Lev Shestov - Potestas Clavium - Part III

     Let us return to our principal theme, the sovereignty of reason. Reason affirms that our truths are not only human but absolute truths, and demands that we recognize that the contrary thesis is inadmissible because obviously absurd. Reason affirms that reality is not and cannot be, for the existence of the real is a defiance of the existence of reason. Reason demands furthermore that we admit all the consequences of the given principles and brand as a crime against mankind every deviation from this demand. But, while admitting evidence and, consequently, the logical legality of the pretensions of reason, we feel with all our being that in certain cases self-evidence and logic do not guarantee the chief thing, to timiôtaton — the truth of our judgments. Just as it often happens that the sleeper protests in his dream state already against that "unity" of consciousness which penetrates and organizes all the particular perceptions of his dream and, without even realizing what he is doing, tries no longer to maintain but to overthrow the conviction imposed upon him from the outside that the unity of consciousness guarantees the truth of his perception; so also the philosopher sees arising before him this question: where is the truth to be sought? To whom, to what, confide my destiny? Must I submit to the demands of reason, or at the risk of becoming the laughingstock of all and of appearing ridiculous in my own eyes, refuse obedience to reason and consider it no longer a legitimate master but a usurper who has exceeded his powers?

     The evidence that supports reason enters into a struggle with an obscure sentiment which does not succeed in finding any justification. Husserl complains that demonstration deduced from consequence does not have sufficient influence over men. But this is a calumny against fate, men, and history. On the contrary: we should stand astonished at the power of this kind of argumentation. The best weapon in intellectual struggles is reductio ad absurdum, an even more efficacious weapon than the accusation of immorality. Husserl himself uses it constantly, and with what success! All who admit specific relativism, even thinkers as eminent as Sigwart and Erdmann, are, according to him, mad. This "argumentation" acts on minds in irresistible fashion. Sigwart was still living when the first edition of Logische Untersuchungen appeared; he was extremely troubled and felt himself almost crushed by Husserl's attacks. In a note to the fourth edition of Volume I of his Logik he tries to respond to his triumphant adversary. But assurance and energy are lacking in his voice. One feels that he is not at all certain that his response can push back Husserl's attack. And it could not be otherwise. Sigwart knew well that his own attempts to find an immanent basis for the absolute pretensions of reason always failed against an insurmountable obstacle. But how rid oneself of the argumentation deduced from consequences? If one rejects it, does he not risk being shut up in an insane asylum? Furthermore, Sigwart himself, like Rickert and Erdmann, