same rank.
Before this turn, though, apropos of Hippels earlier presentations on the
reign of manwhich were readily read by the mans world of that time and,
in terms of content, widely sharedat the end of the eighteenth century, for
the woman, the fatal question arises: Should she emigrate from Knigsberg
(and its broader Central European environment) to the South, to Heinses
blissful islands, in order to live a life under the protection of Love and
Beauty. Yet what awaits her there? According to Heinse, educated in the con-
stitutions of Ancient Greece as well as of various modern states, the situation
is decisively less complex over there than in Europe during early modernity:
Good order was taken care of; men and women lived separate from each other.
To the women and children we assigned the whole of Naxos, the most beauti-
ful pearl of all the islands [...] It appeared that all was already set up by nature
for us. Naxos did not have a harbor for shipsand this is not, as one might
suppose, a disadvantage, but a warranty provided by precautious nature so as
to prevent other sailors from suddenly undertaking an extended land excur-
sion: Only the barques of the lovers can disembark.26 Now such an organisa-
tion of nature, allotting different islands to different sexes as places to live, is
perhaps not wholly to every mansor womanstaste. And the same goes
for the specification that, if it is not possible to attain sexual satisfaction in
a peaceful way, one has to do whatever it takes theretobecause without
satisfaction, one ultimately neither preserves oneself nor the human species
25 Ibid., 122.
26 He, 392.
72 Jaeschke
as a whole.27 But Heinse also makes his case with political arguments in favour
of the order that is both desired by and in service to nature: The women also
have a voice concerning common affairs, and are not treated as mere slaves.
Yet with respect to this manifestly far-reaching magnanimous condescension,
to not treat women as mere slaves, Heinse, to appease the male islanders
who are already a tad beset by this remarkadds that the women admittedly
have only ten percent of the votessuch that this should not cause a pro-
found anxiety on the part of the male world of the blissful islands. And he
confirms this excellent measure by the following assurance: Such is the way
that love spread her wings with utmost freedom.28
Love: If further proof had to be provided, it is now given. In his entire work,
Heinse does not speak of love, despite the fact that it is dedicated to love and
beautysave for the episode with Lucinde. This episode can be summarised
by the proposition familiar from the Emblematics: perfectus amor non est nisi
ad unum. And yet Heinse relegates this conception of love to a truly marginal
second rank; he ultimately shows a lack of interest in and understanding of
it. (The charm and imperishable worth of his book consequently lies, men-
tioned here for completenesss and justnesss sake, in his eminent descriptions
of paintings and not in the utterly problematicpartly historically motivated
to be sureplot in which he incorporates them.) Out of the confusing pursuit
of burning and being burned, no picture of love arises; only the putrid smell
of metaphorically burned and actually decayed flesh lingers in the air. And
in retrospect, that cannot come as a complete surprise: Whoever conceives
of lovelike Heinseas something merely natural, that is, as the natural
fire that, despite its disruptive effects, innocently burns, will experience the
greatest difficulty in ever catching sight of love. But that does not mean that
the marriage between beauty and love, at which Heinses book indeed aims,
has disintegratedthe marriage between beauty and love, on the contrary, has
never been formalised and has already failed before it has even begun.29
27 Ibid., 395.
28 Ibid., 393.
29 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with respect to Heinses Ardinghello: I strongly disliked
it [Ardinghello] because it sought to ennoble and extol sensibility and abstruse ways of
thinking by means of the plastic arts. [Zur Naturwissenschaft: Allgemeine Naturlehre, in
On the other hand, in Hippel one does not make a discovery in the search
for love either. This could have to do with some personal disappointments in
matters of love about which we are comparatively well informedat least
better than in the case of Heinse. However, regardless of what has ultimately
given us this disappointing result, in Hippels eyes, it discredits love such that
itas I have already notedmerely [has] enjoyment as its end goal; for him,
love is a transient need, a stroll to get some exercise30 and therefore a type of
stroll to digest. The best that can be said about love is that it can function as
a kind of preamble to marriage and, in that case, receive its justification from
marriage. Of marriage, on the other hand, Hippel talks in superlativesfor
the length of the entire book. It is certainly hard to get rid of the impression
that these superlatives do not really hit the target that they praise, or, to be
more accurate, resonate with the notions that we nowadays associate with the
word marriageand this for the reasons stated above: Hippel ultimately sees
marriagein all the words of praise that he can find for it(!)only within a
framework that is structured on practical considerations concerning everyday
life and concerning the discovery of what is useful (i.e., as a means to survive).
The woman enters into marriage because she thereby escapes the slavery in
the house of the parents and because it conforms to her nature;31 marriage
is the path of common life, the middle path, on which one practices to
bear life with all of its points and clauses and stay the same throughout spring,
summer, autumn and winter.32 This may have been, generally speaking, an apt
assessment back then, and it is certainly not nothing, but it is nevertheless not
enoughsubstantially not enough.
And still, amidst the lengthy discussions concerning the virtues of the man
and the virtues of the woman, as well as the domination of the man and all the
other things that one can associate with marriage, there is one placemen-
tioned in passing and not further elaborated onwhere one finds a thought for
which one searches in vain in Heinse: the husband and the wife constitute, so
Goethes Werke: Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Bhlaus Nachfolger, 1893), Sec. II,
Vol. 11].
30 Hi, 108.
31 Ibid., 12021.
32 Ibid., 191.
74 Jaeschke
it is said, one person.33 How does one arrive at this specificationand what
does it mean? The prospect that husband and wife will become one flesh has
been well known since the Creation (Gen. 2:24). If one does notanachronis-
ticallyinterpret this in terms of Pauls complex notion of flesh, but rather
takes it as naturalistic, as it is unquestionably intended, then it does not, as is
well known, take two spouses for one flesh to come into being, but merely a
man and one, but not his, woman. Indisputably, then, something completely
different from the predication that spouses constitute one person is thereby
envisioned by this expression. Yet, exactly what is being said with the phrase
one person? This phrase could be understood in purely juridical termsan
assumption that is easily made with this author, considering that the law was
his field. In that case, the phrase would mean that the husband and wife form a
common will that legally acts as an undifferentiated unity, jointly takes respon-
sibility for their actions, and has to carry that responsibility jointly, if neces-
sary. It seems to me, however, that the point of the passage in which we find
this phrase betrays something more than a mere juridical personalityall the
more so as it is not at all clear whether one can find this idea in the juridical
texts of that time.
While it is not fully clear as to when and in what context the idea that the
partners in a marriage constitute one person was introduced and anchored in
our thinking, it appears to me that transitioning from the formula one flesh to
the formula one person was a decisive step in this process. It presupposes the
formation of the modern conception of personhoodfound both in Thomas
Hobbes and in John Locke, as well as in Samuel Pufendorf (who was part of
the modern tradition of natural law that followed in the English philosophers
footsteps)but the formula one person is incongruent with Hobbess and
Lockes conception of personhood. If I am correct, it is also incongruent with
Pufendorfs view. With Pufendorfs conceptual tools, it is obviously easy to pro-
ceed from the idea of the persona moralis to the more complex idea of per-
sona moralis compositaand every formal fusion of singular, natural human
beings is the formation of such a persona moralis composita.
But, it is precisely for this reason that the expression that the marriage
partners constitute one person claims something principally different than
the concept of the persona moralis composita. If one were to adapt this ter-
minology, one would have to phrase it such that the partners in a marriage
constitute one person and indeed not a composite personotherwise, it
would be barely worth mentioning, as there are composite persons every-
where. Yet, it is exactly this specification that the partners in a marriage consti-
tute one person is something I do not find in Pufendorfs discussion of spousal
33 Ibid., 116.
duties. Just as it was a century later in Hippel, in Pufendorf, the main bibli-
cally coloured emphasis concerning marriage lies on procreation, even if it is
alwaysalthough it may sound paradoxical to our earssupplemented by
the specification that it is mans duty to love his wife, guarantee her liveli-
hood, and to guide and defend her, whereas it is the womans duty to love
her husband, to take care of him, have children with him, and to stand by his
side when it comes to teaching them discipline. In the expression the duty to
love, it would be virtually impossible to make the change in meaning of the
word love at around 1800 any more intuitive. This is, however, not first and
foremost the achievement of Romanticismeven if that is claimed time and
again. Indeed, Mozarts Constanze points Bassa Selimas is well known, not
the most ignorant person(!)to his misapprehension: As if one could com-
mand someone to love! During the entire Sturm und Drang period and in the
sentimentality genre, an understanding of love is to be presupposed which
we nowadays mostly and unjustly call romantican understanding that
dates back to the last third of the eighteenth century. For Pufendorf, however,
the close character of the union [that] requires the spouses to be partners in
good and bad fortune alike follows out of nature34but they do not consti-
tute one person. And even a century after Pufendorf, in the time of Hippel and
Kant, it appears that the frequently found expression of the one person can
still not be given any special meaning.
One person appears to me to be the expression in which loveand I
say love and not Ardinghello-Heinses fire(!)and marriage were thought
together. One person: that does not only mean the natural, earthly-realis-
tic instance in which two human beings become one flesh; it also does not
merely mean, with Pufendorf, to be partners in good and bad fortune alike,
just as much as it does not mean, with Hippel, that one practices on the mid-
dle path of life, bearing life with all of its points and clauses and to stay the
same throughout spring, summer, autumn and winter,35 since the latter case
entails the premise for the common formation of a character fit to live a Stoic
or even Cynic lifestyleand yet, the mutual relation of the partners in a mar-
riage is left entirely untouched. Finally, it also does not merely mean to exter-
nally appear as a unity by virtue of a common declaration of the will. Rather,
it means that the previously separated persons overcome their natural duality
and conjoin with one another in such a way that they become an integral part
34 Samuel von Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law, ed.
J. Tully and trans. M. Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 123
(=10).
35 Hi, 191.
76 Jaeschke
of the otherwise different personeach persons personality fuses with the

others personality and finds itself in the others personality.
Perfectus amor non est nisi ad unum! In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel expli-
cates the condition for the person to become one in his discussion of marriage
and the family as follows:
Marriage is essentially monogamy, because it is personality or immediate

exclusive singularity [Einzelheit] which enters into and surrenders itself
to this relationship, whose truth and inwardness [...] consequently arise
only out of the mutual and undivided surrender of this personality.
The latter attains its right of being conscious of itself in the other only in
so far as the other is present in this identity as a person, i.e. as atomic
individuality.36
One could capture the same thought in an abbreviated manner by means of the
colloquial expression fully giving oneselfand that expression can already
be found in Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Social Contract (Ch. 6). Yet it makes all
the difference in the world whether, in marital love, both partners give them-
selves fully or whether the expression fully giving oneself refers to the civil,
full externalization of every member with all their rights to the polity as a
wholelike it does in Rousseau. And for sure, no one would expect a mutual
and undivided surrender this personality with respect to society (to modify
the Hegelian phrase we just cited above).
Mutual and undivided surrender of personality is an expression that does
not merely concern love and marriage, but marital love, and an expression
that makes two persons into one person and presupposes a long history of
thinking rather than social development. Only at around 1800, specific con-
cepts were formedespecially the concepts of self-consciousness and person-
hoodsuch that this expression became possible and could be given concrete
meaning. In that case, one can surmise from Hegels expression why it is to
no avail that the garon has the whole world for a bride. One could indeed
reply to the theological bachelors with the biblical expression: to what aid
would it be for him, to win the whole world [for a bride]? He would surely
not be able to bring love as the mutual undivided surrender of personality
to realisation. Hegels expression, however, also makes clear that the marital
partners are not brought to the bliss of marriage when and in so far as they
keep walking on the middle path of enduring the toils of everyday life and
36 Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right,167. On Hegels position, see Eva Bockenheimer,
Hegels Familien- und Geschlechtertheorie (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 2013).
the propagation of utility, as per Hippels strict instructionseven if they dog-

gedly cultivate the biblical commandment of procreation. Furthermore, one
can surmise from Hegels expression that even the inhabitants of the blessed
islands, in spite of or perhaps even due to their eager studies of the ancient
constitutions and their (alleged) orientation toward them instead of the mod-
ern concept of subject or person, follow the misleading path toward love, by
living on different islands, allegedly for the sake of love. But more importantly,
they follow the misleading path toward love by taking the path to the com-
monly shared surrender of bodies instead of taking the path of undivided
surrender of personality. And finally, Hegels expression hasand this should
not be downplayed nowadaysanother merit, which unquestionably did not
cross Hegels own mind, but which has become relevant in our times: Differing
from other assertions made by Hegel, this particular expression does not refer
to the idea that there is a natural difference between the sexes. And this, I
think, is the position that is attained in the development of the Spiritagain
to use a Hegelian phrasefor now.37 We can wait with greater ease for the
answer to the questions of if and when the Spirit will take its next stepor
whether it will better suit it to at least take a rest here before moving on. And
yet, resting does not seem to be its elixir of life.
References
Birkert, Alexandra. Hegels Schwester: Auf den Spuren einer ungewhnlichen Frau um
1800. Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2008.
Bockenheimer, Eva. Hegels Familien- und Geschlechtertheorie. Hamburg: F. Meiner,
2013 (= Hegel-Studien. Beiheft 59).
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Zur Naturwissenschaft: Allgemeine Naturlehre. In
Goethes Werke: Weimarer Ausgabe. Sec. II, Vol. 11. Weimar: Hermann Bhlaus
Nachfolger, 1893.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte der Philosophie. In
Smtliche Werke. Vol. XV. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1836.
. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Edited by Allen Wood and translated by
H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Heinse, Wilhelm. Ardinghello and the Blissful Islands: An Italian Story from the Sixteenth
Century. Lemgo: Meyer, 1787.
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Josef Feix. Wiesbaden: Emil Vollmer, 1980.
37 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte der Philosophie, in
Smtliche Werke, Vol. XV (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1836), 690.
78 Jaeschke
Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von. Collected Works. 8 Vols. Berlin: G. Reimer, 18281839.
Kant, Immanuel. Metaphysics of Morals. In Kants Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 6. Edited
by The Prussian Academy of Sciences. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1914.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Zur Genealogie der Moral. Edited by William David Williams.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1972.
Pufendorf, Samuel von. On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law.
Edited by J. Tully and translated by M. Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Sec. V, Vol. 8: Briefwechsel 1804
1806 (Briefe 18312172). Edited by Andreas Arndt and Simon Gerber. Berlin and New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008.
part 2
Aesthetics and Ethics in the Context of
German Idealism

CHAPTER 5
Remember that All Poetry is to Be Regarded

as a Work of Love: Ethics and Aesthetics in
Schleiermacher
Andreas Arndt
Philosophers are not usually written up in tabloid newspapers. It might come,

then, as quite a surprise to see an author like Friedrich Schleiermacher men-
tioned in an article bearing the intriguing title The Desire for the Forbidden:
Sex Completely DifferentlyAs Described by Women.1 This text, published in
the beginning of 1993 in Munichs AZ newspaper, was not, by the way, the prod-
uct of male fantasy; the article, from a series entitled Women Tell of Love,
was actually written by a woman. But what does Schleiermacher have to do
with this topic? First, we know that Schleiermacher himself adhered to the
early Romantic notion of androgyny and that he held his own feminine in high
esteem, and second, we know that his friends jokingly referred to him as the
feminine partner in reference to his relationship to Friedrich Schlegel, with
whom he shared an apartment in Berlin.2 These details, however, are unlikely
to have been in the authors mind when writing the article. Rather, she referred
to Schleiermachermore precisely to his anonymously published Intimate
Letters on Friedrich Schlegels Lucinde3 from 1800in order to reclaim, as she
puts it, a human right to sexual fantasy.
* Translated from the German by Ryan Wines. This paper was previously published as
Bedenke, dass alle Poesie schlechthin als Werk der Liebe anzusehen ist: Ethik und sthetik
bei Schleiermacher, in Friedrich Schleiermacher als Philosoph (Berlin and Boston: Walter de
Gruyter, 2013), 33647.
1 A Z 1617, January 1993, 3.
2 Schleiermacher to his sister Charlotte, December 31, 1797, in Friedrich Schleiermacher,
Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Gnter Meckenstock et al. (Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 19802005), Sec. V, Vol. 2, 220 (hereinafter KGA). Cf. Andreas Arndt, Eine liter-
arische Ehe: Schleiermachers Wohngemeinschaft mit Friedrich Schlegel, in Wissenschaft
und Geselligkeit: Friedrich Schleiermacher in Berlin 17961802, ed. Andreas Arndt (Berlin and
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 314.
3 KGA, Sec. I, Vol. 3, 143216.

82 Arndt
I need not repeat at length here the ways in which Friedrich Schlegels novel
Lucinde, published in 1799, scandalised and was misunderstood by most of
his contemporaries: It was the key novel about the relationship between the
author and the divorced daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn,
Brendel (Dorothea) Veit. The moral outrage was probablyas is usually the
caseinversely proportional to the actual knowledge of the allegedly shame-
less text. Such outrage is usually an attempt by people to defend their own
fantasies, which become inflamed by rumours of alleged immodesty. In his
Essay on Modesty, which is found in the third part of his Intimate Letters,
Schleiermacher characterises such moral apostles so very aptly: Their own
crude desires always lie in wait, and leap out as soon as something appears in the
distance that it can appropriate, and that they gladly shift the guilt to that which
was the most innocent occasion for it.4 The author of the newspaper article
cites this passage as well, and she attaches her own observations to it. However,
she misses the fact that in the subsequent text, Schleiermacher ascribes to
women a special role in overcoming this bigotry:
The first thing that is necessary [...] is the help of women [...] since the
proof that it is not as terrible as most fear with this forbidden intercourse
of ideas and senses must proceed from them; they are the ones who, in
their actions, must sanctify everything that has been proscribed up to
now by false delusions. Only when they show that this does not injure
them can the beautiful and the understanding be set free.5
Besides women, however, it is art that unifies love and beauty for Schleiermacher
and that can thereby eliminate false modesty.6 This unification of poetry and
love stands, without a doubt, within the horizon of aesthetic Platonism,7
a concept that the early Romantics thought had been best formulated by
Friedrich Schlegel and with whose most essential aspects Schleiermacher had
affiliated himself.8
4 Ibid., 176.
5 Ibid., 177.
6 Cf. Ibid., 178.
7 Cf. Klaus Dsing: sthetischer Platonismus bei Hlderlin und Hegel, in Homburg vor der
Hhe in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte: Studien zum Freundeskreis um Hegel und Hlderlin,
ed. C. Jamme and O. Pggeler (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 10117.
8 Cf. Wo das philosophische Gesprch ganz in Dichtung bergeht: Platons Symposion und seine
Wirkung in der Renaissance, Romantik und Moderne, ed. S. Matuschek (Heidelberg: Winter,
2002). For Schleiermacher, see 16373 (= Andreas Arndt, Das Unsterbliche mit dem
Sterblichen verbinden: Friedrich Schleiermacher und Platons Symposion).
Ethics and Aesthetics in Schleiermacher 83
Thus the true, the beautiful, and the good converge in love because love,
like the beautiful, is thought to have its end in itself. Schlegel says as much in
Lucinde:
The ecstatic Diotima revealed only half of love to her Socrates. Love is not
only the quiet longing for the infinite, it is the holy pleasure of a beautiful
present. It is not merely a mixture, a transition from the mortal to the
immortal, but rather it is a complete unity of both. There is a pure love,
an indivisible and simple feeling without the slightest disturbance of
restless striving. Each gives just what he takes, one as the other; every-
thing is completed equally and completely and in itself like the eternal
kiss of Gods children.9
In Schlegels view, love is the point of indifference, as it were, in which every-

thing melts into the hen kai pan (literally, one and all), but at the same time
it also disperses into the richness and distinctiveness of the world: Love sepa-
rates beings and forms the world, and only in its light can one discover and
behold the latter. Only in the answer of its Thou can each I completely feel its
infinite unity.10 What is at issue for Schlegel is not an undifferentiated fusion
with the whole, but rather the individuation of the infinite from the individual
subjectthe figure of the individual universality. This individualisation is
the work of education (or cultivation) and, in this respect, poetry: In the
mysteries of education (Bildung), the spirit beholds the play and the laws of
the will and of life. Pygmalion moves, and the astonished artist is gripped by a
joyous shudder in the consciousness of his own immortality.11
Schleiermachers proposition in the Intimate Letters, that all poetry should
be regarded as a work of love,12 appeals to the same ideas; even the conclusion
of his review of Lucinde in the Berlinische Archiv der Zeit und ihres Geschmacks
(1800) reads as a paraphrase of the Schlegelian conception, the only difference
being that religion is now introduced into the equation:
Precisely through love, the work [Lucinde] becomes not only poetic, but
religious and moral as well. Religious, in that it is always directed to the
standpoint from which it looks beyond life into the infinite; moral, in that
9 Friedrich Schlegel, Werke. Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler et al. (Paderborn and Zrich:
Ferdinand Schningh Verlag, 19581979) (hereinafter KFSA), Vol. 5, 60.
10 Ibid., 61.
11 Ibid., 61.
12 KGA, Sec. I, Vol. 3, 214.
84 Arndt
it spreads itself out from the beloved over the whole world, and demands
freedom from all unreasonable limits and prejudices for all and for itself.13
The imagination and its product, the beautiful, actually stand here, in the
Intimate Letters, as a third faculty between cognition (the theoretical perspec-
tive) and desire (the practical perspective) and is thereby what religion, as the
intuition and feeling of the universe, was in the Discourses on Religion (1799):
the third faculty alongside cognition and action.14 Schleiermacher never came
as close to the concept of an aesthetic religion and a god-like artist and artist-
god as he did in the Intimate Letters. One must certainly add, though, that this
remains but a brief moment of philosophical convergence of positions. As we
shall soon see, although Schleiermacher indeed allows art and religion to be
adjacent concepts, he nevertheless clearly separates them in his thought. And
herein lies the real tension between Schleiermacher and Schlegel, a tension
that was also apparent in the latters collection of fragments entitled Ideas
(1800), which, in contrast to Schleiermachers Discourses, emphasised a poetic
understanding of religion.15
Meanwhile, Hans Dierkes attempted with great interpretive effort to find
an essential difference between Schlegel and Schleiermacher in their treat-
ments of corporeality.16 Whereas Schlegel regards love, as mentioned above, as
the complete unity of the mortal (which Dierkes equates with corporeality)
and the immortal, Schleiermacher thinks of love as determined and refined by
the spirit.17 Dierkess argument, however, is unconvincing because the unity
of the mortal and the immortal (or the infinite) is the result of a process of
education (Bildungsprozess) for Schlegel as well: something that is evident
in, for example, the following passage from the Allegory of Insolence (from
Lucinde):
You should not want to share the immortal fire pure and raw. [...]
Compose, invent, transform, and preserve the world and its eternal forms
in the constant change of new separations and marriages. Veil and bind
the spirit in the letter. The genuine letter is omnipotent and the real
13 Ibid., 223.
14 Cf. Ibid., 174 for the Discourses. Cf. KGA, Sec. I, Vol. 2, 211.
15 Cf. KFSA, Vol. 2, 25672.
16 Hans Dierkes: Die problematische Poesie: Schleiermachers Beitrag zur Frhromantik, in
Internationaler Schleiermacher-Kongre Berlin 1984, ed. K.V. Selge (Berlin and New York:
Walter de Gruyter, 1985), Vol. 1, 6198.
17 Cf. Ibid., 71.
magic wand. It is that with which the irresistible will of the high sorceress
Imagination touches the sublime chaos of full nature, and calls the infi-
nite word to the light, which is an image and a mirror of the divine
spirit.18
Dierkes understands this passage as if the genuine letter were the sensuality
qua natural drive,19 but it is in fact most likely the poetic composition of the
spirit, with which the imagination first touches nature in order to portray it as
a mirror of the divine spirit.
Both Schlegel and Schleiermacher understand love and poetry within and
from a broad ethical horizon which is not morally tinctured by prudishness or,
as Schleiermacher characterised it in the Intimate Letters, by Englishismthe
prudery he ascribed to English ladies. Take, for example, a certain Mistress B.
who was agitated in a genuinely English way by how in the presence of girls one
could only discuss garters.20 On the contrary, Schlegels and Schleiermachers
ethical horizon corresponds much more to that of morality as a historical pro-
cess of education of humanity in the infinite reformation and advancement
(Nach- und Fortbildung) of the world, according to the former,21 or in the
ensouling of human nature by means of reason, according to the latter.22
This broad understanding of ethics, which, in that epoch, probably comes

closest to Georg Hegels concept of ethical life (Sittlichkeit), carries the rela-
tionship between ethics and aesthetics defined in Schleiermacher beyond the
early Romantic view of his review of Schlegels Lucinde. For Schleiermacher,
artin the sense of fine artsis a component of the ethical process and
is therefore a component of the process of the ensouling of human nature
18 KFSA, Vol. 5, 20.

19 Dierkes, Problematische Poesie, 71, n. 16.
20 Cf. KGA, Sec. I, Vol. 3, 158. Cf. Andreas Arndt, Schleiermacher und die englische
Aufklrung, in 200 Jahre Reden ber die Religion, ed. U. Barth and C.D. Osthvener
(Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 18193.
21 Cf. Andreas Arndt, Naturgesetze der menschlichen Bildung. Zum geschichtsphiloso-
phischen Programm der Frhromantik, Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie 48 (2000):
97105.
22 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Werke. Vol. 2: Entwrfe zu einem System der Sittenlehre, ed. Otto
Braun (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1913), 87.
86 Arndt
by reason. Accordingly, this process is identical to the historical process, and

ethics is therefore the science of history or intelligence as appearance.23 This
science concerns the natural laws (as they are explicitly called) of human
action.24 Two consequences follow from this with regard to aesthetics. First,
aesthetics concerns objects that undergo this process of natural education
(Naturbildung); second, aesthetics is historically constituted. Its exact location
emerges when one looks more closely at how Schleiermacher distinguishes it
from reason. The two fundamental forms are, on the one hand, organisation as
the forming of nature into an organ of reason, and, on the other, the cognising
and representing or symbolising as the use of the organthus of the reformed
naturefor reasons acting. Both activitiesorganising and cognising (sym-
bolising)are now defined more closely from the point of view of excessive
individuality or excessive universality (community), by means of which a qua-
druplicity emerges as a categorisation schema that is absolutely fundamen-
tal to Schleiermachers constructions. The organising activity, which is thus
directed toward nature, produces, when under the predominance of com-
munity, the social-natural relation (labour, division of labour, and exchange);
along with predominant individuality, it produces private property and the
private sphere. The excessive communal symbolising activity characterises the
sphere of knowing (Wissen), and the excessive individual symbolising activity
characterises the sphere of feeling, which is located in art and religion. These
four spheresthe private, the feeling, the knowing, and the communitycor-
respond to four institutional spaces: the state (which organises the social-
natural relation), free sociability, the academy, and the church.25
With this, the location of the aesthetic within the ethical is clearly deter-
mined. Art belongs to individual symbolising qua feeling and thereby stands
in the greatest possible proximity to religion. Here, the configuration that he
had already laid out in the Intimate Letters essentially repeats itself. Even in
the notes for his Halle ethics lectures of 18051806, Schleiermacher speaks of
identifying art with religion: Now the proper sphere of feeling in ethical being
is religion. [...] Thus religion and art must coincide, and the moral visage of
23 Ibid., 80.
24 Ibid., 80.
25 For Schleiermachers aesthetics within the context of his system, see Gunter Scholtz:
Die Philosophie Schleiermachers (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984),
140ff.; and Thomas Lehnerer, Die Kunsttheorie Friedrich Schleiermachers (Stuttgart: Klett-
Cotta, 1987).
art consists precisely in its identity with religion. The true exercise of art is
religious.26
Now, feeling is not simply only feeling in the senses, as we mean when we
say that we feel something (e.g. happiness, sadness, anger) or when we are in
a given mood. Schleiermacher clearly distinguishes between feeling as a mere
affection, which refers to momentary sensation, and feeling as the organ of
an immediate awareness of the Absolute oras he defined it in 1799 in the
Discourses on Religionof the universe. In the Monologues (1800), for exam-
ple, Schleiermacher wrote of him who gives himself over to the feeling that
he shares with the animal: How can he know whether he has fallen down into
crude animality?27 Religious feeling and, if one consults the position of art
in the Intimate Letters, aesthetic feeling elevate themselves over momentary
affection in that they continually accompany thinking and acting and thereby
produce something like a relation to the whole. According to the Discourses,
religion consists in accepting everything individual as a part of the whole, and
everything limited as a representation of the infinite, where we cannot our-
selves penetrate into the nature and substance of the whole.28 It is precisely
here that religion is connected to art, for if the nature and substance of the
whole is greater than that which we can represent to ourselves in thought, then
it is, in Kantian terminology, something sublime which we can only symbolise.
And with this, we have characterised the function of both religion and art in
the ethical: symbolising it in the individual thing.
In his 18051806 lectures (mentioned above), Schleiermacher speaks in
this context (i.e., feeling and its role in morality) of a thoroughgoing moral-
ity (Sittlichkeit) of feeling, which would exist when a unity of consciousness
would obtain; this would be cognized as the product of the higher faculty
and thus everything that appears to it and would be related to the identity
of reason and of organization.29 If subjective cognising were only based on
pleasure and painthus to momentary affectionsthen evil would be
the sensual way of thinking, egoism and, in reflection [...], eudaimonism,
and good would be, by contrast, that subjective cognition based on the
identity of reason and organization, by means of which feeling would be
elevated to the potentiality of morality (Sittlichkeit). And this process of ele-
vation, according to Schleiermacher, is nothing other than that which we call
26 Schleiermacher, Sittenlehre, 99100, n. 22.

27 KGA, Sec. I, Vol. 3, 16.
28 KGA, Sec. I, Vol. 2, 214.
88 Arndt
religion.30 The cultivation or potentialisation of feeling does not take place as

it was traditionally thought, namely, on the basis of a rational control of the
affects and passions; rather, it takes place by means of the continuous presence
of feeling as a higher faculty in the unity of subjective consciousness. And it
is the cognition of this feeling, according to Schleiermacher, that changes the
affective economy as a whole, since feeling is elevated to the potentiality of
morality (Sittlichkeit), the succession of individual feelings gets another law,
instead of the merely organic law of stimulus and counter-stimulus, the higher
law of free individual combination.31
With this free individual combination, we have reached the realm of imagi-
nation and art. Art is consequently a product of the moral cultivation or poten-
tialising of feeling. The problem consists of course in how this cultivation can
succeed when it itself is based on a feelingmore precisely, based on a feel-
ing to be apostrophised as religious that is fundamentally distinct from mere
affecteven if at the same time it holds for Schleiermacher that my feeling
is absolutely mine and therefore cannot be an Other.32 Here, Schleiermacher
presupposes that feeling can come in itself to clarity without being able
to say how this could happen, for here there is an aporia that Friedrich von
Hardenberg (Novalis) understood very well: Feeling cannot feel itself.33 The
mineness of the feeling hinders its communicability as feeling. Feeling itself
cannot therefore be represented in order to evoke it in others. According to
Schleiermacher, this would be impossible: But rather it [the feeling] can only
be made to appear as the object of the relation, so that his feeling will thereby
be excited in the Other.34 The representation is therefore the representation of
something that forms the objective foundation of feeling, and therefore of the
whole (of the totality or of the universe), as the content of the feeling that has
(in whatever way) come to clarity about itself, from which the higher feeling
takes its source. Here, in Schleiermachers words, the representation (work of
art) is related to the original (feeling) as a real object to the smell.35 The work
of art arouses the feeling of the recipient by representing the object by which
the feeling of the producer had been aroused.
30 Ibid., 177.
31 Ibid., 180.
32 Ibid., 180ff.
33 Novalis, Schriften, Vol. 2, ed. R. Samuel with H.J. Mhl and G. Schulz (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981), 114.
35 Ibid.
It is not the identity of the feelings of both of them that mattersthe feel-
ings themselves will remain essentially incommunicablebut it is rather the
identity of the content of the feelings that are important, regardless of how
the feelings for this content might become clear. Now, the work of art is not
at all objective in the sense that it abstracts from the subjectivity of the rep-
resenter. The feeling, the content of which the artist wants to bring to repre-
sentation, is rather the subjective reaction to something that is not to be had
outside that feeling, thus only in subjective refraction and only with the latter
is it even representable: Thus in this sense the pure Objective is not the object
of art, but rather the reflection of individuality in the objective.36 The object of
art is thus, in short, the reaction of feeling to something objective, not something
that is in itself incomprehensible, but rathersomething sublimethat super-
sedes the comprehensive and representational powers of the individual. With
regard to the possibilities of representation, Schleiermacher distinguishes, on
the one hand, the so-called mobile arts, that is, mime and music, that repre-
sent the reaction of feeling as action, from, on the other hand, images, which
like symbolic forms contain the individual aspect of a feeling objectified in
itself and thereby are in the position to affect the feeling of the observer as
images of the universe.37 According to Schleiermacher, the objectification of
feeling is synonymous with its moralisation, which consists in every feeling
passing over into representation: All human beings are artists.38 This not only
anticipates Joseph Beuyss program Every Human Being is an Artist, which
underlies his concept of social sculpture (where art is then shifted into a com-
parable ethical dimension, as it is with Schleiermacher),39 it is also picked up
from the early Romantic program of Universal Poetry, as Friedrich Schlegel
had formulated it in Athenaeum Fragment 116, which expanded the boundar-
ies of poetry as poiesis40 and that regards even apparently artless representa-
tions as poetry.41
36 Ibid., 182.
37 Ibid., 183.
38 Ibid., 184.
39 Joseph Beuys, Jeder Mensch ein Knstler: Auf dem Weg zur Freiheitsgestalt des sozi-
alen Organismus. Lecture at the Internationales Kulturzentrum Achberg, March 23, 1978.
Cassette. (Wangen: FIU-Verlag, 1991).
40 Cf. Andreas Arndt, Poesie und Poiesis. Anmerkungen zu Hlderlin, Schlegel und Hegel,
in Sprache Dichtung Philosophie. Heidegger und der Deutsche Idealismus, ed. Brbel
Frischmann (Freiburg: Alber, 2010), 6175.
41 Cf. KFSA, 2, 18283.
90 Arndt
So far, I have looked at the Halle ethics lectures of 18051806; in the notes
from the Berlin lecture of 18121813, art is associated mainly with the charac-
teristic of particularity (or peculiarityEigentmlichkeit): There is as much
beauty and art in all areas of culture as particularity manifests itself in it.42
Art brings particularity to intuition and is the emergence of the image of the
imagination or the expression of feeling. However, now it not only has its ratio-
nal content in common with religion, but ratherand this is at first glance
only a minor shift, but is in truth far-reachingit also has its rational content
through and from religion: If [...] the composition of the imagination, in and
with its emergence, is art, and the rational content in the particular cognition
is religion, then art is related to religion as language is related to knowledge.43
Art is the language of religion, but it does not for that reason have to speak
religiously itself, for its products can be accomplished in a religious or in a
profane style.44 However, beyond such questions of style, Schleiermacher has
taken the step of clearly separating aesthetics and religion from each other on
the common ground of individual symbolisation and cognition. The moralisa-
tion of feelingand thereby the dignity of artobviously depends on how
closely art stands to religion with respect to its content,45 where religion of
course does not signify a specific confession, but rather counts as all real feel-
ing and synthesis, which lies as spirit on the physical domain and as heart in
the ethical domain, inasmuch as both are related to unity and totality beyond
personality.46
How is the relation between ethics and aesthetics to be represented from the
side of aesthetics? At the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher lectured on aes-
thetics as a separate discipline three times (1819, 1825, 18321833); for him, it is
a critical discipline based on ethics, which mediates between experience and
speculation in that it deduces the cycle of the arts and presents the essence

43 Ibid., 314ff.
44 Ibid., 368.
45 Cf. Ibid., 315: Since particular cognition is only nascent religion, the representation can
only characterize the internally given gradation of the rational content.
46 Ibid.
of the various forms of art.47 However, aesthetics stands in a close relation-

ship not only with ethics, but with psychology as well, which coordinates aes-
thetic feeling with religious feeling and treats the theme of artistic production
in the theory of self-manifestation. This, is of fundamental significance for
Schleiermachers aesthetics. However, in aesthetics itself, the concept of feel-
ing no longer plays the central role that it did in the Halle lectures on ethics;
one must, according to the lecture manuscript of 1819, ignore the excessively
limited expression feeling from common parlance and pay more attention to
the characters themselves,48 where characters refers to the characters of the
particular cognition as the foundation of artistic production. With this, just as
with the ethics lecture of 18121813, the representation of the particular, which
is imagined here as self-manifestation, stands as the terminological focus.
The content of art is now defined as the archetype, which is conceived of as
an inner characteristic that precedes the execution and steps in between it
and the excitation.49 Excitement (feeling) and representation are thus directly
mediated in art in that feeling receives an objective content through the arche-
type. As soon as reflection steps positively in between, excitement and repre-
sentation are divided as moments. Thus in the domain of art, one must say that
this identity is not only not necessary, but rather that it is essentially abolished
in it, and the representation is immediately related only to the archetype.50 In
this mediated relation, there is now an asymmetry, which differentiates the
equation of artwork with discourse in the ethics lecture of 18121813. Discourse
in relation to thought is, as Schleiermacher now writes, a natural exterioriza-
tion, to fix thought for oneself or for others. Discourse and thought are thus
essentially identical; however, art and archetype are not, since the work of art
is not the archetype itself, but rather the latter is always more indeterminate
than the former.51 What is communicated by the archetype is not feeling, and
thus not excitement, but rather the archetype itself.
Another explanation that distinguished the artistic from the religious realm
to a greater degree than the lecture of 18121813, consists of Schleiermachers
47 Ibid., 366. Cf. Friedrich Schleiermacher, sthetik, ed. R. Odebrecht (Berlin and Leipzig:
Walter de Gruyter, 1931). However, a critical edition is still needed. For the deficiencies
of all previous editions, see Andreas Arndt and Wolfgang Virmond, Review of F.D.E.
Schleiermacher. sthetik: ber den Begriff der Kunst, ed. Th. Lehnerer, (Hamburg:
F. Meiner, 1984), New Athenaeum 2 (1991): 19096.
48 Schleiermacher, sthetik, 16, n. 47.
49 Ibid., 11.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 20ff.
92 Arndt
recasting of the character of knowledge. Here, his theory of dialectic stands in

the background. A theory in which thinking wants to become knowing refers
to two ideas: the idea of God as the point of departure (terminus a quo) of
knowledge and the idea of the world as the goal (terminus ad quem) of the pro-
cess of knowledge. The former, the idea of God, is a relationless identity, while
the latter, the idea of the world, is totality as unity distinguished within itself.52
These ideas are realised when thought directs itself both toward the universal
as the idea of God as well as toward the particular in order to bring it to unity
in the idea of the world. This is also true of particular knowledge, to which art
belongs: All art has, on the one hand, a religious tendency, and on the other
hand it loses itself in the free play with the particular. In both together the
particular world manifests itself.53 Art as the self-manifestation of the indi-
vidual is thus more than the mere objectifying of a religious content, even
if the religious is taken in a very wide sense. It is at the same time a free play
with the particular, which of course remains bound to the extent that this play
in turn presupposes the relation to a ground of unitythe idea of God. However,
the archetypical itself, which is what is at issue in art, obviously emerges
from the relation of both ideasthe idea of God and idea of the worldthat
are equally present in the process of particular knowledge formation.
For Schleiermacher, the permanence of religious feeling in abstraction
from the idea of the world is now mood,54 which can appear as an explicitly
religious work of art or as a foundation for profane art. The conflict with the
religious tendency appears mostly in the erotic, which one accuses of excit-
ing desire and then takes this as grounds to blame religious art for still cling-
ing to the sensible.55 Note that this is a discussion of erotic representation
in religious art, and this means as well that even the religious work of art is
more than merely religious. Thus, conversely, erotic art has its place as well
for Schleiermacher in his conception of art; it is, however, not immediate unity
of excitement and representation, but rather representation of an archetype
that is influenced by a quasi-religious mood, namely, the joy in the drive to
preservation and unification, and in how it forms human beings into organs.56
52 Cf. Heinz Kimmerle, Schleiermachers Dialektik als Grundlegung philosophisch-theolo-

gischer systematik und als Ausgangspunkt offener Wechselseitigkeit, in Internationaler
Schleiermacher-Kongre Berlin 1984, ed. K.V. Selge (Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1985), 49ff.
53 Schleiermacher, sthetik, 21, n. 47.
54 Ibid., 22.
55 Ibid., 23.
56 Ibid., 24.
If one takes a look from here back once again to Schleiermachers position
in the Intimate Letters on Friedrich Schlegels Lucinde from around two decades
earlier, the following becomes clear: Even the Schleiermacher of the lectures
on aesthetics from 1819 would have to make no compromises for the sake of
consistency. The Essay on Modesty, as a treatise on erotic art, would still be
capable of being integrated into the context of justification of ethicalaesthetic
discourse. Furthermore, it would even be true that all poetry is to be regarded
simply as a work of love, since the moralising religious element in artistic rep-
resentation depends on a love of knowledge, which can be described as an
amor dei intellectualisin the sense of a genitivus obiectivusto the extent
that, for Schleiermacher, the idea of God is an indispensable presupposition of
the cognitive process.
And herein lies the very crux of Schleiermacherian aesthetics and the
context for its justification. In one place in the manuscripts of the 1819 aes-
thetics lectures, Schleiermacher speaks of the modern art world and says
that according to it (and with it presumably the entirety of modernity), the
relation to the idea of divinity dominates, and this relation is an absolutely
immediate one and can depart from every particular point.57 This immedi-
ate relationship is the achievement of Christianity, and Schleiermacher finally
equates Christianity with modernity. He does not speak of the fissures, dislo-
cations, and abysses of modernity, and in this respect the ethical framework
of his aesthetic project isfrom the present point of viewprecisely that
which, according to Schleiermacher, it ought not to be: in the position of a
mere ought against reality.
References
Arndt, Andreas. Schleiermacher und die englische Aufklrung. In 200 Jahre Reden
ber die Religion. Edited by U. Barth and C.D. Osthvener, 18193. Berlin and New
. Naturgesetze der menschlichen Bildung: Zum geschichtsphilosophischen
Programm der Frhromantik. Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie 48 (2000): 97105.
. Das Unsterbliche mit dem Sterblichen verbinden: Friedrich Schleiermacher
und Platons Symposion. In Wo das philosophische Gesprch ganz in Dichtung
bergeht: Platons Symposion und seine Wirkung in der Renaissance, Romantik und
Moderne. Edited by S. Matuschek, 16373. Heidelberg: Winter, 2002.
57 Ibid., 49.
94 Arndt
. Eine literarische Ehe: Schleiermachers Wohngemeinschaft mit Friedrich

Schlegel. In Wissenschaft und Geselligkeit: Friedrich Schleiermacher in Berlin 1796
1802. Edited by Andreas Arndt, 314. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009.
. Poesie und Poiesis. Anmerkungen zu Hlderlin, Schlegel und Hegel. In
Sprache Dichtung Philosophie: Heidegger und der Deutsche Idealismus. Edited by
Brbel Frischmann, 6175. Freiburg: Alber, 2010.
. Bedenke, dass alle Poesie schlechthin als Werk der Liebe anzusehen ist: Ethik
und sthetikbei Schleiermacher. In Friedrich Schleiermacher als Philosoph, 33647.
Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013.
Arndt, Andreas and Wolfgang Virmond. Review of F.D.E. Schleiermacher: sthetik.
ber den Begriff der Kunst. Edited by T. Lehnerer. Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1984, New
Athenaeum 2 (1991): 19096.
Beuys, Joseph. Jeder Mensch ein Knstler: Auf dem Weg zur Freiheitsgestalt des
sozialen Organismus. Lecture at the Internationales Kulturzentrum Achberg,
March 23, 1978. Cassette. Wangen: FIU-Verlag, 1991.
Dierkes, Hans. Die problematische Poesie: Schleiermachers Beitrag zur Frhromantik.
In Internationaler Schleiermacher-Kongre Berlin 1984. Vol. I. Edited by K.V. Selge,
6198. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1985.
Dsing, Klaus. sthetischer Platonismus bei Hlderlin und Hegel. In Homburg vor der
Hhe in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte: Studien zum Freundeskreis um Hegel und
Hlderlin. Edited by C. Jamme and O. Pggeler, 10117. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981.
Kimmerle, Heinz. Schleiermachers Dialektik als Grundlegung philosophisch-theolo-
gischer systematik und als Ausgangspunkt offener Wechselseitigkeit. In Inter
nationaler Schleiermacher-Kongre Berlin 1984. Edited by K.V. Selge, 3959. Berlin
and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1985.
Lehnerer, Thomas. Die Kunsttheorie Friedrich Schleiermachers. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1987.
Novalis: Schriften. Vol. 2. Edited by R. Samuel with H.J. Mhl and G. Schulz. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981.
Schlegel, Friedrich. Werke. Kritische Ausgabe. Edited by Ernst Behler et al. Paderborn
and Zrich: Ferdinand Schningh Verlag, 19581979.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Werke. Vol. 2: Entwrfe zu einem System der Sittenlehre.
Edited Otto Braun. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1913.
. sthetik. Edited by R. Odebrecht. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1931.
. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Gnter Meckenstock et al. Berlin and New
Scholtz, Gunter. Die Philosophie Schleiermachers. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1984.
CHAPTER 6
Hegels Concept of Pathos as the Keeper of the

Marriage between Aesthetics and Ethics
Paul Cobben
1 Introduction
In the tradition of German Idealism, it is not a remarkable thesis that there

exists an internal bond between aesthetics and ethics. When Immanuel Kant
tries to systematically think through the unity of reason in his three Critiques
(Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgement),
this is at the same time a project in which the internal coherence between
the truth, the good, and the beautiful is thematised. In his Philosophy of Spirit,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel discusses the same coherence in his own way.
However, the internal coherence between the good and the beautiful does not
itself legitimate talk about a marriage between ethics and aesthetics. The rela-
tions of a marriage seem to be more direct and corporeal than the abstract
considerations in which the unity of reason is expressed. For this reason, we
have to further investigate my claim to a marriage between aesthetics and
ethics. If it is meaningful at all to speak about a marriage between aesthetics
and ethics, do we not have to look to the ancient world instead of the modern
one? In modern times, the true, the good, and the beautiful have been differen-
tiated, such that their coherence calls for mediating steps which have too great
a distance from the love-relation of the marriage. This differentiation did not
already take place in the Greek world, although this world had nevertheless
developed the freedom which is presupposed by the meaningful distinction
between aesthetics and ethics. Therefore, is the conclusion that their marriage
relation can be found in the Greek world not justified? In this paper, I will
show that this is indeed the case. I will analyse the meaning of the concept of
pathos, which plays an important role in Hegels reception of the Greek world.
The concept of pathos expresses the immediacy of love which is appropriate in
the relation of the marriage. But at the same time, it is the love which forms the
bridge between the aesthetic and the ethical modes of existence.

96 Cobben
2 The Essential Determination of the Concept of Pathos
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel writes, with respect to the Greek world,
as well about the pathos of the divine and the human law,1 and about the
pathos of the artist.2 In this sense, pathos is something which either prompts
the individual to an ethical (or rather to a moral) action or something which
prompts him to an aesthetical action (i.e. prompts him as an artist to produce
a work of art). Since in both cases there is talk of pathos, there is obviously
a still more general, abstract meaning of pathos in which the differentiation
between aesthetical and ethical action has not yet been madeno more so
than the differentiation between actions in terms of the divine or the human
law. The concept of pathos, however, does not appear in the Phenomenology of
Spirit in this general sense.3 And yet, I think that it is possible to reconstruct
1 Die Substanz erscheint zwar an der Individualitt, als das Pathos derselben, und die
Individualitt als das, was sie belebt, und daher ber ihr steht; aber sie ist ein Pathos, das
zugleich sein Charakter ist; die sittliche Individualitt ist unmittelbar, und an sich eins mit
diesem seinem Allgemeinen, sie hat ihre Existenz nur in ihm, und vermag den Untergang,
den diese sittliche Macht durch die entgegengesetzte leidet, nicht zu berleben. [Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes (Hereinafter referred to as PhdG)
(Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1980), 256].
2 PhdG, 378.
3 In the Vorlesungen ber die sthetik Vol. 13 [(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986), 301], Hegel makes
some general remarks with regard to pathos worth quoting at length: ) Die allgemeinen
Mchte nun endlich, welche nicht nur fr sich in ihrer Selbstndigkeit auftreten, sondern eben-
sosehr in der Menschenbrust lebendig sind und das menschliche Gemt in seinem Innersten
bewegen, kann man nach den Alten mit dem Ausdruck bezeichnen. bersetzen lt
dies Wort sich schwer, denn Leidenschaft fhrt immer den Nebenbegriff des Geringen,
Niedrigen mit sich, indem wir fordern, der Mensch solle nicht in Leidenschaftlichkeit gera-
ten. Pathos nehmen wir deshalb hier in einem hheren und allgemeineren Sinne ohne die-
sen Beiklang des Tadelnswerten, Eigensinnigen usf. So ist z. B. die heilige Geschwisterliebe
der Antigone ein Pathos in jener griechischen Bedeutung des Worts. Das Pathos in diesem
Sinne ist eine in sich selbst berechtigte Macht des Gemts, ein wesentlicher Gehalt der
Vernnftigkeit und des freien Willens. Orest z. B. ttet seine Mutter nicht etwa aus einer inne-
ren Bewegung des Gemts, welche wir Leidenschaft nennen wrden, sondern das Pathos,
das ihn zur Tat antreibt, ist wohlerwogen und ganz besonnen. In dieser Rcksicht knnen wir
auch nicht sagen, da die Gtter Pathos haben. Sie sind nur der allgemeine Gehalt dessen,
was in der menschlichen Individualitt zu Entschlssen und Handlungen treibt. Die Gtter
als solche aber bleiben in ihrer Ruhe und Leidenschaftslosigkeit, und kommt es unter ihnen
auch zum Hader und Streit, so wird es ihnen eigentlich nicht Ernst damit, oder ihr Streit hat
eine allgemeine symbolische Beziehung als ein allgemeiner Krieg der Gtter. Pathos ms-
sen wir daher auf die Handlung des Menschen beschrnken und darunter den wesentlichen
Hegel s Concept Of Pathos 97
this general understanding of pathos. This reconstruction can help us under-

stand what Hegel ultimately means by this term.
Pathos that prompts one to action is distinguished from instinct that
prompts animals to action. Instinctual action is not free and therefore cannot
be differentiated into aesthetical or ethical action. For this reason, it makes
sense to investigate how Hegel, in the chapter of his Phenomenology of Spirit
on self-consciousness, principally distinguishes between animal action and
free (human) action. The point of departure is the concept of natural reality,
which Hegel determines to be an interplay of forces acting on one another.
This interplay of forces can also be found at the level of living organisms with
respect to their interaction with the earth.4 As long as the organism lives, it
knows to maintain the balance between itself and the earth, that is, the out-
side world. The organism acts upon the environment and succeeds in satisfy-
ing its needs, so that it reproduces itself as an organism. At the level of animal
life, this acting upon itself is part of instinctual action. If the organism dies,
the interplay of forces between the organism and the earth is annihilated. The
organism no longer has the ability to resist the outside world and, as it said in
Genesis, returns unto dust: It disappears as a particular identity.5
When experiencing the fear of death, the animal organism can have a spe-
cific experience of a threatening death. Hegel describes the organism fearing
death as the force which is forced back into itself in its relation to the absolute
lord, namely, death.6 During this experience of fearing death, the dynamics of
the interplay of forces comes to a standstill. The external world has become an
invincible, absolute force which throws the organism totally back into itself.7
The animal organism can react to this fear of death in various ways. It can be
paralysed with fright, it can try to fly, or it can attempt to fight itself to death.
vernnftigen Gehalt verstehen, der im menschlichen Selbst gegenwrtig ist und das ganze
Gemt erfllt und durchdringt.
4 Unterscheiden wir die hierin enthaltenen Momente nher, so sehen wir, da wir zum ersten
Momente das Bestehen der selbstndigen Gestalten oder die Unterdrckung dessen haben,
was das Unterscheiden an sich ist, nmlich nicht an sich zu sein und kein Bestehen zu haben.
Das zweite Moment aber ist die Unterwerfung jenes Bestehens unter die Unendlichkeit des
Unterschiedes. Im ersten Momente ist die bestehende Gestalt; als frsichseiend oder in ihrer
Bestimmtheit unendliche Substanz tritt sie gegen die allgemeine Substanz auf, verleugnet
diese Flssigkeit und Kontinuitt mit ihr und behauptet sich als nicht in diesem Allgemeinen
aufgelst, sondern vielmehr als durch die Absonderung von dieser ihrer unorganischen
Natur und durch das Aufzehren derselben sich erhaltend. [PhdG, 106].
5 Genesis 3:19: Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return. [KJV].
6 Denn es hat die Furcht des Todes, des absoluten Herrn, empfunden. [PhdG, 114].
7 Sie wird als in sich zurckgedrngtes Bewusstsein in sich gehen. [Ibid.].
98 Cobben
For a self-conscious organism like the human being, however, the fear of death
is an experience of a different kind.8
Many philosophers claim that humans are the only beings who have knowl-
edge of their death. Hegel was one of them. However, the real question is what
exactly having knowledge of ones own death means. Hegels point of depar-
ture is the physical experience of the fear of death as it is described above.
While experiencing the fear of death, the organism is forced back into itself.
In this sense, the fear of death is a kind of physical self-identification. The
mode of existence of the organism is no longer dispersed in a series of actions
in which it tries to reproduce itself; rather, the course of time in which these
actions normally occur is, as it were, suspended. The actions are taken back in
the single experience of the organism, namely, that it is in itself, that it has an
identity. Experiencing the fear of death is a physical experience of being-in-
itself, of self-relation. Therefore, experiencing the fear of death is also the con-
dition under which the reality of pure self-consciousness can be conceived of.
This last point is made clear in the chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit
on self-consciousness mentioned above. In it, self-consciousness is first of all
determined to be pure autonomy, pure self-relation. This raises the question
of how the reality of pure self-consciousness can be conceived: How can the
autonomous self be conceived of as being unified with the natural reality in
which the heteronomous laws, the laws of nature, have their validity?
At first glance, this problem seems to have no solution. Although self-
consciousness can only realise itself in natural reality, it seems at the same time
to have to exclude this reality because it threatens its pureness. This problem,
however, can be solved if nature, to which pure self-consciousness is related,
is understood as an organism which experiences the fear of death, that is, as
an organism which is forced back into itself. Under this condition, pure self-
consciousness can recognise itself in nature: The force which is forced back
into itself is the pure self-relation of self-consciousness in the form of other-
ness. Only under this condition can the existence of self-consciousness be
understood without contradiction. The structure of self-relation which char-
acterises the organism which is forced back into itself by the fear of death is
expressed as such in the pure self-relation of self-consciousness. Therefore, it
is in this way that Hegel justifies the argument that in this relation pure self-
consciousness is in otherness as otherness with itself.
8 See Paul Cobben, The Nature of the Self: Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 37ff.
We can draw the conclusion that in the relation of the fear of death self-
consciousness has transformed the heteronomy of nature into the immediate
expression of autonomy. The organism which is subjected to external instinc-
tual laws can, as soon as it appears as the force which is forced back into itself
during the experience of fearing death, truly becomes valid as the immedi-
ate expression of an autonomous self-relation. I think that in this relation the
elementary version of what Hegel calls pathos comes to the fore. Pathos is
the nature which the self feels to be its own nature.
3 The LordBondsman Relation: Second Nature as the Immediate

Appearance of Nature as Pathos
As long as the awareness of nature as the selfs own pathos remains an inter-
nal experience, it could be a subjective illusion. It is only if internal pathos
is also objectively expressed as the realisation of ones own self that it can
become clear that pathos is not merely a subjective illusion. This means that
pathos, which is experienced as the force that is forced back into itself, has
to manifest itself as an objective lawan objective law which therefore no
longer expresses itself as the instinctual actions of the organism, but rather
expresses the freedom of the self. This objective law is a second nature, in
which the autonomous laws of a self-posited nature are expressednot the
heteronomous laws of a given nature. This second nature can be conceived of
as a social organism which observes the laws of a man-made tradition. In the
form of tradition, pathos has obtained an objective meaning: It has become
the second nature in which the free self has given objective shape to natural
content which it has identified as its own nature.
Hegel understands the transition of the social organism into the law as the
lordbondsman relation. The bondsman is the free self who serves tradition.
It does not serve the tradition as an external power to which it has to sub-
mit itself as slave, but because it understands tradition as the expression of its
lord, that is, as its own essence. The lord, who initially appeared as death, as
the absolute superior power of nature, was internalised during the experience
of the fear of death because the free self felt itself to be the lord of its body. In
the lordbondsman relation, this internal lord is represented as an external,
objective lord, as the free being which underlies the law of the social organism.
The lord, who after all stands for pure freedom, is practically expressed in the
law of the social organism. Since the social organism is only a contingent form
of an appearance of pure freedom, the lord is also represented in a special way,
namely, as the essence of the contingent social organism.
100 Cobben
4 The Content of the Human Law and the Divine Law as More
Specific Forms of Pathos
At the level of the lordbondsman relation, pathos is determined to be the

content of the law of the social organism. This makes it clear that pathos is
expressed in the laws (the norms and values) of a traditional society. However,
it remains undetermined what exactly the content of the social organism is.
In the chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit on reason, Hegel investigates
whether a more precise determination is even possible. But this investigation
only yields a negative result. It becomes explicitly clear that as soon as the con-
tent of the law of the social organism (the good life) is positively determined,
the freedom of the individual is immediately annihilated. Therefore, the only
necessary determination which applies to this law is that it may not contradict
itself.9
The conclusion seems to be that a more specific determination of pathos
is only a matter of contingency: It has no necessary content and can only be
determined for a contingent, historical society. Nevertheless, this conclusion
is drawn too fast. After all, we have already observed that all contingent social
organisms are characterised by a fundamental internal tension. Individuals
who have submitted themselves to a contingent tradition have experienced
the fear of death and are therefore internally free. Sooner or later, this internal
freedom has to clash with the prevailing tradition leading to the development
of this tradition. At the level of religion (especially the religion of nature), Hegel
discusses this process. Tradition which is served (by humans as servants) is
represented by a god (the lord). In the end, this god stands for the absolute
essence of man (namely, his pure freedom); this absolute essence, however,
appears in a specific historical form. This specific form corresponds to the spe-
cific law of the social organism, that is, to the form in which the lord is served.
As long as the lord is represented in a religious form, the bondsman cannot
bring his subjective certitude to truth, namely, that the lord is his absolute
essence. This results in a process of development in which the absolute con-
tent of the lord is more and more adequately expressed. The lord is the abso-
lute substance which has to be adequately expressed as substance (which will
finally succeed at the level of absolute spirit). And, since the form of the lord
9 Es msste auch sonderbar zugehen, wenn die Tavtologie, der Satz des Widerspruchs, der
fr die Erkenntniss theoretischer Wahrheit nur als ein formelles Kriterium zugestanden
wird, das heisst, als etwas, das gegen Wahrheit und Unwahrheit ganz gleichgltig sey, fr die
Erkenntnis praktischer Wahrheit mehr seyn sollte. [PhdG, 234].
corresponds to the form of the social law in accordance with which the lord
is served, the social organism itself also has to appear as absolute substance.
The process of development that we have just mentioned seems to finish at
the moment that the human as bondsman has discovered that he is his own
lord. Then, the human has understood that by observing the law of the social
organism he does not serve a strange lord; instead, he realises his own freedom
by observing the law. Now the social organism can be understood as a sub-
stance in which the human realises his freedom in and through his actions.
Hegel thinks that this form of relation can historically be found in the Greek
world.
The citizen of the Greek polis is the bondsman who has recognised him-
self in his lord. What his actions express is nothing other than his internal
essence.10 Therefore, it may seem that the pathos has become self-conscious.
It is the citizen himself who feels through this second nature that he is his own
essence. Nevertheless, a further step has to be made in order to establish the
way in which his pathos has truly become self-conscious. The relation in which
the citizen observes the law of the social organism (the law which now has
been transformed into an autonomous, human law) is initially only a purely
practical relation. The citizen only practically transforms the content which he
finds in his inner self into an objective content by realising this internal con-
tent by means of his actions. He is not aware that this content is his absolute
essence. This is only possible if the citizen makes this given (traditional) con-
tent self-conscious through mediation of the fear of death which has become
self-conscious. Hence, not only is this content his absolute essence, but he has
also developed the awareness that this is in fact the case.
Under the conditions of the polis, the process in which the pathos becomes
self-conscious falls into two forms which correspond to the two forms in which
the power of death can be experienced. The experience of death can as well
concern the second naturethat is, the death of the social organismand
the death of the individual (human) organism. In the first case, the process
of becoming self-conscious leads to the pathos of the human law, and in the
second case, it leads to the pathos of the divine law.
10 Um dieser Einheit willen ist die Individualitt reine Form der Substanz, die der Inhalt
ist, und das Thun ist das Uebergehen aus dem Gedanken in die Wirklichkeit, nur als die
Bewegung eines wesenlosen Gegensatzes, dessen Momente keinen besondern von einan-
der verschiedenen Inhalt und Wesenheit haben. [Ibid., 253].
102 Cobben
The substance of the polis is an immediate substance:11 a substance with

traditionally given norms and values. As given and historical, the substance of
the polis does not yet have an adequate form, for it is related to the outside
and more specifically to the substance of another polis. The interplay of forces
of lifeless nature can be continued at the level of culture as the interplay of
forces between two poleis. The polis whose existence is threatened by the other
polis is the force which is forced back into itself. Under this condition, the con-
tent of the social law can be brought to self-consciousness as the pathos of the
human law. The citizens of the polis experience the fact that their existence as
citizens is dependent on the realisation of the human law of the polis to which
they belong.12
Only under the condition of the polis can the death of the individual be
experienced as an absolute loss. After all, the law of the social organism is now
for the first time identified as a human law. Not only is the reality of the human
being dependent on the social organism, but conversely, the social organism
is also dependent on the human being. Nevertheless, in some way a distinc-
tion between the individual and the community becomes valid. The death of
the individual does not automatically lead to the death of the community.
Individuals continuously die. Each of these individuals contributes in a certain
way to the community. If he dies, he can be replaced by others without the
survival of the community being threatened.
If it is stated that the death of the individual is an absolute loss, this absolute
loss does not concern the finite contribution which an individual can deliver
to the community, but rather the individual as a free individual. After all, the
freedom of the individual is the absolute (i.e., not being retraceable to some-
thing else) ground for the social organisms existence, especially of the polis.
However, from the point of view of the human law, this absolute loss is not vis-
ible as such. After all, with the death of the individual, it is only his finite con-
tribution to the polis that disappears. In the polis, the freedom of the individual
11 Der Geist ist das sittliche Leben eines Volks, insofern er die unmittelbare Wahrheit ist.
[Ibid., 240].
12 Um sie nicht in dieses Isoliren einwurzeln und festwerden, hierdurch das Ganze aus-
einanderfallen und den Geist verfliegen zu lassen, hat die Regierung sie in ihrem Innern
von Zeit zu Zeit durch Kriege zu erschttern, ihre sich zurechtgemachte Ordnung und
Recht der Selbststndigkeit dadurch zu verletzen und zu verwirren, den Individuen aber,
sich darin vertieffend vom Ganzen losreien und dem unverletzbaren Frsichseyn und
die Sicherheit der Person zustreben, in jener auferlegten Arbeit ihren Herrn, den Tod, zu
fhlen zu geben. [Ibid., 246].
only manifests itself in the positivity of his actions. It must be said, however,
that the freedom of the individual always transcends his positive actions.
If the death of the individual cannot be experienced from the point of view
of the human law as an absolute loss, then the question can be raised as to
where this absolute loss can be situated. Hegels answer is that it can only
be experienced in a social organism located alongside the polis, namely, the
social organism of the family. The relations of the family are in some sense
the reverse of the relations of the polis. While the actions of the individual
in the polis serve the community, in the family it is the community that serves
the individual, that is, the family member.
One might then ask: Why should there exist, besides the polis, a second
social organism, namely, the family? Obviously, the family is not introduced
by Hegel as a deus ex machina in order to solve a certain problem. Rather, he
can only account for the introduction of the family if it is clear that the social
organism of the family must necessarily be presupposed in a free society like
that of the polis (the true substance).
It is clear that the freedom of the individual is not expressed in the activities
which the individual performs on behalf of the human law: In these activities,
the individual is functional for the community. The freedom of the individual,
however, is only expressed if it is institutionally guaranteed that his activi-
ties do not coincide with the human law and that they can be understood as
the (contingent) expression of his freedom. After all, freedom cannot be one-
sidedly expressed as a positive series of actions.13
Nevertheless, Hegel thinks that the introduction of the social organism
of the family offers the beginnings of a solution. Ultimately, a positive series
of actions can only be understood as the expression of the free self if there
exists a free self which is aware that this series of actions is a finite expres-
sion of itself. Such a free individual who is aware of his freedom seems to be
something that is lacking in the polis. Therefore, the assumption of a social
13 Der Inhalt der sittlichen Handlung mu substantiell oder ganz und allgemein seyn; sie
kann sich daher nur auf den ganzen Einzelnen oder auf ihn als allgemeinen beziehen.
Auch di wieder nicht etwa so, da sich nur vorgestellt wre, eine Dienstleistung frdere
sein ganzes Glck, whrend sie so, wie sie unmittelbare und wirkliche Handlung ist,
nur etwas Einzelnes an ihm thut, noch da sie auch wirklich als Erziehung, in einer
Reihe von Bemhungen, ihn als Ganzes zum Gegenstand hat und als Werk hervorbringt;
wo auer dem gegen die Familie negativen Zwecke die wirkliche Handlung nur einen
beschrnkten Inhalt hat; ebensowenig endlich, da sie eine Nothlffe ist, wodurch in
Wahrheit der ganze Einzelne errettet wird; denn sie ist selbst eine vllig zufllige That,
deren Gelegenheit eine gemeine Wirklichkeit ist, welche seyn und auch nicht seyn kann.
[PhdG, 24304].
104 Cobben
organism in the form of the family seems to be rather problematic. In what

sense exactly does it appear to be the case that the actions of the family are in
the service of the family member? Does this not rather presuppose an explicit
self-consciousness which knows that the actions in the family express the free-
dom of the family member in a finite way? How exactly does the qualification
of the family as a social organism in the service of the individual become insti-
tutionally expressed?
To answer this question, Hegel again appeals to the experience of the fear
of death. In so far as the family members participate in the social organism of
the family, they observe as bondsmen the norms and values of the family. We
again find these norms and values of the family as the pathos of family life. As
in the case of the human law, we now have to ask ourselves how it is that this
pathos of the family member becomes self-conscious. Moreover, we have to
answer the question of how we can understand that the pathos of the family
has a different status than the pathos of the state. The key for answering these
questions is the experience of the fear of death which is characteristic of the
family and which is, consequently, distinct from the experience of the fear of
death which we observed as being characteristic of the citizens of the state.
The experience of the fear of death within the family (under the conditions
of the polis) does not concern the death of an individual per se, but rather
the death of one of his family members. Only with the death of the family
member can the very essence of the positive actions of the family domain
truly be experienced. In the loss of the family member, we see not only the
negation of the finite actions performed in service of the family member, but
the experience of an absolute loss, namely, the loss of the self on behalf of
which these actions were performed. In the absolute loss of the family mem-
ber, what is experienced is precisely what had already constituted the essence
of the actions of the family: the free, pure self which can manifest itself in
a multitude of actions.14 This pure self is retained by the family members as
14 Die Handlung also, welche die ganze Existenz des Blutsverwandten umfat und ihn
nicht den Brger, denn dieser gehrt nicht der Familie an, noch den, der Brger werden
und aufhren soll, als dieser Einzelne zu gelten, sondern ihn, diesen der Familie angehri-
gen Einzelnen, als ein allgemeines, der sinnlichen, d. i. einzelnen Wirklichkeit enthobenes
Wesen zu ihrem Gegenstande und Inhalt hat, betrifft nicht mehr den Lebenden, sondern
den Todten, der aus der langen Reihe seines zerstreuten Daseyns sich in die vollendete
eine Gestaltung zusammengefat und aus der Unruhe des zuflligen Lebens sich in die
Ruhe der einfachen Allgemeinheit erhoben hat. Weil er nur als Brger wirklich und sub-
stantiell ist, so ist der Einzelne, wie er nicht Brger ist und der Familie angehrt, nur der
Unwirkliche marklose Schatten. [Ibid., 244].
the shade of the deceased.15 Therefore, just as in the initial experience of the
fear of death described by Hegel in the lordbondsman relationthe pure
self experiences itself as the lord of its bodyso too in this case the pure self
of the deceased, the shade, is experienced as the lord of the second nature,
namely, the social organism of the family. Once again, the experience of the
fear of death is caused by an external absolute lord: death. In the experience of
the family members, however, the absolute lord is internalised: the experience
that the shade of the deceased is the absolute essence of the deceased family
member. This experience is in contrast with what they (the family members)
observe externally: The deceased family member has become a corpse which
is destroyed through the external powers of nature. The family members take
over the work which is performed through external nature and thus realise
what they have felt internally: They posit themselves as the lord of the real self
of the deceased family member.16 In this manner, the demand of the divine
law to bury the deceased family member and to honour the memory of his
shade can be understood. In the realisation of the demand of the divine law,
the pathos of the divine law receives objective shape.
In the immediate freedom that characterised the Greek world, the pathos
of the human law and the divine law falls into two categories. The distinction
between the two immediately presents itself as a natural one, namely, as one
between the law of the woman and the law of the man. Since natural distinc-
tions are fully contingent, they cannot have moral meaning. Nevertheless,
the question can be raised as to why the woman is linked to the divine law
15 Der Unwirkliche marklose Schatten [Ibid., 244].

16 Die Blutsverwandtschafft ergnzt also die abstracte natrliche Bewegung dadurch,
da sie die Bewegung des Bewutseyns hinzufgt, das Werk der Natur unterbricht,
und den Blutsverwandten der Zerstrung entreit, oder besser, weil die Zerstrung,
sein Werden zum reinen Seyn, notwendig ist, selbst die That der Zerstrung ber sich
nimmt. Es kmmt hierdurch zustande, da auch das todte, das allgemeine Seyn ein in
sich Zurckgekehrtes, ein Frsichseyn oder die krafftlose reine einzelne Einzelnheit zur
allgemeinen Individualitt erhoben wird. Der Todte, da er sein Seyn von seinem Thun oder
negativen Eins frey gelassen, ist die leere Einzelnheit, nur ein passives Seyn fr Anderes,
aller niedrigen vernunftlosen Individualitt und den Krfften abstrakter Stoffe preisgege-
ben, wovon jene um des Lebens willen, das sie hat, diese um ihrer negativen Natur willen
itzt mchtiger sind, als er. Di ihn entehrende Thun bewutloser Begierde und abstrac-
ter Wesen hlt die Familie von ihm ab, setzt das ihrige an die Stelle, und vermhlt den
Verwandten dem Schoe der Erde, der elementarischen unvergnglichen Individualitt;
sie macht ihn hierdurch zum Genossen eines Gemeinwesens, welches vielmehr die
Krffte der einzelnen Stoffe und die niedrigen Lebendigkeiten, die gegen ihn frey werden
und ihn zerstren wollten, berwltigt und gebunden hlt. [Ibid., 24445].
106 Cobben
and not to the human law and vice versa. Why should the logical distinction
between the human law and the divine law correspond to a biological distinc-
tion between men and women? From a modern point of view, it is, after all, an
injustice that only males can be citizens.
However, the injustice of the Greek world cannot be meaningfully formu-
lated in terms of discrimination against women. From the viewpoint of the
modern, free individual, it is accidental whether one is a man or a woman,
just as it is accidental to be assigned to a specific law. But the freedom of the
Greek world is characterised by its immediacy, which implies that all indi-
viduals are immediately assigned to a specific law. The injustice we have just
mentioned therefore concerns the immediacy of the assigning of individuals
to a specific law and not the correspondence between, on the one hand, man
and the human law and, on the other hand, woman and the divine law. The
question now becomes whether the logical relation between the human law
and the divine law at all corresponds to the relation between being male and
being female. In Hegels analysis, such a correspondence does indeed exist. In
biological reproduction, the female individual stands for the care of the indi-
vidual in so far as she bears new individuals. The male individual stands for
the species in so far as it is only in relation to the male individual that female
reproduction appears as a reproduction of the species (and not as a spontane-
ous self-reproduction).
5 The Pathos of the Artist: The Attempt to Synthesise the Pathos

of the Divine Law and the Human Law
We have observed that a society in which the law of the social organism has
developed itself into a human law necessarily presupposes a family domain
which is in service of the divine law. On behalf of the divine law, the individual
freedom takes institutional shape. However, this individual freedom concerns
the deceased family member, not the living citizen. It is obvious that in this
kind of society the individuals freedom is not adequately realised. Moreover,
the separation between the divine law and the human law, as well as that
between dead and living individuals, has to be overcome. A closer thinking
through of the relation between the divine and the human law shows what
first steps have to be made in order for individual freedom to become ade-
quately realised.
The point of view of the divine law is diametrically opposed to that of the
human law: The individual does not serve the community, but the commu-
nity serves the individual. Therefore, the divine law and the human law can
only exist beside one another. The divine law concerns the realm of the dead,
and the human law concerns the realm of the living. Finally, the separation
between both realms cannot be maintained. After all, the dead have their way
of appearing in the realm of the living, namely, in their graves. Under nor-
mal circumstances, the grave does not threaten the human law. This changes,
however, if it concerns the grave of an individual who intended to appropri-
ate the human law. Then, the grave symbolises the most extreme undermining
of the human law: the citizen who does not conform to the human law, but
who, conversely, tries to make the human law conform to himself. Therefore,
from the viewpoint of the human law, there cannot be any place for the grave.
Consequently, the human law and the divine law no longer exist beside one
another: they exist at opposite extremes.
From the viewpoint of the divine law, however, the prohibition of the grave
is an absolute injustice: It appears as a power which goes against the absolute
demand to bury deceased family members. Because of this, for the divine law
the human law appears as a contingent law which ultimately threatens the
stability of the polis.
The threat to the human law is the beginning of the genesis of the artists
pathos. First, the artist is a citizen of the polis and participates in the general
pathos of the human law. The divine laws threatening of the human law is
experienced by the artist as the absolute negation of his internal essence,
namely, the pathos of the human law. The power of this absolute negation is
the power of individuality, the pure self. This absolute power again causes the
experience of the fear of death. Because the artist experiences this external
power as such, he can internalise this power and experience himself to be the
essence of the fear of death. Since the artist is already a self-conscious being
and participates in the pathos of the human law, the internalised divine law
here takes the form of a synthesis between the human law and the divine law.
The pathos of the artist is the pathos of the human law which is individually
experienced (and is not only experienced by the citizen).17
17 Die Existenz des reinen Begriffs, in den Geist aus seinen Krper geflohen, ist ein
Individuum, das er sich zum Gefsse seines Schmerzens erwhlt. Er ist an diesem, als
sein Allgemeines und seine Macht, von welcher es Gewalt leidet, als sein Pathos,
dem hingegeben sein Selbstbewutseyn die Freyheit verliert. Aber jene positive Macht
der Allgemeinheit wird vom reinen Selbst des Individuums, als der negativen Macht,
bezwungen. Diese reine Thtigkeit, ihrer unverlierbaren Krafft bewut, ringt mit dem
ungestalteten Wesen; Meister darber werden hat sie das Pathos zu ihrem Stoff gemacht
und sich ihren Gestalt gegeben, und diese Einheit tritt als Werk heraus, der allgemeine
Geist individualisirt und vorgestellt. [PhdG, 378].
108 Cobben
The enriched pathos of the artist is again objectively expressed in the ser-
vice (as bondsman) of the law. The service of the law again results in a work.
This time, however, the work does not consist of the collective work of the
citizens (the polis), but is rather an individual work: a work of art in which
the pathos of the human law is individually expressed.
The work of art of the artist firstly consists of the statue of the god and the
temple.18 The statue of the god and the temple are the idealised representa-
tions of the citizen and the polis. The statue of the god is the idealised free
man, and the temple is the idealised free representation of the second nature.
The artist can give them, as representations of the citizen and the polis, his
own individual form. In these works of art, however, the synthesis between
the pathos of the divine law and the human law is not adequately expressed.
It is true that in the work of art the ethical substance is represented as the
work of a free individual (the artist), but this free individual remains tied to
a contingent tradition. His freedom is not explicitly represented as pure free-
dom. In the development of the religion of art, Hegel discusses many forms
of art which increasingly express the emancipation of the individual from
the contingent tradition. Finally, however, it must become clear that the
work of art cannot be the adequate expression of the pure self. It is only at the
level of the Roman Empire that the pure self is expressed as the free and equal
person of Roman law.
6 Conclusion
Pathos is the immediate synthesis between self and nature. Pathos is nature
which the self feels to be its own nature. The ethical version appears as an
immediate practical relation, as the immediate ethical law (i.e., the human law
and the divine law) which is observed on the basis of ones own nature. In the
aesthetic version of the pathos, the ethical version is reflected in itself by unify-
ing the pathos of the human law and the divine law in their representation as a
work of art. In the work of art, however, the pure self still remains embedded in
representation. Finally, the pure self emancipates itself from the form of repre-
sentation in a work of art and appears in the legal order of the Roman Empire.
18 Die erste Weise, in welcher der knstlerische Geist seine Gestalt und sein thtiges
Bewutseyn am weitesten voneinander entfernt, ist die unmittelbare, da jene als Ding
berhaupt da ist. Sie zerfllt an ihr in den Unterschied der Einzelnheit, welche die
Gestalt des Selbsts an ihr hat, und der Allgemeinheit, welche das unorganische Wesen
in Bezug auf die Gestalt, als seine Umgebung und Behausung darstellt. [Ibid.].
For Hegel, pathos is not the domain in which ethics is at home thanks to
its close relation to nature. In the end, ethics is only adequately expressed in
the autonomy of the free self as it was already formulated in Kants practical
philosophy.19 Pathos, rather, is the domain in which aesthetics is at home. After
all, according to Hegel, the Greek world is the world of pathos and art par excel-
lence. In this world, it is only the pathos of the artist which can express free
individuality.
References
Cobben, Paul. The Nature of the Self: Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phnomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: F. Meiner,
1980.
. Vorlesungen ber die sthetik. Vol. 13. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986.
The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769; King James Bible Online,
2015. http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/.
19 However, since Hegel argues that modern freedom is realised in the modern state, pathos
in some sense returns as patriotism, which the citizen has felt as second nature through
the modern state (or more precisely, the modern ethical world).
CHAPTER 7
In Search of a Second Ethics: From Kant

to Kierkegaard
Paul Cruysberghs
In the preface to his Critique of Pure Reason,1 Immanuel Kant claims that he
performed a Copernican revolution on the level of theoretical philosophy.
What he did on the level of practical philosophy was no less revolutionary. He
replaced an ethics based on the Aristotelian ideal of a good life by an ethics
based on the concept of a good will. In traditional ethics, the good is con-
nected with the completion and the perfection of the human being as a whole,
whereas in Kant the good does not refer to the whole of the human being,
but only to one single dimensionto the will in so far as it is obedient to the
lawgiving of practical reason. What is more, if we would introduce the notion
of perfection into ethics, according to Kant it would ruin the very essence of
ethics itself.
Kant divided the human being into a rational part and into a sensuous part,
connecting the ethical imperative to reason and subjecting the sensuous part
to it. The cultivation of the sensuous part remains a work to be done, to be sure,
but it has no intrinsic ethical value. For Kant, cultivation of the senses is not a
practical, but a pragmatic imperative.
As a consequence, a certain dualism was introduced inside the ethical dis-
course itself. Since reason was the only determining ground for ethical behav-
iour, or at least for morality, ethics seemed to split up the human being into
two different parts, which, as such, did not have any relevance for each other
besides that of domination on the one hand and subjection on the other.
* This text is based on a seminar organised by Prof. Dr. Poul Luebke at Copenhagen University
in February 2004; a short version of it was presented on the Stephaneum Campus of the
Pzmny Pter University in Piliscsaba (Hungary) in September 2006; and finally, it was the
subject of a series of lectures at Christ University in Bangalore (India) in January 2014.
1 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Zweite Auflage 1787, in Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte
Schriften, Vol. 3, 12 (Berlin: Akademieausgabe: 1911); Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation) (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 110 (B XVI). In the following Kant quotes, I first refer to the
German Akademie edition [GS] (first the volume, then the page). After a semicolon, I refer
to the English Cambridge edition [CE].

In Search Of A Second Ethics 111
A lot of philosophers were quite impressed by the Kantian renewal of eth-

ics. At the same time, they felt that this modern kind of ethics was rather harsh
as compared to traditional ethics. While imposing its imperatives, ethics was
not supposed to take into account any motive stemming from sensuousness.
Only the principle of universality, being the form of reason itself, was allowed
to intervene. One of the first Kant readers to react was Friedrich Schiller, not by
rejecting Kantian ethics, but by supplementing it with an ideal of aesthetic per-
fection that was supposed to complete ethics in a conduct that would be supe-
rior to what Kants ethics was able to offer. A young Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel was looking as well for an alternative, for an ethics that replaced the law-
giving of reason by a religion of love. Although Hegel dropped this somewhat
romantic perspective quite soon, he never gave up the endeavour of freeing the
lawgiving of reason from its harshness. That very same harshness of Kantian
ethics was recognised by Sren Kierkegaard as well. In an essay on the tragic, in
the first part of Either-Or, the author called A by Hilarius Bogbinder, the edi-
tor of the bookA representing an aesthetical view of lifesays explicitly:
Det Ethiske, det er strngt og haardt (The Ethical, it is severe and hard).2
And we might consider Judge Williams ethical life-view in the second part
of Either-Or as a recasting of Schillers concept of aesthetic education.3 Still,
according to Kierkegaard, Judge Williams perspective on ethics, not taking
human finiteness and, most of all, sinfulness into account, must be considered
nave. Therefore, Kierkegaard takes up the problem again in the introduction
to The Concept of Anxiety. Here, the ethical reappears with all of its severity
and harshness. Nevertheless, Vigilius Haufniensis, the pseudonymous author
of The Concept of Anxiety, opens up new perspectives by suggesting a second
ethics,4 which should be based on religious presuppositions.
What I want to do in this paper is to make clear that the problems that
Kierkegaard is dealing with are not completely new; rather, they have to be
placed in the broader context of classical German philosophy.
2 Sren Kierkegaard, Enten-Eller 1, in Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter [SKS], ed. Niels Jrgen
Cappelrn et al (Copenhagen: Gad Forlag, 1997), Vol. 2, 145; Either/Or 1, in Kierkegaards
Writings, ed. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong [HH], Vol. 4, 145 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987). In the following Kierkegaard quotes, I refer to the Danish Gad edition (first the
volume, then the page); then, after a semicolon, I refer to the English Princeton edition.
3 Cf. Smail Rapic, Selbstverstndigung: Kierkegaards Auseinandersetzung mit der Ethik Kants
und der Rechtsphilosophie Hegels (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series) (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 2007).
4 Sren Kierkegaard, Begrebet Angest, SKS, 4, 323ff.; The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and trans.
R. Thomte in collaboration with A.B. Anderson, HH, 8, 20ff.
112 Cruysberghs
1 The Harshness of Kantian Ethics
With a bit of exaggeration, one might argue that Kant replaced traditional vir-
tue ethics by a kind of heroic ethics. This does not mean that virtue is absent
in Kant. Of course it isnt: After all, we just have to remember that the second
part of the Metaphysics of Morals most definitely consists of a theory of virtue.
But it is not by accident that Kant defines virtue in terms of moral disposition
in conflict, (moralische Gesinnung im Kampfe).5 I have no problems with the
idea of virtue as a moral disposition, but what makes me suspicious of this
definition is that Kantian virtue is operating im Kampfe (in conflict). This
is quite a different context than the quieter, day-to-day context of the virtuous
life espoused by the traditional conception of virtue (maybe with the excep-
tion of the virtue of courage, and even that may have been rather day-to-
day in Aristotles Greece). Sure, in the passage I refer to above, Kant opposes
virtue to holiness, which he defines in terms of einer vlligen Reinigkeit der
Gesinnungen des Willens (a complete purity of dispositions of the will).6
According to Kant, however, holiness appears to be beyond our human capaci-
ties, and that is the reason why we have to learn and live with Kampf.7
In Kants perception of life, duty is usually not something that is done
spontaneously or easily, let alone with pleasure. While virtue, for Aristotle, had
the character of a spontaneous hexis of a second nature, for Kant duty is never
evident: It is something to fight for against all kinds of sensuous inclinations.
Sure, moral disposition is more than taking decisions in the moment; it is an
attitude that pervades ones whole life in all circumstances. But still, Kant needs
the notion of Kampf to clarify what virtue really means. And it is im Kampfe
that the eminence and the superiority of practical reason shows up. Kant
seems to ignore that in everyday life most human beings, if they are virtuous,
do not need to fight against their inclinations. And even when he accepts the
5 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, GS, 5, 84; Critique of Practical Reason, in
Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, CE, 208. See also Anthropologie in pragmatischer
Hinsicht, GS, 7, 277; Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, in Immanuel Kant,
Anthropology, History, and Education, CE, 377.
6 Ibid.
7 Here, we can recall Johannes Climacus in Concluding Unscientific Postscript characterising
Judge Williams ethics as it is presented in Stages on Lifes Way as Kamp og Seier (struggle
and victory) [Afsluttende uvidenskabeligt Efterskrift, SKS, 7, 263; HH, 12, 288]. In Kant, how-
ever, otherwise than in Judge William, there is no prospect of victory.
possibility of virtue as a joyous frame of mind (frhliche Gemthsstimmung),

the joyfulness appears to be the effect of the courageous character of virtue.8
As a matter of fact, when dealing with the lawgiving of practical reason,
Kant makes use of a very specific kind of language borrowed from either the
military or the political sphere. Both types of language suggest an asymmet-
ric relationship between reason and sensuousness, the two faculties in man
that are involved in a continuous conflict with each other on the battlefield of
ethics. It is as if the Hobbesian natural state of war was transferred from the
external, social world into the inner, psychological world of human faculties.
And when, in the end, a state of law must be established, we seem to need a
harsh regime in which the subjects (the natural impulses and inclinations) are
constrained to obey the ruler (i.e., reason) unconditionally. Thus, if we do not
want to live in a permanent state of war within ourselves, we are forced to live
under the extremely oppressive regime of reason. Though Kant admits that
this state of oppression does not need to be felt as such the whole time, he is
quite pessimistic about what is needed most of the time. Since there is a con-
tinuous risk of rebellion from the side of the subjects, the ruler has to be on his
guard against his inner enemies at all times.
Let me give a few examples of the typically military and political metaphors
Kant makes use of when dealing with virtue. They all refer to situations of sub-
jection and domination. A good place to start is in the Metaphysics of Morals,
where virtue is said to borrow its arms from the arsenal of metaphysics (ihre
Waffen aus der Rstkammer der Metaphysik).9 Kant further talks about the
capacity to master ones inclinations when they rebel against the law (ber
seine dem Gesetz widerspenstige Neigungen Meister zu werden).10 Vices are
monsters (Ungeheuer) one has to combat (bekmpfen).11 In sum, moral
8 This quote from a footnote in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft, GS,
6, 24n; Religion within the Limits of mere Reason, in Religion and Rational Theology, ed.
and trans. A. Wood and G. di Giovanni (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant in Translation) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 49n is an answer to
Schillers ber Anmuth und Wrde (On Grace and Dignity), where Schiller is complaining
about the harshness of Kants ethics as if it were the expression of eine kartuserartige
Gemthsstimmung (the frame of mind of a Carthusian) (thus Kant himself: Ibid., GW,
6, 23; CE, 48). As for Schillers criticism and Kants answer to it, see below.
9 Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, GS, 6, 376; The Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical
Philosophy, CE, 509.
10 Ibid., GS, 6, 383; CE, 515 (See also Ibid., GS, 6, 485; CE, 598; Die Religion, GS, 6, 59n; Religion,
CE, 102; Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, GS, 4, 411; Groundwork of the Metaphysics
of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, CE, 65).
11 Ibid, GS, 6, 405; CE, 53334.
114 Cruysberghs
strength is a question of courage (fortitudo moralis) that constitutes the

greatest and the only true honor that man can win in war (die grte und
einzige wahre Kriegsehre des Menschen).12
As a true soldier indeed, the virtuous man obeys the positive command
to rule over himself (Herrschaft ber sich selbst),13 to bring all his capaci-
ties and inclinations under his (reasons) control (alle seine Vermgen und
Neigungen unter seine (der Vernuft) Gewalt zu bringen).14 And when, indeed,
the military language does not show up, it is only to make room for another lan-
guage of subjection, that of a ruler over against his subjects. Just as in the case
of the political state of law, so it is in the case of the moral law that it is thought
of in terms of solemn Majesty (feierlichen Majestt).15 We stand under a
discipline of reason (Disziplin der Vernunft) and we should never forget our
subjection to it (Unterwrfigkeit unter derselben).16 The respect for the moral
law is described as intimidating (abschreckend), and with great severity
(strenge) it shows us our own unworthiness (Unwrdigkeit).17 Sure, we
are supposed to be freely obedient to the moral law (just like men gave up
freely their own liberty in the state of nature in order to subject themselves to
the sovereign ruler in the state of law), but the result is as plain as day: Being
confronted with our frail nature (gebrechliche Natur),18 we have to restrict
our inclinations and even, if necessary, our self-esteem. This restriction has an
unpleasant effect on feeling. It restrains the opinion of our personal worth,
which, in the absence of agreement with the moral law, is reduced to nothing.19
Hence, its effect on feeling is one of mere humiliation (Demthigung).20
Kant admits that we are indeed lawgiving members of a kingdom of mor-
als possible through freedom and represented to us by practical reason for our
respect.21 But we always have to keep in mind that we are at the same time
12 Ibid., GS, 6, 405; CE, 534.

13 Ibid., GS, 6, 408; CE, 536.
14 Ibid., GS, 6, 408; CE, 536.
15 Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, GS, 5, 77; Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical
Philosophy, CE, 202.
16 Ibid., GS, 5, 82; CE, 206.
17 Ibid., GS, 5, 77; CE, 203.
18 Ibid., GS, 5, 77; CE, 203.
19 der ohne Einstimmung mit dem moralischen Gesetze auf nichts herabgesetzt wird.
[Ibid., GS, 5, 78; CE, 203].
20 Ibid., GS, 5, 778; 20203. [See also GS, 5, 75; CE, 201].
21 Wir sind zwar gesetzgebende Glieder eines durch Freiheit mglichen, durch praktische
Vernunft uns zur Achtung vorgestellten Reichs der Sitten. [Ibid., GS, 5, 83; CE, 206].
subjects in it, not its sovereign.22 As subjects, we have to accept our inferior
position as creatures and we should never presumptuously deny from self-
conceit the authority of the holy law.23
The respect for the authority of the law always has the character of a yoke
(Joch)24 we have to bear, whether we like it or not; and, as a matter of fact,
it always humiliates us. Obeying the law always implies a subjection of the
mind. Motives other than just this subjection risk making ethics dependent
on pathological, non-moral motives. Pathological motives have their seat in
sympathy and self-love, not in the law. People inspired by pathological motives
develop a frivolous, high-flown, fantastic cast of mind, flattering themselves
with a spontaneous goodness of heart that needs neither spur nor bridle and
for which not even a command is necessary and thereby forgetting their obli-
gation, which they ought to think of rather than merit.25 Thus, it must be clear
that we need to set the boundaries of humility to self-conceit and self-love,
which are both ready to mistake their limits. That is the reason why traditional
virtues such as nobility, sublimity, and magnanimity must be considered as
being extremely dangerous: They threaten the purity of practical reason.
It is no wonder that man, as belonging to both the sensuous and the rational
worlds, must regard his own rational nature only with reverence and regard its
laws with the highest respect. However, reverence and respect do not seem to
be good enough if one wants a human life to be in harmony with itself. More
is required. And we will now have to turn to Friedrich Schiller, who, according
to a famous distich of his, spent ten years trying to understand Kant and an
additional ten years trying to get rid of him.26
22 aber doch zugleich Unterthanen, nicht das Oberhaupt desselben. [Ibid., GS, 5, 83; CE,
206].
23 Verkennung unserer niederen Stufe als Geschpfe und Weigerung des Eigendnkels
gegen das Ansehen des heiligen Gesetzes. [Ibid., GS, 5, 83; CE, 206].
24 Ibid., GS, 5, 85; CE, 208.
25 so bringen sie auf diese Art eine windige, berfliegende, phantastische Denkungsart her-
vor, sich mit einer freiwilligen Gutartigkeit ihres Gemths, das weder Sporns noch Zgel
bedrfe, fr welches gar nicht einmal ein Gebot nthig sei, zu schmeicheln und darber
ihrer Schuldigkeit, an welche sie doch eher denken sollten als an Verdienst, zu vergessen
[Ibid., GS, 5, 85; CE, 208].
26 Zwei Jahrzehende kostest du mir: zehn Jahre verlor ich / Dich zu begreifen, und zehn,
mich zu befreien von dir [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe & Friedrich Schiller, Xenien und
Votivtafeln aus dem Nachla, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poetische Werke (Berlin:
Berliner Ausgabe, 1960), Vol. 2, 501].
116 Cruysberghs
2 Schiller: Grace as a Complement of Virtue
Schillers main endeavour as a philosopher consisted of stressing the auton-

omy of aesthetics and art over against ethics. Though he knew quite well
that works of art (e.g., his own dramas) might have an ethical effect, the lat-
ter should never be confounded with the purpose of art, which is enjoyment,
subjectively speaking, and representation (of the super-sensible), objectively
speaking.27 Still, what Schiller had in mind as well was what we might qualify
as an aesthetisation of human behaviour. This should not be considered as an
alternative to, but rather as a complement of ethical behaviour. Though dedi-
cated to Kantianism, Schiller opened the perspective of a new ethos that was
no longer dominated by the opposition of sensuousness (inclinations and
impulses), on the one hand, and ethics (duty and virtue), on the other. That
new ethos can be defined as moral beauty (moralische Schnheit).28 It is
introduced in a text called Kallias oder ber die Schnheit (Kallias, or on the
Beautiful) and further developed in the famous text ber Anmuth und Wrde
(On Grace and Dignity).29 It is tempting to characterise Schillers project of an
aesthetisation of the human ethos as a second level ethics. As such, it seems
to go beyond the Kantian positionstill shared by Schiller, to be surethat
the moral law does not allow any other instance above or beyond itself. If this
is the case, the question then becomes as follows: How can one combine this
new kind of (aesthetic) ethics with the absolute superiority of the moral law?
27 See ber den Grund des Vergngens an tragischen Gegenstnden, in Friedrich

Schiller, Smtliche Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert Gpfert [SW] (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993), Vol. 5, 35872; Friedrich Schiller, On the Reason
Why We Take Pleasure in Tragic Subjects, in Friedrich Schiller, Poet of Freedom, [PF] Vol. 4
(Washington: Schiller Institute, 2003), 26770. When quoting Schiller, I normally refer to
the fifth volume of Smtliche Werke (first the volume, followed by the page). After a semi-
colon, I refer to the English translations included in one of the four volumes of Friedrich
Schiller, Poet of Freedom, unless a different edition is mentioned (first the volume, then
the page).
28 Kallias oder ber die Schnheit, SW, 5, 404; Kallias, or On the Beautiful, PF, 2, 496.
29 That there are some dangers connected with this aesthetic perspective is the theme of an
article, ber die notwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schner Formen (On the Necessary
Limits in the Use of Beautiful Forms), a revision of Von den notwendigen Grenzen des
Schnen (On the Necessary Limits of the Beautiful) and ber die Gefahr sthetischer Sitten
(On the Danger of an Aesthetic Ethos). That the danger should not be overemphasised
is made clear in ber den moralischen Nutzen sthetischer Sitten (On the Moral Utility of
Aesthetic Manners).
2.1 Kallias (1793): Beauty as Freedom in the Appearance

Let us start with some perspectives offered by Kallias oder ber die Schnheit,
which consists of a series of letters written by Schiller to Gottfried Krner. What
we are interested in here is not the notion of beauty in general, but a particular
type of beauty that we have already termed moral beauty. Somehow, Schiller
seems to be thinking of a modern recasting of the (neo)classical ideal of kalo-
kagathia as defended by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, that is, of an ethics
that combines the good and the beautiful. We take up Schillers argument
when, in his letter of February 18, 1793, he explains his definition of beauty in
terms of freedom in the appearance.30 The definition itself was introduced
already at the end of his letter of February 8, 1793.31
What shows up immediately is that the definition suggests an intrinsic link
between beauty on the one hand and freedom, one of the Kantian postulates
of practical reason, on the other. Phenomena which appear as if they were
free or autonomous, that is, natural in the sense of spontaneous and not as the
result of a moral constraint, can be considered to be beautiful. This can relate
to natural phenomena, to works of art, and, to human behaviour.
Essential in this context is that, when behaviour is concerned, moral beauty
be an analogue of freedom: It must appear to be free, that is, natural in the
sense of spontaneous and not determined by any external natural cause or
by free will. Moral beauty is a matter of taste: It can be understood neither as
the complement of scientific understanding nor as the result of a moral imper-
ative. Moral behaviour that is not connected with taste will always appear
to be heteronymous precisely because it is the product of the autonomy of
the will.32
Moral beauty, however, is connected with one doing ones duty in such an
easy way that it is as if it were done instinctively: Therefore, were a moral
action then first a beautiful action, if it appears as an effect of nature arising
from itself. In a word: a free action is a beautiful action, when the autonomy
of the disposition and autonomy in the appearance coincide.33 What Schiller
shows is that the violence (Gewalt) exercised by practical reason on our drives
30 Freiheit in der Erscheinung. [Kallias, SW, 5, 401; PF, 2, 489].

31 Ibid., SW, 5, 400; PF, 2, 489.
32 Ibid., SW, 5, 40304; PF, 2, 491.
33 Also wre eine moralische Handlung alsdann erst eine schne Handlung, wenn sie aus-
sieht wie eine sich von selbst ergebende Wirkung der Natur. Mit einem Worte: eine freie
Handlung ist eine schne Handlung, wenn die Autonomie des Gemts und Autonomie in
der Erscheinung koinzidieren. [Ibid., SW, 5, 407; PF, 2, 498].
118 Cruysberghs
(Trieben), when moral determinations of the will are at stake, is a form of coer-
cion (Zwang) over and against our sensory nature. Therefore, it has an offend-
ing (etwas Beleidigendes) and distressing character (etwas Peinliches).34
That is exactly what Kant had in mind when explaining the effects of the ethi-
cal law. The problem is that we do not appreciate coercion, even when it has
its origin in reason. We want the freedom of nature to be respected as well, at
least in the case of aesthetic judgements. We wish to consider any being (not
just a moral person) as an aim in itself (Selbstzweck). For that very reason, it is
not just practical reason that needs to be free; our sensory nature must appear
to be free as wellalso when moral behaviour is at stakeeven when it is not
actually free. It must seem as if we have satisfied our drives, when, in fact, we
have subjected them to the domination of the pure will.
2.2 On Grace and Dignity (1793)

In On Grace and Dignity (ber Anmuth und Wrde), Schiller further devel-
ops the theme of moral beauty, but now with the help of the notion of grace
(Anmuth), whereas moral dignity (Wrde) must be connected with the aes-
thetics of the sublime. Schiller takes up beauty and grace on the one hand, and
grace and dignity on the other. In the first discussion, we remain within the
sphere of aesthetics; in the second, we dwell on the borderline of the aesthetic
and the ethical. First, we will deal briefly with the distinction between beauty
and grace; then, we will focus more extensively on the distinction between
grace and dignity.
2.2.1 Grace
As compared to beauty in general, grace is to be termed changeable beauty,
more specifically in connection with human beings.35 As such, it must be
contrasted with fixed beauty. Changeable beauty refers to accidental changes
of behaviour, whereas fixed beauty is attached to a subjects appearance as
such. The condition for motion to be graceful is that it be unintentional. On
many occasions, however, grace appears to be a kind of side effect of inten-
tional acts. Hence, we have to look for what, in the case of intentional acts, is
unintentional but at the same time in accordance with a moral state of mind
(i.e., the intentional side). Grace must express a certain moral perfection (and
in that sense, grace is also termed speaking or expressive movement). It is the
super-sensible ground in the mind which makes grace speaking or expressive,
whereas it is the sensuous ground in nature that makes it simply beautiful.
34 Ibid., SW, 5, 40708; PF, 2, 499.

35 ber Anmuth und Wrde, SW, 5, 434; On Grace and Dignity, PF, 2, 338.
The easiness of movement when fulfilling ones moral duty will be its most
typical characteristic.
Hence, gracious beauty must be located in between dignity as the
expression of the ruling of spirit on the one hand and wantonness or lust as
the expression of the ruling of instinct or drive (Trieb) on the other.36 Grace,
however, is not possible when reason rules or controls sensuousness or when
sensuousness rules reason. It is only when reason and sensuousness, duty and
drive, correspond that we meet a playful beauty that we term grace. Grace is
only possible if obedience to reason becomes the immediate object of our
drive; and this is only possible if it offers us room for pleasure (Vergngen),
since instinct is only set into motion by pleasure and pain.37
It nevertheless remains problematic that inclinations are the companions
of moral sentiment (des Sittengefhls). Pleasure, indeed, is quite a dubious
bonus to moral determinations. Inclination joining together with duty might
be advantageous for the legality of our actions, but it is not relevant for their
morality, which depends exclusively on the good will. In that sense, Schiller
remains a dedicated Kantian.38 Still, he tries to do justice to the claims of sen-
suousness: again not with respect to the moral lawthere it must be rejected
resolutelybut with respect to the appearance and the actual execution of
moral duty. Whereas Schiller considers the contribution of inclinations as irrel-
evant when considering the dutifulness of an act, he concludes that the ethi-
cal perfection of a human being, his humanity (Humanitt), must be related
to his inclination toward moral action.39 In an objective sense, actions out of
inclination and actions out of duty are opposed to each other; in a subjective
sense, however, this does not need to be the case. And that is Schillers point.
His position is that, when considering the human being not from the point of
view of the moral law, but in a more integrating way, from the viewpoint of
Humanitt, of moral perfection, not only is it permissible to link pleasure with
duty, but one has to do so. Since a human being as such is both a rational and
a sensuous being, one should not divide asunder what she [nature] brought
together,40 and therefore the one part should not be suppressed by the other.
The fact that the union of pleasure and duty has the character of a human
task to be accomplished suggests a new kind of ethics that links reason and
inclination in the concrete action of the human being. What Schiller cares for
36 Ibid., SW, 5, 463; PF, 2, 363.

37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., SW, 5, 46364; PF, 2, 36364.
39 Ibid., SW, 5, 470; PF, 2, 370.
40 Ibid., SW, 5, 465; PF, 2, 365.
120 Cruysberghs
is indeed not only that we obey reason, but that we do so with joy. A well-
educated human being can allow himself to trust the voice of inclination
and is not forced to have it tested time and again by the principle of morality.
Respectable is precisely he who, with some confidence, can commit himself
to his inclinations. This proves indeed that both principles do correspond in
his mind. If that is the case, we can speak of a perfected humanity;41 and
the person who is able to reach that point can be considered as a beautiful
soul.42 We call it a beautiful soul, Schiller says, when moral sentiment has
assured itself of all emotions of a person ultimately to that degree, that it may
abandon the guidance of the will to emotions, and never run danger of being
in contradiction with its own decisions.43 For that reason, the whole character
is moral in a beautiful soul, not just in this or that act. Even the most painful
obligations are fulfilled easily. The beautiful soul is not even conscious of the
beauty of its acting, and it cannot even imagine that it could eventually act or
feel differently: It is thus in a beautiful soul, that sensuousness and reason,
duty and inclination harmonize, and grace Is its epiphany.44
2.2.2 Dignity
If grace corresponds with a beautiful soul, then dignity corresponds with a sub-
lime disposition (einer erhabenen Gesinnung).45 In this context, the sublime
(Erhabenheit) is to be understood in two ways. First, in an elementary sense,
in contrast with sensuousness, one can consider ones will as suchthat is,
even when it is not acting morallyto be sublime. The will alone rises already
beyond the merely animal status. In that sense, the sublime is not necessarily
associated with morality (Sittlichkeit). Second, however, the sublime charac-
ter of morality should be considered to be a higher level that presupposes the
sublimity of the will as such. Schiller identifies it with divinity. If the human
being is not able to free himself from the necessity of nature, than he is not
capable of moral action either. As such, the will stands in between two laws:
that of nature and that of reason.46 As a natural force, it is free over against
41 Ibid., SW, 5, 468; PF, 2, 368.

42 Ibid. It should be clear that Schillers definition of a beautiful soul is far away from the
beautiful soul which refuses to have dirty hands that Hegel has in mind when dealing
with morality in his Phenomenology of Spirit. Cf. Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes, in
Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 9 (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1980), 355ff.; Phenomenology of Spirit,
trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 383ff.
43 Anmuth und Wrde, Ibid.
44 Ibid., SW, 5, 46869; PF, 2, 368.
45 Ibid., SW, 5, 470; PF, 2, 370.
46 Ibid., SW, 5, 47172; PF, 2, 371.
both: It is bound neither by the laws of nature nor by those of reason. But it is
not free as a moral force: The will should be (soll) reasonable. It is not bound
(gebunden) to either, but it is obliged (verbunden) to the law of reason.
Schiller is convinced that impulse can be disarmed (entwaffnen) by
moral means, but that soothing it (besnftigen) is only possible by natural
means. When an impulse has a tendency of pushing aside the will in a vio-
lent way, the moral character has to resist by restricting it.47 In that case, there
is no correspondence (bereinstimmung)no harmony of inclination and
dutybetween sensuousness and reason. Since the specific contribution of
inclination is lacking here, the human being cannot act in a morally beautiful
way. Now, the human being has to act in a morally great way. This means that
in such a situation, the beautiful soul has to turn into a sublime, a great, a
heroic, or a noble soul.48 That is the touchstone by which the beautiful
soul must be distinguished from a good heart or from a kind of virtue that
would rest only on temperament. The latter is just a product of nature. The
sublime soul will no longer be guided by inclination, but by reason alone. Thus,
the soul acquires freedom of mind by mastering its impulses, just appealing
to its moral strength. Dignity is the external expression of this freedom in the
world of appearances.49
The ideal of a perfected humanity, however, does not ask for struggling,
but rather for harmony. Therefore, virtue consists in grace, not in dignity.50
Humanity as such finds it hard to come to terms with dignity because the latter
is the expression of an internal struggle within the human being. But in case
duty cannot be brought into harmony with the demands of nature without
annihilating human nature itself (its reasonableness), resistance against incli-
nation is absolutely necessary. In that case, we expect dignity: the expression of
the struggle in the world of appearances. And then there is no longer place for
playful beauty either: There is only room for bitter earnestness.
By way of conclusion, I would like to quote Schillers suggestion for a new
moral law in the following terms: The person must do with grace everything
which he can accomplish within his humanity, and with dignity everything
that he has to transcend his humanity to accomplish.51 By connecting grace
with the notion of the beautiful, and dignity with that of the sublime, Schiller
clears the way for an aesthetic view of human behaviour not just in case there
47 Ibid., SW, 5, 474; PF, 2, 37374.

48 Ibid., SW, 5, 47475; PF, 2, 374.
49 Ibid., SW, 5, 475; PF, 2, 374.
50 Ibid., SW, 5, 478; PF, 2, 377.
51 Ibid., SW, 5, 479; PF, 2, 378.
122 Cruysberghs
is a harmony of moral duty and sensuous inclinations, but also in case they
struggle with each other (as in most of Schillers dramas). In both cases, an
aesthetic conception of our behaviour offers a reconciliation with ourselves
that is absent in Kantian ethics as such.
2.3 The Limits of Grace (1795)

In spite of his warm plea for grace, Schiller felt the need to put some limits
on moral beauty. Even though one is a beautiful soul indeed, it might happen
that one may be forced to leave room for dignity. Aesthetics indeed can never
replace (Kantian) ethics. Ethics preserves its autonomy, and in certain circum-
stances it would be simply inappropriate to want toand begracious.
It is precisely because his plea for grace was misunderstood that Schiller
took up the topic again in an article entitled ber die notwendigen Grenzen
beim Gebrauch schner Formen (On the Necessary Limits in the Use of Beautiful
Forms).52 One should not mix up ethical and aesthetic judgements, he argues
in this article. The aesthetic indeed can be misused. That is the message now.
Misuse is finding a place where aesthetics forgets its place. While the latter
normally belongs to the executive force, it might consider itself as being the
lawgiving force.53 However, lawgiving is not a question of aesthetics but of
ethics. Therefore, the use of beautiful forms must be kept within clear-cut
limits.
In what circumstances is this keeping apart of aesthetics and ethics neces-
sary? Schiller refers to two essentially spiritual activities in man: knowing, on
the one hand, and acting, on the other. In both cases, limits have to be put on
aesthetics. I will not go into Schillers endeavour of putting limits on beautiful
forms on the level of science (as a matter of fact, by so doing he is defending
himself against Johann Gottlieb Fichte). Rather, I will concentrate on the ethi-
cal context.
52 As a matter of fact, this text is the result of Schiller bringing together two different texts
when he published his Kleine prosaische Schriften in 1800. The first text is an article enti-
tled Von den notwendigen Grenzen des Schnen, besonders im Vortrag philosophischer
Wahrheiten, which was published in Die Horen (9th issue) in 1795; the second was an
article entitled ber die Gefahr sthetischer Sitten, which was written earlier (1793), but
published in Die Horen (11th issue) as well in the same year as a continuation of the first
text.
53 ber die notwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schner Formen [SW, 5, 670; On the Necessary
Limits in the Use of Beautiful Forms, PF, 3, 281].
Danger is imminent as soon as the human being commits himself exclu-

sively to the sense of beauty and taste, and makes taste into the unlimited
lawgiver of his will. Aesthetic refinement is then far from being an advantage.
The reason is clear: The moral destination of man asks for the radical inde-
pendence of the will over and against any influence of sensuous motives. The
problem with taste is that its intention is precisely to strengthen the ties of rea-
son with the senses. As such, this seems to be innocent or even praiseworthy.
The drive of aesthetics indeed offers the possibility of ennobling our desires
and of bringing them in line with reason. But there is a great danger connected
with it, according to Schiller. In exchange for services rendered, taste indeed
seems to expect something done in return. Anyway, there is a very real danger
that the accidental accordance of duty with inclination that we meet in grace
is made into a necessary condition. Thus, ethics already risks being poisoned
at its very source.
The point is this: The more moral and aesthetic judgements are in accor-
dance with each other, the more reason will have the tendency to consider
a sensuous inclination that is spiritualisedthanks to what we have termed
aesthetisationas its own and to grant the latter unlimited force to steer the
will. This is no problem as long as inclination and duty desire the same thing.
But the situation is completely different when reason and feeling have a dif-
ferent interest and the one wants something that is against the desire of the
other. Then the right instancein this case the moral lawmust be in power.
But that is no longer evident, since in the meantime inclination may have
acquired so much respect that it can turn against duty. Whereas respect is only
due toward the moral lawsince only the moral law can claim the uncondi-
tionality connected with respectit now might be claimed by an ennobled
inclination. In that case, the latter is no longer ready to subordinate itself
(untergeordnet) to reason; rather, it wants to be co-ordinate (beigeordnet)
with it. If both instances are considered as equal, it may very well be that, when
making choices, the interest of inclination will be decisive (cf. the example
of love).54
As compared to the earlier Schiller, who made a plea for a harmony
(Zusammenstimmung) of impulse and duty, we meet a Schiller who is now
scrambling backward. The unity of sensuous and moral impulses appears to
be just an ideal, something that never finds place in reality. An excessively
intimate partnership (eine zu innige Gemeinschaft)55 of both appears to be
54 Ibid., SW, 5, 690; PF, 3, 302.

55 Ibid., SW, 5, 693; PF, 3, 305.
124 Cruysberghs
extremely dangerous for morality. In this situation, indeed, sensuousness has

nothing to lose, since in the case of a conflict it would fare worse. But reason is
exposed to much greater dangers if she allows herself to be granted by the incli-
nation that which she could demand from it.56 The feeling of Verbindlichkeit,
the obligatory character of the moral law, might be lost too easily. For that very
reason, Schiller returns to what he had developed in the section on dignity in
his text On Grace and Dignity: True morality only maintains itself in the school
of adversity, and a situation of continuous happiness turns too easily into an
obstacle for duty.57 Kants severe and harsh ethics is back, so it seems.
2.4 But Still...On the Moral Use of Aesthetic Manners (1796)

In On the Necessary Limits in the Use of Beautiful Forms, Schiller pointed to
the danger connected with a morality which is guided exclusively by taste. In
On the Moral Use of Aesthetic Manners (ber den moralischen Nutzen sthe-
tischer Sitten), a text published in Die Horen in 1796, but written in almost the
same period as On the Necessary Limits in the Use of Beautiful Forms (1793), he
recalls that a lively and pure feeling of beauty has a salutary effect on moral
behaviourif not on morality as well.
Here, we return to the moral effect of aestheticsnot so much, however, to
that of the fine arts (as is the case, for example, in On the Aesthetic Education of
Man), as to that of an aesthetic ethos, of aesthetic manners (Sitten). Schillers
point of departure is that the ethical has no other foundation than itself.
Therefore, taste can promote (begnstigen) moral behaviour, but it can never
give birth (erzeugen) to anything moral.58
The reasoning goes as follows: Though practical reason is autonomous, the
possibility of moral action might be co-determined by external factors. In pro-
portion to the strength of our sensuous inclinations, we will find it more or less
hard to do our duties. Therefore, morality can be promoted (and hindered) in
two ways.59 Either the power of reason and of the good will must be strength-
ened in such a way such that we can resist temptation more easily, or we must
break the power of the temptation itself. The latter can be done thanks to aes-
thetics. A good taste indeed always rests on a certain refinement of manners; it
demands moderation (Migung) and decency (Anstand).60
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 ber den moralischen Nutzen sthetischer Sitten, SW, 5, 781; On the Moral Use of Aesthetic
Manners, PF, 3, 399.
59 Ibid., SW, 5, 783; PF, 3, 401.
60 Ibid., SW, 5, 784; PF, 3, 402.
Now, when aesthetics moderates our sensuous impulses and makes us

sensitive to order and harmony, neither reason nor the good will need to be
extremely strong in order to master said sensuous impulses. Seemingly, moral-
ity does not win anything with such an operation. Morality indeed is exclu-
sively determined by the good will; and the use of good taste does not really
alter this.61 However, that is not necessary either. The issue, indeed, is not that
the bad will change into a good will. Rather, we are confronted with a good
will that might be just a little bit too weak to withstand the urges of our sensu-
ous impulses. Thanks to good taste, this weak good will may result in being
effective, something that might not have happened, had stronger impulses
hindered it.
Thus, Schiller defends the position that an instance which is capable of
destroying the opposition of the impulses to the good effectively promotes
morality. And that is precisely what an aesthetic ethos does: It breaks the
opposition of our primitive sensuousness to the good. As a matter of fact, there
are two types of people. There are people, who, when acting, are simply steered
by sensuous impulses. These are the raw minds. In the case of moral minds, the
second type, reason imposes its law immediately: And, in the third place, there
are the aesthetically refined souls in which there is still one more instance
which not seldom replaces virtue when it is lacking and makes it easier when
it is present. This instance is taste.62
Thanks to taste, the human being at least acquires the capacity to suspend
the merely passive situation of the soul by an act of auto-activity and to stop
through reflection the far too easy transition of feelings into actions. Thus, it
makes room for the will to turn effectively toward virtue. This victory of taste
over the raw affect is not a moral action at all, and the freedom that the will
acquires thanks to taste is not yet moral freedom. But taste liberates the soul
from the yoke of the instinct, only insofar as it guides it in its fetters.63
Even though we did not become better moral beings by this intervention
of taste, something great has been won. All these material inclinations and
raw wishes that oppose doing good have been replaced by nobler and softer
inclinations [...] which relate to order, harmony and perfection.64 Before
being judged by reason, our wishes must pass severe inspection by the sense of
beauty. After that inspection, reason no longer merely counters any opposition
61 Ibid., SW, 5, 783; PF, 3, 401.

62 Ibid., SW, 5, 784; PF, 3, 402.
63 Ibid., SW, 5, 785; PF, 3, 403.
64 Ibid.
126 Cruysberghs
it may encounter, it actually wins approval from the side of the aesthetised
inclination.
Even though the question might arise as to whether our actions have kept
their moral character when taste has such an influence on them, Schiller
defends the position that taste as such does not at all harm true morality; as
a matter of fact, he goes even further, arguing that it is positively useful.65 On
many occasions, aesthetically formed people will not even reach the level
of moral judgement because their taste is that well developed that they will
instinctively omit certain actions. Their behaviour is morally indifferent; it is
a merely beautiful effect of nature.66 In other cases, aesthetic taste will care
that what duty is imposing is done with inclination as well. Then, we perform
a morally perfect action which is even more perfect from a physical point of
view, since we are inclined to perform it.
The least we can say is that if taste does not promote the morality of our
behaviour, it furthers its legality. It makes us capable of acting without any
moral disposition in the same way as we would have acted with it. From the
viewpoint of a physical world order, assuring legality is of the utmost impor-
tance, especially when we take into consideration the fact that we can never
count on the morality of people. For that very reason, we are compelled to bind
ourselves through religion and aesthetic laws in order to avoid our passions
from harming the physical order.67
It is probably not by accident that in this relatively late text Schiller returns
to what he had already written in Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubhne
eigentlich wirken?, an early pre-Kantian text about the possible effects of a
well-established theatre.68 There, he suggested that religion and aesthetics
were the two strongest pillars of the state. In the early article, aesthetics is rep-
resented by the theatre, but here (as we have seen), it is represented by by taste.
Both religion and aesthetics are present in The Moral Use of Aesthetic
Manners because of their common merits in respect of their effects: They
both serve as a surrogate for true virtue and to protect legality where there is
65 Ibid., SW, 5, 787; PF, 3, 406.

66 Ibid., SW, 5, 786; PF, 3, 405.
67 Ibid., SW, 5, 789; PF, 3, 407.
68 The article, published in 1785, was presented on June 26, 1784 at a conference for the
Kurfrstliche deutsche Gesellschaft in Mannheim. In Volume 4 of his Kleinere prosaische
Schriften (1802), Schiller deleted the initial introduction and changed the title to Die
Schaubhne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet. For an English translation of the latter
version, see Schillers aesthetical essays, which are available at http://www.gutenberg.org/
ebooks/6798.
no hope of morality.69 Both remain beneath the level of morality, which only
acts out of duty; nevertheless, both the stimulus of beauty as a complement
of taste and that of immortality promised by religion, will function as strong
anchors70 upon which to fasten the welfare of humanity.
Thus, the circle is closed. The proper character of aesthetics has been saved.
We learned that the ethical functions not only as an aesthetic instrument
something Schiller developed in ber den Grund des Vergngens an tra-
gischen Gegenstnden (On the Reason Why We Take Pleasure in Tragic Subjects)
(1792)71but also as an effect of the aesthetical. And finally, we learned that
there is room for an aesthetic ethos, though we should not underestimate its
danger.
3 Kants Book on Religion and His Anthropology
Now, I return to Kant for a moment, in order to have a look at his reaction to
Schillers notions of grace and dignity and in order to see how he dealt with
the notion of humanity (Humanitt, Menschlichkeit) within the context of his
anthropology.
3.1 A Reaction to Schiller in Kants Book on Religion (1794)

After having read Schillers On Grace and Dignity, Kant added a footnote in the
second edition (1794) of his Religion within the Limits of mere Reason, in which,
instead of criticising Schiller, he appears to agree with Schiller as far as the lat-
ters basic ethical conceptions are concerned.72 He does not see any fundamen-
tal opposition between Schillers position and his own. On the contrary, as long
as dignity and grace are sufficiently distinguished, Kant is ready to go along
with Schiller. For that very reason, he does not accept Schillers reproach of
moral rigourism that represents obligation (Verbindlichkeit) as carrying with
69 ber den moralischen Nutzen sthetischer Sitten, SW, 5, 789; On the Moral Use of Aesthetic
Manners, PF, 3, 408.
70 Ibid.
71 I do not go deeper into this perspective, but Schiller refers in this text to the importance
of ethical themes in drama, more specifically in tragedy. He argues that the ethical should
never be the goal of aesthetics (its goal should be pleasure), but that nevertheless it can
function as its effect. See SW, 5, 358ff; PF, 4, 267ff.
72 Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft, GS, 4, 66970, n. 2;
Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason and Other Writings, ed. and trans. A. Wood and
G. di Giovanni, in Religion and Rational Theology, (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 723, n. 2.
128 Cruysberghs
it the frame of mind of a Carthusian (kartuserartige Gemthsstimmung).

Still, Kant is not ready to associate grace with duty precisely because the idea
of duty involves an unconditional necessitation (unbedingte Nthigung),
which, as such, is incompatible with grace. He prefers to stress the majesty
of the moral law (cf. the law on Mount Sinai) which instils awe (Ehrfurcht),
not dread (Scheu) or fascination (Reiz). This majesty inspires respect to be
compared to the respect of a subject (Untergegebenen) toward his master
(Gebieter), with the proviso that since the master resides within ourselves,
it rouses a feeling of the sublimity of our own vocation.73 This feeling of sub-
limity, Kant argues, enraptures us more than any beauty (read: grace). This
means that Kant has more confidence in the sublimity of our ethical voca-
tion than in the attractiveness of grace. Sure, virtue does allow the attendance
(Begleitung) of grace, but when duty alone is the theme, grace has to keep
a respectful distance. However, while taking into consideration the sublime
character of moral duty, Kant refuses to consider it as being weighed down
by fear (ngstlich-gebeugt) and dejected (niedergeschlagen). If that were
the case, it would indeed result in a slavish frame of mind that would involve
a hidden hatred of the law instead of the joyful state of mind that is con-
nected with virtue.
3.2 Kants Anthropology (1798)

Now, I turn to Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View),74 which is not a critical or a transcendental
workit is based on common knowledge derived from reading novels and
travel stories, going to the theatre, and having contact with fellow countrymen.
My assumption is that Kants anthropology offers some suggestions on com-
bining ethics and aesthetics that are in line with Schillers concept of grace.
What we learned from Kant up to now is that man belongs to two worlds
and that the hierarchical relationship of both requires submission of the lower,
natural world to the higher, spiritual oneat least as long as we consider these
worlds from the point of view of ethics. This point of view I have character-
ised as being heroic, albeit not in the proper sense in which Kant himself con-
sidered heroism. According his perspective, heroism risks being a heroism of
romance, which is inspired by sentimentalthat is, pathologicalmotives.
I qualify Kants own ethics as heroic in so far as it constrains us to a continuous
73 Ibid.
74 Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, GS, 7, 117ff.; Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View, CE, 227ff.
struggle against our sensuous inclinations, or at least to a definite humiliation

of them.
Still, Kant leaves room for a different viewpoint, a viewpoint of worldly wis-
dom (Weltkenntni) which he develops in his Anthropology. Here, Kant does
not any longer consider human life from the point of view of the ethical law
alone. Now, the perspective of humanity as presented by Schilleror that of
human perfection, as it used to be the ultimate telos of ancient ethicscomes
explicitly to the forefront. In order to contrast this teleological viewpoint with
the ethical one, I suggest turning to that part of the book which deals with the
faculty of desire.
After having dealt with the highest physical good, the good that offers the
greatest sensuous pleasurewhich, nota bene, can be found in resting after
work75 and which, of course, is not to be confounded with lazinessKant
reflects somewhat on the highest moralphysical good, a combination of the
highest physical and the highest moral good. First of all, and this is in line with
what has been said before, he stresses that both goods, the physical and the
moral, should not be mixed up. If that were the case, they would neutralise
each other and would not work at all toward the goal of true happiness (der
wahren Glckseligkeit). Again, Kant stresses that inclination to a pleasurable
living and inclination to virtue are in conflict with each other. Therefore, the
principle of the physical good must be restricted by the principle of the moral
good. Kant repeats that this restriction involves a conflict of both principles,
but instead of complaining, he turns it into something highly desirable by stat-
ing that through their very conflict the principles constitute the entire end of
the well-behaved (wohlgearteten) human being, a being who is partly sensible
but partly moral and intellectual.76 Thus, instead of mixing up both princi-
ples, Kant rather seems to favour their conflicting with each other. Butand
this seems to be something new as compared to what was expressed in the
Critique of Practical Reasonif properly combined, the two principles pro-
vide us with the enjoyment of a moral happiness (den Genuss einer gesitteten
Glckseligkeit), not in the life hereafter as promised in the Critique, but here
on earth.77 This union of good living (Wohlleben) and virtue (Tugend) in
social intercourse (im Umgang) Kant terms humanity (Humanitt).78
75 Ibid.,87; GW, 7, 276, 376.

76 Ibid.,88; GW, 7, 277, 377.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.; GW, 7, 378.
130 Cruysberghs
When asking for the right proportion between both principles, Kant does
not really care about the degree of good living, because that is merely subjec-
tive. What counts is the kind of relationship whereby the inclination of good
living is to be limited (eingeschrnkt) by the law of virtue.
When trying to make more explicit what such humanity, such an enjoyment
of moral happiness, might consist of, Kant first tries out the perspective of
social life in general. Sociality can be considered to be a virtue. But here, Kant
just reminds his readers that social enjoyment can easily result in a passion
which, boastfully heightened by extravagance (Verschwendung), is rather the
contrary of virtue: It is a form of good living which is rather detrimental to
humanity.
Keeping this warning in mind, Kant turns to three forms of social life that
might claim the price of humanity: music, dance, and games. However, these
rather innocent forms of social life promising the enjoyment of moral hap-
piness have the disadvantage of establishing a speechless social gathering
(sprachlose Gesellschaft), Kant remarks.79 Since the mutual exchange of
thought is not encouraged when making music, dancing, or gaming, it seems
that these combinations of good living and virtue are not in the right propor-
tion. Gaming (playing cards) after a meal is especially defective, since then
a certain convention of self-interest is established, so that the players can
plunder each other with the greatest politeness.80 Despite the fact that music,
dance, and games exhibit quite a high level of culture, the kinds of conversa-
tions that pertain to these activities (or what there remains of them) do not
seem to further the union of good living and virtue. After all, they are and
remain inferior ways of establishing true humanity.
The good living that still seems to harmonize best with true humanity is a
good meal in good company (and if possible, also alternating company).81 That
is the final solution brought forward by Kant in his endeavour to make clear
what moral happiness (gesittete Glckseligkeit) here on earth might consist
of. It is worthwhile examining Kants explorations of how a good meal in good
company should be organised (there is still something to be learned from itI
just mention the suggestion that, especially for a philosopher, eating alone is
considered by Kant to be unhealthy, in particular when it becomes solitary
feasting (ein einsames Schwelgen)).82 Although Kant considers all this to
be completely unimportant when compared with the pure moral laws (mit
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid., GW, 7, 278, 378.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.,88; GW, 7, 27980, 380.
dem reinmoralischen), he nevertheless gives himself the time to insist on the

rules of refined humanity to be observed by the organiser of a good dinner for
men of taste (aesthetically united).83 The rules must be considered at least
as a garment that dresses virtue to advantage (ein die Tugend vorteilhaft klei-
dendes Gewand),84 also when more earnest questions are at stake. Thus, Kant
pleas for an intervention of the Graces, the goddesses of beauty that Schiller
was in love with, after all.
4 Young Hegels Complaints: Love as a Complement of Virtue
There is no direct evidence that Hegel read Schillers ber Anmuth und Wrde.
Still, we know that he had a full subscription to Die Horen, which appeared
from 1795 to 1797 and which contains the text on grace and dignity. So, there
is some probability that Hegel did in fact read Schillers text. And, as for Kant,
there is some substantial evidence that he read Die Religion innerhalb der
bloen Vernunft shortly after the appearance of the first edition in 1793.85
But I am not interested in direct influences for the moment. What does
interest me, however, is that young Hegel, especially in his Frankfurt period
from 1796 to 1801after having shown himself to have been quite a good
Kantian during his Bern periodappeared to have developed an explicit aver-
sion for Kantian ethics, an aversion that led him, remarkably enough, at least
for a while, toward a conception of religion that, in its motives, appears to be
quite similar to that of Kierkegaards second ethics. That is what I want to show
in what follows. Schillers second ethics, if I may refer to it that way, was a com-
plement to Kantian ethics, an aesthetisation of it, akin, I suggested above, not
to the second ethics we meet in the introduction to The Concept of Anxiety, but
to the ethics fostered by Judge William in Either-Or, an ethics in harmony with
aesthetics. Young Hegels endeavour to understand the spirit of Christianity in
83 Ibid.,88; GW, 7, 278, 378.

84 Ibid.,88; GW, 7, 282, 381.
85 Cf. Editorischer Bericht, in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Frhe Schriften I, ed.
F. Nicolin and G. Schler, Gesammelte Werke [GW], Vol. 1 (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1989),
47478. In what follows, I will refer to this edition as well as to Frhe Schriften II, ed.
W. Jaeschke, Vol. 2 (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 2014). As for the English translations, I will refer
to Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel, Three Essays, 17931795: The Tbingen Essay, Berne
Fragments, The Life of Jesus, ed. and trans. P. Fuss and J. Dobbins (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1984) and to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, On Christianity: Early
Theological Writings [ETW], trans. T.M. Knox (New York: Harper, 1961).
132 Cruysberghs
terms of love, in contrast with the Jewish (and Kantian) law, brings us closer to
the second ethics that Vigilius Haufniensis had in mind.
Initially, Hegel still shared Kants basic insights. He referred to the limits
of human reason; he distinguished carefully between morality and legality;
and he wanted religion to be a religion within the limits of mere reason, at
the service of morality, the latter being the highest and ultimate destination of
mankindat least here on earth.
But already in the Bern fragment beginning with Religion ist eine der wich-
tigsten Angelegenheiten (Religion is one of the most important matters),
which probably dates from the summer of 1793, we hear a different voice, a
voice which is close to Schillers perspective or to that of Kant himself in his
later texts on religion and on anthropology. Hegel indeed, although remaining
within the Kantian framework, appears to be quite polemical against too strong
a separation of morality and sensuousness. In a moral system, abstractly, he
argues, one must separate both, and the latter must be humiliated (ernied-
rigt) by the first. However, in reality, we must take into account mans sensu-
ousness, as well as his dependency on external and internal nature. If morality
is the highest aim of mankind, the issue is not so much that of negating human
sensuousness as it is of impregnating it (geschwngert) with the lawgiving of
practical reason.86 The impregnation must be compared to the salt in a well-
prepared meal penetrating the whole without showing itself. The ideas of rea-
son must penetrate and animate the whole tissue of human sensation, feeling,
and inclination because in any acting and striving sensuousness is the main
element anyway.87 And religion has to interest not just reason, but sensuous-
ness, the heart, as well: Religion is Sache des Herzens.88 It is the whole human
being, not just reason that acts, and therefore religion should not just touch
reason, but heart and fantasy as well.89
In the Frankfurter Manuskripte ber Vereinigung und Liebe (Frankfurt
Manuscripts on Union and Love), traditionally referred to as Entwrfe ber
Religion und Liebe (Drafts on Religion and Love) (1797), and the Frankfurter
Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion (Frankfurt Manuscripts on the Chris
tian Religion), traditionally known as Der Geist des Christentums und sein
Schicksal (The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate) (17981799), Hegel disso-
ciates himself definitively from Kants principle of morality. Since morality
86 Hegel, Studien 1792/17931794, Text 16: Religion ist eine der wichtigsten Angelegenheiten,
GW, 1, 845.
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid., GW, 1, 90, 92, 96.
89 Ibid., GW, 1, 107.
asks for a subjection to the lawgiving of practical reason, Hegel argues now,
it is still dominated by an opposition. Even though the moral law is given
by the human being himself, morality is and remains a form of subjection.
For the particularity, the inclinations, of the human beingin short, for
his sensuousnessthe universality of moral norms remains something
alien, objective, and opposite.90 Jesus is no longer a moralist or a Kantian
Tugendlehrer, as he still was in the 1795 text The Life of Jesus: To complete
subjection under the law of an alien Lord, Jesus opposed not a partial sub-
jection under a law of ones own, the self-coercion of Kantian virtue, but
virtues without lordship and without submission, i.e., virtues as modifications
of love.91
The lesson to be learned here is that morality must be replaced by love.
An ethics of duty must be replaced by a new kind of ethics, a second ethics
we might term, a virtue ethics that should not be read in a Kantian or in an
Aristotelian sense, but from a Christian perspective: an ethics of love.
4.1 The Frankfurt Manuscripts on Union and Love (Drafts on Religion

and Love) (1796)
In the Frankfurter Manuskripte ber Vereinigung und Liebe, Hegel links
ethics to love, but also to religionand life. Unity is the keyword. Life is the
unifying element. When dealing with the relationship between subject and
object, between nature and spirit, Hegel rejects indeed any kind of opposition
or one-sidedness. Over and against the Fichtean overstressing of subjectivity
and of practical reason, he argues in a fragment, written on paper, still dating
from the Bern period, but at least partly dating from 1796, that the practical
activity annihilates the object, and is fully subjectivein love alone one is one
with the object, it does not dominate and is not dominated.92
90 Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion, Text 54: Jesus trat nicht lange, GW, 2,
15253, col. 2; ETW, 21112. This text dates from 17981799.
91 Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion, Text 55: Der Tugend ist nicht nur
Positivitt, GW, 2, 224, col. 2 (comp. col. 1); ETW, 244. This text dates from 17981799.
92 Berner Manuskripte mit Frankfurter berarbeitungen zum Glauben und zur Religion,
Text 41: Religion, GW, 2, 9. (My translation). In the Frankfurter Manuskripte ber
Vereinigung und Liebe, Text 49: Welchem Zwekke, GW, 2, 846, Hegel argues that in love
as a feeling (not a single feeling, but a general one) no distinction is made between the
feeling and the felt. Both dimensions coincide in life. In life, all the oppositions are uni-
fied. Love is both feeling and felt life. And as living beings, the lovers are one. One year
later, however, Hegel rewrote this text, stressing that love is more than just a mere feeling
of oneness: In it [love] life finds itself as a duplication and oneness of itself. [Ibid., 85,
col. 2]. Cf. Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion, Text 59: Das Wesen des
134 Cruysberghs
Identifying love and the deity, Hegel further connects love and religion:
This love, made into a being [Wesen] by imagination, is the deity; the [inter-
nally] divided human being then has reverence, respect for itthe human
being who is united in himself (in sich einige) loves it.93 In love, Hegel sug-
gests in Frankfurt fragment 50, the subject and the object, freedom and nature,
actuality and possibility, are united: Religion is one with love: the beloved is
not opposed to us, he is one with our being; we see only ourselves in him, and
still he is not usa miracle (ein Wunder) we cannot understand.94
In love, all the oppositions, including the one that still dominates morality,
are sublated. Love appears to be the complement of morality, just as grace was
for Schiller. Whereas Kantian virtue still rested on the opposition between the
universality of the moral law and the particularity of the senses, in love this
opposition disappears. In love, both dimensions are in perfect harmony with
each other in such a way that we cannot even speak anymore in terms of hav-
ing to (Sollen) or of duty. Thanks to love, the power of the objective, external
order, typical of the reign of legality and still present in morality, is broken.
4.2 Frankfurt Fragments on the Christian Religion (The Spirit of

Christianity) (17981799)
In that perspective, the Kantian notion of morality does not any longer come
up to the mark. In Frankfurt fragment 52, beginning with Zu der Zeit da Jesus,
Hegel definitely questions the status of Kantian morality. According to Kant,
he says, morality is the subjection [Unterjochung] of the singular under the
universal, the victory [Sieg] of the universal over the singular that is opposed
to it.95 But then he adds, just in the form of keywords: rather elevation
[Erhebung] of the singular to the universal, union [Vereinigung]subla-
tion of both opposites through union.96 These elementary remarks are an
apparent indication that Hegel is in search of a different conception of moral-
ity, one that escapes the implicit opposition of the singular and the universal
Jesu, GW, 2, 28283; ETW, 27879: Life develops and differentiates in living beings. In this
development and differentiation, reflection produces oppositions, but in love the oppo-
sites are united again in their difference. Separation and reflection are no longer external,
but moments of life itself.
93 Berner Manuskripte mit Frankfurter berarbeitungen zum Glauben und zur Religion,
Text 41: Religion, GW, 2, 9. (My translation).
94 Frankfurter Manuskripte ber Vereinigung und Liebe, Text 50: So wie sie mehrere
Gattungen, GW 2, 97 (1798). (My translation).
95 Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion, Text 52: Zu der Zeit da Jesus, GW, 2,
116 (1798). (My translation).
96 Ibid.
as it is still present in the Kantian conception. What Hegel is looking for is not
the subjection, but rather the elevation of the singular. And indeed, further on
Hegel confirms this perspective: Morality is sublation of a separation in life,
and, as such, the principle of morality is love.97 Kants practical reason as the
capacity of universality must be considered to be the capacity of excluding.98
Instead of being a principle of union, it is a principle of separation. Instead of
uniting the universal and the singular, it excludes the latter. Only a morality
that is based on love is capable of sublating the opposition of both.
The universality inherent in Kantian morality remains a dead one as
long as it is opposed to the singular, whereas life is precisely the union
(Vereinigung) of both. Morality thus remains a dependency of myself, a divi-
sion (Entzweiung) in one self.99 And as for the moral law (Moralgesetz), it
is said that it sublates [...] the purely positive commandments, since it does
not recognize any law except its own, to be sure, but it still appears to be sub-
ject to an alien power, that is, under universality as opposed to the singular.100
The logic of the moral law contains an unavoidable opposition between the
determining act of reason (ein Bestimmendes) and the determinability of
the sensuous (ein Bestimmbares).
I cannot go here into the full content of Hegels considerations on the spe-
cific character of Christianity, which he qualifies as a religion of love and which
he opposes to the Jewish religion, which he considers to be a religion under the
rule of the law. While the law speaks in terms of an eye for an eye, a tooth for
a tooth, Jesus advises his disciples to surrender their rights, to lift themselves
up above the whole sphere of justice or injustice by love, for in love there van-
ish not only rights, but also the feeling of inequality and the hatred of enemies
which this feelings imperative demand (das Soll) for equality implies.101
The unifying capacities of love are pushed up to a paroxysm in Hegels con-
siderations on love, crime, and punishment. In its content, crime is opposed to
love: It precludes love, yet it is, that is, it is something that happens, some-
thing that is real. Crime is a violation of the law. As an answer to that violation,
the law appeals to penal justice in the form of punishment. The law cannot
forego the punishment, it cannot be merciful. In that sense, law and punish-
ment can never be reconciled. But Hegel suggests that they can be sublated
97 Ibid., GW, 2, 118. (My translation).

98 Ibid.
99 Ibid., GW, 2, 124. (My translation).
100 Ibid.
101 Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion, Text 54: Jesus trat nicht lange, GW, 2,
16768, col. 2; ETW, 218 (17981799).
136 Cruysberghs
(aufgehoben) in the reconciliation of fate.102 Hegels basic idea is that in so far

as crime is a violation (Zerstrung) of nature, which should be thought of as
one, there is as much violation in the criminal (the violator) as there is in the
victim (the violated):
The criminal intended to have to do with anothers life, but he has only
violated his own, for life is not different from life, since life dwells in the
single Godhead. In his arrogance he has violated indeed, but only the
friendliness of life; he has perverted life into an enemy. It is the deed itself
which has created a law whose domination now comes on the scene; this
law is the unification, in the concept, of the equality between the injured,
apparently alien, life and the criminals own forfeited life. It is now for the
first time that the injured life appears as a hostile power against the crim-
inal and maltreats him as he has maltreated the other. Hence punish-
ment as fate is the equal reaction of the criminals own deed, of a power
which he himself has armed, of an enemy made an enemy by himself.103
Reconciliation with the law appears to be impossible; one with fate seems to be
even more difficult. But there is a way out: Fate, indeed, is a part of life that uni-
fies everything. And then it comes: Life can heal its wounds again; the severed,
hostile life can return into itself again and annul the bungling achievement of
a trespass, can annul the law and punishment.104 From now on, the criminal
can feel life as disrupted and experience (in punishment and bad conscience)
the longing (Sehnsucht) for what was lost. The fear of fate, according to Hegel,
is completely different from the fear of punishment: The latter is fear of some-
thing alien, whereas fear of fate is fear of a separation, fear of being separated
from life, and therefore also fear of being separated from ones own self: In
fate [...] man recognizes his own life, and his supplication to it is not supplica-
tion to a lord but a reversion (Wiederkehren) and an approach (Nahen) to
himself.105
Reconciliation is possible now because the hostile is also experienced (felt)
as life.106 This sensing of life, a sensing that finds itself once again, must be
102 Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion, Text 55: Die Tugend ist nicht nur
Positivitt, GW, 2, 188, col. 2 (compare col. 1); ETW, 228 (17981799).
103 Ibid., GW, 2, 191, col. 2; ETW, 22930.
104 Ibid., GW, 2, 193; ETW, 230.
105 Ibid., GW, 2, 194; ETW, 231.
106 Ibid., GW, 2, 196; ETW, 231.
called love, and in this amor fati fate is reconciled.107 That seems to be the
basic meaning of Jesuss remission of sins. Basically, it is a reconciliation of
fate: In love, life has found life once more. Between sin and its forgiveness
there is as little place for an alien thing as there is between sin and punish-
ment. Life has severed itself from itself and united itself again.108
The message of Jesus is a message of love, not just for the just and the vir-
tuous, but for the sinners as well. Thy sins, Jesus said when talking to Maria
Magdalena, are forgiven thee.109 It is love that was Jesuss motive when insist-
ing on forgiving the sins of those who had faith. But love does not just rec-
oncile us with fate and forgive our sins. It is also the sole principle of virtue.
Otherwise, every virtue risks turning into vice. In contrast with the self-coer-
cion of Kantian virtue that replaced the subjection under the law of an alien
lord by a partial subjection under a law of ones own, Jesus thought in terms of
virtues without lordship and without submission, i.e. virtues as modifications
of love, of one living spirit:110 Just as virtue is the complement of obedience
to law, so love is the complement of the virtues.111 Therefore, Jesus demanded
that love be the soul of his friends: A new commandment give I unto you, that
ye love one another; thereby will men know that ye are my friends.112
It is precisely as a commandment, however, that love seems to be contra-
dictory: Love cannot be commanded.113 Hegel solves the contradiction by
affirming that it is only as a name that love can be commanded; love itself does
not tolerate any command. Therefore, somehow love should not be called by
name: Speaking introduces a universality which is opposed to the particular. In
love, however, in the feeling of harmony with the all of life, the universal and
the particular are no longer opposed to each other: In this feeling of harmony
there is no universality, since in harmony the particular is not in discord but in
concord, or otherwise there would be no harmony.114
But love is not enough, Hegel suggests. Love as such is too subjective a
feeling. It requires religion. And as such, it requires a Gestalt, that of a god.115
107 Ibid.; ETW, 232.

108 Ibid., GW, 2, 211, col. 2; ETW, 239.
109 Ibid., GW, 2, 217; ETW, 240.
110 Ibid., GW, 2, 224, col. 2 (compare col. 1); ETW, 244.
111 Ibid., GW, 2, 229, col. 2; ETW, 246.
112 Ibid.; ETW, 246.
114 Ibid., GW, 2, 231, col. 2; ETW, 247.
138 Cruysberghs
With the help of imagination, the unification of love must be objectified in the
form of a god:
This love is a divine spirit, but it still falls short of religion. To become
religion, it must manifest itself in an objective form. A feeling, something
subjective, it must be fused with the universal, with something repre-
sented in idea, and thereby acquire the form of a being to whom prayer is
both possible and due. The need to unite subject with object, to unite
feeling, and feelings demand for objects, with the intellect, to unite them
in something beautiful, in a god, by means of fancy, is the supreme need
of the human spirit and the urge to religion.116
To sum up Hegels early conception of ethics and of religion, it is clear that he

was looking for an alternative to the harshness of Kantian ethics. This alterna-
tive, he believed, could be found in an ethics of love, which was clearly inspired
by the Christian religion. One of the main problems this new ethics had to
solve was that of the remission of sins, or, in a more secular language, the rein-
tegration of a criminal into the community he belongs to, or in a more funda-
mental wording, the unification of crime as a dimension of life with life itself.
On the legal level, young Hegel argues, this reintegration can only be partial.
Punishment remains opposed to crime and cannot offer a true reconciliation.
Only love, which presupposes a unity of all living beings within life itself, is
capable of reconciling the criminal with his fate. That is what finds its expres-
sion in religion and its rituals, an expression which seems to be a necessary
objectifying complement to the subjective feelings of love.
5 Kierkegaards Second Ethics
Let me finally return to Kierkegaard, whose pseudonymous aesthetic author A

complained in Either-Or that modern ethics is harsh and severe. We might
start the discussion by arguing that in Either-Or Kierkegaard developed a
notion of ethics that is somehow in between the respective positions of Kant
and Hegel. Maybe it is quite close to that of Schiller, especially when we take
into consideration Judge Williams endeavour to show the harmony of ethics
and aesthetics in marriage. Harmony is, I think, what Schiller had in mind
when looking for an aesthetic education of manalthough he did not insist
116 Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion, Text 60: Mit dem Muthe, GW, 2, 302
03; ETW, 289 (17991800).
on marriage as the example par excellence of an aesthetic state.117 Of course,

I should not simply jump from Schiller to Kierkegaard without taking the posi-
tions of Romanticists such as Friedrich Schlegel (cf. his Lucinde) into consid-
eration; however, for Schlegel, marriage, and with it bourgeois ethics, is more
an obstacle to than a medium of love. His project of establishing a harmony
of aesthetics and ethics goes in a more radical direction, though not as radi-
cal as Kierkegaards A in the first part of Either-Or. But B or Judge William,
representing the ethical view of life in the second part of Either-Or, is aiming
at harmony just as Schiller was, and, actually as Hegel was as well. The least we
can say is that for the later Hegel as well, harmony is the keyword when he is
dealing with marriage and even with the state, although he is realistic enough
to understand that marriage can fall apart and that states may be torn apart by
inner tensions.
In any event, there are good reasons for reading Judge Williams ethics in a
Hegelian sense, and in Fear and Trembling Hegelian ethics is even mentioned
explicitly as being the perspective of ethics as such.118 The situation, however,
is quite different when we turn to The Concept of Anxiety. There, we have the
impression that, at least in the introduction, Vigilius Haufniensis presents a
typically Kantian perspective on ethics.
The broader context in which ethics is brought to the fore in the introduc-
tion to The Concept of Anxiety is that of the particular status of sin. According
to Vigilius Haufniensis, the pseudonymous author of the book, sin does not
belong in any science, since it is the subject of a sermon.119 Still, if sin must
have a place, it must be close to ethics. But there is some kind of a prob-
lem, which is connected with the fact that ethics is conceived of by Vigilius
117 At the end of the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, while speaking of the aes-
thetic state, Schiller asks the question whether such a state effectively exists and where
it should be found. The answer is both ambitious and modest: Dem Bedrfnis nach
existiert er in jeder feingestimmten Seele, der Tat nach mchte man ihn wohl nur, wie
die reine Kirche und die reine Republik, in einigen wenigen auserlesenen Zirkeln finden,
wo nicht die geistlose Nachahmung fremder Sitten, sondern eigene schne Natur das
Betragen lenkt, wo der Mensch durch die verwickeltsten Verhltnisse mit khner Einfalt
und ruhiger Unschuld geht und weder ntig hat, fremde Freiheit zu krnken, um die sei-
nige zu behaupten, noch seine Wrde wegzuwerfen, um Anmut zu zeigen. (Schiller, ber
die sthetische Erziehung des Menschen, in einer Reihe von Briefen, in SW, 5, 669); On the
Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters, trans. William F. Wert, Jr., in Friedrich
Schiller, PF, 1, 298. Did he think of a selective circle of friends analogous to what the Jena
Circle would realise at least for a very short period in 1799?
118 Kierkegaard, Frygt og Bven, SKS, 4, 161; Fear and Trembling, HH, 6, 69.
119 Kierkegaard, Begrebet Angest, SKS, 4, 323; The Concept of Anxiety, HH, 8, 16.
140 Cruysberghs
Haufniensis as an ideal science in the sense that it wants to bring ideality into
actuality (Virkelighed), though it will never be able to fully realise this goal.
This perspective is perfectly Kantian. If ideality refers to pure reason, we can
consider the ethical lawgiving as being typically ideal. And I think this is exactly
what Vigilius Haufniensis had in mind. In ethics, ideality indeed appears as a
task to be fulfilled, that of introducing the basic characteristic of pure reason,
universality, into ones actual life. In that sense, ethics presupposes that every
man has the prerequisite conditions to do so. The famous Kantian saying Du
kannst denn du sollst thus receives its full meaning.
On the other hand, we are well aware that the accomplishment of the
ethical imperative is not possible, that it can only be the subject of a contin-
uous striving. In that sense, ethics introduces a contradiction which is inher-
ent in its own status: The ethical imperative unconditionally demands the
impossible. Responding to the ethical demand is indeed not just difficult, it
is impossibleand still we have to obey it.
Now, the very heart of Vigiliuss argument is that ethics tells us how to apply
ideality to actuality (in a Kantian sense, this is the subject of the Metaphysics of
Morals), but it does not tell us how to raise actuality up into ideality. This per-
spective is not new, and we can turn to Schiller, but also to Fichte, as a source
for this particular problem. In their perspectives indeed, the problem of raising
actuality, that is, the human being as a natural being with its natural impulses
and inclinations, up to the ideality of ethics is the task of culture. Culture is
essentially the cultivation of the senses. There are different ways of cultivating
the latter, but one of them is aesthetic cultivation, especially by means of art.
The cultivation of our sensuousness thus has an educative character. Schiller
suggests that the aesthetic pleasure (connected with the beautiful and the sub-
lime) that we take in works of art will help us take delight in fulfilling our duty
as well. But this is not Haufniensiss or Kierkegaards perspective. According to
them, I think, aesthetics is too ambivalent to solve the problem of raising actu-
ality to ideality. Thats why Vigilius Haufniensis rejects all aesthetic perspec-
tives on life, including that of Greek ethics. Greek virtue ethics, aiming at the
ideal of kalokagathia, remains an aesthetic project that, as such, is too weak
to raise an individual up to the level of ideality that Vigilius has in mind: The
more ideal ethics is, the better,120 that is his position. Ancient virtue ethics is
able to bring the sensuous closer to the ethical (by making health, friends, and
earthly goods into essential parts of a virtuous life). But thats not good enough.
There is too much immediacy in that kind of virtuous life. That is precisely
120 Ibid., SKS, 4, 324; HH, 8, 17.

what we learned from Kant, so it seems. Therefore, Vigilius Haufniensis wants

to keep ethics far away from aesthetics (as well as from metaphysics and psy-
chology). Ethics needs different categories. It should not be contaminated by
notions that belong to a different sphere.
One of the consequences of this endeavour to safeguard the purity of
ethicsas well as its ideal and judging characteris that it cannot avoid
dealing with sin. And as a matter of fact, ethics appears to be shipwrecked
upon this concept.121 In a footnote, Vigilius Haufniensis refers to Johannes de
silentio in Fear and Trembling, who confronted his readers with the shipwreck-
ing of the ideality of ethics as well. Johannes de Silentio had the intention of
bringing into light religious ideality as the ideality of actuality. And that is what
Vigilius Haufniensis is after as well. Therefore, at the outset, even before intro-
ducing the religious as such, Haufniensis already refers to the latter as bringing
the solution for a problem that ethics, because of its harshness, cannot solve:
that of the ideality of actuality.
The ideality of actuality is as desirable, Vigilius Haufniensis says, as the aes-
thetic (as happiness) and not as impossible as the ideality of ethics. This sug-
gests that, on the one hand, the ideality of actuality refers to a completion of
life that is of the order of happiness, typical of sensuousness, and connected
with the psychological sphere of impulses, desires, and inclinations. On the
other hand, it has to offer an ideality similar to that of ethics, but without being
impossible. On the contrary, it is proposed as being possible, not just theoreti-
cally, I would suggest, but effectively as well. It is of the order of the evangelical:
Behold, all things have become new.
Ethics as such will never have this capacity of making all things new after
being confronted with sin, a confrontation which typically requires that things
become new again. It cannot deal with sin at all, that is, it cannot deal with
its own shipwrecking. Sin means the end of ethics because in ethical ideal-
ity there is no room for sin, only for obeying the moral law. Sin is beyond the
level of ethics. In Kantian terms, ethics has an imperative character, and that is
all. Ethics is just imposing the categorical imperative, and that is what Vigilius
Haufniensis wants to stick to as well.
At the same time, Haufniensis argues that ethics should never become so
inhuman as to lose sight of actuality. At first sight, this is just a remark that is in
line with what has previously been said. It is evident that ethics should never
forget that its imperative must be applied to actuality, that it is a question of
acting, not just of speculating. But there is more at stake when Haufniensis
121 Ibid.
142 Cruysberghs
points to the risk of inhumanity. He stresses that the ethical task is to make
out of the human being the true and the whole man, the man kat exochn.122
This is more than obeying the categorical imperative, and it is no longer in
line with Kantian ethics: Strictly speaking, Kantian ethics does not care about
being whole. According to Kant, being wholeand this, I think we must inter-
pret in terms of a harmony of virtue and happinessis a postulate of practical
reason, but it is not a part of practical reason as such, and it is not intended for
this life either. Or, as I explained above, Kant would consider it as belonging to
the perspective of a pragmatic anthropology, not of practical reason as such.
The actuality of sin in life thus seriously threatens the ethical perspective of
life. In the context of the struggle to actualise the ethical task, sin shows itself
to be something that withdraws deeper and deeper as a deeper and deeper
presupposition, as a presupposition that goes beyond the individual.123 This
somewhat cryptic sentence says in the first place that sin withdraws itself from
the ideality of ethicswhich is Haufniensiss claim as a matter of fact: First,
he considers sin, being an essential failure over and against the ethical impera-
tive, to belong to a different world than ethics. By sinning, man actually posi-
tions himself outside the ethical. Second, Haufniensis brings to the fore the
idea that sin has the character of a deep presupposition. This means, I believe,
that whenever ethical questions are at stake, the reality of sin is to be taken
into account as something that is already there in the world. And, third, this
reality goes beyond the individual: It seems to belong to human history or to
humanity as such. Haufniensis thus actually introduces the Christian notion of
hereditary sin, which should not be our concern here. What we must keep in
mind, however, is that sin appears to be a real threat to ethics. Then all is lost
for ethics, Vigilius says, and ethics has helped to bring about the loss of all.124
The severity of the ethical imperative itself somehow generates sin, which,
as such, constitutes the debacle of ethics itself that has to give room to dog-
matics: the point of departure of a new science,125 a new ethics, a second
ethics, which precisely presupposes sin. This science proceeds from actuality
in order to raise it to ideality. Thus, the question appears to be this: Taking into
consideration that all of us are sinners, how can we open up for the appeal of
ideality, or: How do we get out of the morass of despair? In that sense, ethics
reappears, but its task is quite different compared to the ethics that starts with
122 Ibid., SKS, 4, 325; HH, 8, 189.

123 Ibid., SKS, 4, 326; HH, 8, 19.
124 Ibid.
125 Ibid., SKS, 4, 328; HH, 8, 20.
ideality and is to be realised in actuality. The new task is that of actualising the
dogmatic consciousness of actualitywhich is that of sinfulness.126 The new
ethics does not make ideal demands, but it has its ideality in the penetrating
consciousness of the actuality of sin. Thus, it has to show and to convince us
that we are sinners and that we have to take this seriously (not with metaphysi-
cal intentionsas Hegel did in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religionand
not with psychological intentions tempting us to understand ourselves as mere
concupiscent beings).
The first ethics, requiring ideality to be realised in the actual world, ship-
wrecked when being confronted with the single individuals sin: It did not
explain sinfulness, but it was confronted with itand not just with the sin-
fulness of the self as an individual, but also with that of the self as a member
of the whole race (hereditary sin). The second ethics sets ideality as a task,
not by a movement from above and downward but from below and upward.127
It deals with the manifestation of sin, although its coming into existence
(Tilblivelse) remains hidden for it, as it does for any science: The first eth-
ics presupposes metaphysics [i.e. immanence]; the second ethics presupposes
dogmatics but completes it in such a way that here, as everywhere, the presup-
position is brought out.128
Contrary to an immanent ethics that is based on the first philosophy, namely,
metaphysics, the second ethics is based on a second philosophythe essence
of which is transcendence or repetitionnot recollection and immanence, as
is the case with the first ethics.129
It is very common today to give content to the second ethics by referring to
Kierkegaards book Works of Love,130 loving ones neighbour being the typically
Christian imperative according to Kierkegaard. Personally, I hesitate to fol-
low this very uplifting path, at least in too hasty a way. It might be worthwhile
to pass by The Sickness unto Death first. Before starting with the imitation of
Christ, we should first thoroughly realise that we are sinners and that realising
Christs commandment to love our neighbours is not something like following
advice from Readers Digest. Otherwise, Works of Love would be just as imma-
nent, or even worse, as the first ethics. Loving should not be made easy. On the
126 Ibid.
127 Ibid.
128 Ibid., SKS, 4, 331; HH, 8, 24.
129 Ibid., SKS, 4, 32829; HH, 8, 21.
130 Cf., for example, the introduction to the Hong translation of Kjerlighedens Gjerninger
(Works of Love).
144 Cruysberghs
contrary, Kierkegaard wants to make things difficult first, and for that very rea-
son I suggest a passage toor rather throughThe Sickness unto Death first.
In The Sickness unto Death, Anti-Climacus makes clear that we, all of us, are
sinners. Hence, the first task is to reach the level of ideality as it is expressed
in the commandment of Christian charity. However, we first have to get ideal-
ity into actuality before we can obey the imperative of loving our neighbour.
Bringing ideality into our lives is the task of faith more generally and the task
of believing in the remission of our sins in particular. If we can deal with that
task, we can have some hope of being capable of practicing the Christian char-
ity afterward. The true problem of the sinner is not that of doing his moral
or Christian duty: That would just be a question of applying the ethical or
Christian ideality to actuality; it would be the way from ideality to actuality.
If that were the problem, we would not need a second ethics. The true prob-
lem goes the other way around: the way from actuality to ideality, from sin to
duty. But if sin is despair, as Anti-Climacus argues, then the problem is that of
overcoming a situation in which we are completely helpless: not being able
to get out of the situation of despair. If help is available, it has to come from
elsewhere. In that sense, the traditional tale of someone who is stuck in a
morass, who tries to get out of it, but who only gets stuck deeper into it is an
excellent representation of the helplessness of a sinner. The least one can say is
that this presentation leaves a logical place for the intervention of a transcen-
dent god promising to absolve us of our sins and to free, so to speak, our capac-
ity of again bringing ideality into our actual lives. Then and only then might
there be room for Christian charity, for works of love, for an ethics of love. In
that sense, the works of love do indeed presuppose faithnot just because the
commandment of Christian charity is something that is beyond the common
human perspective of life (somewhat extravagant, a transgression of common
sense), but because it requires faith in the remission of our sins.
The remission of our sins: For most people, this is something one ought
not to care about (I assume), and for others, it is an offence (Forargelse), as
Anti-Climacus explains in The Sickness unto Death. For those who have been
in intense despair and who are ready to give up their pride, faith in the remis-
sion of their sins might open up the possibility for a life of Christian charity in
which we might be able to forgive others in the same way as God forgives us
our sins. That is at least what I understand when reading the discourse Love
[that] Hides the Multiplicity of the Sins in The Works of Love.
That is the way I understand Kierkegaards second ethics. If I am right, his
second ethics is not that much a question of action but rather one of pas-
sion. In order to be able to act, or rather, to be susceptible to the ideality of
ethics, we need to get rid of ourselves first, of our demonic enclosedness
(Indesluttedhed), of our sins. This seems to be, humanly speaking, an impos-

sible task. Therefore, an intervention from elsewhere is required: the interven-
tion of God himself, the only authority who has the capacity to forgive our sins.
Humanly speaking, this is impossible.131 Young Hegel called it a miracle, the
effect of love. For Vigilius Haufniensis and for Anti-Climacus, it is the effect of
faithmaybe because the sinner is not even capable of loving anymoreif
ever he was.
In The Sickness unto Death, sin is a qualified form of despair, despair being
linked to the representation of Godand that is the sickness unto death. Sin is
despair before God. In that sense, the self is a theological self, a self whose cri-
terion (Maalestok) is God himself. In The Sickness unto Death, Anti-Climacus
makes God into the criterion of the self in such a way that God is not just its
judge but its ethical goal (Maal) as well. And, of course, according to so high
a criterion, the self is doomed to be a sinner. Typical of Christianity is that it is
extremely demanding.132 In that context, the question of how to reach ideal-
ity from actuality becomes rather urgent. In this sense, ideality is not just the
immanent ethical imperative, nor is it even the Kantian Reich der Zwecke,
but God himself, that is, transcendence. How does one come to the level of
Gods imperative? By faith, which is the opposite of sin. And sin in the highest
sense, in this context is taking offence (forarges) at being called a sinner and,
most of all, at being promised that our sins will be forgiven.
But at this point, instead of presenting a philosophical analysis, I am giv-
ing a sermon, Im afraid. So allow me, then, to summarise my argument. Our
point of departure was the harshness of Kantian ethics. Friedrich Schiller
may be considered to be an eminent voice trying to bring in the aesthetic as
a complement to the ethical imperative. It might be worthwhile to consider
Kierkegaards Judge William to be a true disciple of Schiller in so far as he also
tried to bring ethics and aesthetics into harmony. More than any of the other
Kierkegaardian pseudonyms, Vigilius Haufniensis presents the image of an
ethics that is typically Kantian in so far as it is accusing, judging, and acting.133
But curiously enough, with his second ethics, stressing the fact that we are sin-
ners and stressing the miracle that is the remission of sins, Haufniensis was
quite close to what the Frankfurter Hegel had in mind when considering the
spirit of Christianity and its fate.
It is quite a surprise to discover that the young Hegel and Kierkegaard
appear to be kindred souls, both affirming the Christian forgiveness of sins as
131 Cf. Kierkegaard, Christelige Taler, SKS, 10, 118; Christian Discourses, HH, 17, 107.
132 Cf. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Dden, SKS, 11, 196ff.; The Sickness unto Death, HH, 19, 83ff.
133 Kierkegaard, Begrebet Angest, SKS, 4, 330; The Concept of Anxiety, HH, 8, 22.
146 Cruysberghs
an alternative for the harshness of modern Kantian ethics. While Kant, affirm-
ing the autonomy of ethics, reduced religion to a mere support of the ethical
lawgiving, both the young Hegel and Kierkegaard argued that the Christian
religion has a perspective of its own, a perspective beyond (first) ethics, one
we can call a second ethics based on forgiveness of sins. Somehow, human
beings seem to be in need of a perspective beyond the severity and harshness
of ethical imperatives. In a general way, we might qualify this perspective as
a symbolic one.134 Symbolic perspectives should not be identified with ethi-
cal or juridical ones. Killing ones son, as Abraham had the intention of doing
(the example given by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling), is unethical and
should be punished by the court of law. No human being, no human institu-
tion, only God can forgive a crime, Christianity suggests. In a secularised soci-
ety, however, the Christian perspective of a forgiving God as an alternative or a
complement to the first ethics seems to have lost its immediate appeal. Young
Hegel may have considered God to be a (necessary) product of the imagina-
tion, and Kierkegaard may have presented a non-dogmatic, subjective concep-
tion of religion; however, the world does not seem ready and willing to listen
to these voices anymore. Over and against crime, there is only room left, I am
afraid, for emotional resentment (identifying itself with moral indignation)
and juridical revenge, forgetting that punishment is not just a form of retri-
bution but also the right of the criminal, as Hegel argued in his Philosophy of
Right.135 Sure, punishment will never undo a crime, and for that very reason
the need for a symbolic restitution, which does not just concern the crimi-
nal but the offended individual and the offended society as a whole as well,
remains open. Today, faith and trust in the possibility of a radical forgiveness
of sins seems to be lost. We content our need for salvation with less unified
and more partial forms of symbolic restitution. These can be considered to be
a form of modesty, to be an acknowledgement that we will never be capable
of fully restituting the crimes that were committed. What risks getting lost in
134 I owe the linking of the specifically religious conception of forgiveness to a broader sym-
bolic perspective to a paper presented by Tine Vandendriessche during the International
Conference on Bounds of Ethics in Bangalore on January 9, 2014, where she dealt with
the question: Should we punish a remorseful offender? She was inspired by the discus-
sions of Arnold Burms with Anthony R. Duff in Arnold Burms, Waarheid Evocatie Symbool
(Leuven: Peeters, 2011) and Anthony R. Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
135 Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts,100, GW, 14/1, 923; Outlines of the
Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxfords World Classics) (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), 10203.
those forms of restitution is the subjective appropriation of guilt that is pres-

ent in the Christian confession that we are all sinners. Instead of pointing to
the criminal and exclaiming our true or fake moral indignation, we should
keep in mind the words of Kierkegaards pseudonym Johannes Climacus in
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which warn against wanting to observe [at
betragte] the world and human beings ethically.136 Observing is not an ethical
category, or rather, there is only one ethical observingit is self-observation
[Selvbetragtning].137
References
Burms, Arnold. Waarheid Evocatie Symbool. Leuven: Peeters, 2011.

Duff, Anthony R. Punishment, Communication, and Community. New York: Oxford
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von and, Friedrich Schiller. Xenien und Votivtafeln aus dem
Nachla. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Poetische Werke. Vol. 2. Berlin: Berliner
Ausgabe, 1960.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. On Christianity: Early Theological Writings. Translated
by T.M. Knox. New York: Harper, 1961.
. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977.
. Phnomenologie des Geistes. In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Gesammelte
Werke. Vol. 9. Edited by Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Reinhard Heede. Hamburg: F.
Meiner, 1980.
. Three Essays, 17931795: The Tbingen Essay, Berne Fragments, The Life of Jesus.
Edited and Translated by P. Fuss and J. Dobbins. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1984.
. Studien 1792/17931794 In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Frhe Schriften II.
Edited by F. Nicolin and G. Schler. Vol. 1. Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1989.
. Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by T.M. Knox. Oxfords World
Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 14, 1. Ed. by Klaus Grotsch and Elisabeth Weisser-Lohmann.
Hamburg: F. Meiner, 2009.
136 Afsluttende uvidenskabeligt Efterskrift, SKS, 7, 291; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, HH,
12/1, 320.
137 Ibid.
148 Cruysberghs
. Frankfurter Manuskripte zur christlichen Religion. In Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel, Frhe Schriften II. Edited by W. Jaeschke. Vol. 2. Hamburg: F. Meiner,
2014.
Kant, Immanuel. Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft. In Immanuel
Kant, Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 6. Berlin: Akademieausgabe, 1911.
. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. In Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte
Schriften. Vol. 4. Berlin: Akademieausgabe, 1911.
. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Zweite Auflage 1787. In Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte
. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. In Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften.
Vol. 5. Berlin: Akademieausgabe, 1913.
. Metaphysik der Sitten. In Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 6. Berlin:
Akademieausgabe, 1914.
. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. In Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte
. Religion within the Limits of mere Reason and Other Writings. Edited and trans-
lated by A. Wood and G. di Giovanni. In Religion and Rational Theology. The
Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge
. Critique of Practical Reason. In Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy. The
Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999.
. Critique of Pure Reason. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In Immanuel Kant, Practical
Philosophy. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Kierkegaard, Sren. The Sickness unto Death. Edited and translated by H.V. Hong and
E.H. Hong. In Kierkegaards Writings. Vol. 19. Edited by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
. Fear and Trembling. In Kierkegaards Writings. Vol. 6. Edited by H.V. Hong
and E.H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
. Either/Or 1. In Kierkegaards Writings. Vol. 4. Edited by H.V. Hong and E.H.
Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.
. The Concept of Anxiety. Edited and translated by R. Thomte in collaboration
with A.B. Anderson. In Kierkegaards Writings. Vol. 8. Edited by H.V. Hong and
E.H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.
. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Edited by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong. In
Kierkegaards Writings. Vol. 12. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
. Begrebet Angest. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 4. Edited by Niels Jrgen

Cappelrn et al. Copenhagen: Gad Forlag, 1997.
. Christian Discourses. Edited by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong. In Kierkegaards
Writings. Vol. 17. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
. Enten-Eller 1. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 2. Edited by Niels Jrgen
. Sygdommen til Dden. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 11. Edited by Niels
Jrgen Cappelrn et al. Copenhagen: Gad Forlag, 1997.
. Frygt og Bven. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 4. Edited by Niels Jrgen
. Works of Love. Edited and translated by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong. In
Kierkegaards Writings. Vol. 16. Edited by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1998.
. Afsluttende uvidenskabeligt Efterskrift. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 7.
Edited by Niels Jrgen Cappelrn et al. Copenhagen: Gad Forlag, 2002.
. Christelige Taler. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 10. Edited by Niels Jrgen
. Kjerlighedens Gjerninger. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 9. Edited by Niels
Jrgen Cappelrn et al. Copenhagen: Gad Forlag, 2004.
Rapic, Smail. Selbstverstndigung: Kierkegaards Auseinandersetzung mit der Ethik
Kants und der Rechtsphilosophie Hegels. Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series.
Schiller, Friedrich. ber die notwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schner Formen.
In Friedrich Schiller, Smtliche Werke. Vol. 5. Edited by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert
Gpfert. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993.
. ber Anmuth und Wrde. In Friedrich Schiller, Smtliche Werke. Vol. 5. Edited
by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert Gpfert. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch
gesellschaft, 1993.
. ber den Grund des Vergngens an tragischen Gegenstnden. In Friedrich
Schiller, Smtliche Werke. Vol. 5. Edited by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert Gpfert.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993.
. ber die sthetische Erziehung des Menschen, in einer Reihe von Briefen. In
Friedrich Schiller, Smtliche Werke. Vol. 5. Edited by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert
Gpfert. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993.
. ber den moralischen Nutzen sthetischer Sitten. In Friedrich Schiller, Smtliche
Werke. Vol. 5. Edited by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert Gpfert. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993.
. On Grace and Dignity. In Friedrich Schiller, Poet of Freedom. Vol. 2. Washington:
Schiller Institute, 2003.
150 Cruysberghs
. On the Moral Use of Aesthetic Manners. In Friedrich Schiller, Poet of Freedom.

Vol. 3. Washington: Schiller Institute, 2003.
. On the Reason Why We Take Pleasure in Tragic Subjects. In Friedrich Schiller,
Poet of Freedom. Vol. 4. Washington: Schiller Institute, 2003.
. On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters. Translated by
William F. Wert, Jr. In Friedrich Schiller, Poet of Freedom. Washington: Schiller
Institute, 2003.
CHAPTER 8
The Kantian Sublime: A Feeling of Superiority?

Gerbert Faure
In this paper, I would like to reveal an ambiguity in the Kantian conception

of the sublime experience. I will do this in an indirect manner by turning to
a thinker whose views on the sublime are strongly influenced by Immanuel
Kant: Friedrich Schiller. In his text ber das Pathetische, Schiller argues that
the satisfaction of the sublime experience is ultimately grounded in the dis-
covery of the faculty of freedom, whether this faculty is employed in moral
or immoral actions. In this way, Schiller creates a gap between aesthetics and
ethics which is absent in Kants theory of the sublime, but which nevertheless
points to an ambiguity in the latter. Does Kant consider the sublime feeling
to be pleasurable because it makes us realise that our moral principles cant
be affected by sensuous nature or because it makes us feel that the moral
subject is superior and invulnerable? It will turn out that for Kant and Schiller
these insights necessarily go hand in hand. Freedom and morality are inex-
tricably bound up with each other through the notion of rationality. Arthur
Schopenhauer will abandon this assumption and thus make room for a more
plausible view that is expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche early on in his career:
It is not the subject, but the object that is sublime.
1 Friedrich Schiller and the Separation of the Aesthetic

and the Ethical
Friedrich Schiller is famous for being a thinker of freedom, which is appar-

ent in his plays as well as in his theoretical writings. This is the reason why
he attaches so much importance to the sublime experience, which makes
us conscious of our moral freedom as rational creatures. In his early text
Vom Erhabenen, Schiller explains that the sublime feeling necessarily origi-
nates from the contrast between two moments. We can only become aware
of our superior rational nature if we have first experienced our powerlessness
as sensuous beings.1 As sensuous beings, we are dependent on the external
1 Friedrich Schiller, Vom Erhabenen, in Theoretische Schriften, ed. Rolf-Peter Janz (Frankfurt:
Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2008), 395. In this paper, I will refer to this text as VE.

152 Faure
world and hence fundamentally vulnerable. In times of prosperity, however,

we are not aware of this dependency. Therefore, it is only when our sensuous
desires get frustrated that we can become conscious of the fact that our ratio-
nal nature cannot be affected by the vicissitudes of fortune.2
Following Kant, Schiller makes a distinction between two types of sublime
experiences which is based on the kind of frustration that is involved.3 In
the mathematical or theoretical4 sublime, we experience a frustration of the
power of the imagination, which leads to the revelation of the superiority of
reason: The more we realise that the imagination doesnt manage to represent
the infinite as a totality, the more we realise that reason is able to think about
the latter. By contrast, in the dynamical or practical sublime we experience a
frustration of our sensuous being as a whole: The more we understand that
we cannot maintain our natural existence, the more we come to see that the
faculty of reason succeeds in maintaining its independence from the course of
natural events.
Whereas Kant gives more attention to the mathematical sublime, Schiller
considers the dynamical sublime to be more valuable.5 Schiller explains that,
in the mathematical sublime, we only experience a superiority over some-
thing that is located within the subject: The faculty of reason is more powerful
than the faculty of the imagination. In the practical sublime, by contrast, we
experience that we are superior to something which exists outside the subject.
Our entire sensuous being cannot maintain itself because it depends on the
external world. The faculty of reason, however, functions independently from
our sensuous being, and consequently it cant be vulnerable to external influ-
ences either. In other words, the practical sublime is deemed to be more valu-
able because in this experience there seems to be more at stake. Furthermore,
Schiller believes that the dynamical sublime is manifested most ideally in trag-
edy: Tragedies are able to reveal the nothingness of our sensuous nature while
at the same time demonstrating the possibility of transcending this vulnerable
condition as rational beings. Consequently, Schillers text ber das Pathetische,
which can be read as a sequel to Vom Erhabenen, discusses the sublime
experience from the perspective of tragedy (in contrast to the works of Kant,
which famously only apply the concept of the sublime to the experience of
natural objects).
2 v e, 397.
3 Ibid., 396.
4 Schiller uses the terms theoretical and practical instead of mathematical or dynamical.
5 V E, 398.
The Kantian Sublime: A Feeling of Superiority ? 153
In this text, Schiller points out that tragedy can reveal our independence as
rational creatures in two distinct ways:
In two ways, however, can the independence of the mind in the state of
suffering manifest itself. Either negatively: if the ethical man does not
receive the law from the physical and no causality over the mind is per-
mitted to the state; or positively: if the ethical man gives the law to the
physical and the mind exercises causality over the state. From the first
arises the sublime of disposition, from the second the sublime of action.6
The first road to the sublime concerns our moral disposition (das Erhabene
der Fassung). We see on the stage how certain painful physical circumstances
cannot affect the will, which reveals the independence of our moral attitude
in an indirect manner. The second road to the sublime concerns our actions
(das Erhabene der Handlung). We see on the stage how certain physical occur-
rences are caused by a rational will. We understand, in other words, that they
are actions instead of mere events.
In the sublime of action, the spectator discovers the independency of reason
because he understands that the suffering of the hero on the stage is caused by
his rational will. Schiller points out, however, that the suffering can be caused
by the rational will in either an immediate or a mediate way. In the case of the
immediate variant, our physical suffering is caused by an exercise of the will
that is informed by the rational moral law. In the case of the mediate variant,
by contrast, the suffering doesnt issue from the fulfillment of a moral duty.
Quite the contrary, one suffers because one has neglected ones duty, which has
in turn given rise to feelings of remorse: An example of the first Regulus gives
us, when he, to keep his word, gives himself up to the Carthaginian desire for
revenge; he would serve us as an example of the second, when he had broken
his word and the consciousness of this guilt has made him miserable.7
This distinction has an important implication. The sublime experience
consists in the consciousness of our independence as rational creatures, and
apparently this can also be induced by portraying immoral actions. When
a character has acted immorally and subsequently suffers from feelings of
remorse, the spectator can figure out that this character has a rational will that
6 Friedrich Schiller, On the Pathetic, in Friedrich Schiller: Poet of Freedom, Vol. III (Washington,
D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1990), 242; Cf. Friedrich Schiller, Theoretische Schriften, ed. Rolf-Peter
Janz (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2008), 440. In this paper, I will refer to this text as
UP with the reference to the German original after the slash.
7 U P, 244/441.
154 Faure
doesnt automatically succumb to sensuous inclinations. An animal just follows

its instincts; it does what it does. This is the reason why an animal acts neither
morally nor immorally. In fact, it doesnt even act at all, because it lacks a ratio-
nal will altogether. By contrast, when a human being yields to his inclinations,
he will always realise afterward that he did have the power to prevent the nega-
tive consequence that followed from his deed. In such a case, the spectator is
displeased from a moral perspective, since the moral law has been disobeyed.
Nevertheless, he is pleased from an aesthetic perspective, since through the
depiction of the immoral action on stage he has become aware of his rational
independence. In short, the only requirement for the aesthetic experience of
the sublime is that we experience the freedom of our will as a faculty, whether
this be used for moral or immoral purposes. The aesthetic concern is already
satisfied with the possibility of our moral destination, whereas the moral con-
cern wants it to be actualised.8
Up to this point in Schillers argument, morality and aesthetics are by no
means incompatible. Schiller has only contended that aesthetics allows more
than morality. A bit further on in the text, however, he seems to suggest that
the aesthetic and the ethical perspectives are in tension with each other. From
an aesthetic perspective, we are only interested in the possibility of morality,
in the freedom of the will as a faculty. And we can only experience the power
of our freedom if we are not concerned at all with the realisation of the good.
This is explained in a difficult passage, which I shall now attempt to clarify.9
Schiller connects the difference between the aesthetic and the ethical with the
distinction between the interest of the imagination and that of reason. The
aesthetic pleasure of the sublime experience comes about because the imagi-
nation, which is part of our sensuous being, becomes aware of reasons moral
destination. Furthermore, one should know that both the rational and the sen-
suous part of our being can experience a feeling of satisfaction. When a ratio-
nal demand is respected, we speak of approbation or approval. Conversely,
when a sensuous desire is fulfilled, we speak of pleasure. In addition, both the
sensuous desire and the rational demand are conceived of as necessities (the
rational demand is an unconditional necessity, whereas the natural desire is a
conditional necessity). The feeling of satisfaction is contingent with regard to
this necessity. The key to Schillers argument lies in the following contention:
The intensity of the feeling of satisfaction depends on the grade of contin-
gency of the fulfillment. This view corresponds to the intuition that the most
intense pleasures come unbidden.
8 Ibid., 244/441.
9 Ibid., 24548/44244.
Schiller goes on to argue that the satisfaction of the imagination is more

contingent, and thus more pleasurable, than the satisfaction of reason. The
necessity of reason lies in the rational moral law, and the fulfillment of this
demand is contingent because, as free beings, we can just as well choose to fol-
low our sensuous inclinations. The necessity of the imagination, on the other
hand, lies in its desire for freedom. The imagination naturally desires to be free,
and this is why it functions optimally in the free play of the faculties that con-
stitutes the Kantian experience of beauty. However, the imaginations desire
for freedom is not only satisfied by the beautiful but also by the sublime expe-
rience. In the case of the beautiful, the desire for freedom is satisfied because
the imagination is not determined by the understanding. In the case of the
sublime, by contrast, the satisfaction comes about because the imagination
discovers the independency of reason. In this way, it becomes clear that the
satisfaction of the imagination in the sublime experience is more contingent
and thus more pleasurable than the satisfaction of the rational moral law in
the performance of moral actions. The contingency of the satisfaction of the
moral law is related to the fact that we have a free will that can also choose
immoral actions. We only possess this free will, however, because we are ratio-
nal creatures. Therefore, the necessity of the moral law and the contingency of
its satisfaction are grounded in the same faculty. By contrast, the imagination
is really struck by the possibility of a free will because our freedom is granted
by an altogether different level than the natural world to which the imagina-
tion belongs. The imagination discovers that there is something outside itself
that nevertheless satisfies its desire for freedom. It is this exteriority or passiv-
ity that makes the satisfaction of the imagination more contingent and thus
more pleasurable than that of reason.
However, it is not only that the imagination can really derive pleasure from
the insight into our freedom. The imagination is also the only faculty that is
actually able to experience the latter. As rational beings, we are initially bound
by the moral law and we subsequently evaluate whether it has been obeyed.
Consequently, we dont experience a feeling of liberty; rather, we experience
that we are under constraint. This perspective is at odds with the instinct of
freedom that is characteristic of the imagination. Hence, Schiller advises the
author of tragedies not to express moral concepts too obviously in his work:
For the lawfulness, which reason demands as moral judge, does not exist
with the unboundedness, which the imaginative power desires as aes-
thetical judge. Therefore, an object will be precisely so much the less fit
to an aesthetical use, as it is qualified for a moral one; and if the poet had
nevertheless to select it, so will he do well to treat it so, that the attention
156 Faure
of our reason is not drawn to the rules of the will, but rather of our imagi-
nation to the capacity of the will.10
If the play directed our attention to certain moral rules, our interest would
shift to a law that binds us and the perspective of freedom would disappear
from view.
Both points about the pleasure and the experience of our capacity to be free
are connected by the notion of passivity. Passivity is a condition for intense
pleasure. At the same time, I can only experience my freedom if I am passively
struck by its possibility. If I already know in advance that I am free, I shall never
really be able to feel free. From the perspective of pure reason, my freedom
is not contingentit is an indisputable fact. The moral law subsequently
demands that I use my freedom properly by doing what the categorical imper-
ative prescribes. Yet one cannot experience freedom if one is guided by a rule
that one has to obey: No wonder, therefore, we enlarge ourselves with the aes-
thetical judgment, with the moral, on the contrary, feel narrowed and bound.11
2 An Ambiguity in the Kantian Sublime: Negative or Positive

Freedom?
The preceding analysis of the distinction between aesthetic and moral judge-
ments prompts us to recognise an ambiguity in Schillers characterisation of
the sublime experience and its relation to morality. When reading Schillers
ber das Pathetische, we initially get the impression that the sublime plea-
sure consists in the knowledge that our moral principles cant be affected by
the sensuous part of our being. Consider, for instance, Schillers description
of the Greek tragic heroes: They love life as ardently as we others, but this
sentiment does not so much govern them that they cannot give it up, if the
duties of honor or of humaneness demand it.12 Apparently, the aesthetic sub-
lime experience teaches us that there is something within us that transcends
the natural determination to which we are subjected as sensuous beings and
thus safeguards the sense of our moral principles. One might also consider his
interpretation of Laokoon further on in the text: At whatever moment the ser-
pents would like to have seized him, it would have always moved and shaken
us. However, that it occurs just in the moment, where he becomes worthy of
10 UP, 248/447.
11 Ibid., 248/446.
12 Ibid., 229/425.
our respect as father, that his demise is presented, so to speak, as the immedi-
ate consequence of the fulfilled paternal duty, of the tender concern for his
childrenthis inflames our sympathy to the highest.13 However, toward the
end of the text, it becomes clear that the sublime pleasure can never consist
in this insight. In the previous section, I have explained that Schiller considers
the sublime feeling of liberty to be incompatible with the idea that we have to
realise certain moral principles. The fulfillment of our duty is accompanied by
the feeling that we are subjugated to a higher principle, whereas the sublime
experience makes us feel independent from external constraints.
This is confirmed at the end of the text, where Schiller remarks that we
admire people who are able to act out of free will, even if this capacity is
employed in immoral actions: A vicious person begins to interest us, as soon
as he must risk his happiness and life, in order to put through his bad will;
a virtuous person, on the contrary, loses our attention in the same propor-
tion, as his happiness itself obliges his good behavior.14 The sublime judge-
ment reveals the specific dignity of the human being, which is located in his
freedom, irrespective of how this capacity is used. It is not oriented toward
the content of our moral principles, but toward the formal capacity to realise
these principles, that is, the free will. Consequently, the pleasure of this expe-
rience is not derived from the insight that our moral principles are protected
against natural determination, but rather from the feeling that we can escape
the vulnerable and base condition to which our sensuous being predestines us.
In other words, the concept of freedom is a condition of possibility for moral
actions, but it also has a broader significance. It points toward an inner realm
that allows us to escape suffering and humiliation. In this way, the sublime
experience becomes a feeling of superiority (berlegenheit), independence
(Unabhngigkeit), and freedom from boundaries (Freiheit von Schranken).15
In short, there is an ambiguity as to whether in the sublime experience we
enjoy the fact that morality is invulnerable or the fact that we are invulnerable.16
13 Ibid., 242/439.
14 UP, 251/450.
15 VE, 395.
16 In the beginning of this section, I have explained that the invulnerability of our rational
capacities can only appear against the background of the vulnerability of our sensuous-
ness. Hence, one could object that the sublime experience by no means reveals that we
are invulnerable, but only that there is a part of us that transcends vulnerability. However,
Schiller identifies the essence of our personhood with our rational capacities (see, for
example, UP, 235/43132). The sublime experience is so satisfying precisely because we
realise that the essence of our personality cannot be affected by nature.
158 Faure
In fact, this ambiguity can already be seen in Kants Analytic of the Sublime,
albeit in a more implicit way. On the one hand, several passages clearly point
out that the sublime feeling primarily has a moral significance for Kant. Take,
for instance, a passage on the dynamical sublime:
In this way, in our aesthetic judgment nature is judged as sublime not

insofar as it arouses fear, but rather because it calls forth our power
(which is not part of nature) to regard those things about which we
are concerned (goods, health and life) as trivial, and hence to regard its
power (to which we are, to be sure, subjected in regard to these things)
as not the sort of dominion over ourselves and our authority to which
we would have to bow if it came down to our highest principles and their
affirmation or abandonment.17
In this passage, the sublime feeling is pleasurable because we realise that the
preservation of our moral principles is immune to the vulnerability of our
natural being. In this case, the sublime feeling is accompanied by a feeling of
respect (Achtung) for the moral law within us. We admire a realm that tran-
scends us, but to which we belong at the same time. A similar passage can be
found in Kants discussion of the mathematical sublime: But the mind feels
itself elevated in its own judging if, in the consideration of such things, with-
out regard to their form, abandoning itself to the imagination and to a reason
which, although it is associated with it entirely without any determinate end,
merely extends it, it nevertheless finds the entire power of the imagination
inadequate to its ideas.18 This passage illustrates how the imagination looks
up to reason, realising that it will always remain inadequate compared with
rational ideas. Hence, in this context too, a feeling of respect is appropriate:
The feeling of the inadequacy of our capacity for the attainment of an idea
that is a law for us is respect.19
In his discussion of the dynamical sublime, however, Kant clarifies that we
actually only respect our own destination: And we gladly call these objects
sublime because they elevate the strength of our soul above its usual level, and
allow us to discover within ourselves a capacity for resistance of quite another
17 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
2009), A262. Cf. Critique of the Power of Judgement, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Eric
Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 145. (My italics). In this paper,
I will refer to this text as KuK.
18 KuK, A256/13940.
19 Ibid., A257/140.
kind, which gives us the courage to measure ourselves against the apparent
all-powerfulness of nature.20 This passage does not so much stress the feeling
of respect for a moral destination that transcends us as it emphasizes the feel-
ing of independence from the oppressive sphere of nature. Kant also makes a
revealing comparison between the sublime feeling and the feeling of admira-
tion for the warrior, which has not vanished even in civilised times: Someone
who is not frightened, who has no fear, thus does not shrink before danger but
energetically sets to work with full deliberation.21 Kant immediately hastens
to say that the warrior must display all the virtues of peace, gentleness, com-
passion and even proper care for his own person. However, the reason why
this is necessary lies in the fact that precisely in this way the incoercibility of
his mind by danger can be recognized.22
In sum, it is not entirely clear whether the sublime pleasure primarily con-
sists in the feeling that we are superior to sensuous nature or in the feeling that
we are subject to our moral destination. Is it an experience of independence,
liberation, and invulnerability? Or is it an experience of dependence on the
moral law, which only presupposes that we are independent from nature? Do I
derive a sense of dignity from my capacity to be free from external constraints
or from my adherence to moral principles?
Schiller seems to answer these questions at the end of his ber das
Pathetische. He makes a clear choice by pointing out that respect for moral
principles is incompatible with the sublime feeling. This feeling consists in the
deliverance from the chains of sensuous being, and hence it cant be accom-
panied by the feeling that we are imprisoned again, this time by the chains of
reason. This choice has an important advantage: We can save the autonomy
of the aesthetic judgement. If we maintain that the sublime feeling consists
in the knowledge that our moral principles cant be affected by the course of
nature, it becomes difficult to explain what makes this feeling so special and
important. Why is it necessary that I first suffer as a sensuous being (i.e., aes-
thetically) in order to discover that morality is inviolable? We must assume
that every rational creature is conscious of the moral law (Kant calls it a fact of
practical reason) and thereby of his freedom to obey it. Consequently, an aes-
thetic experience doesnt seem essential for the discovery of the moral law and
its preservation. Schiller argues, however, that the sublime feeling is not con-
cerned with moral principles at all, but rather with the capacity for freedom,
regardless of whether this is employed in moral or in immoral actions. And we
20 Ibid., A261/14445.
21 Ibid., A262/146.
22 Ibid.
160 Faure
have explained that this capacity can only be experienced from the aesthetic
perspective because the moral perspective makes us feel bound. In this way,
Schiller saves the autonomy of the aesthetic sublime judgement.
However, Schillers choice also has a disadvantage. The sublime pleasure
seems to have become purely negative. If we enjoy the superiority of our moral
destination, the sublime feeling still has a positive object. In Schillers theory,
there seems to be no room for this anymore. We enjoy the fact that we are no
part of nature, that we are invulnerable and independent. It is not clear how
this negative capacity is related to the positive orientation toward a meaning-
ful reality. I have tried to show that this difficulty is already present in Kants
text. He repeatedly stresses that it is not the object, but the subject that is
sublime.23 However, what kind of subject are we talking about here? Is it the
subject within me that gives me the fact of the moral law, or is it I, as a sub-
ject, who is merely giving the law to myself? It seems that we have to choose
between both alternatives. Kant writes: Hence the will is not merely subject
to the law but subject to it in such a way that it must be viewed as also giving
the law to itself.24 Yet how can I simultaneously be subject to the law and be
the source of the law?25
3 Subjective vs. Objective Sublimity
Schiller could have provided an answer to the question that ended the pre-
vious section. He would have replied that we actually dont have to choose
between respect for ones own independency and respect for the moral law. To
be sure, the sublime feeling is incompatible with the experience of the neces-
sity of the moral law. However, the negative feeling of liberation might be ori-
ented toward the positive moral destination in an indirect way. Toward the end
of ber das Pathetische, Schiller qualifies his theory in an important respect.
This qualification concerns what we would nowadays call socially engaged
art. Doesnt this form of art show that the artistic expression of definite moral
concepts might be valuable after all? Socially engaged art can be a very power-
23 See, for example, KuK, A257/14546.

24 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, ed. and
trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 81. Cf. Grundlegung
zur Metaphysik der Sitten, ed. Karl Vorlander (Hamburg, F. Meiner, 1999), 57. In this paper,
I will refer to this text as G.
25 William Desmond calls this tension the antinomy of autonomy and transcendence. See
William Desmond, Ethics and the Between (Albany: SUNY University Press, 2001), 13738.
ful medium to transfer morally relevant ideas.26 Schiller understands, however,

that in that case one wouldnt recognise the specificity of art. If the function
of a work of art were to express moral concepts, then it would be in a sense
superfluous. It would serve at most as a vivid illustration of a message that
could in principle also be grasped independently. This doesnt mean, however,
that art is not morally relevant at all. Works of art paradoxically have a much
greater moral impact when they dont express recognisable moral principles in
a direct way. This is because the absence of the binding perspective of morality
allows the spectator to experience his capacity for freedom, which in turn can
incite him to act morally: Poetry can become to man, what love is to the hero.
It can neither advise him, nor strike for him, nor otherwise do work for him;
but it can educate him as a hero, it can summon him to deeds and to all that he
should be, equip him with strength.27
This cultivation of the capacity for freedom even seems to be a necessary
condition for truly moral actions. Kant has stressed time and again that being
moral requires that one act not only in conformity with duty, but also from
duty. I am not moral if my actions happen to correspond to the moral law;
rather, I am moral if and only if they issue from the will to be good.28 This is
why Schiller claims that the vices which bespeak the strength of the will evi-
dently announce a greater predisposition for truly moral freedom than the vir-
tues which borrow a support from inclination, because it costs the consistent
villain only a single triumph over himself, a single reversal of his maxims, in
order to turn to the good all the consistency and dexterity of the will, which he
lavished on the evil.29 The truly moral person chooses particular good actions
because he knows that they are rational. He has freely chosen them on the
basis of this insight and not because he happens to desire them. In this way,
the cultivation of the negative capacity for freedom ultimately serves the posi-
tive moral law after all: It belongs to the instinct, to attend to the interest of
sensuousness with blind zeal, but it belongs to the person, to limit the instinct
through regard for the law. The instinct in itself pays attention to no law, but
the person has to take care that the prescriptions of reason be infringed upon by
26 UP, 250/449.
27 Ibid.
28 See G, 52/16 and Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, AA81, in Desmond, Ethics
and the Between, 20506. In this paper, I will refer to this text as KpV.
29 UP, 25152/45051.
162 Faure
no action of the instinct.30 For this reason, Schiller often calls the capacity for
freedom the moral capacity (das moralische Vermgen).31
Kant would have formulated a similar answer. The sublime feeling is indeed
a feeling of independence, superiority, and personal dignity. I enjoy because I
cant be humiliated by the senses. However, this feeling is not merely negative,
it is oriented toward the positive moral law. In Kants framework, I can only be
free in so far as I am governed by the moral law, thus freedom and uncondi-
tional practical law reciprocally imply each other.32 Nevertheless, it is crucial
to cultivate the feeling of freedom in itself apart from the concern with the
moral law. After all, I only act morally if I understand that my action is rational,
that is, if I autonomously consent to the moral law without being guided by a
heteronomous principle such as divine authority or natural inclinations.
When Kant writes that I give the moral law to myself, he is actually only
referring to this contrast. I am essentially a rational creature, and obeying the
categorical imperative is rational. Hence, giving the moral law to myself simply
means that obeying it corresponds to what I essentially am, in contrast to prin-
ciples that are strange to me. Therefore, when the sublime experience makes
me feel superior, this by no means implies that I feel superior as an individual.
My rationality, which constitutes my essence, makes me a citizen of a noume-
nal realm that transcends my individuality. Consequently, the sublime feeling
is a feeling of personal dignity that can only be acquired by subjecting oneself
to a higher principle.33
In this way, we come to see that negative and positive freedom are con-
nected by a particular assumption: I can only be free from nature in so far as
I am a rational creature, and as a rational creature I am necessarily governed
by the moral law. Schiller, too, expresses this assumption at the beginning of
his later text ber das Erhabene: The will is the species character of man, and
reason itself is only the eternal rule of the same.34 This means that the denial
of the natural world ultimately serves to produce certain states of affairs in that
same world in conformity with rationality. The freedom from x enables the
freedom to y. In short, Kant and Schiller presuppose that the formal capacity
30 Ibid., 235/43132. (My italics).

31 See, for example, UP, 244/441.
32 KpV, AA29/162. For Kants distinction between negative and positive freedom, see G,
945/756 and KpV, AA33/166.
33 Cf. KpV, AA83/206: We are indeed lawgiving members of a kingdom of morals possible
through freedom and represented to us by practical reason for our respect; but we are at
the same time subjects in it, not its sovereign.
34 This text can be found in the same volume as ber das Pathetische (UP, 255/822).
to be free implies the knowledge of a moral content, which is guaranteed by the

notion of practical reason.
However, it is not only that the idea of rationality guarantees that freedom
is not empty but connected to a positive content, it is also that this idea safe-
guards our autonomy. Admittedly, my independence from nature presupposes
a new submission. Yet, this time I am merely subjected to my own rational-
ity. It is not something entirely strange and fearful; rather, it is something
with which I can identify even though it transcends me and calls for respect:
As submission to a law, that is, as a command (indicating constraint for the
sensibly affected subject) it therefore contains in it no pleasure but instead,
so far, displeasure in the action. On the other hand, however, since this con-
straint is exercised only by the lawgiving of his own reason, it also contains
something elevating.35
It is precisely in this respect that Kants theory is new. The idea that the
capacity to be free implies a rational insight into the good is present through-
out the history of philosophy. However, for Kant, the source of the good
becomes located in the faculty of reason. Traditionally, the faculty of reason
merely discovered the good in nature, but it was by no means the source of the
good. Kants turn has perhaps been inspired by the fact that nature has become
contingent in a modern framework and thus cant provide a suitable founda-
tion for morality.36 However it may be, this turn toward reason as a faculty has
also given rise to the idea that morality is something with which I can easily
identify, something which seems closer to me than God or nature. This enables
Kant to reconcile the notion of respect for something higher with the enlight-
ened desire for independence and emancipation. The autonomy of the subject
is guaranteed by the autonomy of morality. This explains why in the sublime
experience we can simultaneously enjoy our own superiority and something
which is greater than ourselves. After all, respecting the moral law is tanta-
mount to respecting the faculty from which my sense of dignity is derived,
namely, reason.
The next question that naturally comes to mind is whether Kants assump-
tion is true. Is it correct to say that the enlightened ideal of emancipation and
the subjection to morality are intrinsically connected through the notion of
reason? I have merely shown that this ethical assumption is the key to the
solution of the ambiguity in Kants aesthetic theory of the sublime, without
35 KpV, AA81/205.
36 See the many passages in which Kant refutes the idea that nature can provide the foun-
dation of morality on the basis of the claim that it lacks the necessity that is attached to
moral judgements.
164 Faure
attempting to inquire as to whether it is correct. It would be impossible to pur-

sue this inquiry here. However, I would like to end this paper by providing a
kind of historical proof for the correctness of my claim. I have contended that
the solving of the ambiguity in Kant and Schiller depends on their assumption
that the feelings of superiority and respect are connected through the notion
of practical reason. What happens with a theory of the sublime which is simi-
lar in all respects but which lacks this assumption?
Schopenhauer has provided such a theory. He adopts the Kantian concep-
tion of the sublime as a feeling of subjective independence. In his theory, too,
the sublime feeling originates from the contrast between two moments: our
radical impotency, on the one level, leads to the revelation of our superiority,
on the other.37 Moreover, he agrees with Schiller that tragedy forms the high-
est degree of the sublime feeling.38 In conformity with Schiller, he argues that
tragedy confronts us with the terrible side of life,39 and hence the feeling of
contrast that constitutes the sublime experience works most intensely in this
art form. Thus, as far as the painful occasion of the sublime experience is con-
cerned, Schopenhauer is in keeping with Kant and Schiller. However, how does
he characterise the sublime pleasure itself? He deviates from the view that the
sublime experience leads to the revelation of our moral destination in the strict
Kantian sense of the term.40 The confrontation with the terrible side of life
rather has the following result: At this sight we feel ourselves urged to turn our
will away from life, to give up willing and loving life.41
This modification of Kants theory is ultimately grounded in a metaphysical
shift. Schopenhauer adopts the Kantian distinction between phenomenal and
noumenal reality, but the noumenal level doesnt coincide with the sphere of
reason. It has become identified with the world of natural desire that for Kant
constituted the phenomenal world. Schopenhauer accordingly considers rea-
son to be a mere servant of this natural drive, which he calls the will to live.
Reason is nothing other than the capacity to compare empirical phenomena
in an abstract way. At most, it allows us to pursue our desires more efficiently,
37 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation. Vol. II, trans. E.F.J. Payne
(New York: Dover Publications, 1958), 433. Cf. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Band II
(Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998), 503504. In this paper, I will refer to this
text as WWRII.
38 WWRII, 433/50304.
39 Ibid.
40 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, trans. E.F.J. Payne (New
York: Dover Publications, 1958), 205. Cf. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Band I (Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998), 277. In this paper, I will refer to this text as WWRI.
41 WWRII, 433/504.
but it cant serve as the source of moral actionhence Schopenhauers central

criticism of Kants foundation of morality in reason.42 As a consequence of
this, the only escape from the contingent and meaningless reality of nature
that Kant still had in store is taken away.
Due to this metaphysical shift, the sublime pleasure, for Schopenhauer,
can no longer have a positive object. It has become merely negative (Blo
negativ).43 Kant is a modern philosopher in the sense that the natural world
cannot provide a meaningful framework anymore. Nevertheless, we have seen
that the Kantian sublime feeling of liberation is not merely negative, since it is
oriented toward the meaningful realm of reason. However, now that Schopen-
hauer has made reason part of the natural world, there seems to be no reality
left that can serve as a suitable positive object of the sublime pleasure. Conse-
quently, the sublime pleasure can only consist in a purely negative denial of the
natural world:
If this rising above all the aims and good things of life, this turning away
from life and its temptations, and the turning, already to be found there,
to an existence of a different kind, although wholly inconceivable to us,
were not the tendency of tragedy, then how would it be possible gener-
ally for the presentation of the terrible side of life, brought before our
eyes in the most glaring light, to be capable of affecting us so beneficially,
and of according us an exalted pleasure? [...] Thus the summons to turn
away the will from life remains the true tendency of tragedy, the ultimate
purpose of the intentional presentation of the sufferings of mankind.44
The sublime pleasure has become purely negative because Schopenhauer

lacks the metaphysical resources for a positive pleasure. If there exists nothing
besides the meaningless and contingent world of natural desires, salvation can
only be oriented toward the nothing, as Schopenhauer indicates at the end of
his magnum opus.45
In short, Schopenhauer radically chooses for the interpretation of the
sublime experience as a feeling of superiority and independence, and this
view is directly related to his criticism of the essential role that reason plays
in the Kantian framework. In this way, Schopenhauers theory of the sublime
42 See his ber die Grundlage der Moral (ed. Peter Welsen (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 2007)) and
WWRI, 51428/65167.
43 WWRII, 433/504.
44 Ibid., 435/506.
45 wwri, 71.
166 Faure
can function as a kind of historical proof for the claim that Kant and Schiller
can hold together negative and positive freedom thanks to the assumption
that there exists a practical rationality in a deeper sense than the merely
instrumental.
However, Schopenhauers radical shift to one side of the ambiguity has
enabled the young Nietzsche to abandon the Kantian conception of the sub-
lime altogether. He shares Schopenhauers radically modern metaphysical
framework, which means that he too leaves no room for the thought of a ratio-
nality that could connect freedom and morality. Yet, Nietzsche contests the
view that the sublime must have anything to do with subjective autonomy and
independence at all, whether it concerns the moral subject or the individual
subject. He attempts to show that the very same natural world on which we
depend and which makes our existence absurd can be an object of respect and
veneration. In the sublime experience, the subject does not escape from its
dependence on the object, but it learns, rather, to see the things that make life
vulnerable from a different perspective.
Nietzsche claims, in the tradition of Schiller and Schopenhauer, that trag-
edies can produce this sublime effect, whereby the terrible is tamed by artis-
tic means (die knstlerische Bndigung des Entsetzlichen).46 He writes that
tragedy offers metaphysical solace because it points to that core of being
despite the constant destruction of the phenomenal world.47 On the phe-
nomenal level, we constantly suffer from the transience of things: We are to
recognize that everything which comes into being must be prepared for pain-
ful destruction.48 However, tragedy makes us realise that all empirical reality,
including ourselves, is a manifestation of an eternal core of existence that will
never vanish, which leads to a feeling of consolation: For brief moments we
are truly the primordial being itself, and we feel its unbounded greed and lust
for being: the struggle, the agony, the destruction of appearances now seems
to us to be necessary, given the uncountable excess of forms of existence
thrusting and pushing themselves into life, given the exuberant fertility of
the world-will.49
46 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, ed. Raymond Geuss and
trans. Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 40. Cf. Kritische
Studienausgabe, Band 1, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Munich: Walter de
Gruyter, 1988), 57. In this paper, I will refer to this text as GT.
47 GT, 41/59.
48 Ibid., 80/109.
49 Ibid., 81/109.
Thus, Nietzsche does not so much solve the ambiguity in the Kantian
sublime, so much as he dissolves it by rejecting the basic assumption of the
Kantian scheme. Kant, Schiller, and Schopenhauer assume that it is not the
object, but the subject, that is sublime. Nietzsche, on the other hand, shows
that the sublime feeling should not consist in a subjective superiority at all. On
the contrary, I experience that I am inferior to the world-will or the eternal
core of existence, of which I am a mere ephemeral manifestation and which
is the cause of my misery. Nevertheless, it is precisely this insightwhich is
disenchanting at first sightthat can cause a sublime pleasure. It is indeed
painful to realise that our individual lives full of suffering are transient. But
this is only painful from the individuals point of view. Tragedy elevates us to
the level of the whole and thus makes us indifferent to our individuality. In this
way, Nietzsche regains a positive object of the sublime experience. However,
the object that we affirm does not differ from the one that caused the initial
suffering. The two contrasting moments of the sublime feeling dont corre-
spond to two metaphysical levels anymore. In other words, the sublime feeling
is still a feeling of personal dignity. But Kant, Schiller, and Schopenhauer might
wrongly assume that dignity and superiority imply each other. Nietzsche would
object that our highest dignity lies in the fact that we are a work of art of the
eternal-one, that is, a manifestation of the whole: We may very well assume
we are already images and artistic projections for the true creator of art, and
that our highest dignity lies in our significance as works of art.50
It is difficult to explain in a philosophical way how such a paradoxical kind
of pleasureenjoying ones own vulnerabilityis possible. Nevertheless, this
seems to be the most plausible explanation of the sublime experience from a
phenomenological point of view. Schiller thinks that tragedies ought to evoke
subjective resistance on the stage. Yet, many tragedies seem to be deeply satis-
fying even as they confront us with our nothingness without offering the signal
that we can escape this condition. Kant wonders: And who would want to call
sublime shapeless mountain masses towering above one another in wild disor-
der with their pyramids of ice, or the dark and raging sea, etc.?51 I would like
to ask a question in return: Who has beheld the dark and raging sea and has
thereupon considered that one is superior to the natural object in question?
50 Ibid., 34/47.
51 KuK, A256/139.
168 Faure
References
Desmond, William. Ethics and the Between. Albany: SUNY University Press, 2001.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy.
Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999.
. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Edited by Karl Vorlander. Hamburg,
F. Meiner, 1999.
. Critique of the Power of Judgement. Edited and Translated by Paul Guyer and
Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
. Kritik der Urteilskraft. Edited by Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
2009.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Kritische Studienausgabe. Band 1. Edited by Giorgio Colli and
Mazzino Montinari. Munich: Walter de Gruyter, 1988.
. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Edited by Raymond Geuss and
Translated by Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Schiller, Friedrich. On the Pathetic. In Friedrich Schiller: Poet of Freedom. Vol. III. 22753.
Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1990.
. Theoretische Schriften. Edited by Rolf-Peter Janz. 42351. Frankfurt: Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, 2008.
. Vom Erhabenen, in Theoretische Schriften. Edited by Rolf-Peter Janz. 395422.
Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2008.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. Vol. II. Translated by E.F.J.
Payne. New York: Dover Publications, 1958.
. The World as Will and Representation. Vol. I. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. New
York: Dover Publications, 1958.
. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Band I. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1998.
. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Band II. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1998.
. ber die Grundlage der Moral. Edited by Peter Welsen. Hamburg: F. Meiner,
2007.
CHAPTER 9
Kants Transcendental Reflection: An Indispensable

Element of the Philosophy of Culture
Simon Truwant
Toward the end of the Transcendental Analytic in the Critique of Pure Reason,
Immanuel Kant rather poetically depicts the domain of the understanding,
which he has just analysed, as the land of truth. This land, however, is actually
an island [that is] surrounded by a broad and stormy ocean [...] where
many a fog bank and rapidly melting iceberg pretend to be new lands
and, ceaselessly deceiving with empty hopes the voyager looking around
for new discoveries, entwine him in adventures from which he can never
escape and yet also never bring to an end.1
It quickly becomes clear, in the Transcendental Dialectic, that the stormy

ocean refers to the faculty of pure, theoretical reason. Traditionally, the
domain of this faculty was regarded as the domain of philosophy par excel-
lence. For Kant, however, it rather resembles the Bermuda Triangle: While
we can more or less identify the boundaries of this area by means of three
orientation pointsthe ideas of reasonwe should nevertheless not enter
it with any hope of returning from an enriching expeditionor of returning
at all. It is not until the Critique of Practical Reason that Kant finds himself an
entirely different kind of shipthe moral lawand that a metaphysical jour-
ney becomes once again a reasonable endeavour.
Taking into account Kants entire oeuvre, the picture of a stormy ocean may
also refer to the territories of aesthetics and teleological thinking discussed in
the Critique of Judgement. Governed by the power of judgement, these fields
also lie outside the land of truth that is ruled by the faculty of understanding.
Yet, unlike speculative metaphysics, Kants critical assessments thereof result
in positive, influential theories on aesthetics and teleology. Hence, the second
1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), B, 29495. I will hereafter refer to this text as CPR.

170 Truwant
and third Critiques show that Kant is ultimately interested in a much broader
territory than that which he has called the land of truth.
It seems appropriate, therefore, to exchange Kants limiting topographical
sketch of reason for a more encompassing transcendental topology, that is, a
map of the different concepts and principles that reason employs in order to
interpret the world. For this purpose, I suggest a new reading of Kants account
of transcendental reflection, the subjective power that outlines a limited tran-
scendental topology in the appendix of the Transcendental Analytic, which
is entitled On the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection.2 Most literature
on this chapter focuses on its philosophical-historical value because here Kant
most sharply opposes his position from that of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and
that of John Locke.3 However, inspired by Rudolf Makkreels hermeneutical,
or orientational, reading of the Critique of Judgement,4 I will focus on the sys-
tematic role of transcendental reflection in the first Critique instead, and I will
expand it to Kants critical philosophy as a whole. Finally, I will indicate the
(hitherto neglected) importance of this kind of reflection for Ernst Cassirers
attempt to transform the critique of reason into a full-blown critique of culture.
1 Makkreel on Orientation and Sensus Communis
By approaching the Critique of Judgement as a part of Kants epistemology,

Makkreel counters the contemporary hermeneutical critique that the main
shortcoming of Kants transcendental philosophy is that it is foundational and
appeals to a priori starting points that are not subject to reevaluation.5 While
he agrees that Kants interpretation of nature in the first Critique was merely
an extrapolation of reason from [understandings] reading of experience, [and
2 C PR, B, 31646. I will hereafter refer to this text as the Amphiboly chapter.
3 See, for example, Karl Aschenbrenner, A Companion to Kants Critique of Pure Reason:
Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic (Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1983), 28398; Karin de Boer, Pure Reasons Enlightenment: Transcendental
Reflection in Kants First Critique, in Kant Yearbook: Metaphysics, ed. Dietmar Heidemann
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 5373; and Marcus Willascheck, Phaenomena/Noumena
und die Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe, in Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Georg Mohr and
Marcus Willascheck (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998), 34050.
4 Rudolf Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of the
Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). I will hereafter refer to this
text as IIK.
5 I IK, 154.
Kant s Transcendental Reflection 171
therefore] remained on the whole a one-directional abstract process,6 he

also holds that the third Critique allows for a simultaneously Kantian and her-
meneutical view of nature. There, Kant introduces three orientational tran-
scendental conditions that complement the foundational transcendental
conditions of the first Critiques deterministic view of nature.7
First, the principle of purposiveness that is central to the Critique of
Judgement installs a dynamic bond between sensations and concepts that is
foreign to the Critique of Pure Reason. In the first Critique, Kant discusses the
possibility of judgements that subsume our appearances under a priori fixed
concepts and thus express the laws of a deterministically conceived nature.
In the third Critique, on the other hand, he defends the legitimacy of reflec-
tive judgements that allow for an additional, teleological interpretation of the
same nature:8 by means of a transcendental principle of purposiveness, we
can think of a harmony among natural events that complements their a pri-
ori determination of the understanding. Because reflective judgements move
from the particular to the general, and thus let the appearances speak first,
they allow for a dynamic and revisable interplay between concept and sensa-
tion.9 Hence, thanks to a teleological principle, we can explain such complex
and evolving natural objects as organisms.10 Moreover, since reflective judg-
ing works in a bottom-up manner, it is not bound to one general but abstract
concept of nature, but allows for different natural realms.11 Both cases of inter-
pretation require, in Makkreels words, the mutual adjustment of parts and
wholes characteristic of the hermeneutic circle.12
Second, along with the principle of teleology, a feeling subject enters the
process of interpretation. Kant claims that the discovery of purposiveness in
nature is the ground of a very appreciable pleasure, often even of admiration.13
In fact, the table of faculties in the third Critiques second introduction indi-
cates the feelings of pleasure and displeasure as the incentives for teleologi-
cal judging:14 for Kant, teleological explanations betray a subjective interest
6 Ibid., 111.
7 Ibid., 154.
8 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, in Oxford Worlds Classics, ed. James Creed
Meredith and Nicholas Walker (Oxford University Press, 2007), 180;78. I will hereafter
refer to this text as CJ.
9 IIK, 11112.
10 CJ,65.
11 Ibid., 183.
12 IIK, 112.
13 CJ, 187.
14 Ibid., 197.
172 Truwant
rather than an objective reality.15 Makkreel holds that, given the involvement
of a subject that is not indifferent to its perceived objects, the hermeneutical
process has a triadic structure, including not only
the focal point of some object before me, but also my feeling of orienta-
tion toward it as focused in my subject. By means of the relation of these
two reference points to each other and to the horizon, I can gain a kind
of reflective leverage on the world, which is precisely what is needed in
hermeneutics as well.16
Third, the validity of teleological judgements, which are thus reflective rather
than deterministic, and subjective rather than objective, rests on the assump-
tion of general, intersubjective consent.17 Although an aesthetic judgement
This is beautifuldoes not determine any objects, it presupposes that all
beings capable of reflective judging would agree.18 In this way, the idea of a
sensus communis or community of communicative human beings also enters
the process of interpretation: [C]ommon sense can orient the judgment
of the individual to the larger perspective of the community and thus provide
the basis for what Kant calls an enlarged mode of thought or interpretation.19
15 Ibid., 18586. Although Kant here uses the expression universal validity, which denotes
the validity of the reference of a representation, not to the cognitive faculties, but to the
feeling of pleasure or displeasure for every subject [CJ, 214], it is perhaps more appropri-
ate to ascribe a general character to reflective taste judgements, in contrast to the univer-
sal character of determining judgements. While the latter type of judgement is valid for
all rational beings, the latter only pertains to human reason, whose limited understanding
of the world leaves it wanting more [CJ, 185]. The Critique of Judgement admittedly deals,
in other words, with what is objectively contingent but subjectively necessary [CJ, 243],
or with the laws of contingency.
16 IIK, 159.
17 CJ, 238.
18 Strictly speaking, the term sensus communis only occurs in Kants discussion of aes-
thetic judging and not in relation to natural teleology. However, in the Canon of Pure
Reason in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant suggests that it is the ultimate touchstone
for taking something to be true for all our cognition (CPR, B, 84850). Makkreel there-
fore holds that [b]oth in matters of knowledge and taste, judgmental assent must be
coordinated with consent. [Rudolf Makkreel, Schematizing with and without Concepts:
How Kants Aesthetic Judgment Recontextualizes the Object of Cognition, (paper pre-
sented at the first biannual meeting of the North American Kant Society, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 24, 2011), 12. See http://northamericankantsociety
.onefireplace.org/papers].
19 IIK, 15657.
Makkreel further shows that Kant has the same hermeneutical approach to
history, culture, religion, and other human sciences.20 In sum, reflective judge-
ment allows us to oscillate between the parts and wholes that we perceive in
nature and culture, between these organic views and our subjective stances
with regard to them, and between this individual appreciation and the inter-
subjective community within which we express it.
Toward the end of Imagination and Interpretation in Kant, Makkreel relates
the idea of sensus communis to Kants account of transcendental reflection in
the first Critique. He raises the idea of a transcendental topology that encom-
passes not only the formal discrimination of the cognitive faculties as irre-
ducible sources of knowledge, but also their felt accord and agreement, which
must be communicated to produce a scientific consensus,21 but he never
explains how we should understand this. How do we get from Kants response
to Locke and Leibniz in the Amphiboly chapter to a conception of transcen-
dental reflection that maps out our complementary deterministic and herme-
neutic views of the world? How, in other words, does this conception mirror
the idea of a sensus communis understood as a kind of pre-understanding
that orients the subject in the world?
2 The Role of Transcendental Reflection in Kants Philosophy
In the Amphiboly chapter, Kant holds that all judging entails comparing
representations and that these comparisons always happen according to one
of the four pairs of concepts of reflection: identity/difference, agreement/
opposition, inner/outer, and determinable/determination (or matter/form).22
However, the way we perceive the relation between two or more representa-
tions can differ significantly according to the cognitive power that we thereby
employ. Because they make use of different cognitive tools, namely, the forms
of intuition or the categories, sensibility is capable of making distinctions and
the understanding is capable of grasping unities to which the other faculty is
blind. Kant illustrates this with the example of two drops of water with the
exact same logical qualities. While they are identical from the point of view
of the understanding, they are nevertheless temporally or spatially distinct
from the point of view of sensibility.23 The ultimate meaning of the concepts
20 Ibid., 13136, 14853; 13641; 14148; and 16671, respectively.

21 Ibid., 166.
22 CPR, B, 317.
23 Ibid., B, 318.
174 Truwant
of reflection is thus relative to whether or not they are applied sensibly and/
or intelligibly:
[W]hether the things are identical or different, in agreement or in opposi-

tion, etc., cannot immediately be made out from the concepts themselves
through mere comparison [...] but rather only through the distinction of
the kind of cognition to which they belong, by means of a transcendental
reflection.24
From a historical perspective, we should understand Kants account of tran-

scendental reflection as a response to both Leibniz and Locke. Because they
only accept the understanding or sensibility as a legitimate source of knowl-
edge, these thinkers cannot help but judge the drops of water from the exam-
ple above as either identical or different, respectively. Kant holds that these
positions inevitably result in amphibolies, a confusion of the pure object of
the understanding with the appearance.25 He himself avoids these categorical
mistakes by acknowledging both sensibility and the understanding as sources
of knowledge and by invoking the power of transcendental reflection to guard
over their different fields of application.
From the perspective of Kants philosophical system, on the other hand,
transcendental reflection is the constructive capacity to identify and direct
our attention toward the proper transcendental topos26 of our concepts and
judgements. As a precondition for any objective judgement, it is the subjective
power through which I make the comparison of representations in general
with the cognitive power in which they are situated[:] pure understanding or
[...] pure intuition.27 One could thus say that the account of transcendental
24 Ibid., B, 318.
25 Ibid., B, 326.
26 Ibid., B, 324.
27 Ibid., B, 317. Aschenbrenner also refers to transcendental reflection as transcendental
assignment or destination [IIK, 285]. In this capacity, it differs from logical reflec-
tion, which merely compares representations without taking into account the cognitive
power to which they belong [CPR, B, 31819]. In the first introduction to the Critique of
Judgement, Kant gives a general definition of reflection that encompasses both types
thereof that he distinguishes in the first Critique [CJ, 16]. See Peter Reuter, Kants Theorie
der Reflexionsbegriffe: Eine Untersuchung zum Amphiboliekapitel der Kritik der reinen
Vernunft (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1989), 825, 945 for an overview of
all the different uses of the term reflection in Kants works and 968 for the different
definitions of transcendental reflection in the Amphiboly chapter. I will argue that
reflection allows, in retrospect, for the distinction between the Transcendental

Aesthetics and the Transcendental Analytic.28
The most important distinction that Kant makes in the Amphiboly chap-
ter is, however, not that of sensibility and the understanding this distinction
should already be clear at this point in the first Critique, but that between
the empirical and transcendental use of the latter.29 It is well known that, for
Kant, the empirical use of the understanding is the only legitimate one. The
transcendental use of the understanding, on the other hand, coincides with
the traditional conception of pure theoretical reason that Kant rejects in the
Transcendental Dialectic. On this view, the faculty of reason produces knowl-
edge by applying the categories of the understanding beyond the empirical
realm. For Kant, however, this whole undertaking is based on amphibolies;
quantitative judgements about the soulThere is only one soul no less
than There are several souls,express a failure to distinguish the faculties
of reason or discern the proper transcendental topos of our concepts. Again,
transcendental reflection allows us to discern transcendental-logical categori-
cal mistakes. This time, it is the capacity to orient us toward either the safe
land of truth or the stormy ocean of reason. As such, the account of tran-
scendental reflection also prepares the way for the distinction between the
Transcendental Analytic and the Transcendental Dialectic.
In order to now expand this account beyond the first Critique, I must first
return to the empirical use of the categories of the understanding. Given that,
following the above, this is the only legitimate scientific use of the concepts of
reflection, we may suspect a correlation between these concepts and the table
of the judgements of the understanding. Kant indeed holds that
[p]rior to all objective judgments we compare the concepts, with regard

to identity (of many representations under one concept) for the sake of
transcendental reflection also differs from teleological reflective judging because of its
preparatory character and its much broader scope.
28 See Willascheck, Phaenomena/Noumena, 341; and Avery Goldman, Kant and the
Subject of Critique: On the Regulative Role of the Psychological Idea (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2012).
29 There is an ongoing debate in the secondary literature on the place of the Amphiboly
chapter within the Critique of Pure Reason; while located at the end of the Transcendental
Analytic, some authors (e.g., Avery Goldman, Marcus Willascheck) hold that it in fact
belongs to the Transcendental Dialectic.
176 Truwant
universal judgments, or their difference, for the generation of particular

ones, with regard to agreement, for affirmative judgments, or opposition,
for negative ones, etc.30
This quote explicitly links the first pair of reflection concepts we mentioned
aboveidentity/differencewith universal and particular judgements, and
the second pairagreement/oppositionwith affirmative and negative
theoretical judgements. These are, respectively, the first two quantitative and
qualitative judgements from the table of the judgements of the understanding.
The etc. in this quote further suggests that the other concepts of reflection
inner/outer and matter/formare linked to the understandings relational
and modal judgements. The phrase for the sake of finally hints at a teleologi-
cal relationship between transcendental reflection and the understanding; the
act of transcendental reflecting happens in function ofamongst others, as
we shall seethe scientific determination of the world.31
Interestingly, the moments of quality, quantity, relation, and modality return
in the Critique of Practical Reason as the headings of the table of categories
of freedom32 and in the composition of the Analytic of the Beautiful33 and
30 CPR, B, 317.
31 Since the table of the judgements of the understanding corresponds to that of the cat-
egories [CPR, B, 105], the concepts of reflection also back up the latter; Kant refers to
the four subdivisions of the table of the judgements of the understanding, its categories,
and reflection concepts as headings (Titel ) [CPR B, 95, B, 111, and B, 325], and he twice
ascribes a special, foundational status to the fourth one [CPR B, 99100 and B, 322]. See
also Batrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity
in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Charles T. Wolfe
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) 12223: It is indeed a striking fact, generally
overlooked by Kant commentators, that the Transcendental Analytic, which opens with
the parallel exposition of forms of judgements and categories, should close with another
parallel exposition, that between forms of judgements and concepts of reflection, or
concepts of comparison. Moreover, Longuenesse holds that the neglect in which the
latter correspondence is held might well be due to a fundamental misunderstanding of
the nature and function of judgment according to Kant. However, when she develops
this latter correspondence, she focuses almost exclusively on logical reflection in the
first Critique (chapter 6), whereas my interest is in the role of transcendental reflection
throughout the three Critiques.
32 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), A, 117.
33 CJ, 20344.
Analytic of the Sublime34 in the Critique of Judgement. I cannot work out the
parallels between these tables here, as each of them is already in itself notori-
ously complicated. However, the recurrence in the second and third Critique of
the four moments of judging that Kant in the first Critique relates to the four,
more basic conceptual pairs of reflection suggests that transcendental reflec-
tion, finally, also prepares the way for distinction between the theoretical, the
practical, and the aesthetic sphere.
According to Kant, the understanding is the leading faculty in theoretical
matters, while pure reason in the practical sphere and imagination reigns in
the aesthetic sphere.35 Although these spheres represent different interests of
reason, namely, to determine natural phenomena and intentions of purposive
beings, and interpret the status of a certain pleasure, respectively, the four con-
ceptual pairs of reflection nevertheless return in different shapes in each one
of them.36 While we apply in the theoretical sphere the concepts of reflection
to compare our representations with regard to identity and difference, for the
sake of universal or particular judgments, in the practical sphere we do so for
the sake of commissive and prohibitive judgements, and in the aesthetic sphere
for the sake of judgements of beauty or agreement (das Angenehme). Thus,
even when we basically judge the same data by means of the same concepts,
due to the particular function of the latter, we can do so with a different tonal-
itydeterministic or reflectiveand with different resultsthe assertion of
a scientific fact, a moral duty, or an aesthetically pleasing hypothesis.
3 Toward a Comprehensive Transcendental Topology
Although Kant never uses this term in the Critique of Judgement, its first pages
offer a brief overview of an encompassing transcendental topology.37 There,
Kant says that our rational capacities relate to two fields: the natural and the
ethical. He refers to the regions of the fields of which we can have cognition as
territories and to those of the fields where reason is legislative as domains.
We should think here of mathematics, physics, and ethics. Those parts of the
34 Ibid., 247.
35 Ibid., 174, 198.
36 Gilles Deleuze beautifully explains the changing dominance of the interests, and thus fac-
ulties, of reason over the other ones in Kants Critical Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson
and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
37 CJ, 174.
178 Truwant
territory for which reason is not legislative he calls dwelling-places.38 Here,

we should think of aesthetics, natural and ethical teleology, andfollowing
Makkreelhistory, culture, religion, and other human sciences. The differ-
ence between a domain and a dwelling-place corresponds to that between
deterministic and reflective judgements, and, as Makkreel showed us, to that
between a deterministic and a hermeneutical approach to nature and culture.
Whereas the mathematician or physicist is supposed to record mere facts,
the relationship of the researcher and her life-world with the research object is
acknowledged by or even the topic of the non-exact sciences.
I have presented transcendental reflection as the capacity to overview the
different regions of reason and map out its multifaceted world. This subjective
power evaluates the use or topos of our concepts in light of certain experien-
tial input in order to steer us away from speculative metaphysics, which has no
place in the territories of reason, and orient us toward the domain or dwelling-
place that is most appropriate for further explaining it. Within the domains,
this explanation comes about through the categories and constitutive rules
of the understanding or through practical reason; within the dwelling-places,
reflective principles interpret things more freely, but they have no claim to
objectivity.
On this reading, transcendental reflection serves philosophical research
in the same way that the sensus communis serves our teleological judging
of nature and art; they both provide an enlarged perspective, whose support
grounds our interpretation(s) of the world. However, because I extrapolated
the way scholars have hitherto understood the role of transcendental reflec-
tion beyond the scope of the first Critique, to the whole of Kants critical
thought, its overview encompasses the exact sciences, ethics, and the human
sciences. By means of this subjective power, we can map out the different fac-
ultiestopoiof reason in order to identify the status of our truth claims as
scientific, speculative, ethical, or aestheticor, put differently, as objectively
true, problematic, or generally valid.
4 Transcendental Reflection and Philosophy of Culture
Following the example of Ernst Cassirer, an early twentieth-century neo-

Kantian thinker who attempted to transform the critique of reason into a cri-
38 The list of translations of Kants term Aufenthalt includes dwelling-place (Meredith;

Bernard), residence (Pluhar), abode, and habitat (Makkreel).
tique of culture,39 I will now argue that the role of transcendental reflection
can finally also be extrapolated beyond Kants thought, toward a philosophy
of culture. Despite acknowledging a multitude of cultural spheresthrough-
out his oeuvre, he distinguishes between the symbolic forms of myth, lan-
guage, art, religion, natural science, history, law, economics, technology, and
politicslike Kant, Cassirer sees a limited number of concepts at the root of
all our comparisons of representations: the symbol is a factor which recurs in
each basic cultural form but in no two of them takes exactly the same shape.40
Throughout his works, he indeed discusses the different meanings of the sym-
bols of time, space, number, causality, and selfhood.41
Still, like Kant, Cassirer also holds that these concepts receive their actual
meaning from a certain direction of vision and from the ideal goal toward
which the vision aims.42 The meaning of the symbols is, in other words, rel-
ative to the symbolic form in which we employ them. Where Kant used the
example of two drops of water, Cassirer illustrates this by means of the image
39 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume One: Language (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1968), 80. I will hereafter refer to the entire three volumes as PSF and
then list the specific volume number.
40 PSF I, 84.
41 There are two prominent differences between Cassirers symbols and Kants concepts of
reflection. First, Cassirers list of symbols is intentionally incomplete; further empirical
research, be it into cultural fields to which he devoted his time (e.g., language), to which
he merely referred (e.g., economics), or that have only developed later (e.g., social media),
may reveal symbols that he had overlooked: The forms of judging signify [...] only uni-
tary and lively motives of thinking, which penetrate the manifold of its particular shapes
and actively cause the creation and formulation of ever new categories. [Ernst Cassirer,
Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit. Erster Band
(Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1971), 18. (My translation). Second, Cassirers attention to
the data gathered by empirical sciences goes hand in hand with a disinterest in a sphere
of pure conceptuality; unlike Kant, he does not deduce the symbols from a logical theory,
and he conceives of the symbols as a priori, but not as pure, concepts. Given the lack
of a definition from Cassirer, Guido Kreis therefore defines the symbols as the phrases,
images, institutions, artefacts, and the cult or religious or in any other way meaningful,
worldly, acts [Cassirer und die Formen des Geistes (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 19]. (My trans-
lation). This explains why Cassirer did not consider the idea of transcendental reflection,
even though, as we will see, his philosophy requires it. Despite these two differences, the
basic structural resemblances between the symbols and the concepts of reflection are
remarkable, and they counter the standard interpretations of the former as mere modifi-
cations of Kants categories.
42 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume Three: The Phenomenology of
Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 138.
180 Truwant
of a line drawing: Relative to our interest, we can perceive the spatial figure of
a line as a geometrical figure, a geographical border, an aesthetic ornament,
a mythical dividing line between the profane and the divine, or a religious
symbol.43 In another example, he explains how causal relationships can play
an important role in both our scientific and mythological worldviews, despite
expressing universal laws in the former case and magical inferences in the
latter case: Here again it is not the concept of causality as such but the spe-
cific form of causal explanation which underlies the difference and contrast
between the two spiritual worlds.44
Finally, while Kant made a distinction between deterministic and reflec-
tive judgements, Cassirer distinguishes between expressive, representational,
and signifying symbols in The Phenomenology of Knowledge and character-
izing symbols in The Logic of the Cultural Sciences.45 Expressive symbols are
typical of mythological discourse; they present an unreflected, one-to-one
relationship between a phenomenon and our rational interpretation thereof.
Representational symbols dominate natural languages and allow for a more
flexible relationship; here, the symbols have a more general and interchange-
able meaning. Signifying symbols constitute formal languages like that of
mathematics and the natural sciences, and they have a strictly universal modal-
ity. Characterizing symbols, finally, are typical of the cultural sciences, which
acknowledge the characteristic indeterminateness of their concepts; in con-
formity with Kants reflective judgements, Cassirer holds that in these sciences
the particular is classified by the universal, but it is never subordinated.46
Due to their distinctive directions of vision, no symbolic form is reduc-
ible to another.47 Moreover, given that, from an internal perspective, each
form offers a complete interpretation of the world,48 they even seem mutu-
ally incompatible with one another. Once we realise that every symbolic form
originates in our rational interests, however, we can see past their absolute and
exclusive claims about the world and try to understand how to place them
beside one another. For Cassirer, this is the task of philosophy: to establish,
43 PSF III, 20204.

44 Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume Two: Mythical Thought (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 48.
45 PSF III, 284; and Ernst Cassirer, Concepts of Nature and Concepts of Culture, in The
Logic of the Cultural Sciences, trans. Steven G. Lofts (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2000), 73. I will hereafter refer to this text as LCS.
46 LCS, 70.
47 PSF I, 79, 17677.
48 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Volume Four: The Metaphysics of Symbolic
Forms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 262, 265.
from an external or detached point of view, a harmony among the different

symbolic forms:
It is the task of systematic philosophy [...] to free the idea of the world
from this one-sidedness. It has to grasp the whole system of symbolic
forms [...] Each particular form [must] be relativized with regard to the
others, but [...] this relativization is throughout reciprocal and [...] no
single form but only the systematic totality can serve as the expression of
truth and reality.49
Thus, in the same way that Kant, as a transcendental philosopher, could

demarcate the boundaries of the understanding and reason, the philosopher
of culture is capable of keeping in check the pretenses of each symbolic form.
We can now understand the philosophy of symbolic forms as a transcen-
dental topology that accounts for the entirety of our cultural life. Cassirer
expresses the wish to develop a morphology of the human spirit50 or a gen-
eral plan of ideal orientation, in which we can [...] mark the position of each
symbolic form.51 Accordingly, he defines the symbol as
a medium through which all the configurations effected in the separate

branches of cultural life must pass, but which nevertheless retains its
particular nature, its specific character [and thus provides] the neces-
sary intermediary link for an inquiry which will accomplish for the total-
ity of cultural forms what the transcendental critique has done for pure
cognition.52
A mere enumeration of the various ways in which the same symbols recur in
the human world does not, however, suffice for establishing a useful plan of
this totality. Rather, conceived as the capacity to direct our attention toward
49 Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function and Einsteins Theory of Relativity (New York:
Dover Publications Inc., 1953), 447. Consequently, Cassirer explains in The Metaphysics of
Symbolic Forms that philosophy cannot itself be a symbolic form [PSF IV, 26265; see also
Thora Ilin Bayer, Cassirers Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms: A Philosophical Commentary
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 1923, 8089; and John Michael Krois, Cassirer:
Symbolic Forms and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 64].
50 PSF I, 69.
51 Ernst Cassirer, Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie, in
Ernst Cassirer Gesammelte Werke. Band 17: Aufstze und Kleine Schriften 19271931 (Berlin:
F. Meiner, 2004), 303. (My translation).
52 PSF I, 84.
182 Truwant
a diversity of meaningful, cultural domains, and to properly coordinate our

different rational interests, the human capacity of transcendental reflection
seems like an indispensable element of Cassirers philosophy of symbolic
forms. This becomes especially clear in his later, ethically oriented works. In
An Essay on Man, he identifies the lack of a unitary view of our cultural life,
and hence of the nature of the human being, as the cause of the crisis that hit
European culture in the beginning of the twentieth century.53 Additionally, in
The Myth of the State Cassirer analyses National Socialism as the successful but
illegitimate merging of the symbolic forms of myth, politics, and technology.
An evolved version of Kants account of transcendental reflection as I have
presented it could remedy both of these interrelated problems and thus greatly
contribute to the philosophy of culture.
References
Aschenbrenner, Karl. A Companion to Kants Critique of Pure Reason: Transcendental

Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983.
Bayer, Thora Ilin. Cassirers Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms: A Philosophical Commentary.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Cassirer, Ernst. Substance and Function and Einsteins Theory of Relativity. New York:
Dover Publications Inc., 1953.
. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume Three: The Phenomenology of
Knowledge. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963.
. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume Two: Mythical Thought. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1966.
53 Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 22: No for-
mer age was ever in such a favorable position with regard to the sources of knowledge
of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an
astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for
observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have
become sharper and more penetrating. We appear, nevertheless, not yet to have found
a method for mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own
abundance, the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a
wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this
labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we
shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all
conceptual unity. Cassirer suggests the symbol as this clue of Ariadne, but transcenden-
tal reflection or symbolic reflection would have been a more complete answer.
. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume One: Language. New Haven: Yale
. Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit.
Erster Band. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1971.
. An Essay on Man. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Volume Four: The Metaphysics of Symbolic
Forms. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
. Concepts of Nature and Concepts of Culture, in The Logic of the Cultural
Sciences. Translated by Steven G. Lofts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
. Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie. In Ernst
Cassirer Gesammelte Werke. Band 17: Aufstze und Kleine Schriften 19271931. Berlin:
F. Meiner, 2004.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kants Critical Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara
Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
De Boer, Karin. Pure Reasons Enlightenment: Transcendental Reflection in Kants
First Critique. In Kant Yearbook: Metaphysics. Edited by Dietmar Heidemann. 5373.
Goldman, Avery. Kant and the Subject of Critique: On the Regulative Role of the
Psychological Idea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
. Critique of Pure Reason. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant. Edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
. Critique of Judgement. In Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by James Creed
Meredith and Nicholas Walker. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Kreis. Guido. Cassirer und die Formen des Geistes. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010.
Krois, John Michael. Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987.
Longuenesse, Batrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the
Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Charles T. Wolfe.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Makkreel, Rudolf. Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of
the Critique of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
. Schematizing with and without Concepts: How Kants Aesthetic Judgment
Recontextualizes the Object of Cognition. Paper presented at the first biannual
meeting of the North American Kant Society, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, July 24, 2011.
184 Truwant
Reuter, Peter. Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe: Eine Untersuchung zum Amphibolie-
kapitel der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1989.
Willascheck, Marcus. Phaenomena/Noumena und die Amphibolie der Reflexionsbe-
griffe. In Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Edited by Georg Mohr and Marcus Willascheck.
34050. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998.
CHAPTER 10
Adornos Response to Kierkegaard: The Ethical

Validity of the Aesthetic?
Margherita Tonon
This paper will address some of the questions raised by the title of the present
volume, namely, The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics, by examining Theodor
Adornos position on the topic as it is expressed in his book Kierkegaard:
Construction of the Aesthetic (1933). The choice of this text is not accidental;
it is motivated by factors that go beyond the need to shed some light on this
rarely examined and yet seminal book. It is precisely in this book that Adorno
addresses the ideas of the thinker who, in the most profound way, engaged
with the issue of the marriage between aesthetics and ethics, namely, Sren
Kierkegaard. Kierkegaards legacy is profoundly influential on Adorno, yet such
an influence often goes unacknowledged. In this paper, I will address Adornos
reception of Kierkegaards aesthetics with particular reference to his so-called
theory of the stages, or his understanding of the dialectics between the aes-
thetic, the ethical, and the religious. I will argue that Adorno reverses such a
dialectics by attributing to the aesthetic the highest rank both with respect
to its truth value and its ethical significance. The import of this reversal goes
beyond the Kierkegaard book and extends to Adornos entire work. I will show
that ethics and aesthetics have for Adorno a profound kinship, and while it
is not possible to argue for the subordination of the former to the latter, it
is at least possible to argue that the possibility of the ethical is, to a certain
extent, dependent on some functions performed by the aesthetic. In order to
show this, I will to move beyond Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic and
extend my inquiry both to Negative Dialectics and to Aesthetic Theory.
1 Kierkegaards Recovery of the Aesthetic in the Ethical
First, it is fitting to briefly consider Kierkegaards position in relation to the

topic of the marriage between aesthetics and ethics. If Immanuel Kant, in his
Critique of the Power of Judgement, had implied a connection between aes-
thetic experience and ethics, this alone was not enough to overcomein the
eyes of the Romantic thinkersthe harshness of the Kantian ethics of duty. As

186 Tonon
a response, Friedrich Schiller pleaded for the harmony of duty and inclination,
and deeply associated beauty with truth and the good, while Friedrich Schlegel
pushed this connection even further, celebrating the spirituality of sensual
love against the moral convention of his time. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
however, was very critical of the Romantic elevation of aesthetics to the high-
est status, and he intensely opposed Schlegels attack on social and moral val-
ues. Kierkegaard himself echoes such a Hegelian position in a similar critique
of Romantic irony in his dissertation The Concept of Irony. However, it is in
his pseudonymous production that Kierkegaard offers his most interesting and
original contribution to the Romantic debate on the question of the marriage
between aesthetics and ethics, that is, of how is it possible that what is right
namely, what is ethicalis at the same time beautiful and pleasurable. This
response is carried out in the second part of Either/Or, where the pseudony-
mous character Judge William, in a letter to his friend the aesthete, defends the
aesthetic validity of the ethical institution par excellence: marriage.
If the aesthetic dimension, which is explored in the first part of Either/Or,
is the realm of self-loss in a multitude of fleeting pleasures and external diver-
sions, the ethical is for Kierkegaard the realm of self-choice, commitment, and
responsibility to such choice. This, however, does not imply that the pleasure
and beauty of the aesthetic are left behind once and for all. As is well known,
in his letter in defence of the aesthetic validity of marriage, Judge William
arguesover and against the aesthetethat it is possible to preserve the
beauty of first love within a mediated external institution such as marriage. In
fact, the beauty of first love (i.e., its aesthetic and romantic qualities) is taken
up through marriage into a higher concentricity.1 That is to say, the image of
concentric circles suggests to us that the erotic-aesthetic element of first love
is not lost but rather incorporated and transfigured in the ethical institution of
matrimony. More generally, in his two letters the Judge maintains that it is in
the ethical that the aesthetic finds its destination an accomplishment. If they
stay at the mere aesthetic level, beauty and pleasure are destined to decay into
boredom and melancholy, while it is only when they are raised to the level of
the ethical, and made the object of a conscious choice that renews itself in
repetition, that they can be preserved and elevated.
1 Love lets itself be taken up into a higher concentricity. [Sren Kierkegaard, Either/Or,
Part II, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987)]. Cf. EntenEller. Anden del, in Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter, Vol. 3, ed. Niels Jrgen
Cappelrn et al (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997), 945.
Adorno s Response to Kierkegaard 187
Utilising a somewhat schematic interpretation, which is also suggested by

Johannes Climacus,2 it is possible to see that Judge William is indicating a
hierarchy of the spheres: the aesthetic, the ethical, and, finally, the religious.
In the aesthetic life, the individual is projected outside of himself and devoted
to the quest for pleasurable and interesting experiences. By choosing himself,
the individual moves from the manifoldness of desires of the aesthetic into the
enduring consistency of the ethical. The ethical is thus distinguished from the
aesthetic by virtue of such self-choice, such taking up of ones own existence
no longer as a possibility, but instead as a task. Subsequently, the recognition
of guilt and sin prompts the transition to the religious dimension. What needs
to be kept in mind is that, despite the either/or injunction that is the title of
the book itself, the transition from one sphere to the other does not imply the
negation and dismissal of the lower sphere, but rather, in a Hegelian way, its
preservation in the higher one. This means that the enjoyment of pleasure and
beauty, which had fateful consequences in the aesthetic realm, can be experi-
enced in its truth only in the context of the ethical, where it is integrated into
the stability and endurance of marriage. The ethical takes up the aesthetic and
shows it in its true light.
2 Adornos Reversal of the Spheres
I will now return to Adornos interpretation of Kierkegaard in order to outline

his response to the latters elevation and legitimation of the aesthetic in the
ethical. Briefly put, Adornos response is quite radical and concerns the overall
dialectic of the spheres, in so far as he puts forward a fundamental reversal
of their order. In his book KierkegaardConstruction of the Aesthetic, Adorno
maintains that in Kierkegaards authorship, the sphere that comes closest to an
experience of truth is not the sphere of the ethical (and even less so, the reli-
gious), but rather the sphere of the aesthetic. Thus, we are no longer faced with
a hierarchy that goes from aesthetics to ethics and then to the religious, but the
2 In his appendix Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature, Climacus writes:
But back to the Stages. In its tripartition it differs markedly from Either/Or. There are three
stages: an aesthetic, an ethical, a religious [...] What was wrong with Either/Or was that its
closure was ethical, as indicated. In the Stages this has been made clear and the religious
has stood its ground. [Sren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Vol. 1, ed. and
trans. Alistair Hannay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 24647; Afsluttende
uvidenskabelig Efterskrift, in Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter, Vol. 7, ed. Niels Jrgen Cappelrn et
al (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 2002), 222.
188 Tonon
aesthetic has priority over the ethical and the religious. I submit that Adornos
reversal of the order of the spheres represents, on the one hand, one of the
crucial features of his original interpretation of the work of Sren Kierkegaard.
On the other hand, I will argue that the primacy of the aesthetic characterises
his entire philosophical enterprise and his position with regard to the ethical.
As a first step, I will lay out Adornos original argument for reversing
Kierkegaards dialectics of the spheres. Second, I will sketch out how this rever-
sal is not to be limited to Adornos critical interpretation of Kierkegaard and
how his claim that the aesthetic experience stands in greater proximity to truth
and the ethical than any other form of experience permeates his entire work.
In his critical reception of the work of the Danish philosopher, Adorno
claims that it is in the much disregarded aesthetic sphere that Kierkegaard
comes closest to a true grasping of reality: Where his philosophy, in its self-
consciousness of its mythical semblance, encounters aesthetic characteris-
tics, it comes closest to reality: to the reality of its own condition of objectless
inwardness, as well as that of the estrangement of things with regard to itself.3
Let us now examine this claim in more detail. Adorno argues that the aesthetic
dimension of Kierkegaards work is superior to the other dimensions in at least
three ways: a) its interpretative priority, b) its higher faithfulness to the real,
and c) its ethical primacy over the other spheres.
2.1 Interpretative Priority of the Aesthetic

It is from the aesthetic realm that Adorno extracts the interpretative clue to
Kierkegaards entire philosophical enterprise, specifically the image of the int-
rieur. Under the influence of Walter Benjamin, Adorno believed that the analy-
sis of images was to be the necessary key for a materialistic philosophy to open
reality and that it constituted the nucleus out of which all critique is gener-
ated. Thus, the image of the intrieur, a recurrent representation that pervades
Kierkegaards aesthetic writings, became for Adorno the cipher that needed
to be interpreted in order to break into the world of the Danish philosopher.
Adorno takes the intrieur, that is, the interior space of the bourgeois man-
sion, to be the cipher of the alienation of the bourgeois intellectual from the
surrounding world, a world which, driven by the law of capitalist production,
no longer corresponds to his inner feelings and desires. In Kierkegaards texts
3 Theodor Adorno. Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-
Kentor (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 6667; Kierkegaard:
Konstruktion des sthetischen, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1962),
98. I will hereafter refer to these texts as K, and I will put the English citation before the
German citation.
such as Stages on Lifes Way, Repetition, and the Diary of the Seducer, all action
takes place behind closed doors in much the same way as subjectivity never
leaves its own interiority and self-reflection. The interior space, typical of bour-
geois well-to-do families, is accurately described, and the attention dedicated
to each decorative object becomes the symbol of an individuality that is locked
within itself, unable to find an outcome in objectivity. This space of meaning
is protected against the intrusion of a reified reality, and thus the illusion of a
concrete existential experience is preserved. However, such idle objects invoke
the external, that is, the historical material conditions of the nineteenth cen-
tury, and emphasise even further the alienation of Kierkegaards declining class
from the real process of productionand therefore its position at the mar-
gins of the historical process.4 It is in fact, according to Adorno, Kierkegaards
marginal and declining social position, and its denial or lack of acknowledge-
ment of the social question, which underpins and informs his philosophy of
inwardness.
2.2 Faithfulness to the Real of the Aesthetic

Hence, it is by analysing the image of the interiur that Adorno interprets
Kierkegaards philosophy as characterised bywhat I like to calla loss of
experience and an alienation of the object. In particular, the ethical, that
is to say, the movement of self-choice toward the interiority of the self, is in
Adornos reading the response to a loss of intimacy (a being out of touch)
with the objective world, be it history, the socio-political dimension, or eco-
nomic relations. The truth about such an inward turning is that it manifests
the awareness of the alienation of the subject from objectivity (the historical
and economic conditions of rising capitalism). In fact, Kierkegaard goes even
further and posits the absolute incommensurability between interiority and
exteriority. Such incommensurability is experienced by the subject in the fail-
ure to have an impact with his actions upon objectivity. This analysis is heavily
informed by Gyrgy Lukcss account of societal reification5 under capitalist
4 In this respect, Adorno puts forward some insightful sociological observations: What today
appear as Kierkegaards petty-bourgeois characteristics correspond to his exclusion from
economic production, the accidents to which he is indeed ultimately subject. One such
characteristic is the powerless hatred of reification in which only the powerful capitalistin
the words of Karl Marxfeels at ease and strengthened. [K, 48/71].
5 It is important to bear in mind, however, that Lukcss theory of reification is only outlined
in his 1922 treatise History and Class Consciousness, which appeared only some years after
the publication of the essay Sren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen in Soul and Form in 1910.
In this essay, Lukcs sees Kierkegaard as the paradigm of the philosopher of modernity, who
has fully perceived the subjects alienation in modern society and especially its separation
190 Tonon
conditions: Fleeing precisely from reification, he withdraws into inwardness.6

Faced with the impossibility of bringing about a change in the external world,
the individual resigns himself to a sort of bad objectivity and is forced back
into interiority, which becomes the only theatre of action. Adorno, however,
maintained that Kierkegaards rebellion against injustice in the world, while
representing a form of critical negative thought, nonetheless remains impo-
tent and frustrated. Such impotence constitutes precisely the untruth of the
inward move and, more generally, a Kierkegaardian ethics. Kierkegaard neither
gets to the root of this social malaise nor challenges its presuppositions; rather,
he limits himself to rejecting it altogether as a realm of depravity, ultimately
leaving the status quo unchanged.
In addition, Adorno criticises Kierkegaards inward movement as return-
ing to the same subjectivism of Idealism, which the Danish philosopher had
rightly opposed in rejecting the identity of subject and object. Although what
we are dealing with here is not the active/productive subjectivism of Idealism,
Kierkegaard nonetheless believed that the individual could conquer himself
in interiority and establish a truth for existence. Kierkegaards inward solution
is precisely realised in the ethical moment of self-choice; hence, when Adorno
takes exception to Kierkegaards philosophy of inwardness, he is in fact criti-
cising the preponderance of the ethical (and religious) sphere. According to
Adorno, the ethical (and the religious) move away from the insightful intuition
of societal reification and the loss of objectivity for the sake of the idea of an
abstract self that is engaged in an equally abstract ethical action7 based on an
abstract notion of freedom.
Adorno thus fully rejects Kierkegaards ethical/religious turn as a deviation
from the insightful intuition of the malaise of rising capitalism. In fact, such
a turn does not provide us, as Kierkegaard would have hoped, with a more
from objectivity. While this analysis is insightful, the conclusions that he reaches, that of
a philosophical subjectivism which finds refuge in faith, are the wrong ones and go in the
direction of even a further alienation. Lukcs attributes these to the melancholic character
of the Danish philosopher. In a nutshell, the breaking down of relations in a reified society is
exemplified by the failure of the gesture (Kierkegaards breaking of his engagement, upon
which he built all his authorship)no transparent unambiguous meaning can be conveyed
in the modern fragmented human experience. [Gyrgy Lukcs, Sren Kierkegaard and
Regine Olsen, in The Lukcs Reader, ed. A. Kadarkay (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 1125.
6 K, 50/75.
7 The contradiction of such kind of ethics are evident to Adorno, who affirms: The possibil-
ity that a person, faultless in terms of private ethics, could act infamously in his objective
social function, a function not reducible to inwardness, is a thought that Kierkegaard does
not allow to occur. [K, 50/75].
truthful account of experience, one separate from the alienation of systems of

exchange, but goes toward an increasing loss of concreteness and a forgetful-
ness of nature.
3 Ethical Primacy of the Aesthetic
Adorno maintains that an examination of aesthetic melancholy can offer a

more faithful account of experience than the subjective self-assertion which
characterises the ethical/religious realm. In Adornos analysis, melancholy is in
fact the mood associated with the image of the intrieur, that is, an ailment
of the age generated out of the struggle of inwardness with reality. Nature, not
being able to find expression in the reified objectivity, migrates into inward-
ness, which becomes its prison. According to this reading, melancholy is the
emotion of the trapped.8 In melancholy, truth presents itself as semblance.
This means that truth presents itself in images in need of interpretation:
Through melancholy, inwardness conjures the semblance of truth to the point
that melancholy itself becomes transparent as semblance; to the point, that
is, that melancholy is wiped out and at the same time rescued; melancholy
conjures images and these stand ready for it in history as enigmatic figures.9
Placing the accent on the relation between truth and semblance, Adorno
explains in which way his interpretation of the aesthetic differs from what he
sees as Kierkegaards misconception of such a realm: The figures conjured up by
inwardness are not identical to inwardness. Kierkegaard had interpreted them
as being products of the imagination of the aesthete and thus as being identi-
cal with his aesthetic deportment, that is, as a form of existential attitude.
In fact, Adorno argues that a fissure [...] separates truth from inwardness, to
which truth appears as a mere semblance.10 Hence, the truth expressed in
the semblance of such images hints at something objectivethat is, nature,
which is repressed and mutilatedand at the possibility of reconciliation
with it. For this reason, it is a concealed truth, a truth that awaits interpre-
tation. By exploring and interpreting such images, which recall their natural
origin and at the same time its loss, it is possible, according to Adorno, to grasp
the possibility of reconciliation beyond the experience of reification, which is
denied to any subjective stance. For this reason, Adorno writes: Semblance,
which illuminates thought from the remoteness of the images like the star of
8 Ibid., 60/89.
9 Ibid., 64/94.
10 Ibid., 65/95.
192 Tonon
reconciliation, burns in the abyss of inwardness as an all-consuming fire. It is

to be sought and named in this abyss, if the hope that it radiated is not to be
forfeited by knowledge.11
First, what is crucial in Adornos interpretation of melancholy and sem-
blance, and what differentiates it from Kierkegaards position, is the demand
for reconciliation and hope that is expressed in the aesthetic images. This
demand is a response to the bad conditions of the objective reality and puts
forward an ethical claim that suffering should be redeemed. Thus, it is the
responsiveness to suffering in objectivity that makes the real of the aesthetical
sphere ethically superior to the subject-centred ethical and religious spheres.
It is not a fleeing in imagination or a construction of a fictitious world, as the
Romantic aesthetic would have had it, but it offers a glimpse of a better world
without forgetting the untruth of the present one.
Second, it is important to emphasise Adornos rehabilitation of that precise
mood which Kierkegaard had taken as the sign of the failure of the aesthetic
attitude, that is, melancholy. While for Kierkegaard melancholy indicated the
foundering of the delusion of the aesthete who had lost his own self in the
manifoldness of pleasures and diversions, for Adorno the melancholic disap-
pointment stands as an accusation against bad reality, the reality of reification
where the individual is no longer at home, and, at the same time, it denounces
the impotence of the subject to amend it by its own strength. Melancholy thus
functions as a critique and corrective of the inward subjective turn, which,
abandoning the world to evil, claims to be able to establish truth in interiority.
On the contrary, melancholic individuality, in its frustration with reality, is well
aware of the fact that genuine access to the object in its individual singular-
itythat is, the possibility of concrete experienceis denied. For this reason,
Adorno affirms that dialectic melancholy does not mourn vanished happi-
ness. It knows that it is unreachable.12 The hope of melancholic subjectivity is
promised as unattainable.13 Yet, aesthetic subjectivity clings to the fragments
of an enciphered and distorted truth.14
Hence, we have seen that in his interpretation and critique of Kierkegaards
work, Adorno argues for 1) the interpretative priority of the aesthetic, namely,
the fact that the images that emerge from the aesthetic writings are more apt
to disclose the core of his philosophy; 2) its higher faithful relation to reality,
namely, the truth-disclosing power of the aesthetic; and 3) the ethical primacy
11 Ibid., 67/98.
12 Ibid., 126/179.
13 Ibid., 126/179.
14 Ibid., 125/178.
of the aesthetic. While Kierkegaard dismisses the aesthetic realm for the sake
of the seriousness of the ethical choice of being oneself, Adorno rehabilitates
such a realm by emphasising its connections with truth and with the ethical
demands for a better world. The aesthetic attitude is thus more truthful in rela-
tion to the object in that it recognises the intolerable conditions of injustice
and oppression that characterise it, and, at the same time, it demands to put an
end to any thwarting of nature and human suffering. This demand, for Adorno,
is precisely the ethical injunction which lies at the core of aesthetics and which
Kierkegaards dialectics of the spheres fails to acknowledge.
4 The Ethical Validity of the Aesthetic in Adornos Work
I maintain that the above-mentioned ethical injunction of putting an end to

the repression of nature and the human suffering that ensues from it domi-
nates Adornos entire work, and that it is closely linked to his interest in the
aesthetic. At the very beginning of his Negative Dialectics, Adorno reminds us
that his entire investigation into the possibility of a non-identical dialectics
arises from the need to lend a voice to suffering.15 It is through suffering that
objectivity emerges and impinges upon the subject; thus, by lending a voice to
suffering, it is also possible to liberate repressed objectivity from its concep-
tual burden. In fact, according to the Negative Dialectics, suffering is a type of
experience that breaks conceptuality and reveals a more profound truth than
the one conveyed by thought. Without purporting to give up conceptuality,
which would amount to a fatal lapse into irrationality, the Negative Dialectics
fosters an attentiveness to any experience of the object outside of its subjec-
tive constraints. Doing justice to the object precisely entails a redressing of the
presumed unavoidability of such suffering.
It should be noticed that the Negative Dialectics does not deal in an explicit
way with the topic of aesthetics; it only does so indirectly by way of the con-
nection between suffering and expression (Ausdruck),16 which is explored
at length in the Aesthetic Theory.17 Having said this, however, it is possible
15 Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (London and New York: Con
tinuum, 1973), 17; Negative Dialektik, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1970), 29. I will hereafter refer to this text as ND.
16 ND, 18/30ff.
17 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London and New
York: Continuum, 1997), 110; sthetische Theorie, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 7 (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1970), 169ff. I will hereafter refer to this text as at.
194 Tonon
to argue that already in the Negative Dialectics Adorno explores the connec-
tion between aesthetics and the ethical injunction to put an end to suffering.
This is the case if one is to understand aesthetics in the broader sense of the
Greek word aisthesis, which translates as sensation or sense perception. In
fact, the notion of suffering that Adorno had in mind is first and foremost a
physical/somatic experience, a suffering that is perceived through and by the
body.18 The somatic element in the experience of suffering is precisely what
evokes objectivity as repressed and maimed nature. As already anticipated in
KierkegaardConstruction of the Aesthetic, physical suffering acts in the first
place as a critique of the current state of affairs: The physical moment tells
our knowledge that suffering ought not to be, that things should be different.19
And such a critique is quick to turn into an ethical injunction, for Adorno
writes: The telos of such an organization of society would be to negate the
physical suffering of even the least of its members, and to negate the internal
reflexive forms of that suffering.20
Yet, it is in Aesthetic Theory that the connection between aesthetics, suffer-
ing, and the above-mentioned critique of history and societal organisation is
developed to its full potential. In Rolf Tiedemanns words, Adornos Aesthetic
Theory expounds an understanding of art as the unconscious, mimetically
written history of human suffering.21 Adorno precisely argues that authentic
art should break beyond the veil spun by the interplay of institutions and false
needs22 and speak for that objective something which lies behind that veil
and which fails to be grasped and conveyed by thought. This bottom layer of
objectivity is precisely suffering that cannot find rational/conceptual expres-
sion. Adorno explains this in the following way:
Suffering remains foreign to knowledge; though knowledge can subordi-

nate it conceptually and provide means for its amelioration, knowledge
can scarcely express it through its own means of experience without
itself becoming irrational. Suffering conceptualized remains mute and
inconsequential, as is obvious in post-Hitler Germany.23
18 ND, 202/202ff.
19 ND, 203/203.
20 Ibid., 20304/20304.
21 AT, xiiii.
22 Ibid., 18/35.
23 Ibid., 18/356.
On the contrary, according to Adorno, artespecially in its modernist form

is able to give expression to the horror of recent historical events and the
suffering and lacerations they generated. This comes to be realised in arts per-
ceived irrationality and negativity, which is more true to reality than any realist
representation of it. To put it in Adornos own words:
The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radi-
cally darkened art. What the enemies of modern art, with a better instinct
than its anxious apologists, call its negativity is the epitome of what
established culture has repressed and that toward which art is drawn. In
its pleasure in the repressed, art at the same time takes into itself the
disaster, the principle of repression, rather than merely protesting hope-
lessly against it. That art enunciates the disaster by identifying with it
anticipates its enervation; this, not any photograph of the disaster or false
happiness, defines the attitude of authentic contemporary art to a radi-
cally darkened objectivity; the sweetness of any other gives itself the lie.24
As is emphasised in this passage, what makes art especially apt to grasp and
communicate the suffering inflicted upon mankind by history and societal
organisation is precisely its mimetic quality, that is, its capacity to identify with
the disaster. Therefore, arts mimetic impulse becomes for Adorno central to
the denunciation of the domination and violence that social totality exercises
on individuals. That is to say, art uncovers what his hidden and repressed. This
becomes apparent in arts involvement with the ugly, in so far as in the ugly,
art must denounce the world that creates and reproduces the ugly in its own
image.25 For Adorno, then, the rejection encountered by the modernist aes-
thetic of the ugly is expression not only of the will to preserve the status quo,
but also, and even more dangerously, of a denial and repression of all suffering
of which the ugly is perceived to be an expression.26 It is especially telling, in
Adornos view, that such condemnation of ugly art as degenerate came pre-
cisely from Nazi ideology, which more than ever before used formal beauty to
conceal its own horrors. As Adorno writes: Hitlers empire put this theorem to
the test, as it put the whole of bourgeois ideology to the test: The more torture
24 Ibid., 19/36.
25 Ibid., 489/79.
26 Ibid., 49/79. The aesthetic condemnation of the ugly is dependent on the inclination, veri-
fied by social psychology, to equate, justly, the ugly with the expression of suffering and,
by projecting it, to despise it.
196 Tonon
went on in the basement, the more insistently they made sure that the roof
rested on columns.27
It is precisely this rejection of the ugly as degenerate on the part of an inhu-
man ideology such as Nazism that, via negativa, bears witness to arts connec-
tion with morality: Censoring the ugly amounts to suppressing the reality of
human suffering while inflicting the most brutal form of suffering on mankind.
On the contrary, in Adornos view, it is precisely when art is charged as degen-
erate that the moral is making its way into the aesthetic, not dissimilarly from
its function in Kants sublime.28 The ugly fulfills a moral function in facing us
with the reality of thwarted and mutilated life. That is to say, by presenting
suffering as an intolerable offence perpetrated on mankind, it stops us from
becoming desensitised to it.
Having said this, one should refrain from simply attributing to art an ethical
function. This would make it into didactical/edifying art, thus denying it its
autonomy and its aesthetic truth. Because of this, art always remains external
to suffering in so far as it is not directly involved with its deliverance, but only
with its representation.29 According to Adorno, arts aporia consists precisely
in its giving expression to repressed and negated suffering while at the same
time neutralising its pressing reality by virtue of its aesthetic distance.30 Thus,
what we are talking about is not the straightforward ethical function of the
aesthetic, but rather a kinship, a proximity, between aesthetics and ethics. The
two meet in their engagement with the reality of suffering and in acknowledg-
ing the necessity to lend a voice to it.
The need to lend a voice to suffering is made for Adorno even more press-
ing by the historical events of World War II and the barbarism of Nazi crimes.
In Negative Dialectics, Adorno argues that the physical suffering of the muti-
lated and violated body is precisely what demands an ethical reaction on our
part and forces us to rethink our understanding of morality. Hence, Adorno
writes: A new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler upon unfree
mankind: to arrange their thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not
repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.31 Adorno shows the deep
entwinement of suffering and morality by adding: The new imperative gives
27 Ibid., 49/80.
28 Ibid., 49/79. In this respect, Adorno writes: The infiltration of the aesthetic by the
moralas for example Kant sought external to artworks in the sublimeis defamed by
cultural apologists as degenerate.
29 AT, 39/645.
30 Ibid.
31 ND, 365/358.
us a bodily sensation of the moral addendumbodily, because it is now the

practical abhorrence of the unbearable physical agony to which individu-
als are exposed.32 Hence, Adorno claims that a morality able to respond to
recent historical events and present social conditions can only emerge out of
the materialism of physical pain and suffering. Aesthetics, both as the Greek
aisthesisthe physical perception of sufferingbut also as artthe memory
of accumulated suffering33takes on a central role for the development of a
new ethics.
Conclusion
Kierkegaard answered the Romantic question of how it is possible that the

ethical is at the same time beautiful and pleasurable by reclaiming the beauty
of the first love within the institution of marriage. In such a way, the aesthetic
is legitimated only from an ethical point of view. Hence, in his dialectics of the
spheres, aesthetics is subordinated to ethics and the religious.
In his critical reading of the Danish philosopher, Adorno reverses
Kierkegaards dialectics of the spheres by attributing to Kierkegaards aesthetic
realm the capacity to grasp objective reality and to take an ethical stance in
relation to it. That is to say, according to Adorno it is precisely in the certain
images and motives of his aesthetic writings that Kierkegaard truly grasps
the reification of objectivity. In addition, it is still in the aesthetic that we can
hear the ethical call to amend or ameliorate the wrong reality. This happens
negatively, in the disappointed hope of melancholy, yet nonetheless defies any
capitulation or resignation to the status quo, for the true desire of melancholy
is nourished on the idea of an eternal happiness without sacrifice.34
I have argued that the priority of the aesthetic with regard to its rela-
tion to doing justice to the object is carried out in Adornos work. While in
Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic aesthetic melancholy has a pivotal
role in shedding light on objectivity and its need of redemption, Adornos
later work takes a materialistic turn and grants such a function to physical
suffering. I have argued that aesthetics is closely connected to the ethical
injunction of putting an end to suffering. In Negative Dialectics, such an imper-
ative emerges first in relation to the bodily perception (aisthesis) of physical
pain as the practical abhorrence of the unbearable physical agony to which
32 Ibid.
33 AT, 261/387.
34 K, 126/180.
198 Tonon
individuals are exposed.35 In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno fully develops the con-
nection between the aesthetic and the ethical by taking art to be the memory
of accumulated suffering36 and by emphasising the ethical role of the ugly in
presenting us with brutality and the intolerability of suffering. At this juncture,
according to Adorno, morality enters into aesthetics; yet, one should also keep
in mind that the two do not overlap. For this reason, I have argued that the rela-
tion between aesthetics and ethics should be understood in terms of kinship
and not in terms of strict subordination.
In my reading, Adorno has been able to convincingly develop the connection
between aesthetics and ethics. Can we then speak, reversing the Kierkegaardian
expression, of an ethical validity of aesthetics? I maintain that in placing the
accent on the somatic moment of suffering, aesthetics has achieved an ethical
priority in so far as it enables or makes possible our ethical reaction to it and
the development of the only possible ethics: a materialistic one. Yet in doing
so, Adorno has significantly weakenedif not altogether eradicatedthe
connection between the ethical and the beautiful and the pleasurable, which
had first defined the Romantic and then the Kierkegaardian inquiry into the
possibility of a marriage between aesthetics and ethics.
References
Adorno, Theodor. Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des sthetischen. In Gesammelte Schriften.

Vol. 2. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1962.
. sthetische Theorie. In Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 7. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970.
. Negative Dialektik. In Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 6. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970.
. Negative Dialectics. Edited and Translated by E.B. Ashton. London and New
York: Continuum, 1973.
. Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. Edited and translated by Robert
Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
. Aesthetic Theory. Edited and translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and
New York: Continuum, 1997.
Kierkegaard, Sren. Either/Or. Part II. Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
. EntenEller. Anden del. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 3. Edited by Niels
Jrgen Cappelrn et al., Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997.
35 ND, 365/358.
36 AT, 261/387.
. Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift. In Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Vol. 7.

Edited by Niels Jrgen Cappelrn et al., Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 2002.
. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Vol. 1. Edited and translated by Alistair
Hannay. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Lukcs, Gyrgy. Sren Kierkegaard s Regine Olsen. Nyugat 6 (1910): 37887.
. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1971.
. Sren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen. In The Lukcs Reader. Edited by
A. Kadarkay. 1125. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
Part 3
Post-Hegelian Thinkers on Art and Aesthetics

CHAPTER 11
The Aesthetic Act as Interface between Theory

and Praxis
If the aesthetics must be married to ethics, and if the idea of aesthetics as

an autonomous science has lost its credibility, it is not only for reasons inher-
ent to its own history, but also for reasons that arise when we deeply question
our conception of science. In short, the latter no longer seems to us to have a
monopoly on the interpretation of nature, nor is it the temple of validity and
truth in omni tempore, in omni loco, ab omnibus established by men with clean
hands, endorsed by noble academies, and speaking in the name of things.1
Our focus has shifted from purely theoretical questions to those concerning
the relationship between what is said and what is done: Domains are no longer
unconditionally extraterritorial, but increasingly intertwined. There is no such
thing as complete objectivity; one must, instead, take into account different
types of experiences. The scientist no longer lives in absolute solitude; he is
involved in civil society. Networks play their role alongside systems. Allowing
non-science to enter into the domain of science is as indispensable as allow-
ing science to develop according to its own methods. Theoreticians, no doubt,
belong to a different group than practitioners, but there is no impassable gulf
between them; if we must maintain lines of demarcation, they can only be pro-
visional, since, as the sociology of science and scientific studies have shown,
we, de facto, never stop crossing the theoretically air-tight divisions that sepa-
rate the exact sciences, strategies of power, and language games. Todays prob-
lem is also how to take into account the hybrid nature of objects and, above
all, ourselves, since we are all sages, administrators, and garrulous artists (to
different degrees).
* Translated from the French by Erica Harris.

** To Paul Cruysberghs in friendship and admiration.
1 See, in particular, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985); Michel Serres, La Traduction (Herms III) (Paris: ditions
de Minuit, 1974); Bruno Latour, Nous navons jamais t modernes (Paris: La Dcouverte, 1991);
and Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitiques, Tome I: La Guerre des sciences (Paris: La Dcouverte,
1996).

204 Saint Girons
For a long time, aesthetics has been caught not only between ontology and
anthropology, but also between ontology and history, philosophy, art, sociol-
ogy, and criticism. Sometimes it focuses on natural wonders and artistic works,
and at others it is interested in the structure of the human subject in so far
as he can be taught, inspired, or moved by meditation on the sensible and
in so far as he shows himself capable of acting in many different ways. The
history of art has the benefit of analysing works in context; the philosophy of
art restores large-scale coherence; art criticism deeply emphasises individual
masterpieces; and the sociology of art draws attention to the different types
of social ties created around privileged images. From the outset, these dis-
ciplines are all complementary, and one feels the need to alternate between
their corresponding fields in order to further ones understanding of aesthetic
power and ability.2
In principle, aesthetic objects are not simple, self-sufficient, or self-created,
nor do they have a specific use. They are, instead, objects at risk, as Bruno
Latour has it.3 They are not bald, they are hairy: Their contours are so hazy
that they can be grasped in several different ways. We may be able to iden-
tify their author with certainty, but it is impossible to measure their effect in
advance, and, finally, everyone paradoxically expects the unexpected impact
that they will not fail to have.4 The unexpected is, paradoxically, both the sign
of the real and of the sublime.
Now, one will certainly argue that the market of art, home decoration, and
leisure determineseven if only approximatelythe value of works of art,
furniture, and landscapes. There is no doubt that the market shapes our judge-
ments; but we still have a reciprocal effect on it, albeit a small one. And, even
if our concrete reappraisals of works of art only have a very loose connection
with the financial world, they can still play a fundamental role in our personal
as well as in our social well-being.
I would like to draw attention to the existence of a genuine aesthetic work-
ing that implies a more or less conscious decision on the part of the subject
to expose himself to alterity and to then deepen and rework it: a decision, in
short, on the basis of which one experiments. The aesthetic act that grounds
this working is a genuine agent of civilisation: It responds to the provocation of
the world, maintains otherness, yokes the signifier to the real, and establishes
or solidifies a substantial connection between people. In this fourfold sense, it
possesses a properly ethical function.
2 See Baldine Saint Girons, Le pouvoir esthtique (Houilles: Manucius, 2009).

3 Bruno Latour, Politiques de la nature (Paris: La Dcouverte, 1999), 40ff.
4 Ibid.
The Aesthetic Act as Interface between Theory and Praxis 205
The aesthetic act becomes the condition sine qua non of aesthetics and,
more specifically, of a married aesthetics: of an aesthetics after aesthetics,
whose aims have been displaced, since they are less concerned with rigor-
ous and allegedly universal formulae than they are with the will to concretely
establish the efficiency of aesthetic discourse and to reveal the way it emerges
and what it is grounded in. The act thus becomes the ultimate touchstone of
aesthetics: It removes all excess from its simple speculation and ensures its
social, aesthetico-moral, or aesth-ethic import.5
We will begin by investigating the enigma of the act and the decision that
grounds it in order to make our way, step by step, to the thesis that I would like
to defend and that views the act as that which anchors theory in praxis and
yokes the signifier to the real. The act is not simply satisfied with producing
signifiers: It manifests in concreto the signifiers ability to make the real emerge,
to reshape it, or to simply enlarge it.
1 The Enigma of the Act and the Decision that Grounds It
What is an act? It is not a simple action, it is a sequence of actions; it is not

a simple movement, it is movement taken as a principle. The act institutes a
beginning and thus presupposes deliberation, decision, and a reorganisation
of the worldalbeit at more or less conscious levels. It is the intentional oper-
ation of the human brain that is not satisfied with reacting to a situation, but
instead engenders a hypothesis, simulates a situation, uses tools, and antici-
pates effects. As Alain Berthoz writes:
The act is the intention to interact with the world or with oneself as a part
of the world. The act is always upheld by an intention. It is thereby what
organizes perception and the perceptual world for organizing perception
and the perceptual world.6
Alain Berthozs goal is to show how perception is an act, how emotion, far
from paralysing it, is a tool that prepares it, and how wagering, simulation, and
competition are essential to the functioning of the brain. As such, he orients
himself toward a biological theory of decision-making that is not our concern
here, but that will be very useful for guarding against the risks of exaggerated
5 See Baldine Saint Girons, Lacte esthtique (Paris: Klincksieck, 2008).

6 Alain Berthoz, La Dcision (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2003), 9.
206 Saint Girons
intellectualism by reminding us how difficult it is for consciousness to access

certain fundamental processes.
The aesthetic act has an enigmatic and paradoxical character: enigmatic
because its actualisation seems to go hand in hand with an element of fail-
ure, and paradoxical because what characterises the analytic technique as an
aesthetic technique is a certain laisser-faire,7 a calculated receptivity, a sus-
pension of all willing in any other than the abstract or general sense. The act
consists in a suspension of action; the decision that appears is both consider-
able, in view of its weight, and minimal, in view of its apparent content.
The act does not only come into the world in its successful form: It appears
in its failed form and thus imposes itself in a particularly pressing manner. As
experience teaches us all too often, things do not go as planned; the advantage
of failure, however, is to make us aware of a dynamic whose power we would
otherwise overlook. The experience of the ugly opens the way for aesthetic
consciousness and constitutes its punctum saliens because it is more a mat-
ter of expelling something from the world than it is recognising its presence.
The sensible is thus deprived of its expressive power; it is confronted with
the impossibility, not only of attracting and seducing, but also of signifying
thought, desire, or will.8 Encountering the obstacle is a brutal wake-up call,
whether it be in the form of a scandal that we come across or a simple collapse
of what seemed to be obvious. The question of the other side of experience
thus shows up as more decisive than the question of the simple movement
from one experience to another. Accumulating experiences is not worth much:
We must start again from scratch.
The act is, however, never simply given to consciousness, especially not as
failed: It appears as intrinsically paradoxical and difficult to identify. A subtle
mix of activity and passivity, the aesthetic act does not even enter into the
mercantile arena that is interested in more visible or materially oriented psy-
chic products; it only reveals its highly moral character if we observe it very
attentively:
An act is linked to the way that the beginning is determined and, more
precisely, to when one needs to make one precisely because there is none.9
7 Jacques Lacan, Lacte psychanalytique: Sminaire 19671968 (Paris: ditions Schamans, 1982),
Lecture of November 29, 1967. Available at: http://espace.freud.pagesperso-orange.fr/pens
bete.htm.
8 See Baldine Saint Girons, Fiat lux: Une philosophie du sublime (Paris: Vrin, 1995), especially
Chapter 2: Risques de la laideur.
9 Jacques Lacan, Lacte psychanalytique, Lecture of January 10, 1968.
The act therefore constitutes the meeting point, the juncture, that must always
be rethought between theory and praxis; it is what anchors theory and what
gives praxis its efficiency and its limited, contained character at the very
place where it seems to elude us the most. But its highly problematic character
remains: It is a foundation without a foundation: It justifies a discipline and
reveals its cultural importance, but only succeeds if we understand the mess
on the basis of which it intrudes on experience.
I refer the reader to my book Lacte esthtique10 for a concrete analysis of
these mechanisms. The aesthetic actor is inspired, in short, by relating to the
world through different artistic practices: He poeticises the world and makes
it musical; he gardens it or makes it into a landscape; he paints or sculpts it; he
makes it into architecture or choreography. These metaphors are not in vain;
they name rigorous operations that are linked to very precise problems and
perspectives.
But since my goal is to show that the aesthetic act constitutes the core of
aesthetics, I would like to insist on its three moments and come back to an
example: the experience of the the evenings peace sul lungomare in Syracuse.
How is a signifier produced in the real, and why are we led to privilege a shared
rather than a solitary experience under such an appellation? Ought we to speak
of simple representation or of real knowledge, and to what degree is going
beyond simple empathy made possible thanks to what I call aesthetic work-
ing or aesthetic action?
2 The Paradox of the Aesthetic Act and Its Three Moments
Let us say that the aesthetic act consists in letting things resonate and giving
presence to all its opportunities by accepting that it can triumph, at least for
some time, over predetermined meanings. It is allowing signifiers to emerge
and travel at their own pace according to their materiality and their own ways.
Looking, or more precisely, feeling is transformed into a challenge that only
meticulous and disinterested working can meet in specific forms of sublima-
tion. But this working is of a special kind thanks to the combination of let-
ting go and investment that it demands; drifting attention is accompanied by
a high degree of libidinal sublimation. If this working evokes the psychoana-
lytic act,11 it differs importantly from the latter: The doubling of the aesthetic
actor is internal.
10 See above, n. 5.
11 Jacques Lacan, Le sminaire, Livre VIII: Le transfert, (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 2001), 24.
208 Saint Girons
Should the analytic act be attributed to the analyst or to the analysand,

either way it presupposes a sharing of tasks: The silence of the one and the
respect of the rules on the part of the other are the transcendental conditions
for the unconscious to emerge under the effects of transference. In the aes-
thetic act, on the contrary, I can be alone, even though this is not necessary, as
we will see in a moment: All kinds of signifiers emerge, and I try to understand
how they are organised and what they produce by suspending my judgement.
I am neither in the position of the analysand, giving himself over to the ideas
that cross his mind without ever omitting anythingnot even what seems to
him to be the most strange and incomprehensiblenor am I in the position of
the analyst, who, above all else, allows the others words to resonate.
Let us then try to isolate the three moments of the aesthetic act: exposing
oneself to the Other in an ascetic effort to constitute oneself as a sensible sur-
face; being inspired by a current or a kind of energy under the influence of
transference and according to well-determined procedures; and extracting
elected signifiers, discovering their imaginary and symbolic charge, the birth
of a need to bear witness, and the ultimate move toward an artistic act.
3 From the Provocation of the World to the Subjects

Self-Constitution as a Sensible Surface
The world is my provocation, writes Gaston Bachelard.12 It provokes the

whole of my thinking, willing, and feeling being. That is why the aesthetic act
cannot be reduced to a particular species of cognitive or voluntary activity:
It does not only allow me to accumulate objective knowledge or situate my
action within it; it personally implicates me. I can consent to allow myself to
be seized and affected by it, to allow it to act and penetrate the very deepest
layers of my being. By refusing to give in to the excitement of understanding
or acting, I can use myself as an Other and combine this othering with self-
observation. In this way, a play of forces comes about in which the Other, to
whom I give priority, begins to reflect and thinks himself through the subject.
But this subject is not a transparent mirror that erases the traces of what it has
reflected whenever it offers itself to new objects: It is a memory mirror at one
with the history that constitutes it, a parltre in Lacans terms, which is to say
an active unconscious that only reflects being by reinventing it.
Let us, then, try to understand the more or less implicit or explicit decision
that constitutes the aesthetic act. Impressed by the claims of the Surrealists, I
12 Gaston Bachelard, Leau et les rves (Paris: Jos Corti, 1942), 181.
first thought that the latter was considering appearances only on the basis of
vision and the emotion that accompanies it by trying to avoid any interference
from utilitarian, religious, or scientific considerations:
SURREALISM, noun. Pure psychic automatism through which one

attempts to explain, either verbally, in writing, or in another manner,
the way that thought and the real function. The reign of thought, free
of all control exerted by reason and independent of all ethical or moral
considerations.13
The aesthetic act therefore corresponds to psychic automatism as Andr

Breton defines it. Now, the problem is to know whether the constitution of a
tabula rasa (in the original Lockean sense) is possible or even desirable. I can
certainly try, in a labour of discipline and abstraction, to stop projecting what
I know or what I want on the way that the world appears. Nevertheless, we still
do not know how to distinguish the different human faculties in an equally
strict manner, nor can we eliminate the motivations inherent to the imagina-
tive or sensible approach.
Before finding one in Andr Breton, I already found a possible version of the
aesthetic act in Kant: Kant essentially demands pure vision, one that is only
vision and that puts the subject in touch with the infinite that surrounds it:
If then we call the sight of the starry heaven sublime, we must not place
at the basis of our judgement concepts of worlds inhabited by rational
beings, and regard the bright points, with which we see the space above
us filled, as their suns moving in circles purposively fixed with reference
to them; but we must regard it, just as we see it, as a distant, all-embrac-
ing vault.14
The formula is magnificent: the disruptive objectwhose presentation alone

counts, rather than its existence, which does not interest mecorresponds to
the dispossession of the aesthetic subject, who has to forget both his knowl-
edge and his pleasure. Aesthetic value is neither instructive nor enjoyable;
it pleases purely and simply, and it stimulates the vital function: The subject
feels himself through being affected by representation.15
13 Andr Breton, Manifeste du surralisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 37.

14 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement,29.
15 Ibid.,1.
210 Saint Girons
The true difficulty, however, is related to the fact that it is not enough to
open ones eyes in order to see. We hardly perceive an object at all, writes
Merleau-Ponty.16 I see nothing. Neurophysiology teaches that the brain never
stops simulating and emulating the world in order to perceive it. I may want
to transform myself into a tabula rasa; I will never succeed. The aesthetic act
must be thought of according to its contradictory structure, that is to say, both
as possible and impossible for the subject who commands himself to do it.
We must put a real theory of aesthetic spontaneity into action that organises
a given that it knows that it has, in part, fabricated and that, for the rest, is
brought about by the world.
The aesthetic actor most resembles the sthetische Zuschauer described
by Friedrich Nietzsche at the end of The Birth of Tragedy.17 It took me some
time to realise it because this syntagm was translated in French as artist-
spectator (spectateur artiste) or artist-listener (auditeur artiste) in 1964 and
1977. Zuschauer is quite difficult to translate: Spectator is correct, but is not
really adequate; the translation that I propose by using witness or actor is
somewhat forced, but it accounts for the active orientation of the gaze. But,
in order to avoid the redundancy of aesthetic spectator, translators have ren-
dered sthetisch as artist. Such a confusion of the aesthetic with the artist
seems quite unfortunate because it purely and simply erases the essential idea
of a truly aesthetic actor. The spectators job, if we wish to keep this word, is
aesthetic working in the full sense of the term.
4 Effervescence: Cognition, Inspiration, Seduction
I characterise the second moment of the aesthetic act as effervescence in

order to indicate the common denominator between the effects it produces.
These are, however, both heterogeneous and unstable: I tried to relate them to
three radically different types of aesthetic ability, even though they sometimes
converge and, most importantly, succeed one another in something like a trail.
Sometimes, a happy and concentrated harmony enthrals us in prolonged and
increasing admiration by constantly finding new support; at others, the force
of thought takes hold of us and inspires us, instituting new demands and seem-
ing to almost make geniuses of us; and in yet other moments, the sweetness of
its attributes seduces us and joins us to one another: It incites us to appropri-
ate them and awakens our love. In each of these cases, some of the causes
16 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2013), 293.

17 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy,22.
of our suffering seem to fade into the background: Believing in the beautiful
means forgetting deformity for a while; believing in the sublime means being
convinced that mediocrity can withdraw; and believing in grace, finally, means
believing that violence does not ultimately triumph.
Aesthetic inspiration has many forms: cognitive with respect to beauty, per-
suasive with respect to grace; it acquires its greatest heuristic intensity in the
sublime. In this way, Longinus compares the way that the sublime inspires us
to the way that Apollos breath vibrates throughout the body of the Oracle of
Delphi:
For many are carried away by the inspiration of another, just as the story
runs that the Pythian priestess on approaching the tripod where there
is, they say, a rift in the earth, exhaling divine vapour, thereby becomes
impregnated with the divine power and is at once inspired to utter ora-
cles; so, too, from the natural genius of those old writers there flows into
the hearts of their admirers as it were an emanation from those holy
mouths. Inspired by this, even those who are not easily moved to proph-
ecy share the enthusiasm of these others grandeur.18
And Edmond Burke, who is highly attuned to the physiological action of the
sublime, or to what Honor de Balzac calls the contagion of the sublime,19
also evokes the transmission of a fire already kindled in another.20 Whether
inspiration be violent, as in the sublime, or softer and more resistible, as in the
beautiful and the graceful, the important thing is to understand the astonish-
ing way that breath and energy are transferred.
The simplest illustration of this immediate kind of action is undoubtedly
in music: Since music is not at my disposition in the same way as a painting
might seem to be, it overtakes my body and places me under its control. There
is neither an exterior nor an interior world in music: The opposition between
the I and the not-I seems to be abolished. I am nothing but a tympanum
that records and transmits vibrations.
18 Longinus, On the Sublime, ed. and trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe (Loeb Classical Library)
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), XIII, 2.
19 De mme que le mal, le sublime a sa contagion. [Honor de Balzac, Lenvers de lhistoire
contemporaine, Tome V: La Comdie humaine (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1966), 347].
20 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), V, 7.
212 Saint Girons
5 From the Desire to Bear Witness to the Artistic Act
To the discipline of the aesthetic act, and to the effervescence which follows,
succeed the desire to bear witness, to invent, or to create. The third moment
allows us to better understand the first ones: The Other takes possession of
me according to my ability to evade myself and transforms me into a vibrating
membrane. But this situation cannot last and, moreover, never achieves the
purity it has in my description. On the one hand, the desire to witness, the
need for interpretationrelating things to all possible knowledge, imagining,
and conscious projectionmakes me shift from pure infusion, as theologians
call it, to an effusion that is, if not actual, at least virtual. On the other hand, I
am not able to avoid, at one time or another, feeling the paradoxical character
of my act: Do I not also constitute the Other to whom I am submitted? If feel-
ing comes from art, it is because there is no such thing as sensation without
invention, without fiction. But it does not matter whether nature is an illusion,
Czanne said: What falls under nature? Maybe nothing; maybe everything.21
We are so linked to alterity that the task of distinguishing between what comes
from it and what comes from us loses its meaning. The problem is rather to
tighten connections in an ongoing work of exposition and composition.
Allow me to reiterate. In the first moment, I conceive of the landscape or
the work as a given that ought to be preserved: I decide to enter into its play of
forces and to submit myself to its visibility as well as its invisibility. But I dis-
cover that the links between submission and the creation of a fiction are fixed.
What I call the real is the object invented in a language whose operation I
cannot suspend.
If the third moment reveals the truth of the first two, these latter are nev-
ertheless real anchoring points for all aesthetics worthy of the name. There is
a moment when works are my master and literally take my breath away, and
there is a second moment when I can invoke them as illustrations without ever
losing sight of the fact that they exceed the use that I make of them.
6 Aesthetic Act and Artistic Act
To become an artist or a poet, desire is not enough. Why does the famous presi-
dent Daniel Paul Schreber not deserve the name of poet? Why do his Memoirs
interest us, but do not act as a work of art? Even before Nelson Goodmans
21 P.M. Doran, Conversations avec Czanne (Paris: Macula, 1978), 109. (My translation).
analytical philosophy, Jacques Lacan does not ask What is poetry? He asks:
When is there poetry?:
There is poetry every time a writing introduces us to a world other than

ours andgiving us the presence of a being, of a certain fundamental
relationshipmakes it become [...] ours [...] the poetry is the creation
of a subject assuming a new order of symbolic relation with the world.22
Lacan thus introduces a philosophical concept that seems to me to be

extremely fertile and whose abandonment is regrettable: the concept of the
signifier in the real that he opposes both to hallucination and to simple signs.
Schreber does not believe in the reality of his hallucinationhe knows what
psychiatrists mean by hallucinationbut that does not mean that he stops
having them. It is not reality that is at stake here; it is certainty. The witness
can attest to this certainty but cannot share it. How, then, can we get at reality;
how is it possible to encounter the phenomenon of world? It must be the case
that the signifier is produced in the real; Lacan gives the example of the the
evenings peace, remarking that this is a given, a certain way of taking a time
of night, to which we can be open or closed.23
Now, if Lacan evoked, in a particularly suggestive manner, the way that the
signifier is tethered to the real, he did not study its properly aesthetic condi-
tions. How and why is it that something that could have remained a simple
syntagmthe evenings peacetakes on meaning and consistency? Why
does it become the emblem of an experience that is shared and shareable in
an indissolubly theoretical and practical aesthetic that we evoke at will?
7 The Evenings Peace
I kept what Lacan said in the back of my mind, but it took me a long time to
really verify it. I finally did so during a remarkable experience that I had in the
company of two Sicilian friends: an event that took place at a particular date
and time that I will never again be able to repeat with the same intensity. I will
describe it briefly now, by way of conclusion, since I think it is of general impor-
tance. It was April 29, 2005, in Syracuse at the end of an intense day that began
with a conference in Noto on the sublime in antiquity that was followed, in the
22 Jacques Lacan, Le sminaire. Livre III: Les psychoses, 19551956 (Paris: ditions du Seuil,
1981), 91. (My translation).
23 Ibid., 157.
214 Saint Girons
afternoon, by a visit to the Greek theatre and the Latomia. We had just seen
the Ortygia Cathedral and its vestiges from the Temple of Athena: enormous
Doric columns whose fluted surfaces emerge from both sides of the outer walls
in which they are imprisoned. Sometimes, only a beautifully round head or the
base of a column would peek out from the stone. I was thinking of the story of
a young Albanian who was sacrificed during the construction of a bridge and
buried alive: Her breasts survived for a long time and continued to produce
milk for her child, the milk of death, as Marguerite Yourcenar writes.24 The
marble rounds that emerged from the walls and encircled us actually seemed
to be the living flesh of antiquity, its face, its breasts, its kidneys, whose tepidity
enveloped and penetrated us.
We paused for a long time near the Fountain of Arethusa, reminded of the
Peloponnesian nymph, who, having refused the love of her pursuer, Alpheus,
ran all the way to Ortygia and was transformed into a living source of water.
Alpheus crossed the Ionian Sea to join her and transformed himself into a river
so that he could mix his waters with those of his beloved.
We continued sul lungomare, exhausted and happy. We were less directly
happy, perhaps, than we were attuned to an unexpected musical harmony that
welled up between the world and us: Our feelings and our thoughts seemed to
achieve unison, despite our differing destinies. The evenings peace, I mut-
tered, as if the words had been whispered to me. A single sweet emotion seized
us. It seemed impossible not to recognise it: It enveloped and absorbed us; it
wove a double thread between us, both substantial and musical.
Did it owe its power primarily to a particular state of the world or to the
sound of words? What roles should be attributed to worldly perception and its
formation? Silently and holding our breath, we believed that we heard the
miraculously calm respiration of the cosmos: Was it not the world that spoke
to us directly through the ephemeral equilibrium of dusk as the day gave way
to night? Did we not hear that voice in a quasi-internal mode, almost as if it
were a verbal hallucination?
Nevertheless, something new happened as we named the evenings peace:
the poetic power of the phenomenon of the world seemed to multiply. We
then felt the need to meditate on the music and meaning of words and to recall
poems.
Let us try to isolate the three moments of the aesthetic act on this occasion:
1) The provocation of the world and recognition: thats it! This is the eve-
nings peacean entity that is both objective and subjective.
24 Marguerite Yourcenar, Le lait de la mort, in Nouvelles orientales (Paris: Gallimard, 1963).

2) The effervescence that followed, linked to the acceptance of a current or

energy, but also to the will to raise doubt and verify that the assertion was
well-founded.
3) The birth of a need to bear witness and the production of linguistic acts,
and even philosophical and artistic acts, of different kinds.
The second and third moments were confused when they occurred, since,
from the outset, our aesthetic act appeared to be collective, and it incited each
of us individually to be its guarantors.
Let us quickly come back to the first two moments: A problematic being
appears precisely at dusk. It is neither day nor night: It is not so much a void
as it is a suspension. However, reacting to the provocation of the world and
naming this event the evenings peace is to suddenly multiply its poetic
force, its authentically creative power. Here, the subject constituting himself
as a surface of sensation is not enough; a signifier that came from elsewhere
takes form and reclaims its ties to a worldly phenomenon; it uses the subject to
declare its dominion over the real. Moreover, it reveals itself as a collaborating
cause of the capture that occurred.
Aesthetic power did not only belong to the magnitude of the sky that used
the depths of the sea to slowly dim its light; no, it was also something in the
syntagm the peace of evening that allowed us to think it.
Thus was born the need to reflect on the origin of the words (le soir, la
sera) and to recall the poems that brought their power its apex. We recited
the end of Virgils First Bucolic: maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae
(bigger still descending from the mountain shadows); Dantes verses in
chapter VIII of Purgatory (Era gia lora che volga il disio/ai navicanti); and
Hlderlins Abenphantasie (Wohin denn ich? Es leben die Sterblichen von
Lohn und Arbeit [...] Warum schlft denn/Nimmer nur mir in der Brust der
Stachel? ).25 Why do the figures of the explorer, the pilgrim, and the stranger
seem destined to make the evenings peace resonate with what is both given
and refused to them? And why is it possible to read the anticipation of eternal
rest, as does Ugo Foscolo: Perhaps you are so dear to me, O night, because you
are the image of the fatal rest?26
25 Dante Alighieri, Le Purgatoire, VIII, III, vv. 16, 76; Friedrich Hlderlin, Pomes (Gedichte),
ed. and trans. Genevive Bianquis (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1943): Abendphantasie, v. 9
(= 166).
26 Forse perche della fatal quiete/tu sei limmago a me si cara vieni/O sera. [Alla sera, in
Ugo Foscolo, Le poesie: Sonetti (Milan: Garzanti, 1974), 23].
216 Saint Girons
Why? It is because the evenings peace does not only say something about
the world; it interprets and allows it to emerge a second time as that which is
no longer ineffable and contingent, but as that which is thinkable and sayable
in its very enigmatic character. The aisthesis and the syntagm therefore joined
together, and both are intimately modified.
The sensible becomes autonomous and rearranges itself in such a way that
the event emerges in a new world, one that is freed of utilitarian constraints
and that borders on eternity. In a like manner, the subject uncouples itself from
its ego and its imaginary attachments; he becomes conscious of an intense
desire for presence in this withdrawal and experiences this presence as both
available and unattainable. Between feeling and formulation, event and poetic
construction, something emerges in the ephemeral union of a state of the
world and a signifier.
It is in similar moments, and thanks to the aesthetic act, that Nietzsches
statement can be understood: The world is only justified as an aesthetic phe-
nomenon. It is not justified as an empty appearance, a decoration without
importance; it is justified in so far as it is a phenomenon that is thought, both
constructed and encountered, that links humans to the world and to one other.
8 From a Self-Enclosed Aesthetics to Aesthetics in Act, to Historical

Aesthetics and to the Aesthetic Network
To conclude, I would like to put forth three theses concerning aesthetics. In

order to keep a rigorous status, aesthetics must satisfy three conditions: prove
the efficiency of its theories by applying them to concrete acts, take into
account the vicissitudes of different historical events, and develop across net-
works by activating multiple connections:
1) If the act is necessary, it is because I must interact with the world and
not simply content myself with representing it. The world is not only an
image or a collection of images: It exceeds boundaries and frames, it
encircles me, penetrates me; it will not let me go. It is a permanent vibra-
tionthe vibration of the visible and the hidden, the heard and the
unheard, of all the sensesit is a principle of transformation. In the aes-
thetic act, therefore, I want myself to be double, for I delve into the world
and pull myself out of it: as systole and diastole, as a witness and an
experimenter. I have to count on surprise, on the worlds provocation.
Trauma can always happenit can either be morbid or, on the contrary,
positive, stimulating, heuristic. Faced with so many risks, the aesthetic
act succeeds when it, here and now, ties down the abstract and general
world of simple representation in the fiery and singular world of life.
2) Contrary to what happens in the physical sciences, whose reversals of
form might seem to be of only mediocre interest, the history of aesthetics
is not a simple matter of curiosity, but is rather the very core of aesthet-
ics. Aesthetics is the history of aesthetics. To understand it, let us think
about the problems that the so-called scientific aestheticsthe aesthet-
ics of modernityencounters as it attempts to import elsewhere its
own values.
3) Now, it is impossible to separate the destiny of aesthetics and that of the
other sciences that increasingly develop into networks rather than only
within the limits of a particular field or domain. Aesthetic actors have
complex positions that are analogous to railway crossings: They can con-
nect or not; they can bring about a reunion; they can create pluriverses
or multiverses.27 In short, they can create simultaneity.
Computers are not required for this kind of activity. Getting a taste of the
evenings peace, verifying ones existence, already presupposes the meeting
of many different lines of sensation, activity, knowledge, and desire. This is
what makes the act emerge in such surprising evidence that we might even use
the term simplexity to refer to ita concept dubbed by Alain Berthoz28 to
convey how the extreme complexity of origin is compatible with the simplifi-
cation of actualisation.
Conceived of as the joining of theory and praxis, as the tethering of sig-
nifiers to the real, aesthetics plays a central role in questioning an intimidat-
ing and fairly rough conception of science that has more or less prevailed in
the modern age. Scientific discourse is doubtless not an impervious, purely
bureaucratic form of knowledge, an all-knowing that erases the subject of
speech and forgets the circumstances that led to its birth. Cartesian science,
which was likely caricatured, is succeeded by another moment: a moment
that is both artistic-aesthetic and aesth-ethic. We, therefore, exist in a time
after celibate aesthetics as it was historically understood: The aesthetics that
27 Visible nature is all plasticity and indifferencea moral multiverse, as one might call
it, and not a moral universe. [William James, Is Life Worth Living? in On a Certain
Blindness in Human Beings (Penguins Great Ideas 75) (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 46.
See also Aurlien Barrau, Quelques lments de physique et de philosophie des mul-
tiverse, http://lpsc.in2p3.fr/barrau/aurelien/multivers_lpsc.pdf; and Elie During, Faux
raccords (Arles: Actes Sud, 2010).
28 Alain Berthoz, La simplexit (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2009).
218 Saint Girons
we favour is a discipline with many ramifications, a discipline that is mar-

ried and that goes even so far as to risk the loss of its name in order to gain
relevance and efficiency.
References
Alighieri, Dante. La divine comdie: Le purgatoire. Translated by Jacqueline Risset.

Paris: Flammarion, 1988.
Bachelard, Gaston. Leau et les rves. Paris: Jos Corti, 1942.
Balzac, Honor de. Lenvers de lhistoire contemporaine. Tome V: La Comdie humaine.
Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1966.
Barrau, Aurlien. Quelques lments de physique et de philosophie des multiverse.
http://lpsc.in2p3.fr/barrau/aurelien/multivers_lpsc.pdf.
Berthoz, Alain. La Dcision. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2003.
. La simplexit. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2009.
Breton, Andr. Manifeste du surralisme. Paris: Gallimard, 1977.
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
the Beautiful. Edited by James T. Boulton. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958.
Doran, P.M. Conversations avec Czanne. Paris: Macula, 1978.
During, Elie. Faux raccords. Arles: Actes Sud, 2010.
Foscolo, Ugo. Alla sera, in Le poesie: Sonetti. 23. Milan: Garzanti, 1974.
Longinus. On the Sublime. Edited and translated by W. Hamilton Fyfe. Loeb Classical
Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Hlderlin, Friedrich. Pomes (Gedichte). Edited and translated by Genevive Bianquis.
Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1943.
James, William. Is Life Worth Living? In On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.
Penguins Great Ideas 75. 3365. London: Penguin Books, 1977.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Translated by J.H. Bernard. London: Macmillan,
1914.
Lacan, Jacques. Le sminaire. Livre III: Les psychoses, 19551956. Paris: ditions du Seuil,
1981.
. Lacte psychanalytique: Sminaire 19671968. Paris: ditions Schamans, 1982.
Lecture of November 29, 1967. Available at: http://espace.freud.pagesperso-orange
.fr/pensbete.htm.
. Le sminaire. Livre VIII: Le transfert. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 2001.
Latour, Bruno. Nous navons jamais t modernes. Paris: La Dcouverte, 1991.
. Politiques de la nature. Paris: La Dcouverte, 1999.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 2013.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Saint Girons, Baldine. Fiat lux: Une philosophie du sublime. Paris: Vrin, 1995.
. Lacte esthtique. Paris: Klincksieck, 2008.
. Le pouvoir esthtique. Houilles: Manucius, 2009.
Serres, Michel. La Traduction. Herms III. Paris: ditions de Minuit, 1974.
Shapin, Steven and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton: Princeton
Stengers, Isabelle. Cosmopolitiques. Tome I: La Guerre des sciences. Paris: La Dcouverte,
1996.
Yourcenar, Marguerite. Le lait de la mort In Nouvelles orientales. Paris: Gallimard,
1963.
CHAPTER 12
Leap into the Surface: Photography, Repetition,

and Recollection
Stphane Symons
1 Introduction
On November 27, 1960, the renowned French artist Yves Klein (19281962)
created one of his most famous works, Leap into the Void. It consists of a
photograph of a person who does, indeed, seem to leap into the void (sauter
dans le vide). The man who can be seen in the photo is the artist himself. This
essay starts from an analysis of this work in order to address, first, an element
that pertains to the medium of photography as such and, subsequently, the
difference between the concepts of recollection and repetition as they were
expounded by Sren Kierkegaard in his book Repetition. What will be at stake
throughout this essay is an understanding of how a genuine leap, that is, an
experience of something absolute, might not necessarily entail the experience
of a world that is wholly other to the one that surrounds us. On the contrary,
with the help of such post-Romantic thinkers as Walter Benjamin and Gilles
Deleuze, we will defend the viewpoint that an experience of the truly absolute
denotes a novel and irreducible experience of immanence and, moreover, that
such a concept of the absolute presupposes the idea that what is real exceeds
what is merely actual.
2 Leap into the Void
Right off the bat, we should note that Yves Kleins Leap into the Void is not
in fact a photograph of a leap into the void. The reason for this is not so much
that it depicts someone who is quite clearly diving into a street and not into a
void, as that it does not depict a leap at all, but merely a jump. The difference
between a leap and a jump is that the former denotes a jump into the unknown,
while Yves Kleins photograph cannot be regarded as having registered such a
movement because a trampoline was carefully placed on the sidewalk in order
to break the artists fall. This prop was erased from the final image. Therefore,
Leap into the Void is not a photograph of a leap; rather, it is a photomontage

Leap into the Surface 221
that itself needs to be considered as having brought about a leap. It is, to be

precise, nothing but the act of the photographer itself which has introduced
a moment of non-anticipatibility into the image, thereby charging it with a
dynamic that is not derived from the actual scene it had registered. This inter-
vention on the part of the photographer needs to be understood as other vis-
-vis the referent of the image, and it results in the awareness that Yves Kleins
work of art is not a mere reproduction of an event that took place in reality, but
the production of something genuinely new. As such, what is most important
about Kleins work is that it manages to interrupt the original event that is reg-
istered and thereby modify an ordinary jump from a wall into the grand and
almost heroic gesture of an artist leaping into a void.
To further understand this issue, it is worth briefly comparing this altered
picture to an unaltered one. In this manner, we will be able to show that,
regardless of what is usually maintained, the mere fact that a photographic
image is altered after the moment it was made does not take away from what
can be considered to be the most crucial aspect of the medium of photography
as such, that is, its indexical nature and the materiality of the link that ties the
image to its referent. The possibility that not all elements in a photographic
image can be said to have actually originated in the scene that was repro-
duced does not at all contradict the statement that, in every image that can be
called a photographic one, there needs to be something that nevertheless did.
Moreover, what seems to be most characteristic of photographic images, both
those that are altered after the moment of registration and those that were
not, is that they play on the striking and paradoxical conjunction of an experi-
ence of necessity with an experience of possibility: All photographic images do
inevitably maintain a link with the reality they depict (despite the fact that
some parts may have been seriously altered), but they also present us with the
irreducible possibility that something new, however banal it may be, might
only become visible in the image itself. Comparing Yves Kleins altered picture
(where the new element was only introduced into the image after the moment
of its initial production) with Henri Cartier-Bressons (unaltered) Behind the
Gare St. Lazare will help us understand that this experience of newness refers
to a potentiality that is essential to the medium of photography as suchand
not only to photographic images that were altered after the fact. That is to say,
all photographic images can play around with the viewers ultimate incapac-
ity to clearly differentiate between what has been and what is only becom-
ing real in and through the image itself: The medium of photography thrives
on this very undecidability and tension. For this reason, it can be maintained
that even those photographs that were not modified after the fact can create a
genuine leap and produce the truly new. This statement, for its part, will lead
222 Symons
us to the claim that photography can confront us with an irreducible layer of

possibility that is present within the very world that surrounds us.
3 The Optical Unconscious
On the surface, Cartier-Bressons image shows quite another kind of jump than
that of Yves Klein and therefore brings about quite another kind of leap, one
that does not seem to be quite as heroic. Cartier-Bressons iconic image, nev-
ertheless, brings out the singular capacity of the medium of photography to
bring time to a standstill and reveal what he has famously called le moment
dcisif, or, to put it in negative terms, photographys incapacity to render the
flow of time passing by. It is only from within this very incapacity, however, that
an important capacity of the photographic medium becomes visible: However
fleeting, ordinary, and banal the act of walking into a pool of water on a rainy
day in Paris may be, and however much the movement of the French man who
did so in the winter of 1932 was destined to go by unnoticed, these events have
nevertheless regained an existence and visibility that continues to live on until
the present day. For this reason, as Thierry de Duve famously argues, much of
the medium of photographys power seems to revolve around the paradoxical
duality of its event-like quality as a snapshot and its picture-like quality as an
exposure of time: Photographs can both freeze time and protract it simultane-
ously and thereby both interrupt and extend it.1 In the case of Cartier-Bressons
picture, this regained existence and visibility has transformed the fluidity of
the mans movement into the immobile scene of a body that is forever hov-
ering in the air: Though mobile in reality, when translated into a still image,
the mans gesture is perpetually suspended between the moment in which an
anonymous left leg was being moved up from the ground and the one in which
a right foot was then being put down again. In this manner, it seems almost
somewhat metaphoricallyas if the camera suddenly interrupted the natural
rhythm of someones breathing and forced that someone to keep the air inside
his lungs forever after. As such, this interruption of the temporal flow becomes
creative, increasing an internal tension and aliveness that charges the image
with a succinct dynamic of its own. Despite the difference with Yves Kleins
altered image, Cartier-Bressons photograph does share its curious blend of
indexicality and possibility and, like Leap into the Void, it produces some-
thing that needs to be considered as other or new vis--vis the actual scene
1 Thierry de Duve, Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox, October 5
(1978): 11325.
it captured: Unlike this scene in reality, the photographic image has brought
time to a standstill and, in fixing the moment in-between two steps, inter-
rupted a natural and continuous movement. In this manner, not at all unlike
Yves Kleins photograph, Cartier-Bressons image created an actual leap by pre-
venting the mans foot from coming down onto the ground.
Walter Benjamin has famously referred to this capacity of the camera to
reveal something that was hitherto invisible as its capacity to reveal the optical
unconscious:
Clearly, it is another nature which speaks to the camera as compared to

the eye. Other above all in the sense that a space informed by human
consciousness gives way to a space informed by the unconscious.
Whereas it is a commonplace that, for example, we have some idea what
is involved in the act of walking (if only in general terms), we have no
idea at all what happens during the split second when a person actually
takes a step. [...] This is where the camera comes into play, with all its
resources for swooping and rising, disrupting and isolating, stretching or
compressing a sequence, enlarging or reducing an object. It is through
the camera that we first discover the optical unconscious, just as we dis-
cover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis.2
This incapacity of the camera to render the homogeneous flow of time and, by
the same token, its capacity to interrupt the all too familiar reveal the hitherto
unperceived and introduce the optical unconscious; this tells us something
very interesting about the concept of the leap. One is automatically inclined to
associate a leap into the void with an escape from the limitations of tempo-
rality and spatiality or with a suspension of the relationship with what is given
in time and space. This is surely the way in which Yves Klein himself referred to
it. His aim was to create Zen-like images of absence or, in his own words, zones
of immaterial pictorial sensibility.3 This is also the way in which Kierkegaard
envisaged the leap of faith when he wrote that the knight of faith leaps 70,000
2 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (Third
Version), in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4, ed. H. Eiland and M.W. Jennings
(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 266.
3 See, for example, Yves Klein, Ritual for the Relinquishment of the Immaterial Pictorial
Sensitivity Zones (19571959), in Yves Klein 19281962: A Retrospective (Houston and New
York: Institute for the Arts, Rice University and Arts Publisher, 1982), 207.
224 Symons
fathoms deep.4 What is very interesting in the link between photography and
the leap, however, is that photography, in revealing what was hitherto present
but invisible, does not deliver us from the confinements of time and space, like
one would expect; rather, it brings us right to them: All photographic images,
like the one made by Henri Cartier-Bresson, come together with the potential
to discover the new in the very core of a concrete and singular spatiotemporal
constellation that has already existed in the past. They suspend or freeze the
flow of time and they cut, out of the continuum of space and time, an immo-
bile rectangle that is fully determined and that can be scrutinized as such.
My suggestion would therefore be that a genuine leap needs to be understood
not as belonging to the attitude that is often identified with Kierkegaards reli-
gious worldviewthat is, not as a release from the limits of time and space and
a full surrender to the totally unknownbut as a renewed and modified way of
responding to this world. It is in this way that photography can be understood
as a true medium in the sense that Samuel Weber understands that term, that
is, not as a medium of representation, but as a medium that redefines activity
as reactivity, and that makes its peace, if ever provisionally, with separation.5
In producing the truly new from within the already known, photographs can
link a brief, first, and alienating moment of disruption together with a second,
more substantial movement of looking at the world with rejuvenated interest,
confidence, and engagement. Benjamin writes as follows:
On the one hand film furthers insight into the necessities governing
our lives by its use of close-ups, by its accentuation of hidden details in
familiar objects, and by its exploration of commonplace milieux through
the ingenious guidance of the camera: On the other hand, it manages
to assure us of a vast and unsuspected field of action [Spielraum]. Our
bars and city streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad sta-
tions and our factories seemed to close relentlessly around us. Then came
film and exploded this prison-world with the dynamite of the split sec-
ond, so that now we can set off calmly on journeys of adventure among
its far-flung debris.6
4 See Sren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, ed.

Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 204 and
Fear and Trembling/Repetition, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
5 Samuel Weber, introduction to Theatricality as Medium by Samuel Weber (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2004), 289.
6 Benjamin, The Work of Art, 265.
Such a leap, therefore, does not escape out of but into this world; it is not at
all heroic, but it can be attained in the most ordinary of experiences, and it
does not go 70,000 fathoms deep but necessarily remains at the surface. For an
author like Benjamin, it is from within such a primarily aesthetic movement
of disruption/reopening that ethical commitment becomes thinkable, that
is, a commitment that presupposes, like Weber puts it, the courage to search
for another kind of balance, a balance and movement that is defined in terms
of responsiveness, rather than in those of stability and security, much less of
spontaneity.7 Such an ability to respond or leap consists of an openness to
the most insignificant and concrete elements of reality and an attentiveness
to these minutiae that have hitherto gone by unnoticed. Rather than escap-
ing time, it embraces its singular force to differentiate and renew, and it even
manages to recover the already existent as something that can be perceived
for the first time. It is in this way, moreover, that Deleuze and Guattari read
Kierkegaards knight of faith as a figure that constantly recharge(s) imma-
nence: [he is] concerned no longer with the transcendent existence of God
but only with the immanent possibilities brought by the one who believes that
God exists.8
4 The Interesting Can Never Be Repeated
In what follows, I would like to further unpack this link between photogra-
phy and a leap or rejuvenated openness to the surrounding world by making
use of Kierkegaards distinction between recollection and repetition, which he
presents at the very beginning of his book Repetition.9 The enigmatic state-
ment, a bit further on in the text, that the interesting can never be repeated
will be the crux of the argument here.10 Let us first of all draw the essential
distinction between recollection, as Kierkegaard understands it, and the
photographic reproduction of the past. As Siegfried Kracauer has famously
argued, contrary to what is often stated, the powers of photography should
not be enlisted by the human faculty of recollection: Photographs are no
7 Weber, introduction, 289.

8 Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994), 74.
9 For what follows, Samuel Webers essay Kierkegaards Posse (in Theatricality as Medium,
20028), was a crucial source of inspiration.
10 Sren Kierkegaard, Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 17.
226 Symons
reliable partners in keeping our memories alive for the simple reason that, as
the materialization of an optical unconscious, they confront us first and fore-
most with the repetition of something that was never even captured by sub-
jective experience to begin with. Photography, writes Kracauer, grasps what
is given as a spatial (or temporal) continuum; memory images retain what is
given only insofar as it has significance. Since what is significant is not reduc-
ible to either merely spatial or merely temporal terms, memory images are at
odds with photographic representation.11 Antithetical to lived memory, pho-
tographs give us a past that was never fully present to us before and that only
becomes present in and while being reproduced: They come together with a
promise to preserve memory, but they dislodge it instead and they reveal its
ultimate fallibility. In Kracauers words, from the perspective of photography,
memory images appear to be fragmentsbut only because photography does
not encompass the meaning to which they refer and in relation to which they
cease to be fragments. Similarly, from the perspective of memory, photog-
raphy appears as a jumble that consists partly of garbage.12 The past that is
thus rendered in photographs is, in other words, not a particularly interesting
one: It is, in Bergsonian and Deleuzian terms, a pass pur in the sense that it
has always escaped our attention and has never seemed worthy of our con-
sideration to begin with. Such a past is to be considered real, but it cannot
even be said to have been actualized at the moment of its first occurrence:
Up until the moment of its sudden resurfacing (in the present and through
photographic reproduction), it was merely virtual. Moreover, however strik-
ing such an event may have been, even this unexpected repetition of the past
does not modify it into something particularly interesting. In such instances,
the past only acquires a sudden and ungraspable form of presence because
it is being repeated and not on account of any form of inherent worthiness
whatsoever. This capacity of a photograph to produce the new by suddenly
and unexpectedly repeating the old is the best example of what Benjamin has
famously termed a Penelope work of forgetting, since it shows memory work-
ing side by side with its polar opposite: oblivion.13 When experienced in this
manner, then, photographs cannot be said to recollect anything: The past that
they bring back is neither fully restored nor made accessible once and for all
11 Siegfried Kracauer, Photography, in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge and
London: Harvard University Press, 1995), 50.
12 Ibid., 501.
13 Walter Benjamin, On the Image of Proust, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume
2, ed. Michael E. Jennings, Gary Smith, and H. Eiland (Cambridge and London: Harvard
(Kracauers famous formula that the turn to photography is the go-for-broke

game of history comes to mind here).14 It retains, even when it is remembered
against all odds, a form of vacuity, and it needs to be understood as absolute,
virtual, or pure in that it is, in Deleuzes description of involuntary memory,
the instance that is reduced to no passing present, but also the instance that
makes every present pass, which presides over such passage: In this sense, it
still implies the contradiction of survival and of nothingness. The ineffable
vision is made of their mixture.15
Such a form of repetition is active toward its own past: Rather than recol-
lecting it, it differentiates it from within and makes it other to itself. In the
dynamic that underlies both Benjamins and Kracauers views on photography,
Deleuzes views on involuntary memory, and Kierkegaards views on repetition,
the past does come back to the present but not merely as something that has
passed: Through being repeated, the past is experienced both as having gone by
and as nevertheless sharing in the very freshness and newness of the present.
Like Benjamin puts it in his essay on Proust, what is repeated in such a manner
is marked by a rejuvenating force [verjngenden Kraft] and thus as a match
for the inexorable process of aging. [...] [The] very concentration, in which
things that normally just fade and slumber are consumed in a flash, is called
rejuvenation [Verjngung].16 In Kierkegaards framework, recollection, on the
contrary, shows the present as merely passive and secondary with regard to
the past: It takes the present to be only reactive and considers only the past to be
truly significant. Kierkegaard uses the category of the interesting to describe
a past that is met in such a wayin recollection, only the past is understood
to be worthwhile in and of itself, and, by that token, it has become fully closed
off from the present: When the Greeks were saying that all knowing was recol-
lecting, they were also thus saying that all of existence, everything that is, has
been. When one says that life is repetition, one also says that that which has
existed now comes to be again.17 The power of recollection is therefore, unlike
the power of repetition, antithetical to a genuinely ethical attitude because it
lacks a commitment to the now and a lived engagement with what is present.
It is to be associated with a sneaking back out of life with the excuse that
one has forgotten something, with becoming an old man, and with leaping
over life. Recollection, then, is an urge to remember that is so strong that it
fully disconnects itself from the present and, by that token, succumbs to the
14 Kracauer, Photography, 61.

15 Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 63.
16 Benjamin, On the Image of Proust, 244.
17 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 19.
228 Symons
melancholic certainty that nothing that is truly important can ever be brought
back: The great advantage of recollection is that it begins with loss. This is its
security, it has nothing to lose.18
5 The Use and Abuse of Repetition for Life
Written exactly thirty years prior to Friedrich Nietzsches groundbreaking essay

on the relationship between history and life, Kierkegaards important distinc-
tion between recollection and repetition thus already anticipates the famous
plea for a creative forgetfulness that saves us from the excessive weight of
the past. The active powers that Kierkegaard deems internal to the process of
repetition already help us understand why repetition is the interest of meta-
physics, and also the interest upon which metaphysics becomes stranded.
Repetition is the solution in every ethical contemplation, repetition is the con-
ditio sine qua non for every dogmatic problem.19 This should help us further
understand Kierkegaards phrase that the interesting cannot be repeated and
the nature of an attitude that does not sneak back out of life or leap over
life but that leaps into life. The most important reason why the interesting
cannot be repeated is that it can only be recollected. Kierkegaard seems to use
the concept of the interesting to denote the ability of an object to attract our
interest and to awaken our desire on account of the qualities that it shares with
the desiring subject. Such qualities, then, are perceived as common to both the
object that is longed for and the subject that longs for it: What is interesting
derives its significance from somehow being in between (interesse) the desir-
ing subject and the desired object. The best example of such a setup is Platos
description of the lovers (in the Symposium) whose interest in one another is
derived from a shared past and an original unity. For this reason, even though
the object that is to be termed interesting can at times be experienced as
absent from the subject that is interested, it is always at the same time felt to
be potentially present, that is, the relation between subject and object is always
seemingly established prior to the actual moment in which both will or will
not be brought together. The reason why Kierkegaard implies that the interest-
ing can never be repeated but only recollected is therefore that our interests
are seen as merely reactive and secondary to what is interesting: if the concept
of being interested in presupposes a shared quality or original unity between
a subject and an object, the moment in which both are brought together does
18 Ibid., 8.
19 Ibid., 19.
not truly change anything let alone that it would actively bring about the new.
If what is interesting is always already structurally related to that which is inter-
ested by it, our interests cannot be said to have the power to truly rejuvenate or
refresh anything.
This explains why Kierkegaard seems to have smuggled, ex negativo, an
intertextual reference to the seducer in his essay on repetition. Throughout
Kierkegaards oeuvre (Either/Or, Stages on Lifes Way), the seducer is the con-
ceptual persona who stands just as much for the continuous thirst for the new
as for the ultimate inability to experience it. Ceaselessly hunting for what is
interesting, he falls prey to a desire for what is always bound to remain absent,
and he cannot genuinely renew or change this desire. The feeling of melan-
choly or disenchantment that comes over those who constantly long for the
interesting is precisely the result of the sentiment that our interests are mere
secondary responses to an original fullness that, however illusionary it may
be, is nevertheless experienced as still potentially present. Not at all opposed
to Platos lover in this regard, and not at all antithetical to a longing for the
eternal, the seducer is, in truth, the person who leaps over life because he has
no feeling for what is part of the rhythm of becoming, renewal, and change
that colour human existence. In this manner, the seducer never truly relates
to anything or anyone whatsoever and is merely out to recollect a unity that
he experiences as pre-established, thereby falling under the sway of the pecu-
liar attraction of something that cannot in fact ever fully become present. The
seducers problem, therefore, is not that he loves the transitive or fugitive too
much, but that he loves it too little: He is helplessly passive with regard to his
own interests because these are experienced as but derived from an original
unity that remains untouched by the contingencies of ordinary existence.
Deeply oedipal in this regard, the seducer jumps over what is real because he
only longs for the identical recreation of something that, in his eyes, has once
been actual: His desire is streamlined by the feeling that the recovery of such
an original unity remains possible, and he thereby loses what Weber has called
the ability to respond and an openness to what is truly other, unexpected,
or virtual (as Deleuze calls it).
The scene in Repetition where Kierkegaard introduces what can be called a
counter-seducer is included immediately after the statement that the interest-
ing can never be repeated. Kierkegaard describes how the protagonist reflects
on a certain moment in the past when, during a solitary lunch, his eye fell on
a beautiful young girl: Six years ago I took a trip thirty miles into the country.
I stopped at an inn where I also ate lunch. I had consumed a pleasant and
tasty meal, was in a good mood, had a cup of coffee in my hand whose aroma I
was in the process of inhaling, when suddenly a lovely young girl, delicate and
230 Symons
charming, passed by the window and into the courtyard that was part of the
inn. However, before he found the time to properly gulp down his meal, leave
the table, and strike up a conversation with this girl, there was a knock on the
door and in walks the girl.20 What follows is a description of how the young
girl, to his great surprise, asked him whether he would allow her to ride along
in his carriage and a detailed account of how this sudden and unexpected
event was sufficient to fully suspend any and all desire to play the seducers
game and take advantage of the girl:
The modest and yet genuinely feminine way she did this was enough to
cause me to immediately lose sight of the exciting and the interesting.
[...] The trust with which she placed herself under my power is a better
defence than all the shrewdness and cunning a young girl could muster.21
The most striking element about this story is that it describes how, at times, it
is precisely the sudden interruption of our expectations that gives shape to a
most worthwhile experience: In this scene, it is the very suspension of the pro-
tagonists desire which establishes a genuine connection with the young girl.
Almost fifteen years prior to the publication of Charles Baudelaires famous
poem To a Passerby, Kierkegaards story manages to already put its finger on
a sensibility that, much more than the seducers attitude, needs to be called
modern: A true relationship between two elements is not derived from any
felt unity or shared quality, but instead arises precisely in and through their
very difference. A genuine connection, then, takes place when two elements
that do not seem to naturally belong together are nevertheless changed from
within by the sudden way in which they seem to relate to one another: It is
much more interesting to ride thirty miles alone with a young girl, in ones
own carriage with a driver and a footman, to have her entirely under ones
power, than it is to meet her in a garden. And yet, I am convinced that even a
less considerate person than myself would not have felt tempted.22 Like the
unknown passerby who overwhelms the poet in Baudelaires famous lines
(which Benjamin termed the depiction not so much [of] love at first sight
as [of] love at last sight), the girl from Kierkegaards story retains an irreduc-
ible anonymity. However, this lack of familiarity is not at all antithetical to the
protagonists feeling that she has become deeply important to him. Moreover,
20 Ibid., 17.
21 Ibid., 178.
22 Ibid., 178.
what testifies to this unexpected personal significance is not at all the senti-
ment that an original unity has been recovered or that what has once been
actual has now become possible again, but, on the contrary, the feeling that the
girl has, through a form of an absolute memory that knows how to preserve
purity, forever become a part of his future. The cycle of recollection has there-
fore fully given way to the productive powers of repetition: I have never tried
to learn who she was, where she lived, what could have occasioned her sudden
trip. She has always been a pleasant memory for me though, which I have not
allowed myself to sully with even an innocent curiosity. A girl who desires the
interesting becomes a snare in which she herself is caught. A girl who does not
desire the interesting, she has faith in repetition. All honour to one who was
originally so. All honour to the one who becomes so with time.23
6 Conclusion
If, like Deleuze puts it, a truly ethical attitude is not to be equated with a
moral one in that it presupposes a set of optional [rather than constraining]
rules that assess what we do, what we say, in relation to the ways of existing
involved, the photographic gaze is charged with an important ethical task: It
opens reality up toward its unexpected possibilities.24 On account of the abil-
ity to reveal the optical unconscious, the camera can be considered to bring
about a leap not from but into immanent reality, since it shows how the cate-
gory of the real exceeds that of the actual (what is captured on camera is always
more than what meets the eye) and how what is possible cannot be derived
from what is merely anticipatable. As Merleau-Ponty describes it, a photo-
graph keeps open the instant which the onrush of time closes up forthwith.25
Reading these insights on photography alongside some of Kierkegaards texts
reveals that what is at stake here is a specific manner of understanding what
the process of repetition is about and, more importantly, what it is capable of
doing. Contrary to recollection, repetition actively creates the new and brings
about the unexpected: What is repeated may not be interesting in its own
right, but, through its sudden resurfacing, it shows how even a reality that is
23 Ibid., 18.
24 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 100. (My italics).
25 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, ed. Ted Toadvine
and Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, ILL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 374.
232 Symons
gone-for-broke (Kracauer) or governed by necessities (Benjamin) is marked

by an ongoing potential for rejuvenation and renewal. As Kierkegaard states:
It requires youthfulness to hope and youthfulness to recollect, but it

requires courage to will repetition. He who will only hope is cowardly.
He who wants only to recollect is a voluptuary. But he who wills repe-
tition, he is a man, and the more emphatically he has endeavoured to
understand what this means, the deeper he is as a human being. [...] He
who chooses repetition, he lives. He does not chase after butterflies like
a child, or stand on tiptoe in order to glimpse the wonders of the world.
He knows them. Neither does he sit like an old woman and spin on the
spinning wheel of recollection. He goes calmly about his life, happy in
repetition. What would life be without repetition?26
References
Benjamin, Walter. On the Image of Proust, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings,

Volume 2. Edited by Michael E. Jennings, Gary Smith, and Howard Eiland. 23747.
Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2003.
. The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (Third
Version), in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4, edited by Howard Eiland
and Michael W. Jennings. 25184. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press,
2003.
Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
. Proust and Signs. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari. What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994.
De Duve, Thierry. Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox, October
5 (1978): 11325.
Kierkegaard, Sren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Edited by Howard V. Hong and
. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Edited by
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
. Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Klein, Yves, Ritual for the Relinquishment of the Immaterial Pictorial Sensitivity
Zones (19571959). In Yves Klein 19281962: A Retrospective. 207. Houston and
New York: Institute for the Arts, Rice University and Arts Publisher, 1982.
26 Kierkegaard, Repetition, 4.
Kracauer, Siegfried. Photography, in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Edited by

Thomas Y. Levin. 4764. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Eye and Mind, in The Merleau-Ponty Reader. Edited by Ted
Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor. 35178. Evanston, ILL: Northwestern University
Press, 2007.
Weber, Samuel. Theatricality as Medium. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004.
CHAPTER 13
Jonny Greenwood vs. Johannes Brahms: Alliances

and Displacement in There Will Be Blood
Marlies De Munck
1 Tracking the Sound
Since its release in 2007, There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Andersons film
drama based on the novel Oil! (1927) by Upton Sinclair, has been lavishly
praised by film critics. A fair share of the critics attention has concerned the
films striking soundtrack, which contains compositions by Jonny Greenwood,
who is better known as the guitar player for the British rock band Radiohead,
and Johannes Brahms, the nineteenth-century composer. Andersons musical
choices are indeed worth scrutinizing, if only for his peculiar use of squarely
opposed musical styles. However, a number of crucial questions remain under-
explored: How does the music function in the film? What is its impact on the
viewer, and how does it influence her understanding of the story? If Andersons
musical choices are indeed so remarkable, then we should consider the music
as a prominent voice in the film. The central question, therefore, should not
merely be whether Anderson has chosen music that fits the images and the
narrative, but it should also be how the music operates together with or per-
haps against the images and the narrative. To this we may add: What does the
music contribute to the film? And How does the musical input differ from
what is already conveyed on the visual and the narrative planes? These ques-
tions concern, in other words, the capacity of film music to blend into and
mould what is usually taken to be a visual experience, but they also concern
musics singularity as an autonomous medium with its own distinctive way of
affecting the spectator. Before venturing into these complex matters, however,
let us first have a closer look at the music itself.
Wholly untypical for such a major Hollywood production, Greenwoods
music for There Will Be Blood features no clear-cut themes or crafty leitmotifs,
nor does it seem to care for a plain melody. Even though classical strings and
piano dominate the overall sound and produce a musical timbre that may be
called traditional, the music is still unusual: It sounds genuinely unheimlich
and sinister, andas some might sayit is often simply irritating. After hear-
ing the soundtrack on CD, The Guardian reviewer David Peschek concluded

Jonny Greenwood vs. Johannes Brahms 235
that Greenwood is a sophisticated musician, but despite the chromatic headi-

ness of much of this music, you feel it needs the movie. In fact, you long for less
austere stabbing and scraping, and something more like a good old-fashioned,
carefully developed, rich and satisfying theme.1
Greenwoods score is presented here as a bloodless affair, more noise than
music, stuck in the background from where it throws some stabbing and
scraping into the picture. And yet, not all of Greenwoods austere music was
originally composed for Andersons filman odd detail, perhaps, yet one that
is incongruous with the claim that the music needs the movie. In fact, the
soundtrack contains material from Greenwoods 2003 solo album Bodysong2
and parts of the symphonic projects Smear and Popcorn Superhet Receiver, both
of which were a result of his residency at the bbc Concert Orchestra in 2004.
Moreover, the film also features Arvo Prts well-known Fratres for Cello and
Piano, as well as two feisty outbursts of the illustrious finale theme of Brahmss
violin concerto in D Majorall music that has done pretty well without the
movie. Finishing with a rickety performance of the stale church song There Is
Power in the Blood, the unorthodox mixture of sounds and styles seems likely
to result in a nightmarish soundtrack, and, in a way, thats precisely what it
isthough not for any of the reasons mentioned above.
The extensive use of pre-existing and unoriginal works rendered the
soundtrack ineligible for an Academy Award nomination, even though it was
suggested, off the record, that the score was actually disqualified because the
Academy decided, quite subjectively, that the viewer comes away from Blood
predominantly recalling the unoriginal works.3 While this unofficial explana-
tion certainly provides a plausible reason for the exclusion of Greenwoods
score, it nevertheless provides a rather awkward criterion by which to judge
the quality of a films soundtrack: The longer it sticks in ones head, the better
it is. To be sure, Brahmss violin concerto will undoubtedly remain stuck in
the spectators head as it blasts off immediately after the last scene. But even
1 David Peschek, CD: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood OST, The Guardian, January
4, 2008, accessed March 10, 2013, www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jan/04/popandrock
.shopping4.
2 Bodysong was originally composed in 2003 as a soundtrack for the film of the same name.
Perhaps, then, what Peschek really meant in his comment was that the music needs any
movie, not Andersons in particular. It would be interesting to further pursue the question
of whether this music intrinsically differs from non-filmic music and whether and how this
difference is reflected in its aesthetic qualities, but unfortunately, such a task falls beyond the
scope of the present paper.
3 Kristopher Tapley, Digging into Oscars Controversial Music Branch, Variety, February 12,
2008.
236 De Munck
if Brahms stays with the viewer long after the film has ended, he has become
a different Brahms, as if Greenwood had snuck into the violins, like an earwig,
and made the instruments sound unfaithful to their own triumphant melody.
To put it in critical terms, one gets the impression that the famous melody has
been appropriated by the films gory promise, and this is precisely what makes
its stickiness so disturbing. In short, there is definitely something about this
films music, original or not, that makes it work particularly well, and work
is the appropriate and operative term here: This music does something to
the spectator, and what it does, in turn, allows for a nuanced understanding
of the story.
2 The Double, the Dissonant, and the Displaced
Even if Pescheks claim were truethat Greenwoods music needs the

movieit does not imply that Greenwood has written a bad soundtrack.
While it might fail as an ideal soundtrack according to traditional Hollywood
standardsthese would indeed look for a good old-fashioned themefor
theorists in the line of Siegfried Kracauer, for example, it would most definitely
be considered as an ideal film score: eerie sounds illustrating a sinister theme.
It could count as an instance of what Kracauer labelled parallel commentative
music, which restates, in a language of its own, certain moods, tendencies, or
meanings of the picture it accompanies.4 Consequently, the reproach that the
music needs the movie should not be understood as referring to a shortcom-
ing with respect to Greenwoods score, but instead ought to be seen as refer-
ring to an accomplishment, as it keeps, still in Kracauers terms, with one of
cinemas basic requirements, which prescribes that the imagery should take
precedence over sound.5
However, more dialectically inclined theorists like Theodor Adorno and
Hanns Eisler might have drawn the opposite conclusion, finding that when
film music merely parallels the meaning of the picture it fails to be a fully-
fledged, autonomous partner for the screen. It cannot engage in an interesting
relation with the images, since that relation is not one of similarity, but, as a
rule, one of question and answer, affirmation and negation, appearance and
4 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton: Princeton
5 Ibid., 152.
essence.6 In this sense, Pescheks judgement that the music needs the movie
inevitably exiles the music to a dull place, where it can only sustain what is
already seen, fully dependent on the story and therefore uninteresting in itself.
The critical model, which promotes a relation of dissonance between the
music and the images or the story in general, is prominently used in so-called
anti-Hollywood films. This music, often atonal or at least dissonant in itself,
deliberately induces a feeling of alienation in order to counteract the viewers
tendency to identify with the characters or the plot. Its aim is precisely to pre-
clude the mechanism of assimilation that is all too easily set to work by sooth-
ing, unobtrusive music. Moreover, as the argument for dissonance goes, film
music should not only preclude full surrender of the spectator, it should also
maximise the socially critical potential of the filmic medium by countering
and even dismantling the illusive allure of the silver screen. As a dissonant
voice, music becomes a strong weapon to emancipate the spectator and to
install an awareness of the ideological indoctrination that comes with modern
mass media and their false messages of happiness. Rather than promote an
ideal of photographic realism, as Kracauer did, this model grants the last word
to the auditory side of the filmic experience.
In both views, however, the music itself is regarded as a homogenous,
almost static element that takes a stance over against the images and the nar-
rative: It either goes along the grain, or it goes against the grain. There is little
room for a more complex kind of interaction between music and images that
would allow for a heterogeneous view on film music. This leaves us with the
aesthetically unsatisfying choice, in this case, between saying that Greenwood
has written either a good or a bad soundtrack, depending on the theory that
we endorse. If we want to pass a more nuanced judgement, on the other hand,
we will have to take into account the entire, agile, and multifaceted nature
of music: not only its ways of mirroring, paralleling, or opposing images and
ideas, or its capacity to influence and alter the viewers perception and under-
standing, but also the ways in which music itself can be altered and shifted by
the images and the story, or by the aural context in which it is heard. In other
words, we need to overcome the stereotypical dichotomy between film music
as a duplication of images and film music as an uncompromising, dissonant
voice. It is crucial, therefore, that we locate the points of intersection in There
Will Be Blood where the music truly interacts with the images and the narrative
and accurately observe the mechanisms that are at work at these junctions of
music, image, narrative, and spectator.
6 Theodor W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films (New York: Continuum, 2007),
47.
238 De Munck
In her essay Film as Visual Music, Lydia Goehr develops an argument for a
theory of displacement to allow for a variety of mechanisms of music in film.
The argument for displacement, she writes, acknowledges that music has
multiple roles in film and that this music may result from all types of construc-
tion associated with classical, jazz, popular, and other traditions. It advances a
complex auditory perspectivism to work alongside an equally complex visual
perspectivism.7 As it allows for a more refined approach than the traditional
models of mirroring and dissonance, the concept of displacement is promis-
ing. Yet, it raises many questions itself. To begin with, what or whom is being
displaced? And by what is it being replaced? And how does the mechanism of
displacement work and to what end? In what follows, the concept of musical
displacement is fleshed out by focusing on two themes that are prominently
present in There Will Be Blood: mans relation to nature and his moral condition
as a social being.
3 Horizontal and Vertical Tendencies
There Will Be Blood relates the rise and fallor, one might argue, the (literal)
fall and riseof Daniel Plainview, an early-twentieth-century oilman. The film
opens with a grand, panoramic shot of a desert landscape in good old west-
ern style. The iconic mountains stand like theatrical quotation marks, prepar-
ing the viewer for the epic Hollywood tale to follow: a parable about mans
struggle with nature and thus about the nature of man. In the nearly wordless,
twenty-minute-long opening sequence, we see Plainview dragging himself,
like an American Baron von Munchhausen, out of a deep hole in the desert
ground. His life story will be that of the modern self-made man who builds his
industrial empire from scratch. Yet, first and foremost, the film tells the story
of Plainviews moral decline. Step by step, reinforced by his confrontations
with Eli, a young preacher with mundane ambitions, he builds up his hatred of
people until he ends up being completely alienated, even estranged, from his
adopted and once dearly beloved son H.W.
These are the general dynamics in what appears to be an archetypical story:
the ups and downs of Plainviews rise and fall, and the ins and outs of his social
life. As so many myths and parables proclaim, living a happy life requires main-
taining a precarious balance in and between personal ambitions and relation-
7 Lydia Goehr, Film as Visual Music: Duplication, Dissonance, and Displacement, in Elective
Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2008), 237.
ships with others: The story of Icarus condemns the hubris of those who aim
too high, whereas the myth of Orpheus warns against the recklessness of those
who venture too low; the parable of the Good Samaritan tells us to love our
neighbour, while the tragedy of Oedipus reminds us not to come too close. Put
like this, human behaviour can be measured against an imaginary coordinate
system of horizontal and vertical axes. By visualising our mostly unconscious
inclinations, such a metaphorical framework may help us get a stronger moral
grip on all kinds of immanent or transcendent aspirations that we foster in life.
Interestingly, There Will Be Blood is full of strong horizontal and vertical
images: The immense horizon of the desert landscape over which the derrick
rises like a heretical cross forms the background against which Plainview digs
deep holes in the ground and renounces any kind of spiritual transcendence.
Meanwhile his opponent, Eli, reaches out toward the sky. There is the theme
of hidden oil lurking beneath, as unpredictable as the Freudian Es, which is
counterbalanced by the impressive image of the oil gusher, a strong symbol of
potency and power. Throughout the story runs the unsettling leitmotif of carv-
ing the earth: the digging of mines, wells, and holes for pipelines and graves, as
opposed to the building of an ever-higher church. Meanwhile, the antagonis-
tic dynamics of sucking out (oil, milkshake) and pouring in (milk, liquor) are
continually at work. In contrast to these vertical tendencies, the film abounds
in flat, horizontal images of vast plains, railroads, pipelines, and a considerable
number of odd, unnaturally horizontal poses: Plainview dragging himself over
the desert soil; sleeping flat out on the floor; lying on the ground with H.W.;
his fake brother Henry being threatened and killed; H.W. forced to stay in bed;
Eli being beaten up by Plainview (Im gonna bury you underground!); Abel
being violently pushed to the ground by his own son; and Eli being murdered
on the bowling alley floor. In a figurative sense, problematic relationships arise
in both directions as well: Central to the story are the vertical relationship
between father and son, which is mirrored and inverted in the relationship
between Abel and Eli, and the horizontal, fake fraternal relationship between
Plainview and Henry, which is mirrored in the mysterious twin relationship
between Eli and Paul. All these themes, images, and motifs lay out a minefield
of tensions between the antagonistic aspirations of the characters.
4 Jonny Greenwood vs. Johannes Brahms
What could and probably would be expected of a major Hollywood production

of this calibre is that its music adds depth to the awkwardly flat construction
of horizontal and vertical images. By drawing the spectator deep into the
240 De Munck
story, by eliciting her imaginary participation, music could provide an internal

point of view and facilitate a three-dimensional experience. As the traditional
ideal for film music prescribes, rhythms and melodies could bridge the gap
between the audience and the screen, and by thus absorbing the viewers mind
they could create a sense of close involvement. As indicated above, however,
Greenwoods music, denies the spectator any such straightforward access to
the story. It merely seems to add more unsettling horizontality to it instead,
as if the music were aspiring to be just as two-dimensional as the images
themselves.
The film starts with a fade-in of a sustained, vaguely dissonant chord that
sounds as if it has been around for at least as long as the horizon that we are
about to see. When the camera focuses on the desert landscape, the tense
chord slides into one single note, lending the mountains the aforementioned
feel of quotation marks that forebode the advent of something terrible that is
about to happen. However, the strings soon glide back into their earlier state of
unstable diffusion, as if already retreating into silence again while they are still
resounding. The same broad strokes of all-too-long and vague dissonance com-
ing into focus and then coming back out again recur throughout the entire film.
In a purely visual sense, this uninviting, stretched-out music fits the images
perfectly, as it mirrors the vast plains of the flat, inhospitable desert landscape.
Yet, from the point of view of the action, it mostly seems to contradict or just
neglect the story. There is no hint of cadence, no gain of momentum when one
would most expect it. For instance, when the prospectors arrive to start build-
ing the new oil plant, we hear the saddest, slowest little waltz that denies all
connotations of progress and growth that would seem to fit this kind of scene.
Even though we may be intuitively attracted by its one-two-three rhythm, its
intervals are blurred by glissandos in the strings, preventing any straightfor-
ward participation from the listeners side. It is as if the sound had melted into
a thick, slobbery mass of oil welling up out of the earth and immediately seep-
ing back into it.
This little anti-waltz appears in many different guises. Likewise, the few
melodies that we are granted remain curiously abstract and dissonant. Often,
they are caught in a narrow space between long notes in the strings, whose
droopiness is only emphasised by the eerie sounds of the ondes Martenot.
One gets the impression that the lines simply refuse to take off; rather, they
keep stretching downward, creating an overall feeling of inertia. When there is
rhythm, then, it is hypnotisinglike primitive drumbeatswhile evoking, at
the same time, the industrial sound of steam engines: It rattles on and on, mer-
cilessly, only to leave the spectator behind in a loneliness as vast as the desert
plains. Overall, Greenwoods music does not offer much of a handle, and when
it does, it soon lets go again, pushing the viewer out into a desolate no-mans-
land. The music then stretches out again, gloomy like the River Styx, guard-
ing the distance between eye and image. Not surprisingly, Arvo Prts Fratres
blends in remarkably well: The strings cluster around one single note and gain
momentum only to be brusquely cut off time and again by merciless piano
chords that alienate the listener from the musics inner movement.
Surrounded by this desolate acoustic landscape, Brahmss violin concerto
at once appears as an old friend and a complete stranger. Its finale is melodic
throughout and overtly ambitious in its vertical dimensions; its main theme is
highly recognisable and widely known, intensely present and clear, with melo-
dies and rhythms that are fully developed and harmonies that are just as grand
as the intervals mastered by the soloist. Moreover, the theme is deeply rooted
in Hungarian folk music and begs for the full and enthusiastic surrender of
performers and listeners alike. After roughly one hour of Greenwoods austere
stabbing and scraping, Brahms marches in like a conqueror, providing the fire-
works for the inauguration of the oil well. Paired with the image of the brand
new derrick that towers above the landscape, the concertos theme transforms
the construct into an impressive arc de triomphe, a testimony to the victory
of man over nature. However, it is clear from the outset of the filmif not
because of its title alone, then at least as a result of the uncomfortably forebod-
ing music of Greenwoodthat this victory will not be neat and clean. Indeed,
when the violin concerto finally reoccurs, it has become embarrassingly com-
promised as a celebration of the crudest violence.
Here we experience a curious reversal of musics power to influence per-
ception as it is often used for propaganda purposes. The stunning presence of
the famous Brahms theme does not glorify the blunt murder that precedes it,
but is contaminated by it instead. Its feisty character now sounds hollow and
fake. Moreover, as indicated above, the music itself has become contagious:
It sticks to the spectator as a vicarious feeling of guilt. From this perspective,
Greenwoods music clearly stands in acute opposition to the heavyweight
Brahms: While the former mostly shuts the listener out, the latter instantly
draws her in. Whereas Greenwood retreats, Brahms suddenly takes us down
there, right into the middle of the western plains, and makes us feel the
drama. Moreover, their sharp opposition corresponds to the visual tensions
on the screen: Brahms is fused with the vertical image of the derrick, while
Greenwood teams up with the wide horizon of the unwelcoming desert land-
scape. Thus, two opposing audiovisual alliances are forged, together symbolis-
ing the struggle of man against nature.
242 De Munck
5 The Dissonant in Disguise
Do these audiovisual alliances imply that the music is, after all, nothing but
an illustration of what is already seen on the screen? In other words, is each
of them held together by techniques of duplication? And if so, does this make
the music redundant? Or, the other way around, was David Peschek of The
Guardian right in saying that Greenwoods music needs the movie? This does
not seem to be the caseif anything, it is the movie that needs the music
and not the other way around. One could say, for instance, that the destabilis-
ing and unsettling effect of Greenwoods music elicits a subtle kind of resis-
tance against the violent story. In precluding our full participation, the music
prevents us from experiencing any straightforward feeling of identification or
sympathy with the protagonists struggle. This is, of course, precisely the strat-
egy of dissonance that critical theorists are in favour of. The important social
and moral task for film music (and for music in general, as Adorno and Eisler
would say) is not only preventing the closing of the gap between the eye and
the earlest the audience gets so absorbed that it loses its critical distance and
becomes all too willingly part of the Gesamtkunstwerkit is also revealing the
theatricality of the images, however realistic their appearance may be. Against
the background of Greenwoods acoustic entropy, Plainview indeed appears as
a larger-than-life archetype in an epic narrative. This unreal appearance is fur-
ther intensified by the John-Huston-like inflection of Plainviews voice, which
makes him sound like an actor in his own life. His eloquent promise to blow
gold over the barren land of the oil plant sounds like an alchemists dream,
and it connects his overall theatricality with the magical manipulations of the
industrial technology that he uses. Such dangerous fusion of myth and modern
rationality is precisely what Adorno and Eisler wanted to see destabilised by
the counterpoint of a critical voice.
Where exactly, then, is the critical voice to be located in There Will Be Blood?
Greenwoods music, as we have seen, is neatly paired with the images on the
screenhorizontality joins horizontalityand as such their relationship is
one of duplication rather than of dissonance. And yet, a critical perspective
arises from the joint venture of music and image as the coordinate system of
horizontal and vertical moral axes begins to emerge from the developing nar-
rative. Backed up by these two opposing tendencies, Brahmss music is needed
to bring about the full critical potential of all the music. To begin with, the
triumphant melody not only embodies the vertical violence of Plainview,
by virtue of its prominent alliance with the derrick, it is also displaced by the
images so that it also becomes related to the many vertical and troubling
activities of digging and carving, drilling, falling, drinking, and swallowing,
and to the cross that keeps up the delusion of false transcendence. As an effect
of quasi-perpendicular contrast, Greenwoods (and Prts) horizontal music
takes the side of the injured earth and thus becomes an elegy for the twisted
horizontality of the victim: the deceased and the downcast, the threatened
and the murdered. As such, Greenwoods austere music is displaced by the
Brahmsian theme of glory and success, and becomes more than the song of
barren nature. It takes on the guise of the cold echo of a very real, but forlorn,
social dimension of warm humanity, a trace that testifies to a lost harmonious
relationship between man and nature, and between man and man.
Here we find modes of displacement that Gilles Deleuze was committed to.
Asking himself how to preclude sound from being redundant in film, Deleuze
disagrees with Eisensteins dictum that sound and the visual should always
have an internal element in common, for instance their particular movement,
in order to jointly express a whole.8 The trouble with this view, like with all
theories of duplication, is that it is very hard to avoid the conclusion that the
music is, after all, redundant. Eisensteins theory, according to Deleuze, fully
preserves the idea of correspondence and replaces external or illustrative cor-
respondence by an internal correspondence.9 Even though Eisenstein stresses
the cooperative nature of the relation between sound and the visual, Deleuze
questions the actual outcome of such a collaboration. Since the silent visual
image already expressed a whole, he asks,
how can we ensure that the sound and visual whole is not the same,
or, if it is the same, does not give rise to two redundant expressions?
For Eisenstein, it is a matter of forming a whole with two expressions
whose common measure would be discovered (always commensurabil-
ity). Whilst the achievement of sound rather consisted in expressing the
whole in two incommensurable, non-corresponding ways.10
At first sight, the coupling of music and images in There Will Be Blood, as we
have explained it so far, seems to accord with Eisensteins rule rather than
with Deleuzes: the horizontal paired to the horizontal, the vertical glued to
the verticala case of perfect commensurability and correspondence of inter-
nal movement. And yet, there is more to it. Still discussing the problem of
cinema music, Deleuze proposes an (early-) Nietzschean solution of pairing
8 Cf. Sergei Eisenstein, Appendix A: A Statement, in Film Form (New York: Harvest/HBJ,
1977), 25759.
9 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image (London and New York: Continuum, 2011), 229.
10 Ibid., 229.
244 De Munck
up the image with the Apollonian veil, and the music with the immediacy of
the Dionysian expression of the whole.11 This way the music becomes a direct
presentation of something that is excluded from the screen, that is, the out-of-
field, which, according to Deleuze, is nevertheless fully part of the cinemato-
graphic visual image.12 Interestingly, he adds that it is not sound that invents
the out-of-field, but it is sound which dwells in it and which fills the visual
not-seen with a specific presence.13
While the out-of-field for Deleuze is specifically connected to the (re)pre-
sentation of time in cinema, what is crucial to the present discussion is that
this concept opens the way for a dynamic mode of displacement in which the
visually absent gains presence by virtue of the music. This, as we have seen,
happens when the contrast between Greenwoods and Brahmss music sets
into motion a domino-like game of significations and embodiments of sounds,
which are related to the screen through the abstract tendencies of horizon-
tality and verticality. As Deleuze emphasises, even though this direct musical
presentation does not always literally correspond to the visual image on the
screen, it is not able to function without it.14 Its not just that the music pro-
vides a dissonant voice on top of the visual experience, added to it as a foreign
body,15 its that a new visual dimension arises in and through it. Greenwoods
music can be regarded as the direct presentation of a dimension that is lost on
the screenthe voice of the invisiblewhile still remaining entangled in the
visible images horizontality. The same, but reversed, mechanism is at work in
the musical interventions of Brahms: Firmly related to the verticality of the
derrick, the morally ambiguous effect of the bright, engaging theme lingers
oneven when it is not heardwhenever we are visually confronted with
new violent vertical motives.
6 Back to Nature?
What is the effect of all these audiovisual displacements on our understanding

of the story? Along the lines that we have sketched out above, There Will Be
Blood can be read as a parable about the hubris of modern progress, about the
11 Ibid., 22930.
12 Ibid., 226.
13 Ibid., 226.
14 Ibid., 23031.
15 Ibid., 230.
moral dangers of industrialization and the ruthless exploitation of the earth.

Vicariously, through the mutual displacement of music and images, it recounts
the loss of natures virginity and the loss of mans innocence as a secular expul-
sion from the Garden of Eden. By continually displacing each others connota-
tions, the music and images create an intricate web that becomes the moral
background against which the story unfolds: The vertical comes to stand for all
of mans disturbing actions and the horizontal for the lost paradise of nature.
This way the story turns into a strong charge against the Enlightenment ide-
als of emancipation and progress, highlighting the immoral nature of the too
deep and the too high. Through the lens of this moral compass, the story reads
as a plea for a more holistic, well-balanced, and harmonious relationship with
mother earth.
This, however, is merely one of the storys many layers of meaning, and
perhaps this interpretation tries too hard to reveal a hidden project. In fact, it
turns the film into a form of propaganda, which is precisely what a critical per-
spective ought to prevent. Besides, there is another good reason to doubt such
a plainly dualistic conception of the relationship between man and nature,
which is triggered by the following questions: If this story is a charge against the
modern Western attitude toward nature, why then does it give the most unset-
tling voice to the horizontal dimension? Why doesnt Greenwoods music try
harder to elicit the viewers involvement in the victims struggle? Why doesnt
what is bad sound repulsive and what is good attractive? In other words, why
doesnt mother earth get the lovely music she deserves? And, turning the argu-
ment around, why is the music of violenceBrahmss violin concertothe
most compelling, indeed, the music that stays with the audience the longest,
even after the film has ended? Is it to emphasise the superficial seductiveness
of modern success? Or is it a play of contrasts coupling the bad and the lovely
in order to delineate the ideological critique more sharply against the musical
background? In other words, is the music, after all, merely a dissonant voice
that turns the meaning of the images into the exact opposite of those images
themselves?
Again, things might be more complicated and ambiguous than they seem. A
closer look at what we have called the horizontal elements in the film reveals
that they hardly allow for a univocal interpretation as the good or healthy
dimension. In fact, the many forced horizontal poses are more reminiscent of
the intuitive inclination of traumatised children to stay as close to the ground
as possible than they are of attitudes of natural security and spontaneous sta-
bility. This horizontality is not an expression of vitality or physical strength;
it exemplifies, rather, the dimension of the discarded, the retreated, and the
handicapped, who is both physically and mentally expelled from communal
246 De Munck
life, like the young H.W. after losing his hearing in an accident in the oil plant.
Similarly, nature is depicted by Greenwoods music as a silent, isolated, and
distorted dimension, which is devoid of harmony and welcoming warmth.
Indeed, the conception of nature as intrinsically good is neither neutral
nor innocent. The ideological programme that promotes a return to nature
canas has been pointed out by numerous commentators, Adorno not being
the least influential among themjust as well be taken as a literal inversion,
albeit in romantic disguise, of the modern understanding of progress. By con-
ceiving of progress as a linear movement along an imaginary line, one can see
that there are two sides to the same enlightened coin. According to this linear
view, the very idea of progress can be logically thought of as reversible: If there
is such a thing as an unequivocally good nature that we have become alien-
ated from, then there must also be, after all, a possibility that one can return
to it. Consequently, adversaries of modern industrial progress only need to
reverse the vector in order to be led back to the sweet bosom of mother earth.
However, if we acknowledge Greenwoods music as an autonomous voice in
There Will Be Blood, such an uncomplicated conception of nature cannot hold.
Rather, the musics silent, detached alliance with the passive horizontality of
nature raises a tricky question: Could it be that this retreat into muteness is
not a form of resistance or contestation but a mirroring of nature seen as being
mute itself?
7 Dynamics of Engagement
At this point, we have to take a short detour and ask how it is that music can be
experienced as meaningful at all. Why, after all, is Greenwoods music so unset-
tling? Why does it (supposedly) need the film in order to become meaning-
ful? I have stated at the outset that his music does not offer much of a handle
to the listener because it does not feature clear-cut themes or recognisable
melodies or motifs, and because it does not abound in inviting harmonies or
rhythms. All these would facilitate the listeners involvement in the music. In
order to experience it as meaningful, the listener must be able to engage in
the music. She therefore needs to find a way to relate to it, for instance, by
dancing to it or tapping along, by recognising themes and motifs, anticipat-
ing turns and phrases and so on. In order for any of this to happen, however,
it is crucial that the listener first hear the musics appeal: a call that draws her
toward the music and seduces her to participate, however minimal or cerebral
her participation may be. Accordingly, when music does not invite the listener
but rather pushes her away, it becomes very hard for her to engage in itshe
might not even want to try. As a result, the music runs the risk of being expe-
rienced as meaningless or even of not being heard at all. One could indeed
say, in accordance with Pescheks comment, that Greenwoods music in itself
is meaningless, but isnt that the case with all music? As we have just seen, it is
only within the praxis of an actual listener relating to it that music can become
truly meaningful. Consequently, a new act of engagement is required on the
part of the listener, time and again, in order for musical meaning to emerge.
Similarly, now, one can claim that nature in itself is devoid of meaning.
When cut off from human life, when dualistically regarded as a detached
entity, as another isolated object postulated over and against an autonomous
subject, nature appears as disenchanted. Correspondingly, the alienation and
loneliness that come with enlightened emancipation are reflected in the image
of nature as essentially meaningless. As in a nightmare, the lonely, the aban-
doned, the expelled, and the isolated all face their empty mirror image in the
terrifying muteness of the amoral force of nature. In romantic writings, this
frightful, silent, unpredictable nature has of course been often referred to. It is
the sublime that we cannot relate to and that therefore necessarily lies beyond
the scope of morality. Only within the context of a concrete human praxis can
things become bearers of moral meaning. Viewed thusly, nature in itself is not
lovely or intrinsically good; only our relation to it can make it sojust like
the Freudian Es, it first needs to become part of human consciousness before
entering the domain of morality.
From this perspective, Greenwoods detached music does not merely pro-
vide a voice for the threatened and violated victim, it also embodies, at the
same time, the mute absence of meaning that is caused by isolation and loneli-
ness, by exclusion from the framework of relationships that is needed for any
kind of meaning to emerge. Plainview, on the other hand, who is completely
dehumanised in his splendid isolation, does not appear so different from the
nature that he tries to tame. His final act of violence seems as sudden and
absurd, as devoid of meaning, as the violent outburst of the oil gusherit
has become its perfect mirror image. And yet, these two outbursts of mean-
ingless violence are both applauded by Brahmss violin concerto and not by
Greenwoods mute, meaningless music. It is precisely here that the music
refuses to be detached or distant and instead pulls the viewer into the picture,
almost violently forcing her to engage with what has just happened.
The idea of nature as intrinsically good is not only the perfect corollary of
the nave and optimistic idea of modern progress; it also assumes, philosophi-
cally, that things can be meaningful in and of themselves, severed from any
form of experience, as self-sufficient, Platonic ideas. Greenwoods music, how-
ever, challenges this metaphysical conception of meaning: By merely being
248 De Munck
there, at a distance, almost tacit, his music makes the listener uncomfort-
ably aware of its muteness and therefore of the impossibility of surrendering
to the story. The arch of tension that is thus createdthe tension between
wanting to be involved and being kept at a distancespans the whole dura-
tion of the film: We are refused entrance while the story makes it so obvious
that our moral involvement is needed. We are continuously being called upon,
but we can never respond. Instead, the music obliges us to dwell in this in-
between spacea space as lonely and detached as Plainviews mind. Still,
when Plainview turns his back to the camera, after having forced a new wedge
between himself and the world, we are suddenly invited by Brahmss music to
fully participate. Alas, the participation that we are granted here is radically
immoral and makes us accessories to Plainviews deeds.
In the last movement of the ongoing play of displacementsin precisely
these two Brahmsian moments of accessoriness, when our desire for partici-
pation is finally fulfilledwe strongly feel that we had always already been
related, to the film as much as to life and nature itself, if only through our
desire and need to be so. We were already fully in the middle of the dynamics
of being pushed out and pulled in, of trying to determine our own position in
relation to the story. It is this very fact that sets us apart from nature: There
is no such possible choice to merely be in ourselves; there is no safe place
beyond the story, since we are always already in an intentional state of aware-
ness, need, and desire.
In spite of this human condition of necessary involvement, Plainview rest-
lessly aspires for an ultimate place beyond. His aspirations find their meta-
phorical expression in his attempts to connect to the oil beneath his feet, to
the unpredictable, self-contained centre of the earth. However, even though
he seeks a state similar to that of the nature he exploitsa purely amoral
stancehis attempts to isolate himself from the world are inevitably immoral:
He cannot avoid his actions being ethically qualified, since his turning away
is a turning away from: for instance, from his son H.W. Accordingly, instead of
aestheticising the murder and turning it into a sublime work of art, Brahmss
music betrays Plainview and exposes the illusion of making a clean leap to
the essence of nature. The music pierces through the veil of the romantic
genius who puts himself above the moral law. Instead of being redeemed by
it, the final blood embarrassingly exposes Plainview as an incarnate, human
being. However animalistic his behaviour may be, as a human being he is for-
ever trapped in a morally qualified web of relations, laid out metaphorically
by the horizontal and vertical alliances between the music and the images on
the screen.
8 The Displaced Listener
The combined experiences of, on the one hand, being refused entrance by
Greenwoods music and, on the other, suddenly being sucked in by Brahmss
theme reinforce each other to the point that they both also evoke what they
are not. Therefore, not only are the musical connotations displacedsuccess
becomes murder, victims become mutebut the listener finds herself con-
tinuously displaced as well. By virtue of the play of exclusion and surrender,
of involvement and failure to engage, the spectator is almost physically made
aware of the fact that she is neither without moral flaw nor allowed to retreat
into a safe, nonmorally determined realm. She is condemned to run the risk
of being manipulated by the game of push-and-pull and nevertheless cannot
escape the moral responsibility for it. It is the entire complex, therefore, of
images, music, story, and spectator that creates a realm in which, through mul-
tifarious forms of displacement, the aesthetic experience is subtly infused with
moral questions. Whether we like it or not, as social beings we are condemned
to perpetually define our position in and vis--vis the world and determine
our relation to others. This is where the aesthetic realm perhaps comes clos-
est to the ethical realm. In its own particular way, the aesthetic experience
makes us physically aware of how we are in constant search for the proper level
of engagement. It makes palpable our attempts (or lack thereof) to keep the
opposing forces of sheer voluntarism and passive surrender in check.
Accordingly, by engaging in the films shifting play of music and image, the
spectator can grasp the storys many layers of meaning, as well as its perti-
nence, as another object she can relate to her condition as a social being in
the world. As I have argued, the particular use of Greenwoods and Brahmss
music in There Will Be Blood challenges the audience to do so by making use
of the virtual compass that ingeniously emerges from its interaction with the
imagesthough time and again it is up to each viewer to use it and to decide
just how she will use it.
References
Adorno, Theodore W. and Hanns Eisler. Composing for the Films. New York: Continuum,
2007.
Brahms, Johannes. Vivace Non Troppo. Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 77: 3. Performed
by the Berliner Philharmoniker. Conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Solo violin by
Anne-Sophie Mutter.
250 De Munck
Eisenstein, Sergei. Appendix A: A Statement. Film Form. New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1977,
25759.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London and New York: Continuum, 2011.
Goehr, Lydia. Film as Visual Music: Duplication, Dissonance, and Displacement.
In Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory, 20456. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Greenwood, Jonny. Bodysong. Music from the Film. Performed by Julian Aravelles (saxo-
phone), Gerald Presencer (trumpet), Colin Greenwood (bass, programming),
Jeremy Brown (bass), Gene Calderazzo (drums), and The Emperor Quartet.
. Popcorn Superhet Receiver. Performed by the B.B.C. Concert Orchestra.
Conducted by Robert Ziegler.
. Smear. Performed by London Sinfonietta. Conducted by Martyn Brabbins.
. There Will Be Blood OST. New York: Nonesuch Records, 2008.
Jones, Lewis E. There Is Power in the Blood. Performed by the Church of the Third
Revelation.
Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1997.
Prt, Arvo. Fratres for Cello and Piano. Performed by I Fiamminghi, The Orchestra of
Flanders. Conducted by Rudolf Werthen.
Peschek, David. CD: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood OST. The Guardian.
January 4, 2008. Accessed March 10, 2013. www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jan/04/
popandrock.shopping4.
Tapley, Kristopher. Digging into Oscars Controversial Music Branch. Variety. February
12, 2008.
There Will Be Blood. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Santa Monica, CA: Miramax
Films, 2007.
CHAPTER 14
Pathology and the Search for a Modern Ethics

in the Writings of Robert Musil
Stijn De Cauwer
In an influential article which appeared in 1958,1 Georg Lukcs formulated his

objections to the approach of certain modernist authors. According to him,
a prominent example of what was problematic with the modern novel was
Robert Musils unfinished Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Lukcs accuses Musil
of not being capable of developing a concrete cultural critique in his literary
analysis of modern society. The consequences of this are that the sociopolitical
reality appears as chaos and that Musil is incapable of giving concrete aims or
goals to his critique. Symptomatic of this incapacity to understand society is,
according to Lukcs, an obsession with the pathological and the morbid.
Lukcs claims that writers such as Musil have an obsession with the path-
ological for its own sake: With Musiland with many other modernist
writerspsychopathology became the goal, the terminus ad quem, of their
artistic intention. [...] There is first of all a lack of definition. The protest
expressed by this flight into psychopathology is an abstract gesture; its rejec-
tion of reality is wholesale and summary, containing no concrete criticism.2 In
Lukcss view, Musils alternative is mere eccentricity and nothing more. The
wholesale rejection of reality that he discerns in Musils writing will inevitably
lead to the disintegration of the personality, becoming without qualities, and
will give society a ghostly and nightmarish character. Both the self and society
become incomprehensible.
In Lukcss reading, the obsession with psychopathology of modernist writ-
ers was an inadequate reaction to life under capitalism, which he finds exem-
plified in certain statements from Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften: It is to the
credit of Musil that he was quite conscious of the implications of his method.
1 Georg Lukcs, Die weltanschaulichen Grundlagen des Avantgardeismus, in Wider den miss-
verstandenen Realismus (Hamburg: Claassen, 1958), 1348.
2 Georg Lukcs, The Lukcs Reader, ed. Arpad Kadarkay (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers,
1995), 19697.

252 De Cauwer
Of his hero Ulrich he remarked: One is faced with a simple choice: Either one
must run with the pack (when in Rome, do as the Romans do); or one becomes
a neurotic. Musil here introduces the problem, central to all modernist litera-
ture, of the significance of psychopathology.3 Lukcs claims that the morbid
and the pathological first had a stylistic or decorative function in literature, but
then became a symptom of an inadequate, escapist protest against capitalist
society by bored and wealthy modern city dwellers.
It would be easy to dismiss Lukcss article as an outdated, overly moral-
ising text, written under particular sociohistorical conditions by a militant
scholar who does not do justice to the complexity of the views and techniques
adopted by the widely diverse authors he critiques. But Lukcss objections
can be seen as an early blueprint for the criticisms and confusions that recur
in the reception of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften to this day. Readers and crit-
ics often characterise the novel as a work which brilliantly describes the chaos
and confusion of the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empirethe period
just before its demise in the First World War. Characters seem to be sliding fur-
ther into their own forms of madness. A society is presented in which chaos,
incomprehension, and outlandish behaviour reign. Stefan Jonsson begins his
review of the biography of Musil in the following way: To read Robert Musil is
to sense an approaching catastrophe. His narratives spiral downward from the
daylight of bourgeois conventions into the night of madness, the negativity of
disorder, criminality, and war.4 Like Lukcs, some critics come to the conclu-
sion that Musil does no more than describe the prevailing confusion of the
period and that he is incapable of providing suggestions or solutions.
In this essay, I would like to clarify the function of the pathological in
Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften in relation to Musils stated intention that the
novel should be an experimental station to find a new ethics suitable for
the challenges of modern life. With this new ethics, he hoped to overcome a
destructive and truly pathological condition which was increasingly affecting
modern society. We can learn from Lukcss critique that an understanding
of the pathological in Musils work will require a clarification of Musils views
and intentions as they are expressed through his novel. Musil is not inter-
ested in the pathological for its own sake, and his interest does not arise out of
incomprehension; rather, the pathological plays a crucial role in Musils sharp
diagnosis of modern life and in his attempt to use his literary talents to find a
modern ethics.
3 Ibid., 196.
4 Stefan Jonsson, A Citizen of Kakania, New Left Review 27 (MayJune 2004): 131.
Pathology and the Search for a Modern Ethics 253
Long before Musil started writing Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, the fascina-
tion of artists with the pathological had almost become a commonplace. The
pathological nature of the new Viennese painting and literature was the cause
of repeated scandals and public condemnations. In one of his first essays, Das
Unanstndige und Kranke in der Kunst from 1911 and published in the journal
Pan, Musil rejected the practice of condemning art for allegedly being obscene
or pathological. The article was a direct response to the confiscation by the
Berlin police of an earlier edition of the journal which contained sections of
Flauberts travel diary. The law stated that more daring artistic representa-
tions were allowed if they were justified by a clear artistic purpose. Musil rightly
points out that the artistic purpose of a work of art is not clearly labelled on
the work in an explicit manner. It was not the task of the law or the press to
decide on the artistic purpose of a work of art. That the Berlin chief of police
fails to see an artistic purpose in the work of art is not the fault of the artist. In
such cases, the artistic purpose of the work of art is denied.
This early essay contains in a compact form many of the concerns that
will preoccupy Musil throughout his life, especially the relationship between
art and morality and the place of the pathological in art. In just a few pages,
Musil gives us a compact theory of the process of creation, representation, and
morality in the work of art. Implicit in the rhetoric about the artistic purpose of
the work of art is that art is supposed to reflect the moral norms prevailing in
society. Musil strongly opposes the folderol about the mission of the artist.5
He rejects the tendency to judge artas well as human behavioraccording
to narrow, rigid moral categories. He defends the view thatin this age which
has so much anxiety about health and decadencethe boundary between
mental health and illness, morality and immorality, is sought in a much too
coarse, geometric way, like a line that is to be defined and respected (every
action having to be on one side or the other).6 Musil reverses the problem.
He notices a problematic tendency in society to react to the rapid changes in
society and to the complexity of modern life with an uptight and rigid form
of morality, condemning new views and art forms as sick or pathological. By
doing so, the indirect claim is made that following moral norms guarantees
5 Robert Musil, Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses, trans. Burton Pike and David S. Luft
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 6.
6 Ibid., 7.
254 De Cauwer
health, sanity, and order.7 A black-and-white view on health, as if one can draw
a straight line between health and pathology, is for Musil nothing more than a
tool in the rhetoric of people with a conservative moral agenda who are terri-
fied of change.
What is at stake in art, according to Musil, is not the reflection of the moral
status quo, but the tracing of new connections and patterns that problematise
our congealed categories.
To experience the need for (artistic) representation means:
to depict something: to represent its connections to a hundred other

things; because objectively nothing else is possible, because only in this
way can one make something comprehensible and tangible, [...] as even
scientific understanding can only arise through comparisons and connec-
tions, and as this is the only way human understanding can arise at all. And
even if these hundred other things were to be obscene or pathological:
their connections are not, and the tracing of these connections, never.8
Even if a given topic can conventionally be seen by society as pathological or

obscene, this is no longer the case once it is expressed in a work of art, as it then
becomes necessarily involved in a web of connections and affinities. The artist
breaks down the habitual categories by which we ordinarily perceive the world
to reorder these elements into new patterns and a new totality that reveals
new connections amongst these defamiliarised elements. Instead of a clear
artistic purpose, the affinities explored by the work of art can only be tenta-
tive explorations. Far from representing the prevailing moral order, the work
of art dissolves this order and finds new affinities and resonances between the
elements it explores.9 The artist must follow the traces and connections he or
she is exploring and not reject them beforehand because they are immoral.
7 The rhetoric of condemning art for being pathological was taken to a grotesque extreme by
the Nazis in their Entartete Kunst expositions. In this travelling exposition, modern paintings
(by Modigliani, Kokoschka, Kandinsky, among others) were shown next to pictures of people
with deformed faces to show the degeneration of these artists who strayed from the Nazi
view on health, the body, and moral conduct. It was not so much their aim to dismiss modern
forms of painting (in fact, certain Nazi officials loved the Expressionist works displayed as
degenerate art), but to persuade the viewer of the existence of a national form of health,
harmony, and order.
8 Musil, Precision and Soul, 6.
9 In Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Ulrich claims that all great novels challenge the status quo:
Every great book breathes the spirit of this love for the fate of individuals at odds with the
forms the community tries to impose on them. [...] Extract the meaning out of all literature,
According to this view, art must by definition move beyond the status quo;
it must move beyond the prevailing moral norms in search of new and bet-
ter ones. Musil writes that the artist is interested in expanding the range of
what is inwardly still possible, and therefore arts sagacity is not the sagacity
of the law, buta different one.10 The artist does not follow the law, which
is too rigid and narrowly defined, but seeks an expansion of what is possible.
Art does not repeat the existing norms, it seeks new norms. Such a view will
inevitably be rejected by those defending the moral order. In the essay, Musil
strongly rejects such a conservative reflex: [O]ne should reform forward, not
backward: Social illnesses, revolutions, are evolutions inhibited by a conserv-
ing stupidity.11
In this early essay, we can find some of the central features of Musils view
on modern life. For him, the problem was not the changes in modern society,
but, on the contrary, it was the overly uptight moral reaction to the changing
times that was one of the most pertinent problems. Furthermore, the chal-
lenges of modern life required a rethinking of morality, allowing for more cre-
ativity and flexibility: Let us define as morality some common goal, but with
a greater measure of permitted side paths, and agree that the movement in
that direction should be based on a strong, forward-directed will, in order not
to suffer the danger of plopping into the smallest quibble on the road.12 The
complexity and volatility of modern life requires more flexibility and the abil-
ity to adapt our moral standards. Rigid, knee-jerk moral responses to change
will cause these changes to look threatening, chaotic, and monstrous. By dis-
solving our habitual categories and exploring new ones, art has a significant
capacity to overcome deadlocks and to find better approaches to and guide-
lines for the challenges of modern life.
and what you will get is a denial, however incomplete, but nonetheless an endless series
of individual examples all based on experience which refute the accepted rules, prin-
ciples, and prescriptions underpinning the very society that loves these works of art!
[Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike (London
and New York: Vintage International, 1995), 39899].
11 Ibid., 9. It is interesting to point out here that Musils view is almost diametrically opposed
to that of his contemporary, Hermann Broch, with whom he is often compared. In one
of his most important essays, Broch states unambiguously that art, in contradistinction
to science, which in its structure is revolutionary and absolutely committed to progress,
needs always to be conservative. [Hermann Broch, Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an
Unspiritual Age, ed. and trans. John Hargraves (New York: Counterpoint, 2002), 21].
256 De Cauwer
In 1922, Musil attempted to bring his different reflections on modern life

together into one comprehensive essay, Der deutsche Mensch als Symptom. In
this rich essay, he provides a general theory of the role of morality in life and
why this general human condition has entered into a state of crisis around the
turn of the century. In his view, human beings, who are essentially shapeless,
are formed in the smallest details by the prevailing moral guidelines, ideolo-
gies, and institutional apparatuses of that society. Without the roles, shapes,
and patterns provided by society, we would drown in existential angst and
insecurity: Life shapes itself in ready-made forms: It is socially preformed. The
feeling of love, for instance, finds modes, modifications, degrees, etc., already
prepared, into which it pours itself and in which it becomes reality. Without
the guidelines, the individual disintegrates.13
To avoid the constant existential angst over our life choices or the intense
doubt that will arise when one realises the contingency of what we find most
important, people adopt pre-existing moral models. The prevailing moral
order, which includes social roles, symbols, and hierarchies, serves as a firm
guideline for people to follow in order to feel that they belong to a meaningful,
ordered society in which they have a specific role and place:
[T]he minute a soul has morals, religion, philosophy, a well-grounded

middle-class education, ideals in the sphere of duty and beauty, it has
been equipped with a system of rules, conditions, and directives that it
must obey before it can think of being a respectable soul [...] All that
remains are only logical problems of interpretation, such as whether an
action falls under this or that commandment.14
After decades, people become accustomed to these moral guidelines, which

Musil calls Kunstgriffe, artificial systems, and they consider these interlocking
value systems to be the natural state of things:
But looked at closely, it does seem to be an extremely artificial state

of mind that enables a man to walk upright among the circling con-
stellations and permits him, surrounded as he is by an almost infinite
unknown, to slip his hand with aplomb between the second and third
buttons of his jacket. Not only does every human being, the idiot as much
13 Ibid., 158.
14 Musil, The Man without Qualities, 198.
as the sage, apply his special skills to make this happen; all these personal
stratagems are also cleverly built into societys moral and intellectual sys-
tems for maintaining its inner equilibrium, so that they serve the same
purpose on a large scale. This interlocking of systems resembles that of
nature itself, where all the magnetic fields of the cosmos affect those of
the earth without anyone noticing it, because the result is simply what-
ever happens on earth. The consequent psychological relief is so great
that the wisest of men and the most ignorant of little girls, if left undis-
turbed, feel very clever and pleased with themselves.15
People can become so accustomed to the moral order that it feels like the natu-
ral state of things; they can no longer fathom that other ways of ordering and
behaving are possible.
In Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, we can find several characters who defend
the view that we should unquestionably and firmly adhere to the prevailing
moral norms because they provide the best and most certain guidelines for life.
Early in the novel, it is Ulrichs father who most clearly expresses this view of
morality as a necessity for existing because it provides us with a guideline and
a sense of security. He lives by the following principle: To pass freely through
open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames.16 Or
in the ironic, mocking words of Ulrich:
His father would have put it something like this: Give a fellow a totally
free hand, and he will soon run his head into a wall out of sheer con-
fusion. [...] For a mans possibilities, plans, and feelings must first be
hedged in by prejudices, traditions, obstacles, and barriers of all sorts,
like a lunatic in his straightjacket, and only then can whatever he is capa-
ble of doing have perhaps some value, substance, and staying power.17
According to Ulrichs father, accepting the traditional moral code is as neces-

sary as solid door frames and, without it, the world would slide into random
chaos and excess. Even more, it is a necessity for people to maintain a grip on
themselves. Let that grip go, and you end up on a slippery slope toward insan-
ity, crime, and confusion. Morality, in this sense, is the preventing of a situation
in which one has too many possibilities and too much freedom.
15 Ibid., 57475.
16 Ibid., 10.
258 De Cauwer
In Musils view, accepting the prevailing moral guidelines and social roles is a
way for people to reduce complexity and uncertainty in a world that is becom-
ing increasingly complex: Life is made easier when it is socially bound, and
when it is individually mobile only to a limited extent. A believing Catholic or
Jew, an officer, a fraternity brother, an honorable businessman, or an important
person, is in every situation capable of a far smaller number of reactions than
is a free spirit: This saves and stores energy.18 However, something fundamen-
tally changed at the end of the nineteenth century. The rapid changes in mod-
ern life had made the prevailing moral guidelines, along with the symbols of
the moral order, as outdated as a powdered wig. People could no longer believe
in the symbols of the moral order, such as the old Emperor Franz Joseph, whose
fading power Musil compared with the light of a star that died many years ago.
But at the same time, the people longed more than ever for firm guidelines and
order as they saw their living conditions change beyond recognition. Hence,
they tried to cling to moral guidelines that they could no longer take seriously.
It was as if the people had outgrown the old moral guidelines: [They were] for-
ever incongruent with life, and life shakes them off in recurring crises the way
swelling mollusks shed their outgrown shells.19 The rapid changes that moder-
nity brought along tilted the old established order out of balance, causing a
crisis in both personal and collective identity. People no longer knew what to
believe, which ideas to endorse, or what to admire. There was a growing list
of pessimistic narratives about the decline of society; the decay of civilization
or moral values; the loss of moral fibre; the anomie and desensitisation of the
masses; the dissolving of social bonds; the degeneration of culture; and the
disintegration of values. The cult around Oswald Spenglers Der Untergang des
Abendlandes and the influence of Max Nordaus Entartung are but two promi-
nent examples. People need to believe in the order in which they have a place,
but in Kakania, as Musil mockingly called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a pro-
cess had begun where people gradually lost this belief:
For Kakania was the first country in our present historical phase from
which God withdrew His credit: the love of life, faith in itself, and the
ability of all civilized nations to disseminate the useful illusion that they
have a mission to fulfill. [...] They no longer had the faith or credit, nor
had they learned how to fake it. They no longer knew what their smiles,
their sighs, their ideas, were for.20

19 Ibid., 130.
In Der deutsche Mensch als Symptom, Musil describes the change that occurred
in the 1880s as a lack of faith, which was not just a religious matter at all,
but includes the secular as well.21 People could no longer identify with the
symbols, institutions, and the life roles they were supposed to take up22or
as Musil phrases it in his Diaries: Morality was not undermined but proved
to be hollow.23 The problems concerning morality were like an escalating
vortex: The need for clear guidelines was greater than ever, but people could
only turn to guidelines they no longer took seriously, increasing their frustra-
tion and need for firm guidelines, like a vicious circle spiralling out of control.
This quagmire created an explosive and destructive psychological condi-
tion, which, according to Musil, paved the way for the enormous cataclysmic
catastrophes of the early twentieth century. Clinging to the old moral values
deprived the people of the capacity to invent new and better ethical guidelines
that would be better suited to modern life:
For every moral system has, in its time, regulated the feelings, and rig-
idly too, but only insofar as certain basic principles and feelings were
needed for whatever action it favoured; the rest was left to individual
whim, to the private play of emotions, to the random efforts of art, and
to academic debate. So morality has adapted our feelings to the needs of
moral systems and meanwhile neglected to develop them, even though

22 The great literature produced after the First World War, looking back at the period before
the war, was filled with protagonists of a wealthy background who were no longer able to
lead the lives they were supposed to lead, from Rilkes Malte Laurids Brigge to the decay
of the old aristocratic families in Joseph Roths novels. Thomas Manns Hans Castorp
withdraws from the life he was supposed to lead to the sanatorium in the mountains
because of a rather vague illness. But probably the clearest and most explicit example of
this phenomenon can be found in Hermann Brochs trilogy Die Schlafwandler. Pasenow,
the protagonist of the first novel Pasenow oder die Romantiek, is trying to cling to the sym-
bols and actions that go along with his position in the old fading society in a truly painful
and almost pathetic way. No matter how hard he tries, he can no longer find any meaning
and comfort in it. He turns to what used to be the signs of dignity, such as his uniform and
military rank; goes to church when he is in moral turmoil; and, in a painful climax, lies
next to his newlywed wife during their wedding night in his full officers outfit. Pasenow
tries to conform to the moral order he was born in, hoping that doing his duty will bring
him solace, only to find this moral system to be hollow and inadequate.
23 Robert Musil, Diaries 18991941, trans. Philip Payne (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 287.
260 De Cauwer
it depends on feelings: Morality is, after all, the order and integrity of the
emotional life.24
We can now understand why Musil, shortly after the end of the First World
War, wrote the following controversial assessment: Germanys collapse was
not brought about by her immoral, but by her moral, citizens.25
Given the fact that people were incapable of developing new and better guide-
lines to help them cope with the complexity of modern existence, it comes as
no surprise that they were looking in the wrong places for solutions for the
vast problems society was facing. They were either longing for the restoration
of a romanticised past order or seeking pseudo-mystical forms of redemption
that would magically transform all present fragmentation and confusion into
a new unity. In Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, one of the protagonists, General
Stumm, claims he had been hearing so much talk about redemption that
he was sick and tired of it: His first reaction was that the term was one of
those verbal inflections not yet classified by linguistic science.26 He cynically
remarks that he hasnt heard so much talk about redemption since the religion
classes of his youth. For Musil, the popularity of the term redemption was a
symptom of the incapacity of his society to face the challenges of the present:
It was among the so-called intellectuals that the word redemption and
its kin came into vogue at this time. They did not see how things could
go on unless a messiah came quickly. Depending on circumstances, he
would be a medical messiah who would redeem the art of healing [...], or
a messianic poet capable of writing a drama that would sweep millions of
people into the theaters despite its ineffable sublimity; besides the belief
24 Musil, The Man without Qualities, 1116. In Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Musil describes
Ulrichs views on morality in the following way: He believed in morality without believ-
ing in any specific moral system. Morality is generally understood to be a sort of police
regulation for keeping life in order, and since life does not obey even these, they come to
look as if they were really impossible to live up to and accordingly, in this sorry way, not
really an ideal either. But morality must not be reduced to this level. Morality is imagina-
tion. [Musil, The Man without Qualities, 1116117].
25 Musil, Diaries, 287.
that every kind of human endeavor needed a messiah to restore it to its

pristine purpose, there was of course also the simple and unadulterated
longing for a leader sent to put everything to right with his strong right
arm. The age before the Great War was a messianic age.27
A common reaction of the intellectuals to the perceived incongruity between

the state of society and their ideals was a longing for the past. They regarded
the confusing and incomprehensible present as a period of decline of a previ-
ous order or fullness, and they nostalgically looked to the past for answers.
Redemption in this context stood for the longing to completely erase all alien-
ation and fragmentation and to restore a presumed old stability along with a
sense of order and purpose. Musil strongly rejects such nostalgia:
Now I am of course aware of the enormous literature whose content con-

sists of expressions for this incongruity. It embraces the familiar sea of
complaints about our soullessness, mechanization, calculatedness, lack
of religion, and so on. But I know hardly of a single sensible book that
tries to see this problem as a problem, a new problem, and not as an old,
failed solution. Generally speaking the cure is sought regressively [...]
Only very rarely is it made explicit that a new problem has been posed
here, that its solution has not yet been found.28
Moreover, the passions of the masses were captured by specific idealised

notions, such as state, nation, and race, which were increasingly exploited by
political forces. Musil refers to them as the mystical fetishes of his time. These
ideologically loaded notions were fetishised as an absolute good and cred-
ited with a form of moral agency. Musil remarks that these mystical fetishes
were used as piecemeal recipes for all evils of modern life. They were treated
as easy answersnot as complicated questions. They were dangerous not
only because they provided the people with an arousing narrative that could
be politically abused, but also because they transferred all moral responsibility
to some idealised abstraction outside of the individual:
If, in good and evil, the race rather than the individual is made respon-
sible for everything, the effect is exactly the same as if one were always
making excuses for oneself: The result is not only that truthfulness and
intellectual refinement become dulled, but also that all the germ cells
27 Ibid., 567.
262 De Cauwer
of morality degenerate. When virtue is declared to be national property

by predestination, the Lords vineyard is expropriated and no one needs
to work in it anymore. The individual is flattered into believing that he
possesses everything desirable by merely contemplating the virtues of
his race: evidently a fools paradise, our happy Germany, where roasted
virtues fly into our mouths.29
Musil describes the function of these fetishised notions as a transforming ide-

alism, that projects the dignity that the human being is unable to achieve in
his personal life onto its background: onto the race, the Emperor, a social club,
the sublimity of the moral law, or some other such tapestry.30 Unable to come
to terms with the complexity of the present, many were seeking their refer-
ence points in abstracted and idealised ideals beyond reality to which the facts
of the present were supposed to conform. Unable to realise that reality was
bound to be incomprehensible and reprehensible in the light of these lofty ide-
als and unable to stop and wonder why life did not comply with these ideals,
they could not see that the mistake must lie with the ideals themselves.
In his last public address in Vienna, in 1936, shortly before fleeing to
Switzerland, Musil developed this problem further. In this address, which was
a veiled critique of the rise of National Socialism, he calls it a dangerous form
of stupidity that had become institutional. This stupidity is the incapacity to
adequately assess the complexities of the present, for which the person wants
to compensate with blind frustration, resentment, and inadequate emotion.
This goes along with a violent hatred of the present and the hope that wild and
random destruction could somehow erase this sense of unease. Musil com-
pares this reaction to a sweeping shootout or the throwing of a hand grenade,
in which a stray bullet or a piece of shrapnel might accidentally be effective in
eliminating the cause of the unease. Such destructive acts mistakenly pass for
sound actions. The striking example that Musil uses of this type of behaviour
is flinging a book to the ground in the hope this would neutralise the poison it
contains. Public book burnings had already taken place in Berlin, with Musils
writings on the blacklist. Earlier in Der Deutsche Mensch als Symptom, Musil
had written about the craving for a metaphysical bang coming as a result
of discontent with the times, an apparently human need to rip existence to
shreds from time to time, and toss them to the winds, seeing where they fall.31
It was this feeling which made people welcome the outbreak of the First World
War with a festive mood, as if spring had arrived bringing on the new society,

30 Ibid., 109.
31 Ibid., 129.
and embrace the arousing mass rallies of the Nazi movement. Redemption in
this sense becomes a longing for violent, total destruction, which would mirac-
ulously restore order.
If Musil rejected a nostalgic longing for the past, he also rejected the belief in
a utopian, redemptive moment in the future. He strongly denied all historical
determinism or teleology. The necessity that certain people see in historical
events was simply a necessity they read post factum in the course of history:
The course of history was therefore not that of a billiard ballwhich, once
it is hit, takes a definite linebut resembles the movement of clouds, or the
path of a man sauntering through the streets, turned aside by a shadow here, a
crowd there, an unusual architectural outcrop, until at last he arrives at a place
he never knew or meant to go to.32
Human existence was not marked by some kind of iron law of fate, natural
rise and decline, or destiny, but a chain of situations. Musil did not accept any
form of meaning, direction, purpose, or simple causality in the unfolding of
history. It was necessary to break out of such deterministic views on history in
order for people to regain a grip on the state of society: [F]or if it turns out that
our innermost being does not dangle from the puppet strings of some hobgob-
lin of fate, but on the contrary that we are draped with a multitude of small,
haphazardly linked weights, then we ourselves can tip the scales.33
The strict rejection by Musil of all forms of eschatology and teleology does
not come as a surprise if we consider the big influence of Friedrich Nietzsche
and Ernst Mach34 on his thought. In Morgenrthe, Nietzsche describes what
happens when people are finally freed from teleological thinking. The fact that
people, in order to acquire salvation in the afterlife, had to gather all the proper
knowledge during a very brief lifespan, gave knowledge a frightful weight. But
when people free themselves from this weight, they regain the benefits of
error: We have reconquered our courage for error, for experimentation, for

34 Musil wrote his doctoral thesis on the work of Mach under the supervision of Carl Stumpf
in Berlin. He did not get along well with Stumpf, who was a strong critic of Mach, and he
had already made up his mind to abandon an academic career for a career in literature.
In his dissertation, Musil is quite critical of Mach, but the influence of Mach on his views
nevertheless remained significant.
264 De Cauwer
accepting provisionally [...] And it is precisely for this reason that individuals
and generations can now fix their eyes on tasks of a vastness that would to
earlier ages have seemed madness and trifling with Heaven and Hell. We may
experiment with ourselves! Yes, mankind now has the right to do that!35
Besides the influence of thinkers such as Nietzsche and Mach, Musil was
very much inspired by his experiences with the new developments in the sci-
ences. Because of his studies, he was well aware of the profound paradigm
shifts that occurred in the sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Rather than talk about the gradual accumulation of knowledge about the natu-
ral order, the scientists now spoke about probability, instability, and provisional
knowledge. Musil believed that such a provisional approach could be trans-
posed to the realm of ethics. Instead of fixed, rigid moral guidelines, which
would be shattered by the first fundamental problem, he believed that we
needed to develop flexible approaches that could be readjusted to constantly
changing challenges. Instead of petrifying reality, Musil wanted to enrich our
sense of possibility: Reality could also be different and better. He did not believe
in a utopian ideal in the future, but in the utopian potential that the present
contains. Rather than presuming certain states of being or ways of ordering
society, different possibilities of being human and organising society should be
explored and tested out like a hypothesis in an experiment.
Musil advocates a provisional, experimental ethos that could provide more
lasting stability without falling into the trap of fetishising the past or abstract
ideals. Musils outlook was formed by the modern scientific sensitivity which
was very critical of older, rigid conceptions of natural science and the picture
of reality that it presented. The complex phenomena which made up mod-
ern life could not be understood as long as people adopted a rigid, outdated
framework or model, in the light of which the bewildering phenomena of
modern life could only be looked upon as incomprehensible monstrosities.
Instead of regarding new phenomena that do not fit in ones model as a threat
to its coherence, Musil argued for an approach that could be readjusted to new
phenomena. That requires an approach in which an awareness of error, uncer-
tainty, contingency, partiality, situatedness, and possibility are crucial. Such
an approach also requires a different conception of order which is no longer
defined by a single form of stability, but by multi-stability: the alternation
35 Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R.J. Hollingdale
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 501.
between different forms of stability, such as in so-called Kippbilderfigures

which can be seen in two or more ways.36
Musil ended his address on stupidity with the following imperative: Act as
well as you can and as badly as you must, but in doing so remain aware of
the margin of error of your actions.37 In Musils ethos we can hear an echo
of Nietzsches courage for error, for experimentation, for accepting provision-
ally. The rupture of the eschatological frees up the possibility of experimenta-
tion and the capacity to readjust ones positions, values, or opinions. It allows
for error in the positive sense that the sciences give it, as a necessary compo-
nent of refining and readjusting ones hypotheses to accommodate new facts.
When temporary and when leading to readjustment, such error is produc-
tive and important. If it is not acknowledged and if it becomes institutional, it
becomes pathological and dangerous:
[E]ach of us is, if not always, at least from time to time, stupid. So a distinc-
tion must be made between failing and incapacity, between occasional,
or functional, and permanent, or constitutional, stupidity, between error
and unreason. This is most important because of the way the conditions
of life are today: so unintelligible, so difficult, so confused, that the occa-
sional stupidities of the individual can easily lead to a constitutional stu-
pidity of the body politic.38
If Musil believed in a flexible, experimental ethos, in which ones approach is

permanently readjusted, then we can understand why Musil had an inclina-
tion toward an open-ended, essayistic writing style.
As we have seen, Musil was highly sceptical of the use of clinical language to dis-
miss new forms of art or unusual behaviour. Nevertheless, throughout his life,
36 Well-known examples of such Kippbilder are the so-called duckrabbit, a single figure
that could be seen as both a duck and a rabbit, and the Rubin Vase, a figure that can
be seen as a vase or two faces. During Musils scientific education, Gestalt Theory was
becoming increasingly popular and the phenomenon of multi-stable figures was a popu-
lar research topic. Musil repeatedly plays with the inversion of part and whole, figure and
background, concavity and convexity, to evoke the feeling of vertigo.
38 Ibid., 28485.
266 De Cauwer
he repeatedly compared the state of society with the behaviour of inmates in

a madhouse. Though he carefully avoided using specific clinical categories, the
increasingly frantic behaviour of people reminded Musil unambiguously of a
form of pathology. From the earliest to the last of his writings, Musil described
the different symptoms of what he called in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften a
mysterious malady of the times.39 In order to comprehend what Musil wanted
to achieve with his novel, we need to keep this diagnosis in mind.
The urge to compare the state of society with pathological behaviour was
felt by Musil for the first time on March 30, 1913, when he visited a psychiatric
institution in Rome.40 What he saw there left a lifelong imprint on him, and
he described his visit in vivid detail in his diary. Many years later, Musil would
incorporate his impressions during this visit in the chapter Die Irren begrssen
Clarisse of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. The observations he wrote down in
his diary were almost taken up literally in this chapter, which shows that even
after many years, Musil was still deeply impressed by what he had seen.
The guided visit to the different wards of the hospital is described by Musil,
who places special emphasis on the disturbing impression that the patients,
and especially their contorted features and wild physical gestures, made on the
visitors. The notebook entry culminates in a visit to a man in an isolation cell:
A naked man stands in the center of the room. [...] Repeatedly he makes
the same movement, like a pendulum, hurling his upper body just to one
side, with head lowered a little and with a movement of the finger while
his arm is bent stiffly at a right-angle and held close to his body as if he
were playing mora. Each time he does so, he lets out a cry: Ah!, panting
and expelling the sound with a colossal tensing of the pulmonary mus-
cles. He is beyond help; one has to wait until he tires. This lasts for hours.41
What strikes Musil the most is that the patients seem to be caught up in wild
mannerisms and gestures which they cannot refrain from doingeven if it
leads them to nothing other than sheer exhaustion and even more agitation.
Their repetitive gestures, contortions, and spasms wear them out and leave
them physically and nervously broken. Yet, they compulsively make these ges-
tures over and over again, as if it is the only thing that really matters to them.

40 He was travelling together with Alice von Charlemont, his mentally unstable friend who
served as the model for Clarisse in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften.
41 Musil, Diaries, 161.
Musils interest in physical details could mistakenly make the reader think
that he is interested in the expressive qualities of the patients in the way that
Egon Schiele or Oskar Kokoschka were influenced by seeing Jean-Martin
Charcots pictures of contorted patients in the Salptrire Hospital. Instead,
he finds the agitation of the patients striking because he notices a similarity
between the plight of the patients and the condition of society. Musil makes
this link explicit in an essay from 1913, Politisches Bekenntnis eines jungen
Mannes, in which he repeats the description of the agitated naked man. In this
essay, he writes:
An hour ago, I visited a Roman madhouse [...] Everything looked to me

like the situation were in. [...] In a cell by himself a naked man was rag-
ing; we could hear his screams from far off. [...] He constantly repeated
the same motion, throwing his upper body around with a single jerk of his
muscles, and at the same time always making the same gesture with one
hand as if he were trying to explain something to someone. Screaming
something no one understood, always the same thing. For him, it was
probably the important point he had to make clear, had to hammer into
the ear of the world; for us it was pulverized, formless shouting.42
The frustrated, compulsive agitation, combined with inadequacy and incom-

prehension, was for Musil a striking image of the present condition of
the world.43
These patients seem to be fanatically in the grip of something, but the what
or why seems to be beyond understanding. The impression that would never
leave Musil from this visit is people who compulsively act out wild, emotional

43 In a series of compelling works, Eric Santner has described a particular situation at the
beginning of the twentieth century. He describes a compulsive, somatic reaction (an
irritation of the flesh, as he calls it) which is a response to a situation in which one is
addressed (by the other, the law, or history), but with an address one cannot make sense
of. Like Franz Kafkas protagonists, there was an interpellation of the law, but they found
themselves before the law without finding any meaning in it. According to Santner, this
surplus will find a way out in a somatic compulsion. In his latest book, Santner finds a
similar fascination with compulsive behaviour in the work of Rainer Maria Rilke. [Eric L.
Santner, The Royal Remains: The Peoples Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 188244].
268 De Cauwer
gestures which they keep on doing as if it was the last thing they had to do. But
to a spectator, these gestures seem utterly incomprehensible and even absurd.44
In 1921 and 1922, Musil wrote the essays Die Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit
and Das hilflose Europa oder Reise vom Hundertsten ins Tausendste, respectively,
in which he sharply assessed the state of Germany and Austria after the First
World War. As opposed to many other intellectuals, Musil was of the opinion
that the war was not some kind of radical break and that people were still in
the grip of the same problems and confusions which had always troubled them
in the period leading up to the war.45 According to him, people were still inca-
pable of comprehending the situation they found themselves in. Moreover,
there was a tendency to forego all responsibility for the war: How false the
childish excuse, which is, unfortunately, often heard in Germany: We didnt do
it! The Emperor, the generals, the diplomats did it! Of course we did it: We let
it happen.46 Musil argued that it would have been a grave mistakeand his-
tory proved him rightto see the period after the war as a clean break, a new
start, and forget about all that had happened before it. The crisis needed to be
worked through:
[C]an we then simply come to our senses again, stand up and walk away
as if after a binge, calling the whole thing just an intoxication, a psycho-
sis, a mass hypnosis, a delusion of capitalism, nationalism, or whatever?
We certainly cannot, without repressing an experience that still has not
been assimilated. By repressing it, we would be sinking the foundations
of a monstrous hysteria into the soul of the nation.47
44 Elias Canetti, who lived in a room in Vienna with a view over the Steinhof Complex,
seemed to have similarly experienced the impact of seeing a psychiatric institution and
its patients. He also regarded the patients, each seemingly in their own world, with their
own one-sided obsessions and rigid mannerisms, as an image of society in general. They
were all stuck in their one-sided world which, combined with all the others, led to noth-
ing else but chaos and incomprehension. As opposed to this, Canetti praised the capacity
for transformation, to listen properly, and to have more openness to other ways of living.
[Elias Canetti, The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Farrar,
Strauss, and Giroux, 1999), 54647].
45 This explains why Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften is not just a dissection of the final years
before the First World War, but also a sharp commentary on the chaotic period leading up
to the Second World War.
47 Ibid., 103.
This statement is crucial to understand Musils intentions with Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften. Society had been in the grip of a truly pathological condition, a
combination of moral and intellectual rigidity with frustrated acting out. This
insight first dawned on him in the psychiatric hospital in Rome shortly before
the war, and societys condition had not disappeared once the conflict had
come to an end. To avoid compulsively reenacting the same destructive ten-
dencies, a form of working through this pathological condition and its symp-
toms was required.
Musils use of the term symptom cannot be underestimated. What does
the choice of this term reveal? The diverse, problematic, and compulsive ten-
dencies Musil describes are symptoms in the sense that they are responses to
an affliction in which modern men and women, Ulrich included, find them-
selves. More importantly, what the term symptom indicates is that it is use-
less to simply dismiss or ignore a symptom. A symptom by definition wants to
repeat itself, and if a symptom is repressed it might return in a more detrimen-
tal form. As Musil wrote in Die Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit, the symptoms
of the times, which led to a war of unimaginable proportions and the collapse
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, should not be seen as belonging to a bygone
era, but should have to be worked through. It is in the nature of a symptom that
it allows for the working through of what actually troubles people.
In Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Musil attempted to work through the dif-
ferent symptoms of the times. Working through means exposing the impasse
to which certain symptomatic approaches to modern life lead and finding a
way of de-petrifying them, of displacing the compulsive repetition of the
same into the exploration of other possibilities. The stalemate of rigid repeti-
tion is turned into a new mobility which allows for the trying out of differ-
ent possibilities. Therefore, a flexible, essayistic literary style was better suited
to this purpose than a theoretical tractate. It has often been claimed that Der
Mann ohne Eigenschaften is an experience rather than an explicit commentary.
In the novel, the different fetishes of the people are in a sense desacralised.48
The sacred, mystical fetishes of the time (the state, the nation, the people,
48 In this context, it is interesting to point out Giorgio Agambens use of the term profana-
tion. Agamben defines profanation as the return to the free use of what used to be sacred
or religious. [Giorgio Agamben, Profanations, trans. Jeff Fort (New York: Zone Books,
2007), 73]. The creation of such a new use, a profanation of what used to be sacred, is
possible only by rendering the old use inoperative (86). Musil relentlessly renders the
prevailing petrified viewpoints, including the sacralised mystical fetishes, inoperative
and reopens these issues to questioning, reformulation, and experimentation.
270 De Cauwer
the race) are rendered profane, allowed to be questioned, and experimentally

redefined according to the complexities and the needs of the present.
If Musil wanted to work through a certain dangerous condition which was

reducing peoples capacity to experiment with other possibilities, then
what was the function of all the pathological behaviour in Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften that critics such as Lukcs have pointed out? I will explain this
by looking at the phenomenon of the monster in literature.
Many scholars have pointed out that the monster appears in times of great
historical changes, anxiety, and incomprehension.49 The monster embodies
the fear of the unknown and the threatening. According to this view, the mon-
ster is something that cannot be placed within the coordinates that one uses
to order the world. It is a concrete formation with which one is confronted, but
which totally falls outside ones habitual frame of reference. By falling far out-
side this frame of reference, the monster cannot but challenge it. By pointing
out an inadequacy or gap in thee frame of referenceand by drawing atten-
tion to the fact that it is by no means the best, the only, or even a natural frame
of referencethe monster makes one realise that his or her frame of refer-
ence is contingent and that a better frame of reference is needed. In this sense,
the monster is not necessarily something negative, evil, or destructive, as in the
common sense opinion, nor is it necessarily something positive. Rather, it is an
indication that the coordinates that we use to order the world are inadequate
and that other coordinates are possible and in fact needed.
Jacques Derrida wrote the following on the topic of the monster:
[T]he notion of the monster is rather difficult to deal with, to get a hold
on, to stabilize [...] monstrosity may reveal or make one aware of what
normality is. Faced with a monster, one may become aware of what the
norm is and that this norm has a historywhich is the case with dis-
cursive norms, philosophical norms, socio-cultural norms, they have a
49 For example, Stefan Jonsson writes in his great book on Musil: A monster is first of all a
creature that demonstratesthe Latin word monstrare means to show or to exhibit
a disturbance in the order of the world. The monster operates outside the social, and it
often demonstrates a vice that threatens the cohesion and reason of the human com-
munity. [Stefan Jonsson, Subject without Nation: Robert Musil and the History of Modern
Identity (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2000), 208].
historyany appearance of monstrosity in this domain allows an analy-

sis of the history of norms.50
It is thanks to the monstrous presence that people become aware of the pre-
vailing norms: They are contingent and not natural, and they have a history
and are not universal. The monster renders visible the prevailing conception
of normality.
For Derrida, this is not so much a theoretical process of awareness as it is
a practical experience: To do that, one must conduct not only a theoretical
analysis; one must produce what in fact looks like a discursive monster so that
the analysis will be a practical effect, so that people will be forced to become
aware of the history of normality.51 When exposed to a monstrous presence,
like the many literary monsters in the work of Musil, the reader is called upon
to reflect on his or her moral norms. The monstrous presence shows us that
other ethical norms are not only possible, but also necessary. The infraction of
rigid moral norms is a necessity if one is to explore new and better norms that
are more adequate for the challenges of modern life.52
All too often, certain characters from Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften are cited
by critics as examples of Musils vacant obsession with the pathological. The
most obviously monstrous character in the novel is the psychotic serial killer
Moosbrugger. In several passages, the extreme case of Moosbrugger instigates
a reflection on law, morality, and mental health, whereby rigid and problem-
atic assumptions are exposed. In the context of the trial of Moosbrugger, Musil
exposes the lacunae and outdated conceptions in the legal, medical, and psy-
chiatric discourses, which, when confronted with difficulties that expose fun-
damental problems in their approaches, turn to simple moral judgements.
50 Jacques Derrida, Points...Interviews 19741994, ed. Elisabeth Weber, trans. Peggy Kamuf et
al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 38586.
51 Derrida, Points...Interviews 19741994, 38586.
52 The views by Derrida on norms and the monster are obviously influenced by his former
teacher Georges Canguilhem. Canguilhem defines health as the capacity to create new
norms given changes in the environment: What characterizes health is the possibility of
transcending the norm, which defines the momentary normal, the possibility of tolerat-
ing infractions of the habitual norm and instituting new norms in new situations [...]
Health is a margin of tolerance for the inconsistencies of the environment. [Georges
Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett in collaboration
with Robert S. Cohen (New York: Zone Books, 1989), 19697]. Conversely, pathological is
the state in which one remains stuck in one norm and in which one cannot transcend
that norm.
272 De Cauwer
The prevalence of the pathological in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, which

Lukcs and other critics find so objectionable, serves multiple, connected func-
tions in Musils search for a modern ethics. The diverse explorations of pathol-
ogy, crime, and transgression are a destabilising of the self-evidence, rigidity,
and inadequacy of a petrified moral order while at the same time exposing the
monstrosities that a rigid morality has engendered: from the unprecedented
death toll of the First World War to the mass murder of the Nazi regime.
Besides this, Musils exploration of the pathological reveals the possibility and
necessity of opening up in order to create new and better norms.
Musils ambition was nothing less than the creation of a new society and
humanity, and he saw it as his task as a writer to help to establish the condi-
tions of possibility for this. Instead of deterministic views on human beings
and the course of society, he believed modern life provided the opportunity for
greater change and experimentation. Musils human being without qualities53
replaces the view that human behaviour was the consequence of innate,
inborn dispositions.54 The changes of modern life were not a threat, but an
opportunity to create new ways of being human: The task is to discover ever
new solutions, connections, constellations, variables, to set up prototypes of
an order of events, appealing new models of how one can be human, to invent
the inner person.55
Given the fact that Musil wanted to problematise the relationship between
pathology and normality, one might expect that he would have been interested
in the new theories developed by Sigmund Freud, which quickly became the
talk of the town in Vienna. While he had a certain amount of respect for Freud
and shared certain interests with him, Musil nevertheless remained very scep-
tical of the particular theories and concepts that Freud had developed.56
While many associate psychoanalysis with the modern innovations that
were booming in Vienna, Musil associates psychoanalysis squarely with the
53 The title The Man without Qualities refers in the first place to Ulrich, but this being
without qualities of course does not have to refer to a man. One of the most inventive
characters in the novel is Ulrichs sister Agathe. Musil had very high hopes of the new
womens movement in Vienna, which he praised in an essay from 1927, Die Frau gestern
und morgen.
54 Stefan Jonsson calls the belief that identities (gender, race, nationality) are expressions
of permanent inner dispositions the expressivist paradigm. [Jonsson, Subject without
Nation].
56 It should be noted here that Musil had a very critical disposition in general. He was
fiercely negative about celebrated authors such as Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, and
Karl Kraus.
outdated, conservative views that could not accept the rapid changes of mod-
ern society. He describes the analysts room as a retreat from the hectic hustle
and bustle of city life, where the patient can relax, lie down, and calmly talk
about the mundane details of his or her life, while being safely in the hands of
the soul-improvement expert: If the world explodes with all its mechanical
energies, here you find the good old time gently flowing.57 The analysts office
is a place where old-time values are restored and portrayed as natural again. As
opposed to the modern city, here one can find the old nuclear family, with its
specific roles and conduct, nicely restored in all its old-fashioned significance.
As Musil remarks, every little detail suddenly has its sense and significance.
Musil is maliciously going against the common sense opinion that Freuds the-
ories, especially about infant sexuality, were supposed to be a great shock to
bourgeois life. Reversing this view, he claims that Freudian psychoanalysis is
steeped in an old-fashioned, bourgeois outlook on life, especially concerning
the role of the family.
Musil also half-jokingly points out that the image of the mother in Freuds
Oedipal theory is based on womens fashion of the 1870s and 1880s: the old
long dresses forming a nest-like lap, which was no longer the case in modern
womens fashion. With this seemingly playful example, Musil is claiming that
Freuds theory is based on an outdated view on women and does not account
for societys rapidly changing gender roles. The Musilian critique of psycho-
analysis fits nicely within his more general critique of society, namely, that
the prevailing intellectual theories were stuck in outdated moral patternsin
Freuds case, the pattern was the traditional nuclear family with the nurturing
mother. Because of this, psychoanalysis was for Musil yet another blockage to
the inevitable and necessary transformation of people and society.
If it was Musils wish to find a new ethics suitable for the challenges and com-
plexity of modern life, then it remains strange why he chose to dedicate sev-
eral decades of his life to writing a huge novel in a peculiar, essayistic style.
Moreover, throughout Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften we can find several for-
mulaic proposals that seem to suggest that literature could provide an exam-
ple for ethical life. Ulrich claims that we should live like characters in a book,
and one chapter explores the possibility of living essayistically. This aspect of
57 Robert Musil, Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, trans. Peter Wortsman (New York:
Archipelago Books, 2006), 107.
274 De Cauwer
the novel has triggered a charge of aestheticism, launched by certain critics,

of denying reality for pure aesthetic fantasiesas in the critique voiced by
Lukcs. But the role of literature is much more complex and multifaceted in
Musils case. Musil explicitly stated that literature can never serve as a direct
model for ethics. In Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, he asks the following ques-
tion: A man who wants the truth becomes a scholar; a man who wants to give
free play to his subjectivity becomes a writer; but what should a man do who
wants something in between?58
The novel, for Musil, has the capacity to work through petrified views which
had been encrusted with strong affects over the course of many years. In this
way, the novel could enhance a greater sense of possibility, of exploration
and of experimentation, but it could never serve as a direct guideline and it
could never crystallise singular insights and turn them into universal truths.
Musil is neither using the novel to develop a theory, nor is he regarding the
novel as a direct model for ethics. Literature can help us overcome petrified,
symptomatic reactions to the challenges of modern life and infuse the flex-
ible ethos Musil believed was needed. Especially in times of profound histori-
cal changes and the predictable anxious, atavistic reactions to such times of
political confusion, literature could help people to find a way out of a petrified
state characterised by frustrated incomprehension, conservative reflexes, and
the compulsion to repeat actions which have already proven to be inadequate
for modern life.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. Profanations. Translated by Jeff Fort. New York: Zone Books, 2007.
Broch, Hermann. Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age. Edited and trans-
lated by John Hargraves. New York: Counterpoint, 2002.
Canetti, Elias. The Memoirs of Elias Canetti. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. New
York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1999.
Canguilhem, Georges. The Normal and the Pathological. Translated by Carolyn R.
Fawcett in collaboration with Robert S. Cohen. New York: Zone Books, 1989.
Derrida, Jacques. Points...Interviews 19741994. Edited by Elisabeth Weber. Translated
by Peggy Kamuf et al., Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Jonsson, Stefan. Subject without Nation: Robert Musil and the History of Modern Identity.
Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2000.
. A Citizen of Kakania. New Left Review 27 (MayJune 2004): 13141.

Lukcs, Georg. Die weltanschaulichen Grundlagen des Avantgardeismus. In Wider

den missverstandenen Realismus, 1348. Hamburg: Claassen, 1958.
. The Lukcs Reader. Edited by Arpad Kadarkay. Cambridge: Blackwell
Publishers, 1995.
Musil, Robert. Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses. Translated by Burton Pike and
David S. Luft. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
. The Man without Qualities, 2 Vols. Translated by Sophie Wilkins and Burton
Pike. London and New York: Vintage International, 1995.
. Diaries 18991941. Translated by Philip Payne. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
. Posthumous Papers of a Living Author. Translated by Peter Wortsman. New
York: Archipelago Books, 2006.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Translated by
R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Santner, Eric L. The Royal Remains: The Peoples Two Bodies and the Endgames of
Sovereignty. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
CHAPTER 15
The Gnostic Sur in Surrealism: On Transcendence

and Modern Art
Willem Styfhals
1 The Surrealist Experience: Between Spiritualism and Nihilism
It is generally accepted that the modern innovations in early-twentieth-

century art have radically reshaped our perception of beauty, art, and creativ-
ity. In order to understand the difference between our contemporary aesthetic
experience and a traditional perception of art and beauty, a philosophi-
cal analysis of the functioning of the aesthetic experience in the twentieth-
century avant-garde may be revealing. In an attempt to understand the
nature of this experience, I will primarily focus on the artistic movement of
Surrealism and its specific conception of the aesthetic experience. This explo-
ration of Surrealism will not aim at a mere aesthetical or stylistic analysis, but
will instead attempt to determine the historico-philosophical conditions of
possibility of this Surrealist experience.
The Surrealist artist does not perceive the world from a realistic point of
view; rather, he experiences reality from the perspective of dreams, hypnago-
gia, fantasy, opium, imagination, and free association. In one way or another,
Surrealist art tries to capture these experiences and attempts to involve the
reader or spectator in this surreal perception of reality. In spite of the vast
stylistic heterogeneity of these artistic attempts, surrealist artists have gen-
erally applied two different though related procedures for presenting these
surreal experiences. The first and earliest artistic procedure is epitomised by
the method of automatism.1 It is a writing and drawing technique based on
free association and unconscious improvisation. The technique of automa-
tism was primarily used by the early Surrealist writers, amongst whom were
1 Automatisme psychique pur par lequel on se propose dexprimer, soit verbalement, soit par
crit, soit de toute autre manire le fonctionnement rel de la pense. Dicte de la pense, en
labsence de toute contrle exerc par la raison, en dehors de toute proccupation esthtique
ou morale. [Andr Breton, Manifestes du Surralisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 37.]

The Gnostic Sur in Surrealism 277
Andr Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Robert Desnos.2 The automatic style
was also adopted by some Surrealist painters such as Andr Masson (pioneer
of automatic drawing) and Max Ernst.3 This type of Surrealist art strongly
rejects any conscious composition or realistic representation. Automatic
writing is not a mere reproduction of an independent Surrealistic perception
of reality; rather, the Surrealistic experience coincides with the creation of
the work of art. Automatic creation is thus not the description of a preceding
surrealist experience, but the freely associated and improvised creation is the
Surrealist experience in its own right. Instead of describing and reproduc-
ing a dream world, automatism opens up a surreal world by uncovering and
applying the laws of the unconscious, which are also at work in the process
of dreaming.
In contrast with this automatism, the second and better-known Surrealist
artistic procedure tries to seize an autonomous Surrealistic experience by
recreating, reproducing, or describing this experience in the work of art.
Very often, these works of art depict a strange and dream-like reality. They
describe an unconscious content, but, unlike the automatic poems or draw-
ings, these works of art are composed consciously. Whereas automatism draws
on the unconscious faculties of human thought in order to manifest and
express the functioning of a hidden or inner reality immediately, this second
Surrealist procedure tries to discover this surreal reality by reproducing the
strange but conscious experiences of dreams, fantasy, and pareidolia. The
first procedure emulates the process of dreaming, while the latter recreates
the aesthetics of dreaming. The most familiar examples of this second pole of
Surrealism are the paintings of Salvador Dali and Ren Magritte. Louis Aragons
Surrealistic novel, Le Paysan de Paris, can be categorised here as well.
In both cases, surrealist art paradigmatically tries to go beyond the ordi-
nary perception of reality. If we want to grasp the nature of the Surrealistic
experience itself, we will have to determine the scope of this beyond, which
is designated by the French prefix sur in the notion of Surrealism (the
English translation of the French preposition sur is over, above, or even
beyond). Evidently, the choice for the name sur-realism reflects the early
Surrealists aversion to any kind of philosophical or literary realism. In his First
Manifesto, the leading figure of the early Surrealistic movement, Andr Breton,
lashes out against the realistic novels and philosophies of his own age: The
realistic attitude, inspired by positivism, from Saint Thomas to Anatole France,
2 Andr Breton and Philippe Soupault, Les Champs Magntiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1920).
3 Ernst developed the techniques of frottage and grattage as an implementation of automa-
tism in painting (Forest and Dove, Europe after the Rain).
278 Styfhals
clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement.

I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate and dull conceit. It is the atti-
tude which today gives rise to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays.4
Most fundamentally, the prefix sur designates the artistic attempt to burst
open the ordinary experience of the world in order to access a new and imagi-
native dream-like reality. In other words, Surrealism aims to transcend ordinary
reality. Affirming that a question of transcendence is at stake in Surrealism,
Breton himself grants that Surrealism is synonymous with supernaturalism:
Soupault and I baptized the new mode of pure expression which we had at
our disposal and which we wished to pass on to our friends, by the name of
SURREALISM. [...] To be even more fair, we could also have taken over the
word SUPERNATURALISM.5 Since the question of transcendence will obvi-
ously be crucial for the understanding of the Surrealistic experience, we have
to determine what kind of transcendence is opened up in the experiences of
fantasy, imagination, dreams, opium, and free association.
Because Surrealism is a modern and atheistic movement, the experience
of a beyond can no longer be conceived of as a religious, let alone a Christian,
contact with the transcendent order.6 Although Bretons interpretation of
Surrealism was explicitly secular and even anti-Christian, some surrealists
deviated from this hardline atheisma notable example being the poet and
filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Nonetheless, Surrealism remains predominantly
an anti-religious movement. Initially, then, the Surrealistic transcendence
appears as a negationa kind of empty transcendenceof the immanent
order of this world. Indeed, Breton and the early Surrealists experienced the
present immanent reality as boring, evil, and restricting. This negative outlook
is reflected in Surrealisms profound dissatisfaction with the descriptive or
realistic attitude in art and philosophy, but also in its revolutionary sociopoliti-
cal stance. While fully rejecting the possibility of a romantic escapism into reli-
gious transcendence, the Surrealists conceived of this world as a nihilistic and
deterministic reality that resists our human craving for freedom. These dynam-
ics of negation can explain the provocative, destructive, and revolutionary
potentials of Surrealism and, for that matter, of the twentieth century avant-
garde in general. However, they cannot account for the substantial content and
creativity that might be at stake in this negation itself. Surrealism originates
from this negative and revolutionary momentum, but, at the same time, it tries
to surpass it: Indeed, Surrealism is not merely synonymous with anti-realism.
4 Breton, Manifestes du Surralisme, 145. (My translation).

5 Ibid., 36. (My translation).
6 Andr Breton, Le Surralisme et la Peinture (Paris: Gallimard, 1965).
As an avant-garde movement, Surrealism can neither stick to a mere nihil-

istic rejection of the world and the cultural tradition, nor can it become a
full-blown artistic genre with a substantial doctrine in itself. It always has
to account for its original negative outlook, but it has to discover positivity
within this negation. If Surrealism were stuck in its nihilistic phase, it would
have become a mere anti-realism. The importance of the Surrealistic pursuit
of transcendence would have been completely absent. However, if this surreal
transcendence were, on the other hand, univocally attainable, the nihilistic
driving force would have expired. The nature of Surrealism has to be under-
stood somewhere in between a strong nihilistic negation and an affirmation of
a transcendence that is opened up from within this negation.
If the Surrealist experience cannot be characterised by a religious transcen-
dence or by an empty nihilistic transcendence, the question remains: What
kind of a beyond is at stake in the prefix sur in Surrealism? In an essay from
1929, Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia,7 Walter
Benjamin indicates that the true Surrealistic experience neither lapses into
a dull religious spiritualism nor becomes a mere negative or anarchic revolt.
Benjamin is right to pinpoint the specificity of the modern Surrealistic experi-
ence between the spiritual experience and the nihilistic experience of a revo-
lutionary negation of this world. He characterises the Surrealistic experience
according to the rich and multifaceted notion of profane illumination. First of
all, this notion accounts for the revelatory character of the surrealist experi-
ence and its ability to transcend the ordinary reality without, however, reduc-
ing this experience to a spiritual illumination: It is a cardinal error to believe
that, of surrealist experiences, we know only the religious ecstasies or the
ecstasies of drugs. [...] But the true, creative overcoming of religious illumina-
tion certainly does not lie in narcotics. It resides in a profane illumination, a
materialistic, anthropological inspiration.8 The Surrealistic inspirations have
an intoxicating vigour that transcends the ordinary perception of empirical
reality. But unlike the spiritual illumination, the Surrealistic experience is con-
fined within the bounds of immanent experience itself and does not appeal
to an otherworldly realm. Free association, imagination, and dreams can thus
give rise to a post-mystical, post-magical experience of a radical otherness
7
Walter Benjamin, Der Srrealismus: Die letzte Momentaufnahme der europischen
Intelligenz, in Aufstze, Essays, Vortgen. Gesammelte Schriften Band II (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1991), 295310. In this paper, I refer to the English translation: Walter Benjamin,
Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia, in Selected Writings 2. 1927
1934 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 20721.
8 Ibid., 209.
280 Styfhals
within immanence itself.9 In this respect, we can understand why Breton and
Aragon presented Surrealism as a modern atheistic alternative to spiritualism.10
As an example of this illumination emerging from within ordinary reality,
Benjamin analyses the Surrealists fascination for outmoded and destitute
architecture. The Surrealists discover a revelatory force in strange and out-
moded objects or in obscure places which are disregarded in everyday life
and overlooked in the realistic perception of the world. Interestingly enough,
Benjamin grants that this profane and revelatory experience of the outmoded
and the destitute also entails a strong revolutionary force. In the experience
of something meaningful and extraordinary within a meaningless and ordi-
nary world, immanent reality bursts open in a violent and revolutionary way.
Another, surreal reality, as it were, explodes from within this world. In its turn,
this revolutionary potential of the profane illumination can account for the
negative, anarchic component of the Surrealistic experience:
No one before these visionaries and augurs perceived how destitution

not only social but architectonic, the poverty of interiors, enslaved and
enslaving objectscan be suddenly transformed into revolutionary nihil-
ism. To say nothing of Aragons Passage de LOpra, Breton and Nadja are
the lovers who convert everything that we have experienced on mournful
railway journeys (railways are beginning to age), on godforsaken Sunday
afternoons in the proletarian neighborhoods of great cities, in the first
glance through the rain-blurred window of a new apartment, into rev-
olutionary experience, if not action. They bring the immense forces of
atmosphere concealed in these things to the point of explosion.11
In spite of Benjamins revealing reflections,12 this essay will focus on a differ-

ent and hitherto unexplored interpretation of the surrealist experience that is
9 Like religious illumination, profane illumination captures the powers of spiritual intoxi-
cation in order to produce a revelation, a vision or insight which transcends the prosaic
state of empirical reality; yet it produces this vision in an immanent manner, that is while
remaining within the bounds of possible experience, and without recourse to other-
worldly authorities and dogmas. [Richard Wolin, From Messianism to Materialism: The
Later Aesthetics of Walter Benjamin, New German Critique 22 (1981): 105].
10 Il convient dy voir, avant tout, une heureuse raction contre quelques tendences dri-
soires du spiritualisme. [Breton, Manifestes du Surralisme, 14].
11 Benjamin, Surrealism, 210. (Benjamin is referring to Bretons surrealist novel Nadja).
12 An extensive treatment of Benjamins interpretation of surrealism can be found in
Margaret Cohen, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist
Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
highly influenced by Benjamins position. A contemporary of Benjamin, Jacob

Taubes, develops in his essay Notes on Surrealism a very original and idiosyn-
cratic interpretation of the Surrealistic experience.13 He equally reflects on the
interrelation between the revelatory spiritual component and the nihilistic
revolutionary component of the Surrealistic experience, but, unlike Benjamin,
Taubes shows how both components essentially belong together by explor-
ing the fundamental dynamics of surrealist transcendence. In other words,
he develops an explicit interpretation of the meaning of the prefix sur in
Surrealism.
2 Jacob Taubes: The Gnostic Sur
In Notes on Surrealism, Taubes recognises a recovery of Gnosticism and of the

Gnostic conception of transcendence in the Surrealistic beyond. Gnosticism
itself is an ancient spirituality characterised by a radical dualism between the
god and the world. The Gnostics experience the cosmos as an inferior, even
evil world, but they also believe that salvation from this material world is pos-
sible through a mystical knowledge (gnosis) of an absolutely transmundane
deity. In order to understand Taubess idiosyncratic equation of Surrealism
with Gnosticism, we will have to ask ourselves why someone would want to
connect a modern, artistic movement to this ancient spirituality.
Initially, modernity and Gnosticism seem to be opposed in many respects.
There is neither a historical nor an obvious ideological relation between the
two phenomena. Gnosticism was an ancient religious movement, whereas
modernity arose almost a millennium after Gnosticisms decline and explic-
itly presented itself as a secular movement. Gnosticism focuses exclusively on
the supreme value of transcendence, whereas modernity seems to undermine
transcendence. Nevertheless, some philosophers have advocated for a conti-
nuity between ancient Gnosticism and certain modern phenomena. The nine-
teenth-century theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur, for example, explains how
Hegelian philosophy is radically influenced by ancient Gnostic cosmology.14
13 Jacob Taubes, Noten zum Surrealismus, in Immanente sthetik, sthetische Reflexion:

Lyrik als Paradigma der Moderne, ed. Wolfgang Iser (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1966),
13943. In this paper, I refer to the English translation: Jacob Taubes, Notes on Surrealism,
in From Cult to Culture: Fragments toward a Critique of Historical Reason, ed. and trans.
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert et al., (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 98123.
14 Ferdinand Baur, Die Christliche Gnosis oder die Christliche Religionsphilosophie in ihrer
Geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967).
282 Styfhals
Furthermore, the political philosopher Eric Voegelin recognises the influ-

ence of Gnosticism on the totalitarian regimes of the early twentieth century.15
Finally, in his Abendndische Eschatologie, Jacob Taubes himself illustrates how
Gnosticism is a structuring force in the history of Western thoughtnot just
in the first centuries AD, but also, in a secular guise, in the centuries that saw
the emergence of modernity.16 However, Taubess interpretation of Surrealism
appeals to yet another understanding of the interrelation between Gnosticism
and modernity. In Notes on Surrealism, Taubes explicitly refers to Hans Jonass
monumental Gnosis und Sptantiker Geist.17 Jonas, a great Gnosticism scholar
as well as a student of Martin Heidegger, analyses ancient Gnosticism from
a perspective that is highly influenced by Heideggerian and nihilistic phi-
losophy. In an essay entitled Gnosticism, Existentialism and Nihilism, Jonas
even develops a systematic comparison between ancient Gnosticism and
modern nihilism.18
As stated above, modern thought has a tendency to delegitimise transcen-
dence and to reduce its influence on the immanent order. Both democratic pol-
itics and modern science try to shape or understand reality without an appeal
to transcendence. The most radical representative of this modern denial of
transcendence is of course Friedrich Nietzsche. The Nietzschean demolition of
transcendence implies a radical nihilism, a devaluation of the highest values.
Without reference to transcendence, only nothingness remains. In modernity,
the immanent world eventually becomes meaningless and indifferent. Nature
is devoid of any inherent value or order. Although this modern rejection of
transcendence is completely opposed to the Gnostic emphasis on transcen-
dence, Jonas argues that modern nihilism and Gnosticism are more closely
related than one might initially expect. Indeed, the extreme Gnostic affirma-
tion of transcendence also coincides with a radical renunciation of the imma-
nent order: a devaluation of this world. Jonas states that this Gnostic acosmism
implies a nihilism that is almost identical with modern nihilism. According to
Gnostic belief, the forces that govern our world are not just evil or inferior, but,
15 Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1952).
16 Jacob Taubes, Abendlndische Eschatologie (Bern: Francke, 1947). In this paper, I refer
to the English translation: Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
17 Hans Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht,
19341935).
18 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message from the Alien God and the Beginnings of
Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 32040.
in contrast with the omniscience of the Gnostic god of transcendence, they

are also blind, ignorant, and indifferent to the human being. This world is not
created for mans sake, and it doesnt contain any predetermined set of anthro-
pomorphic values. Just like modern scientists and philosophers, Gnostics thus
reject the traditional Aristotelian metaphysics and the ancient optimistic cos-
mology. The material world we live in is not a harmoniously ordered universe;
rather, it is a valueless whole of contingent forces.
Obviously, Gnostic nihilism differs from its modern variant to the extent
that its motivations for this nihilistic outlook are completely different. Indeed,
ancient Gnostic nihilism radically affirms transcendence, whereas modern
nihilism originates from a rejection of transcendence tout court. Nonetheless,
the practical consequences of both positions are identical, namely, the rejec-
tion of the inherent value of this world. Jonas concludes that both Gnostic
and modern nihilism originate from the same radical alienation between man
and world. The modern and the Gnostic man feel estranged and anxious in a
universe that appears to be a hostile environment, indifferent in many ways to
mans aspirations.
Jonass comparison of Gnosticism and modern nihilism is taken over by
Taubes in his interpretation of Surrealism. The latter claims that the nihil-
istic worldlessness of the Surrealistic experience repeats in modernity the
nihilistic worldlessness of Gnosticism.19 Taubes argues that both Gnosticism
and Surrealism consider immanent reality as a deterministic, valueless, and
evil world. In this respect, the world appears to be aesthetically and spiritually
irrelevant and even restrictive. Taubes thus equates Surrealisms nihilistic com-
ponent with Gnosticisms acosmism. For the time being, let us abstract from
the question of whether or not this acosmism is a proper characterisation of
the Surrealistic experience and explore how this acosmic Gnostic interpreta-
tion of Surrealism can account for the role of transcendence in Surrealism.
By drawing attention to the Gnostic features of the Surrealistic experi-
ence, Taubes connects the nihilistic component of this experience to its
(pseudo-)spiritual and transcendent component. Indeed, the Gnostic expe-
rience of an intra-cosmic nihilism immediately implies the spiritual expe-
rience of transcendence. The mystical contact (gnosis) with an absolutely
transcendent god originates from a radical alienation and from the rejection
of the immanent world. Only by being aware of this worlds godlessness can
the Gnostic discover the transcendent god. The Gnostics thus conceive of
transcendence as a counter-principle to this world. The transcendent order is
not merely a realm beyond this world, but, above all, it is radically opposed to
19 Taubes, Notes on Surrealism, 101.

284 Styfhals
it.20 Gnosticisms fundamental separation between transcendence and imma-

nence is even more radical than any Protestant or Jewish dualism. The tran-
scendent Gnostic god has no relation to immanence whatsoever. Unlike the
Judeo-Christian god, the Gnostic god is neither the creator of this immanent
world nor does he intervene in it. The immanent reality is rather created and
governed by a fallen or evil deity often called the demiurge. The Gnostic god
can only save humankind by destroying this wicked world.
In this sense, Gnostic nihilism also entails a strong revolutionary momen-
tum. This revolution does not aim at a mere immanent sociopolitical change,
but rather at some kind of cosmological turnabout, a destruction of the
immanent world. The Gnostic revolution wants to oppose the totality of this
world with a new totality that comprehensively founds anew in the way that
it negates.21 In other words, Gnosticism discovers within an acosmic, nihilis-
tic, and form-destroying rejection a forming power beyond this world. From
the nihilistic negation itself originates a positive affirmation of a transcendent
world. Indeed, the negative Gnostic awareness that this world is evil gives
access to a transcendent world and already entails a certain positive amount
of salvation.
Taubes correctly recognises this positive potential of the negation in Surre
alism as well. Indeed, Surrealism and the modern avant-garde originate from
a nihilistic rejectionoften a rejection of the culturo-political traditionand
discover within this negation itself a positive and creative force. This posi-
tive creativity can never really overcome or do away with the initial nihilistic
negation without endangering the original driving force of the avant-garde
movement itself. In Dadaism and early Surrealism, for example, negation and
provocation are aesthetical effects in their own right. However, Taubes seems
to overrate the resemblance between Surrealism and Gnosticism by compar-
ing the Surrealistic dynamics of transcendence with Gnostic transcendence.
Although Surrealism and Gnosticism share a countercultural and revolution-
ary inspiration, it is questionable whether this resemblance is also valid on
a metaphysical level. In Taubess view, the surrealist wants to oppose a tran-
scendent order of reality against this material world. Just like in Gnostic tran-
scendence, this Surrealistic transcendence is rooted in mans alienation from
this world and in a nihilistic experience of the worlds determinism. Both
20 The beyond is beyond the world in its entirety. [Gnosticism] introduces the dualistic feel-
ing of Gods world, a world unidentifiable with the here and now. Gods world differs more
and more markedly from the present world; it appears increasingly to be opposed to this
world. [Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, 27].
21 Ibid., 9.
ancient gnosis and the Surrealistic experience try to overcome this nihilism by
opening up a completely new transcendent realm of absolute and unlimited
freedom and creativity. Although Taubess comparison between Gnostic and
Surrealistic transcendence is far-fetched, the close interrelation he explores
between the nihilistic outlook and the positive affirmation of a transcendence
is fundamental to Surrealism. The prefix sur in Surrealism does not merely
designate the attempt to go beyond immanence, it also points to the revolu-
tionary and nihilistic origin of this attempt.
By comparing Surrealistic transcendence with the Gnostic concept of
transcendence, Taubes explains why the former is structurally irreconcilable
with the traditional Christian conception of the beyond: The categories of
an orthodox Christian doctrine are useless for grasping the a-cosmism as it
articulates itself in Gnosticism and modern poetry [Surrealism].22 Christian
orthodoxy emphasises the interpenetration of the immanent world and the
transcendent god, while Gnosticism and Surrealism only allow for radical
separation and opposition. The fundamental intertwinement of nihilism and
transcendence, characteristic of Gnosticism and Surrealism, indicates the
radical difference between the Gnostic and the Christian conception of tran-
scendence. In Christianity, transcendence and immanence are not opposed;
rather, they are interrelated. To the extent that the Christian god is the creator
of this world, nature itself cannot be nihilistic. On the contrary, nature reveals
the presence of the transcendent god within immanence itself. The cosmos
is a reflection of the infinite mystery of transcendence. This correspondence
between the immanent and the transcendent realm is of course infinitely mul-
tifaceted and can ultimately not be grasped univocally. In the Middle Ages,
then, the Christian interrelation between transcendence and immanence is
interpreted as a kind of symbolic analogy. In modernity, however, this sym-
bolic correspondence is shattered. The modern sciences do not interpret this
world as an enchanted and divinised cosmos: Nature is a valueless whole of
contingent forces that can only be interpreted more geometricoin a univocal,
mathematical way. This modern separation of transcendence and immanence
already entails a return to a more Gnostic conception of the world.
More importantly, Taubes claims that this modern scientific revolution and
its rejection of Christian scholastic cosmology radically influenced the evolu-
tion of the arts in modernity:
Modern poetry, despite its opposition to natural science and technol-

ogy, stands in the shadows of the prevailing natural-scientific concept of

286 Styfhals
reality. [...] The triumph of the natural-scientific interpretation of reality

pushed the symbolic interpretation of the world into poetry and exposed
it as a product of fantasy that remains without worldly correlate.23
By proclaiming the modern scientific method to be the only legitimate way to

attain true knowledge, the moderns dismissed the (medieval) symbolic inter-
pretation of reality. Any discourse about transcendence is pushed aside and
is delegitimised as pseudo-knowledge. Consequently, the symbolic interpreta-
tion found refuge in Romanticism and eventually in modern art. However, this
symbolism had permanently lost its ontological and epistemological status, for
it was no longer founded on a real correspondence between transcendence
and immanence. Lacking an external referent, the symbolic correspondences
were cut off from the outer world. From now on, they remain confined within
the individual interiority of the artist and become as it were self-sufficient.
Ultimately, the subjective analogies and correspondences are just the product
of human imagination and fantasy. These faculties of imagination and fantasy,
the last offshoots of the medieval symbolic correspondence, have played a piv-
otal role in Romanticism. Romantic art no longer wants to represent reality,
but it instead wants to reconfigure and recreate the world according to the
subjective principles of analogy and free imagination: The act of creation here
no longer copies an exemplary creation, the order of the world, rather it dis-
assembles and destroys this order, in order to create out of these depths of
the soul a new world from its individual parts and to attest to the sensation
of the new.24
In Surrealism, the notion of imagination is obviously omnipresent as well.
However, its functioning is radicalised to such an extent that the role of anal-
ogy and correspondence eventually disappears completely. In the unrestrained
imagination of Surrealism, every trace of correspondence with reality is dis-
carded: [In Surrealism], heterogeneous elements, tattered and without con-
text, are brought together. The individual object is torn out of its established
or original context and is placed in unexpected surroundings or imbued with
a new application.25 Taubes argues that the Surrealist, just like the ancient
Gnostic, is completely disconnected from this world and discovers within pure
interiorityin the depths of the soula new world of absolute freedom.
He violently destroys the immanent world, and from its ashes he recreates a
surreal world according to unknown and internal laws. Both the Gnostic and
23 Ibid., 100.
24 Ibid., 100.
25 Ibid., 101.
the Surrealist believe that this surreal transcendent realm is only accessible
by turning inward and by opening up an inner hidden self. However, unlike
Romanticism, Surrealism does not want to manifest the subjective interiority of
the individual artist. The Surrealist rather appeals to the more primordial, pre-
subjective force. Gnosticism has called this fundamental interiority pneuma
(spirit). It is the internal spark of a transcendent reality that is inaccessible
to the individual human soul. The Surrealists, influenced by Sigmund Freuds
psychoanalysis, rather relate this pre-subjective interiority to the unconscious.
In Surrealism, romantic imagination is transformed into free association and
unconscious automatism. Surrealist automatism is in this sense a method for
manifesting this hidden and unconscious self. It is the revelation of a kind of
thinking that precedes any rational, moral, or aesthetic thought.26
3 Gnosticisms Inadequate Ontology
Obviously, Taubess comparison between Surrealism and Gnosticism is

far-fetched and will ultimately fall short in accounting for the nature of
Surrealistic transcendence. First, Gnosticisms metaphysical dualism is incom-
patible with the atheistic and materialistic outlook of Surrealism. In spite of
some striking similarities between gnosis and Surrealism, Taubes has to rec-
ognise a fundamental difference between Gnostic and Surrealistic transcen-
dence. The Gnostic experience consists of individual mystical contact with an
order of reality that is ontologically transcendent to the immanent world. If
Surrealism is indeed influenced by the modern scientific worldview, this onto-
logical dualism is no longer philosophically conceivable. In the end, it does
not really matter whether Taubes conceives of Surrealistic transcendence as a
Gnostic or Christian one. The idea of an ontological transcendence in general
is ultimately incompatible with the modern and materialistic worldview that
Surrealism inevitably adopts. Although Surrealism wants to overthrow this
scientific and deterministic conception of reality, it cannot merely recover a
pre-modern cosmology. The Surrealistic protest is directed against modern sci-
ence, but it remains confined to the immanent order itself:
26 Surralisme: Automatisme psychique pur par lequel on se propose dexprimer, soit ver-
balement, soit par crit, soit de toute autre manire le fonctionnement rel de la pense.
Dicte de la pense, en labsence de toute contrle exerc par la raison, en dehors de toute
proccupation esthtique ou morale. [Breton, Manifestes du Surralisme, 36].
288 Styfhals
The protest of modern poetry, in contrast to the Gnostic protest, can

never reach a beyond of the world in a strict cosmological sense, no
matter how far it strives to advance beyond the boundaries of the world
drawn by the scientific interpretation. [...] The surrealist revolt proceeds
against the infinite world posited by the modern natural sciences and
technology that is experienced as a system of domination and coercion.
But in its escape from this infinite coercive system of the world, it cannot
invoke the guarantee of a god beyond the world.27
Despite the inaptness of Gnostic cosmology in modernity, Taubes argues that

the structural dynamics of Gnostic transcendence remain fully present in
Surrealism. The Gnostic conception of transcendence returns in Surrealism
but discards its underlying ontology. Taubes believes that Surrealistic imagina-
tion and free association are the post-mystical, post-spiritual experiences of an
unthinkable transcendence within immanence itself. In this respect, he con-
nects his interpretation of the Surrealistic experience to Benjamins notion of
profane illumination.28 Surrealistic transcendence is a profane and secularised
transcendence contained within the immanence of the work of art. In moder-
nity, the work of art itself becomes the only possible beyond. In this respect,
Taubes refers to the Surrealist writer Louis Aragon: Seule signification du mot
au-del, tu es dans la posie.29
Even if it were possible to drop the metaphysical background of Gnostic
transcendence, it remains to be seen whether the radically dualistic and
acosmic structure of Gnosticism can be applied to Surrealism. Obviously,
Surrealism is characterised by a revolutionary and nihilistic impulse. It is nei-
ther interested in ordinary reality as it is, nor in any realistic reproduction of
this world. Because the world as such is meaningless and aesthetically uninter-
esting, Surrealism wants to imagine a radically different world that overcomes
the realistic order of this one. However, this nihilism does not imply the anti-
cosmic attitude of Gnosticism. Surrealism does not want to reject or escape
from immanent reality. On the contrary, the central importance of photogra-
phy and film in the Surrealist movement proves that Surrealist art is very often
engaged in this immanent world.30 Even so, Surrealist photography is as little

28 I am in agreement with Walter Benjamin that in surrealism a creative overcoming of reli-
gious illumination takes place in favor of a profane illumination, a materialistic, anthro-
pological inspiration. [Ibid., 105].
29 Ibid., 104.
30 Rosalind Kraus, The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism, October 19 (1981): 334.
interested in a mere realistic reproduction of the world as any other Surrealist

trend. Surrealist photography wittingly depicts a completely meaningless state
of affairs, but by observing and reassembling these utterly insignificant facts it
creates or discovers a new surreal world within the immanent world itself. This
is why the technique of photomontage takes up such an important position
in Surrealist photography. The photomontage is a composite image of differ-
ent and unrelated photographs, often depicting a strange and even impossible
reality. The surrealist montage immanently creates a surreal world by recom-
posing and reassembling the realistic world. In one way or another, this artistic
process of montage is present in a lot of Surrealist poems and paintings as well.
Surrealist art paradigmatically associates unconnected facts and impressions
in an unusual, dream-like, or freely improvised composition. In this sense,
Surrealism installs or discovers a new and hitherto unseen dimension within
immanent reality. It creates a transcendent world with immanent means.
Although this surreality is inaccessible to and unable to be seen by any ordi-
nary or realistic perception of the world, it does not reject or negate the imma-
nent world in itself. On this basis, Taubes misinterprets Benjamins notion of
profane illumination. According to Benjamin, the Surrealist illumination is not
a modern recovery of a religious experience which opens up an ontological
transcendence and negates this world. The profane illumination of Surrealism
is rather an intoxicating inspiration that arises from within immanence.
Ultimately, Gnostic dualism is an inadequate ontological model for under-
standing the nature of Surrealism. Surrealistic transcendence has nothing
to do with religious transcendence and even less so with acosmic transcen-
dence. Gnosticism scholar Ioan Culianu raises the objection to Taubes that the
Gnostic opposition between transcendence and immanence is probably more
compatible with Romantic art than with Surrealism.31 The Romantic escapist
withdrawal from the immanent world into the artistic depths of the soul more
closely resembles Gnostic acosmism. By adopting Gnosticisms radical dualism
and acosmism, Taubes univocally denies the Surrealistic interest in immanent
reality. His radically dualistic outlook does not allow him to understand how
Surrealistic transcendence remains confined within immanence itself. His
perspective cannot account for a so-called immanent transcendence. Hans
Blumenberg, a German philosopher and a friend of Taubes, has criticised the
latters interpretation of Surrealism precisely on this basis.32
31 Ioan Culianu, The Gnostic Revenge: Gnosticism and Romantic Literature, in Gnosis und
Politik, ed. Jacob Taubes (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984), 290306.
32 In a 1964 colloquium of the group Poetik und Hermeneutik, one of the leading interdis-
ciplinary research groups in postwar Germany, Taubes and Blumenberg discussed the
290 Styfhals
4 Hans Blumenberg: The Horizontal Sur
In his reply to Taubes, Hans Blumenberg reproaches him for overemphasis-

ing the verticality of Surrealistic transcendence. He claims that Taubes should
discard any reference to spiritual transcendence. From Taubess perspective,
modern art appears to be a mere recovery of an old religious pattern, a kind
of neo-paganism or neo-mysticism. However, for Blumenberg, this approach
obscures the true nature of twentieth-century art in general and Surrealism in
particular. He believes that the Surrealistic experience introduces a radically
original way of perceiving reality that is incomparable with any pre-modern
perception of the world. In short, the modern aesthetic experience is not a sec-
ular duplicate of a pre modern religious experience. In order to understand the
philosophical scope of Blumenbergs critical assessment of Taubess position,
one has to keep in mind his interpretation of modern thought in general. In
the renowned Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit, Blumenberg radically criticises the
positions that have interpreted modernity and different modern phenomena
as immanent recoveries or secularisations of a pre-modern religious frame-
works.33 Time and again, Blumenberg wants to defend the epochal originality
and the intrinsic legitimacy of the modern age. Therefore, he objects to Taubes
that the modern turn toward immanence and the loss of transcendence do not
necessarily entail the immanentisation of an old religious framework. In the
case of Surrealism, the Surrealistic beyond cannot be conceived of as an imma-
nent substitute for Gnostic transcendence. The immanent frame of modernity
allows for very different and unexpected possibilities that might be completely
independent from old religious methods of approaching reality.
In this respect, Blumenberg states that the structure of Gnostic acosmism
cannot be applied to Surrealisms negative and nihilistic experience of reality.
The Surrealistic opposition between artistic fantasy and the nihilistic deter-
minism of reality is not a mere immanent recovery of this Gnostic opposi-
tion between the transcendent god and the evil world. Blumenberg argues
that Gnostic dualism cannot be present in Surrealism because of the yawning
gap between the Gnostic and the modern conceptions of nature and reality.
The Gnostics believe that the cosmos is governed by an evil law, whereas the
moderns interpret nature as something indifferent and meaningless. By call-
ing nature evil, Gnosticism obviously rejects and reverses the metaphysical
nature of Surrealistic transcendence. [Hans Blumenberg et al., Surrealism and Gnosis,

in From Cult to Culture: Fragments toward a Critique of Historical Reason, ed. Charlotte
Elisheva Fonrobert et al., (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 98123].
33 Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976).
optimism of Greek cosmology. However, Gnostic cosmology remains confined

within an ancient conception of reality to the extent that it is still structured
according to the anthropocentric category of evil. The Gnostic world is evil
because it resists human happinessnot because it is indifferent to the
human being. The modern universe, on the other hand, cannot be categorised
anthropocentrically and goes beyond the distinction between good and evil
itself. Indeed, the modern cosmos is not metaphysically evil, for it is indiffer-
ent, lawless, and valueless.
Furthermore, this modern conception of reality obviously implies a differ-
ent disposition toward reality than does the Gnostic conception of revolt. If
nature is evil and explicitly anti-human, the human being has to reject this
world in its entirety, and he has to escape it as soon as possible. However, if
nature is just a valueless facticity, solutions other than a mere escapist rejec-
tion become conceivable. Although the modern cosmos is ultimately mean-
ingless and even indifferent to the human pursuit of happiness, modern man
does not reject this world: He can intervene in the world in order to change and
improve it for his own benefit because this world is meaningless and has lost
its pre-modern divine status. The modern scientist does not ask whether this
world is metaphysically good or evil, but rather how it can be made valuable to
him. By becoming matre et possesseur of the world, modern man gives a new,
immanent meaning to this reality.
In view of this modern conception of reality and human action, Blumenberg
wonders whether the modern Surrealistic revolt can originate in a strong oppo-
sition to this world, that is, in Gnostic acosmism:
But is the revolt of Surrealism really targeted against nature? Or is it not

rather the purpose of the way in which Nature is treated to forge a self-
affirmation of the human person from the totally hyletic utilizability of
the world as it is presented to him, a self-affirmation that succeeds to the
extent that this world is not Nature any longer?34
Unlike Gnosticism, the nihilistic revolt of Surrealism is not opposed to a meta-

physically evil or deterministic reality. According to Blumenberg, the modern
Surrealists do not really experience this world itself as deterministic or con-
straining. Obviously, Surrealism rejects the worldview of the natural sciences
and realistic art; it loathes the scientific attempt to contain the versatility and
contingency of reality within the dull scheme of a deterministic and realis-
tic theory. Nonetheless, just like modern scientists, Surrealists experience
34 Blumenberg et al., Surrealism and Gnosis, 116.

292 Styfhals
this world as a valueless wholeas a world that is not Nature any longer.
Obviously, Surrealism does not want to fix this reality in a deterministic, sci-
entific system in order to contain and control it; rather, it wants to create a
new world by the immanent decomposition and destruction of this worlds
order. Confined within limits of pure immanence itself, this revolutionary
destruction can essentially never be complete or definitive. The new surreal
world cannot be interpreted as a determinate metaphysical realm beyond and
against this world. The new world of Surrealism originates, rather, from the
infinite recomposition of the present world. It is the future world of an inex-
haustible revolutionary expectation of freedom and creativity:
I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality,
which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a
surreality, if one may so speak. It is in this quest of this surreality that
I am going, certain not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to
calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession.35
In conclusion, Blumenberg argues that there is a different and more innova-

tive transcendence at stake in Surrealism than Taubes can account for in his
comparison between Surrealism and Gnosticism. Indeed, Surrealistic tran-
scendence should not primarily be understood as a vertical and Gnostic oppo-
sition to nature. The revolutionary world of Surrealism is created, rather, by
the artist decomposing and recomposing this material world itselfthe sur-
realist montages and collages being the most straightforward examples of this
reassembling of immanent reality. The Surrealistic reality does not merely
arise as a negation of nature; it arises as a product of the revolutionary artis-
tic intervention in nature itself. The artist can change, alter, and reinvent the
order of nature by means of imagination and fantasy. In this respect, the prefix
sur does not refer to any vertical, mystical transcendence beyond this world;
rather, it refers to the new, Surrealistic world that literally survives the artistic
decomposition of nature. Therefore, Blumenberg interprets Surrealistic tran-
scendence as a kind of horizontal or immanent transcendence.
5 The Interpretation of Modernity: Enlightenment vs. Romanticism
We can conclude that there is more at stake in the discussion between Taubes
and Blumenberg than a mere reflection on Surrealism itself. The two philoso-
35 Breton, Manifestes du Surralisme, 24. (My translation).

phers do not seem to disagree so much about the stylistic interpretation of

Surrealist art as they do about the historico-philosophical conditions of pos-
sibility for the aesthetic experience in modernism and about the historical
paradigm of modernity in general. For Taubes, the modern aesthetic experi-
ence seems to be a continuation of the pre-modern experience of the sacred.
The experience of modern art is the experience of a transcendence that is
internal to this world itself, of an otherness within pure immanence. Although
Blumenberg might not reject this description of the modern aesthetic experi-
ence altogether, he wonders why this transcendence should still be conceived
of in (post-)religious terms. Modern and Surrealist art are characterised by a
certain kind of transcendence, but this modern variant of transcendence can-
not be compared to or derived from any religious conception of the beyond.
Most fundamentally, the disagreement between Taubes and Blumenberg
about the philosophical nature of the Surrealist and the modernist experience
is rooted in a different interpretation of modernity in general. Taubess appeal
to a vertical transcendence as well as Blumenbergs rejection of this form of
transcendence can eventually be explained by their different implicit concep-
tions of modernity and, more specifically, of the modern notion of freedom.
Blumenberg seems to defend an enlightened interpretation of modernity and
freedom, while Taubes takes up the equally modern position of the nineteenth-
century Counter-Enlightenment and Romanticism.
If we return to the issue of Surrealism, the pursuit of political and metaphys-
ical freedom appears to be the driving force behind this artistic movement.36
Surrealism tries to overcome the worlds nihilism by discovering an unlim-
ited freedom in a new surreal reality. Obviously, Blumenbergs and Taubess
different interpretations of this interplay between the nihilistic experience
and the attainment of freedom influence their respective ontologies of the
Surrealistic beyond.
According to Blumenberg, modern nihilism consists in the absence of
an inherent value in this world. Because of this meaninglessness, the mod-
ern scientist, the enlightened philosopher, and the modern artist can legiti-
mately intervene in the world. They can change and alter the nihilistic and
deterministic structure of reality in order to attain freedom within the realm
of immanence itself. In other words, the nihilistic experience of this worlds
determinism does not contradict the possibility of immanent freedom. On the
contrary, the recognition of this nihilism, combined with the knowledge of its
deterministic laws, is the condition of possibility of modern freedom itself.
36 Le seul mot de libert est tout ce qui mexalte encore. [Ibid., 12].
294 Styfhals
Freedom and determinism are for Blumenberg immanently compatible.37

Therefore, the Surrealistic realm of absolute freedom and creativity does not
need the dubious appeal to a vertical transcendence. It is attainable, rather,
within immanent reality by deconstructing and reconstructing the determin-
istic order of this world. However, because the Surrealistic pursuit of freedom
is confined within immanence itself, the attainment of this freedom can never
be absolute. No revolutionary overcoming of the deterministic constraints of
reality can be truly definitive, for an ever greater freedom from these imma-
nent constraints is always conceivable. Without the benchmark of an abso-
lute or transcendent goal, Surrealisms artistic quest is virtually infinite.
Therefore, its revolutionary expectation of a surreality is as inexhaustible as it
is unattainable.
Obviously, Taubes subscribes neither to Blumenbergs immanent frame
nor to his understanding of freedom. He raises the following objection to
Blumenbergs interpretation of freedom and determinism:
It bypasses the arguments of the counter-Enlightenment, which perceive

the legality of nature and freedom as contradictory. Certainly, the protest
against the legality of nature had initially been a topos of the counter-
Enlightenment since De Maistre. It should be noted, however, that this
protest also contains such movements as enter into the protest and revolt
of surrealism in the twentieth century.38
Taubes (over)emphasises that the revolutionary and artistic components of the

Surrealist movement should be understood as being in line with the Counter-
Enlightenment and Romanticism. In this respect, freedom and nihilistic
determinism are incompatible for Taubes. Because true freedom is essentially
inconceivable within immanence itself, his interpretation of the Surrealistic
beyond inevitably has to appeal to a vertical transcendence. Although Taubes
is aware of the impossibility of this vertical dynamic in modernity, his radically
dualistic outlook does not allow him to conceive of Surrealistic freedom with-
out a true transcendence.
37 The laws of nature are thus precisely not the quality of reality that constrains the self in
its freedom [...]. Rather, they are the medium allied with freedom under whose influence
the phenomenal eidetic of nature proves itself to be the accidental status of a process,
or the foreground, studded with secondary qualities, of an inexhaustible and disposable
potentiality. [Blumenberg et al., Surrealism and Gnosis, 118].
38 Taubes, Surrealism and Gnosis, 12223.
References
Baur, Ferdinand. Die Christliche Gnosis oder die Christliche Religionsphilosophie in ihrer
Geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967.
Benjamin, Walter. Der Srrealismus: Die letzte Momentaufnahme der europischen
Intelligenz. In Aufstze, Essays, Vortgen. Gesammelte Schriften Band II, 295310.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991.
. Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia. In Selected
Writings 2. 19271934, 20721. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1999.
Blumenberg, Hans. Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976.
Blumenberg, Hans et al., Surrealism and Gnosis. In From Cult to Culture: Fragments
toward a Critique of Historical Reason. Edited by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert et al.,
98123. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Breton, Andr. Le Surralisme et la Peinture. Paris: Gallimard, 1965.
. Manifestes du Surralisme. Paris: Gallimard, 1966.
Breton, Andr and Philippe Soupault, Les Champs Magntiques. Paris: Gallimard, 1920.
Cohen, Margaret. Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist
Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Culianu, Ioan. The Gnostic Revenge: Gnosticism and Romantic Literature. In Gnosis
und Politik. Edited by Jacob Taubes. 290306. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984.
Jonas, Hans. Gnosis und sptantiker Geist. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht,
19341935.
. The Gnostic Religion: The Message from the Alien God and the Beginnings of
Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.
Kraus, Rosalind. The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism. October 19 (1981): 334.
Taubes, Jacob. Abendlndische Eschatologie. Bern: Francke, 1947.
. Noten zum Surrealismus. In Immanente sthetik, sthetische Reflexion: Lyrik
als Paradigma der Moderne. Edited by Wolfgang Iser. 13943. Munich: Wilhelm Fink
Verlag, 1966.
. Occidental Eschatology. Translated by David Ratmoko. Stanford: Stanford
. Notes on Surrealism. In From Cult to Culture: Fragments toward a Critique of
Historical Reason. Edited and translated by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert et al.,
98123. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Voegelin, Eric. The New Science of Politics: An Introduction. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1952.
Wolin, Richard. From Messianism to Materialism: The Later Aesthetics of Walter
Benjamin. New German Critique 22 (1981): 81108.
Index
absolute37, 40, 42, 87, 97, 99105, 107, 116, Aristotle4, 1017, 20 n. 40, 21, 2425, 42, 46,
180, 189, 203, 220, 227, 231, 261, 285286, 48, 55, 112
292, 294 art24, 29, 3742, 72 n. 29, 82, 8493, 96, 97
absolute spirit100 n. 5, 108109, 115 n. 25, 116117, 124, 140,
act10, 13, 16, 24, 40, 42, 48, 51, 53, 56, 6061, 160161, 164, 167, 178179, 194198, 204,
68, 70, 97, 118121, 125, 132, 135, 144, 154, 212, 221, 248, 253255, 259260, 265,
157, 161162, 176, 190 n. 7, 194, 204210, 276278, 285286, 288291, 293
212, 214217, 221223, 247, 265, 267, work of -, - work3, 8889, 9192, 96,
286 108, 161, 167, 212, 221, 248, 253254, 277,
activity4, 9, 54, 86, 125, 133, 206, 208, 217, 288
224 art of living29, 3742
actuality20, 22, 63, 134, 140145 art of dying39
Adorno4, 185, 187198, 236, 242, 246 artist4, 43, 8384, 89, 96, 107109, 203, 210,
adultery69, 71 212, 220221, 253255, 276, 286287,
aesthetical (the)1920, 22, 9697, 111, 126 292293
n. 68, 127, 155156, 192, 276, 284 Austro-Hungarian Empire252, 258, 269
aesthetic(s), aesthetic34, 25, 8586, 9091, automatism (Surrealism)209, 277, 287
93, 95, 109, 116, 118, 122128, 131, 138141, autonomy57, 9899, 109, 116117, 122, 145,
145, 151, 154, 169, 175, 178, 185187, 159160, 163, 166, 196
193194, 196198, 203205, 207, 212,
216217, 277, 280 n. 9 Bataille, Georges14, 1617, 23
aesthetics/aesthete/aesthetical34, 1920, beautiful24, 17, 71, 8284, 95, 116118,
22, 25, 55, 82, 8487, 9091, 93, 9597, 120122, 124, 126, 138, 140, 155, 172, 176,
108109, 111, 116, 118, 121128, 131, 138141, 186, 197198, 211, 229
145, 151, 154156, 158160, 163, 169, 172, beauty3, 25, 28 n. 5, 62, 64, 7172, 82, 90,
175, 177178, 180, 185189, 191198, 116125, 127128, 131, 155, 177, 186187,
203217, 225, 235 n. 2, 237, 249, 274, 195, 197, 211, 256, 276
276277, 280 n. 9, 284, 287288, 290, Benjamin, Walter188, 220, 223224,
293 226227, 230, 232, 279281, 288289
aesthetisation116, 123, 131 Blanchot, Maurice4, 14, 1618, 2124
Agamben, Giorgio9, 269 n. 48 bliss6566, 76
agape46, 57 Blumenberg, Hans289294
alienation188189, 190 n. 5, 191, 237, 247, Botie, Etienne de la1213, 15, 2729, 3134,
261, 283284 3744
amphiboly170, 173, 174 n. 27, 175 boredom1920, 186
anthropology127129, 132, 142, 182 n. 53, Breton, Andr209, 277278, 280
204
anxiety30, 3940, 42, 47, 61, 72, 111, 131, 139, capacity3, 11, 31, 35 n. 11, 5254, 113, 125, 135,
253, 270 141, 144, 156164, 174175, 178, 181182,
aphorism14 195, 197, 222223, 226, 234, 237, 255, 259,
apollonian244 265, 268 n. 44, 270, 271 n. 52, 274
aporia14, 59, 88, 196 capitalism189, 190, 251, 268
appearance42, 64, 86, 99, 117119, 121, 131, Cassirer, Ernst4, 170, 178182
166, 171, 174, 209, 216, 236, 242, 271 certainty13, 31, 3435, 37, 40, 42, 49, 55, 204,
Aragon, Louis277, 280, 288 213, 228
Index 297
christianity93, 131132, 134135, 145146, duty5759, 75, 112, 116117, 119124, 126128,
285 133134, 140, 144, 153, 157, 161, 177, 185,
Cicero12, 14, 42, 46 256, 259 n. 22
Climacus, Johannes22, 112 n. 7, 146, 187 dynamical152, 158
coercion118, 133, 137, 288
cognition84, 8788, 9091, 172 n. 18, 174, 177, education49, 8386, 111, 124, 138, 139 n. 117,
181 256, 265 n. 36
community3, 1617, 23, 30, 86, 102103, 106, effervescence210, 212, 215
138, 146 n. 134, 172173, 254 n. 9, 270 elusiveness33, 44
n. 49 engagement11, 42, 190 n. 5, 196, 224, 227,
continuity/discontinuity1618, 281 246, 247, 249
crime1, 135136, 138, 146, 196, 257, 272 enjoyment16, 21, 73, 116, 129130, 187
critique95, 110, 129, 169171, 173, 175178, 181, Entartete Kunst254 n. 7
185186, 188, 192, 194, 245, 251252, 262, eros46
273274 erotic love1820, 46
cultivation83, 88, 110, 140, 161 error15, 263265
culture33, 90, 102, 130, 140, 170, 173, 178182, ethical see ethics, ethics/ethical
195, 258 ethics34, 1013, 20, 25, 41, 47, 5759, 61, 69,
8586, 9091, 109113, 115117, 119,
dance130 122124, 128129, 131133, 138146, 151,
death2, 15, 2425, 27, 29, 38, 4042, 55, 64, 177178, 185187, 190, 196199, 203, 252,
68, 70, 97105, 107, 143145, 214, 272, 264, 272274
292 virtue1112, 21, 32, 37, 42, 48, 55, 70, 73,
decency124 75, 112113, 115116, 121, 125126, 128131,
demonic4749, 51, 59, 144 133134, 137, 140, 142, 159, 161, 187, 196,
decision31, 3536, 39, 5761, 6869, 112, 120, 242, 244, 249, 262
204206, 208 second4, 9, 14, 20, 25, 29, 35, 41, 46, 67,
Derrida, Jacques4, 10, 1415, 1718, 270271 72, 81, 86, 99, 101, 103, 105, 108, 111112,
desire30, 34, 37, 4041, 63, 66, 72, 8182, 84, 116118, 120, 125, 127, 131133, 139,
92, 123, 129, 141, 152155, 161, 163165, 142146, 153, 169, 171, 176177, 186, 188,
187188, 197, 206, 212, 216217, 228231, 192, 210, 212, 215216, 223224, 256, 277
248 ethics/ethical34, 1013, 20, 2225, 41, 47,
despair4748, 5051, 142, 144145 50, 5561, 69, 8587, 8991, 93, 9597,
dialectics4647, 49, 52, 54, 185, 188, 193194, 108113, 115119, 122124, 127129,
196197 131133, 138147, 151, 153154, 163,
dichotomy19, 237 177178, 185194, 196198, 203205, 209,
dignity56, 90, 116, 118, 120122, 124, 127, 131, 217, 225, 227228, 231, 249, 252, 259,
157, 159, 162163, 167, 259 n. 22, 262 264, 271274
dionysian244 ethos3, 116, 124125, 127, 264265, 274
dissonance237238, 240, 242 aesthetic see aesthetic(s)
divine3, 57 n. 24, 64, 85, 96, 101, 105108, evil1, 20, 4748, 87, 161, 192, 261, 270, 278,
138, 162, 180, 211, 291 281284, 290291
divine law101, 105108 existential meaning of
domination73, 110, 113, 118, 136, 195, 288 as a form of authentic self-involvement
double16, 41, 5354, 57, 214, 216 29
drive21, 64, 85, 92, 117119, 123, 164, 188, 230 as a relation to the self33
duplication53, 133 n. 92, 237, 242243 as opposed to other human relationships
Duras, Marguerite18 n. 29 30
298 Index
experience1, 4, 1112, 14, 23, 29, 3334, 165, 186, 229, 235239, 245247, 261,
3739, 4144, 49, 59, 6667, 72, 90, 273, 291
97105, 107, 136, 151157, 159167, 170, moral38
185, 187189, 190 n. 5, 191194, 203, will110, 119, 124125
206207, 213, 216, 220221, 225230, good life21, 3841, 43, 100, 110
234, 237, 240241, 244, 246247, 249, grace1, 3, 27, 113 n. 8, 116, 118124, 127128,
254, 255 n. 9, 264, 268, 269, 271, 131, 134, 211
276281, 283285, 287291, 293 Greek world9596, 101, 105106, 109
faith40 n. 17, 43 n. 20, 58, 61, 137, 144146, happiness

188, 190 n. 5, 223, 225, 231, 258259 moral129130
family life22, 104 harmony115, 121123, 125, 131, 134, 137139,
fantasy81, 132, 276278, 286, 290, 292 142, 145, 171, 181, 186, 210, 214, 246,
fate2, 33, 70, 132, 136138, 145, 254 n. 9, 263 254 n. 7
fear of death38, 97101, 104105, 107 health140, 158, 253254, 271
feeling23, 12, 15, 42, 8384, 8692, 114, heart910, 1314, 1617, 23, 38, 46, 52, 55, 66,
123125, 128, 132, 133 n. 92, 135, 137138, 68, 90, 115, 121, 132, 140, 211
151, 153155, 157160, 162, 164167, Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich45, 49, 65,
171172, 188, 207208, 212, 214, 216, 70 n. 23, 7677, 85, 95101, 103106,
229231, 237, 240242, 256257, 108109, 9596, 111, 120 n. 42, 131139,
259260, 262, 265 n. 36, 284 n. 20 143, 145146, 186187, 281
female106 hermeneutics68, 172
feminine81, 230 historical4, 27, 71, 8586, 100, 102, 164, 166,
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb122, 133, 140 170, 174, 189, 195197, 216, 258, 263, 270,
First World War252, 259 n. 22, 260, 262, 268, 274, 281, 293
272 Hobbes, Thomas74
forgetting11, 115, 146, 192, 211, 226 holiness112
forgiveness4951, 137, 145146 horizontal239, 242243, 245, 248, 292
freedom9, 38, 47, 49, 61, 65, 72, 84, 95, human14, 14, 16, 1920, 22, 24, 2931, 40,
99106, 108, 109 n. 19, 114, 117118, 121, 42 n. 1, 52, 58, 6466, 68, 71, 7475, 81,
125, 134, 151, 154157, 159, 161163, 166, 8586, 89, 92, 9698, 100108, 110113,
176, 190, 257, 278, 285286, 292294 115121, 123, 125, 129, 132134, 138, 140,
free will117, 155, 157 142, 144, 146147, 154, 157, 172173, 178,
Freud, Sigmund272273, 287 181182, 190 n. 5, 193194, 196, 204205,
friendship4, 925, 2839, 4144, 4662 209, 216, 223, 225, 229, 232, 239,
fusion1517, 1920, 2223, 25, 74, 83, 174, 242 247248, 253254, 256, 261264, 270
n. 49, 272, 277278, 283, 286287, 291
game46, 63, 66, 130, 203, 227, 230, 244, 249 human law96, 101108
gnosticism281285, 287292 human relationships
God, god, deity27, 34, 49, 52, 54, 5759, as a pattern14, 24, 2930
6364, 8384, 9293, 100, 108, 137138, as a fragmentation of the self19, 31
144146, 163, 225, 258, 281, 283285, 288, humanity56, 85, 119, 120121, 127, 129131,
290 141142, 243, 272
good24, 1112, 21, 30, 3741, 43, 4648,
50, 5253, 58, 64, 67, 71, 75, 83, 87, 95, ideality22, 25, 140145
100, 110, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 124125, identity49, 5556, 61, 76, 87, 89, 9192,
129131, 139140, 154, 157158, 161, 163, 9798, 173, 175177, 190, 258
Index 299
image13, 43, 6970, 85, 8990, 145, 179, 186, Climacus, Johannes22, 112 n. 7, 146, 187
188189, 191, 195, 215216, 220223, 226 Johannes de silentio141
n. 13, 237, 239, 241244, 247, 249, 267, Judge William111, 112 n. 7, 131, 138139,
268 n. 44, 273, 289 145, 186187
imagination39, 8485, 88, 90, 134, 138, 146, Vigilius Haufniensis111, 132, 139141, 145
152, 154156, 158, 173, 177, 191192, 260 Korner, Gottfried117
n. 24, 276, 278279, 286288, 292
immanence143, 220, 225, 280, 284286, Laertius, Diogenes13
288290, 292294 landscape204, 207, 212, 238241
immediacy2425, 95, 106, 140, 244 law23, 32, 4042, 53, 57, 69, 74, 83, 86, 88,
immoral (see morality)151, 153155, 157, 160, 96, 98108, 113116, 118126, 128130,
245, 248, 254, 260 132137, 140141, 146, 153156, 158163,
immortal8384, 127 169, 171, 172 n. 15, 179180, 188, 248, 253,
imperative 255, 262263, 267 n. 43, 271, 277, 286,
ethical110, 140, 142, 145146 290, 293, 294 n. 37
pragmatic110 moral40, 57, 69, 114, 116, 119, 121, 123124,
inclination17, 21, 112114, 116, 119126, 128, 130, 133135, 141, 153156, 158163,
129130, 132133, 140141, 154155, 169, 248, 262
161162, 186, 195 n. 26, 239, 245, 265 leap82, 220225, 227229, 231, 248
independence123, 152154, 157, 159, legality119, 126, 132, 134, 294
162166 liberation70, 159160, 165
inspiration211, 225 n. 9, 279, 284, 288 n. 28, life12, 4, 13, 1617, 2022, 27, 29, 3334,
289 3844, 4849, 55, 5758, 61, 68, 71, 73,
instinct97, 119, 125, 154155, 161162, 195 7577, 83, 85, 97, 100, 104, 110112, 115,
interact97, 205, 216, 237, 249 129130, 133, 135142, 144, 156158,
interesting27, 47, 54, 66, 186187, 223231, 164166, 178, 181182, 187, 189, 196, 217,
235 n. 2, 236, 255 n. 11, 269 n. 48 227229, 232, 238239, 242, 246248,
intrieur (the)188189, 191 251253, 255266, 269, 271274, 280
interiority22, 189190, 192, 286287 listener240241, 246249
interplay of forces97, 102 lord-bondsman Relation99100, 105
interruption222, 230 love34, 9, 1112, 1821, 28 n. 5, 3335, 46,
intuition84, 90, 154, 173174, 190 4953, 55, 5859, 6369, 7173, 7577,
irony52, 186 8185, 93, 95, 111, 115, 123, 131135, 137139,
143145, 156, 161, 186, 197, 210, 214,
Jesus133135, 137 229230, 239, 154 n. 9, 255 n. 9, 256, 258
Jonas, Hans282283 Lukcs, Georg189, 251252, 270, 272, 274
Jonsson, Stefan252, 270 n. 49, 272 n. 52 lust64, 119, 166
judgment156, 158, 172, 175177
jump139, 220222, 229 Mach, Ernst263, 264
madness252, 264
Kant, Immanuel34, 14, 67, 69, 75, 95, Makkreel, Rudolf170173, 178
109113, 115, 118, 124, 127132, 134135, male72, 81, 106
138, 140, 142, 145, 151152, 158167, man2, 13, 21, 28, 35 n. 11, 42, 57, 60, 64,
169175, 176 n. 31, 177182, 185, 196, 209 6971, 7375, 100, 105106, 108, 113115,
Kierkegaard, Sren45, 1824, 4659, 61, 122124, 128, 132, 136, 138, 139 n. 117, 140,
111, 131, 138140, 143146, 185194, 142, 153, 161162, 182, 220, 222223, 227,
197198, 220, 223225, 227232 232, 238, 241, 243, 245, 256257, 260
300 Index
man (cont.) 117121, 126, 132134, 136, 151152, 157

n. 24, 263, 266267, 272 n. 53, 274, n. 16, 158160, 162163, 165, 170171, 173,
283284, 291 176 n. 31, 178, 181182, 191, 193194, 203,
Maria Magdalena137 212, 217 n. 27, 221, 223, 228, 237238, 241,
marriage46, 58, 6470, 7276, 82, 95, 243248, 253, 257, 269, 276277, 279,
138139, 185187, 197198 282, 285, 287, 289294
mathematical152, 158, 285 Nazi (see National Socialism)2, 195196,
melancholy186, 191192, 197, 229 254 n. 7, 263, 272
mental unrest42 necessity33, 50, 58, 120, 154155, 160, 163
metaphor113, 207 n. 36, 196, 221, 257, 263, 271272
metaphysics55, 61, 69, 112113, 140141, 143, Nietzsche, Friedrich1418, 63, 151, 166167,
169, 178, 228, 283 210, 216, 228, 243, 263265, 282
modesty82, 93, 146 Morgenrthe263
monogamy76 nihilism280, 282285, 288, 293
monster113, 270271 noble39, 64, 121, 123, 203
monstrous (see monster)61, 255, 268, 271 Nordau, Max258
montage (surrealism)289, 292 norms31, 42, 59, 100, 102, 104, 133, 253, 255,
Montaigne, Michel de4, 1215, 17, 2744, 257, 270272
46 teleology/purposiveness169, 171, 172
moral (see morality) n. 18, 178, 263
moral disposition112, 126, 153 nothingness152, 167, 227, 282
moral duty177, 119, 122, 128, 153
morality2, 37, 4142, 5859, 65, 69, 85, other24, 9 n. 1, 1112, 1516, 1925, 2837,
8788, 110, 119120, 124127, 132135, 151, 3941, 43, 4656, 5861, 6465, 6768,
154, 156157, 159, 161, 163, 165166, 7071, 73, 7677, 83, 8692, 101102, 106,
196198, 247, 253, 255257, 259260, 110, 113, 115119, 122124, 126, 129130,
262, 271272 134, 136137, 140141, 144145, 151157,
morals69, 112114, 140, 162 n. 33, 256 162164, 167, 171179, 181, 187, 195, 204,
mortal54, 8385 206, 208, 210213, 216217, 220224,
music2, 4, 89, 130, 211, 214, 234249 226227, 229, 234, 237239, 242, 245,
Musil, Robert251256, 258274 247, 249, 251, 253254, 257, 262, 266,
Das hilflose Europa oder Reise vom 267 n. 43, 268272, 278279, 281, 284,
Hundertsten in Tausendste268 289, 291, 293
Das Unanstndige in der Kunst253
Der deutsche Mensch als Symptom259, paradox/paradoxically15, 17, 32, 41, 4647,
262 55, 161, 204, 207
Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften251253, Pascal35
254 n. 9, 257, 260, 266, 268 n. 45, passion1819, 88, 126, 130, 144, 159, 261
269274 pathological (see pathology)115, 128,
Die Nation als Ideal und 251254, 265266, 269272
Wirklichkeit268269 pathology254, 266, 272
Politisches Bekenntnis eines jungen pathos9597, 99102, 104109
Mannes267 perfection15, 35, 40, 110111, 118119,
125129
National Socialism182, 262 performative contradiction14
nature34, 910, 1213, 28, 30, 32, 35, 38, 40 personality27, 3132, 74, 7677, 90, 157 n. 16,
n. 17, 5657, 60, 6366, 6973, 75, 251
8587, 98102, 105, 108109, 112, 114115, philia21
Index 301
photography4, 220222, 224227, 231, relation9, 19, 2125, 2931, 3637, 4042,
288289 5455, 69, 75, 8688, 9093, 95, 97,
physical11, 27, 53, 63, 90, 98, 126, 129, 153, 99101, 103, 105106, 108109, 156,
194, 196197, 217, 245, 266267 172173, 176, 185, 189, 190 n. 5, 191193,
pleasure1012, 16, 28, 33, 54, 67, 83, 87, 112, 197198, 213, 226, 228, 231, 236238, 243,
119, 127, 129, 140, 154157, 159160, 247249, 281, 284
163165, 167, 171, 172 n. 15, 177, 186187, religion3, 66, 8384, 8688, 90, 100, 108, 111,
192, 195, 209 113 n. 8, 126127, 131135, 137138, 143,
pluriverse217 145146, 173, 178179, 256, 260261
poetry8283, 85, 89, 93, 161, 213, 285286, religion of art108
288 religion of nature100
polis101104, 107108 religious (the)3, 33, 39, 5758, 61, 83, 8788,
polyandry70 9093, 100, 111, 141, 146 n. 134, 179 n. 41,
polygyny70 180, 185, 187188, 190192, 197, 209, 224,
possibility9, 1213, 22, 32, 42, 50, 5355, 259, 269 n. 48, 278279, 281, 288 n. 28,
5961, 113, 123124, 134, 144, 146, 152, 289290, 293
154157, 171, 185, 187, 190 n. 7, 191193, repetition52, 5657, 6061, 143, 186, 189,
198, 221222, 246, 264265, 271 n. 52, 220, 225229, 231232, 269
272274, 276, 278, 293 representation8789, 90 n. 45, 9193, 108,
praxis205, 207, 217, 247 116, 144145, 172 n. 15, 173175, 177,
profane illumination279280, 288289 179180, 188, 195196, 207, 209, 217, 224,
pseudonym/pseudonymous1819, 22, 46, 226, 253254, 277
111, 138139, 145146, 186 respect30, 34, 53, 56, 64, 66, 68, 7172, 76,
psychoanalysis223, 272273, 287 83, 90, 93, 9697, 114115, 119, 123, 126,
psychopathology (see pathology)251252 128, 134, 157160, 162 n. 33, 163164, 166,
punishment135138, 146 185, 189 n. 4, 196 n. 28, 208, 211, 236, 257,
272, 280281, 283, 288, 290, 292294
real3, 30, 36, 53, 5860, 66, 68, 84, 88, 90,
98, 105, 123, 135, 142, 182 n. 53, 188189, Sallust19
192, 204205, 207, 209210, 212213, Schiller, Friedrich4, 111, 113 n. 8, 115128,
215, 217, 220221, 226, 229, 231, 243, 131132, 134, 138140, 145, 151157,
286 159162, 164, 166167, 186
reason3, 917, 1920, 22, 2930, 32, 43, 47, Schlegel, Friedrich8185, 89, 93, 139, 186
52, 5556, 5859, 62, 64, 66, 6871, science86, 122, 139, 140, 142143, 173,
7374, 8587, 90, 95, 97, 100, 110115, 178180, 203, 217, 255 n. 11, 260,
117121, 123127, 129, 132133, 135, 264265, 282, 285, 287288, 291
139140, 142143, 146, 151156, 158159, seduction210
161165, 169171, 172 n. 15, 175178, 181, self19, 21, 3334, 3637, 4044, 4647, 49,
191192, 198, 203, 209, 220222, 226, 228, 51, 5358, 61, 99, 101, 103105, 107109,
235, 245, 264, 270 n. 49, 281 n. 13 135136, 143, 145, 190, 192, 287, 294 n. 37
practical11, 95, 110, 112115, 117118, 124, self-choice186187, 189190
129, 132133, 135, 142, 159, 162 n. 33, 164, and self-development
169, 176, 178 as a moral experience41
recollection143, 220, 225, 227228, 231232 as an authentic self-involvement29
reconciliation122, 136138, 191192 self-knowledge3637, 39, 4142, 44
redemption197, 260261, 263 self-love1819, 21, 35, 37, 46, 115
reflexivity25 and self-understanding3637, 42
reification189192, 197 semblance13, 37, 188, 191192, 284
302 Index
senses68, 82, 87, 110, 123, 134, 140, 162, 216, surface208, 214215, 222, 225
268 surrealism209, 276294
sensuousness111, 113, 116, 119121, 124125, surrender50, 7677, 135, 224, 237, 241,
132133, 140141, 157 n. 16, 161 249
sensus communis170, 172173, 178 symbiosis1517
sentiment symbol179181, 189, 239, 256, 258259
moral119120 symbolic forms89, 179, 181
sexual28, 34, 71, 81 sympathy54, 115, 157, 242
signifier204205, 207208, 213, 215217 symptom252, 256, 259260, 262, 266, 269
sin137139, 141146 symptomatic (see symptom)274, 251
singularity20, 2223, 3134, 41, 47, 49, 55, synthesis90, 107108
57, 61, 76, 192, 234
slavery70, 73 taste71, 117, 123127, 131, 172 n. 15, 217
social organism99106 Taubes, Jacob281290, 292294
sociality130 teleology/purposiveness169, 171, 172 n. 18,
society65, 68, 76, 100, 103, 106, 146, 189 n. 5, 178, 263
190 n. 5, 194, 203, 251254, 255 n. 9, temple108, 203, 214
256258, 260264, 266267, 268 n. 44, theological18, 76, 145
269, 272273 theory46, 54, 9192, 112, 151, 160, 163165,
solitude23, 203 179 n. 41, 185, 189 n. 5, 193194, 198, 205,
somatic (the)194, 198 206, 210, 217, 237238, 243, 253, 256, 265
soul n. 36, 273274, 291
beautiful120122 togetherness15, 1718, 23
sovereign114115, 162 n. 33 totality31, 88, 90, 92, 152, 181, 195, 254, 284
species11, 71, 106, 162, 208 tragedy5859, 127 n. 71, 152153, 164167,
spectator153154, 161, 210, 234237, 210, 239
239241, 249, 268, 276 transcendence143, 145, 239, 243, 278279,
Spengler, Oswald258 281290, 292294
stages, theory of the185 transcendental reflection170, 173179, 182
statue of the god108 transcendental topology170, 173, 177, 181
strangeness24 transience166
stupidity255, 262, 265 truth1516, 27, 34, 3940, 49, 52, 58, 6465,
subject22, 29, 43, 49, 6061, 64, 67, 77, 83, 67, 90, 95, 100, 169170, 175, 178, 181,
113115, 118, 127128, 133, 135, 138140, 185193, 196, 203, 212, 229, 274
151152, 159160, 162 n. 33, 163, 166167,
170173, 189190, 192193, 204, 208210, ugly (the)195196, 198, 206
213, 215217, 228, 247 unconscious194, 208, 222223, 226, 231, 239,
subjection110, 113115, 133135, 137, 163 276277, 287
subjectivity23, 89, 133, 189, 192, 274 unity20, 23, 31, 35, 6061, 7475, 8384,
sublime46, 85, 87, 89, 118, 120121, 128, 140, 8788, 90, 92, 95, 123, 133, 138, 182 n. 53,
151160, 162167, 177, 196, 204, 209, 211, 228231, 260
213, 247248 utility1012, 77
substance5556, 87, 100103, 108, 257
suffering53, 153, 157, 165, 167, 192198, 211 vertical54, 239, 241245, 248, 292294
superiority112, 116, 152, 157, 160, 162165, vice64, 70, 106, 113, 137, 161, 270 n. 49
167 violence12, 117, 195, 211, 241242, 245,
supra-human34 247
Index 303
virtue/virtuous1112, 2122, 32, 37, 42, 48, woman6971, 7375, 81, 105106, 232
51, 5556, 70, 73, 75, 112116, 121, 125126, world14, 35, 53, 60, 6465, 7072, 76,
128131, 133134, 137, 140, 142, 157, 159, 8385, 9293, 9597, 101, 105106, 109,
161, 187, 196, 212, 242, 244, 249, 262 113, 115, 121, 126, 128129, 142143, 146,
void42, 215, 220223 152, 155, 162, 164167, 170, 172173, 176,
volatility of the mind39 178, 179 n. 41, 180181, 188190, 192193,
vulnerability33, 42, 54, 59, 157 n. 16, 158, 167 195196, 204211, 213217, 220, 222,
224225, 232, 248249, 252, 254,
will 257258, 259 n. 22, 260, 262, 267268,
free117, 155, 157 270, 272273, 276294
good110, 119, 124125 work of art3, 8889, 9192, 96, 108, 161,
witness1, 6062, 196, 208, 210, 212213, 167, 212, 221, 223 n. 2, 248, 253254, 277,
215216 288

(Critical Studies in German Idealism 19) Stéphane Symons-The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics-Brill Academic Publishers (2015)

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

(Critical Studies in German Idealism 19) Stéphane Symons-The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics-Brill Academic Publishers (2015)

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics

Critical Studies in German

Simon Critchley Paul Cruysberghs Rzsa Erzsbet Garth Green

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/csgi

Symons, Stphane (Philosopher)

Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

1 A Bushel of Salt: On Aesthetics and Ethics in Friendship9

2 Recapturing the Self: Montaigne on Friendship, Self-Knowledge,

3 The Singularity of Friendship: On Kierkegaard and Friends46

5 Remember that All Poetry is to Be Regarded as a Work of Love:

6 Hegels Concept of Pathos as the Keeper of the Marriage between

7 In Search of a Second Ethics: From Kant to Kierkegaard110

8 The Kantian Sublime: A Feeling of Superiority?151

9 Kants Transcendental Reflection: An Indispensable Element

10 Adornos Response to Kierkegaard: The Ethical Validity

11 The Aesthetic Act as Interface between Theory and Praxis203

12 Leap into the Surface: Photography, Repetition,

13 Jonny Greenwood vs. Johannes Brahms: Alliances and Displacement

14 Pathology and the Search for a Modern Ethics in the Writings

15 The Gnostic Sur in Surrealism: On Transcendence and Modern

Anne Christine Habbard

Baldine Saint Girons

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 5|doi .63/9789004298811_002

7 Grossman, The Sistine Madonna, 17071.

the writings of Hegel and Kierkegaard to dozens of colleagues and scholars,

A Bushel of Salt: On Aesthetics and Ethics

Addressing philosophers or a philosophical public with an essay on friend-

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 5|doi .63/9789004298811_003

1 Lower and Perfect Friendships

The most influential chapters on the theme of friendship in philosophys long

invest in many people at the same time, andsimilar to being in lovethe

2 O My Friends, There is No Friend

If we are to believe Aristotle, first and perfect friendship is rather difficult

7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a30.

Montaigne gives no clear reference to a specific work and appears to have

9 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1245b20.

part; rather, it seems to touch upon a susceptibility, an aporia, or even an inef-

11 Derrida, Politiques de lamiti, 44.

from the disenchanting illusions typical of a friendship that rests on symbiosis

3 The Unavowable Community of Friends

If silence is an essential feature of friendship, then, at the end of the day, is

friendship as a relationship in which friends spiritually fuse with one another

23 Maurice Blanchot, Pour lamiti (Paris: Fourbis, 1996), 7.

4 Friendship and Preferential Love

When dealing with those great canonical meditations on friendship, there is

Just as self-love selfishly embraces this one-and-only self that makes it

Kierkegaards outspoken resistance to the idea of true friendship as a form of

of all evil,38 boredom is a threat to lifes endless variety of possibilities

38 SKS, 2.275/EO, 1.285.

5 Aesthetics and Ethics in Friendship

Kierkegaard, so it seems, shrinks back from friendship when he intends to

43 SKS, 9.52/WL, 45.

48 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1157a31 (translation altered).

For Kierkegaard, an optimal and normative53 relationship between indi-

In line with Kierkegaard, Blanchot expresses a fear of fusion in friendship, inas-

53 SKS, 8/TA, 623.

O my friends, there is no friend. When taking Kierkegaards and Blanchots

merit, beauty).65 One of those contingent conditions is what Aristotle meta-

Agamben, Giorgio. Friendship. Contretemps 5 (2004): 27.

65 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1157b 25ff.

Recapturing the Self: Montaigne on Friendship,

1 Introduction: An Exceptional Friendship

From both a historicalanthropological and an autobiographical point of

7 Grossman, The Sistine Madonna, 17071.

7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a30.

9 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1245b20.

11 Derrida, Politiques de lamiti, 44.

23 Maurice Blanchot, Pour lamiti (Paris: Fourbis, 1996), 7.

38 SKS, 2.275/EO, 1.285.

43 SKS, 9.52/WL, 45.

48 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1157a31 (translation altered).

53 SKS, 8/TA, 623.

65 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1157b 25ff.

3 Michel de Montaigne, On Affectionate Relationships, in Michel de Montaigne, The Complete

9 Essays, 217, 21112, and 212. (My emphasis).

10 Essays, 213. (My emphasis).

13 L. Brunschvicg, Descartes et Pascal: Lecteurs de Montaigne (Neuchtel: ditions de la

2 The Concept of Anxiety, 123.

16 Works of Love, 217ff.

19 Un soi rappel la vulnrabilit de la condition mortelle peut reevoir de la faiblesse de

20 The Sickness unto Death, 13.

24 Although arguably in Kierkegaards case the mediation of a third termGod or divine

26 Philosophical Fragments, or a Fragment of Philosophy, in Kierkegaards Writings, Vol. 7

27 Fear and Trembling, 130.

8 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (hereinafter KGA), Sec. V, Vol. 8:

18 KFSA, Vol. 5, 20.

26 Schleiermacher, Sittenlehre, 99100, n. 22.

42 Schleiermacher, Sittenlehre, 288, n. 22.

52 Cf. Heinz Kimmerle, Schleiermachers Dialektik als Grundlegung philosophisch-theolo-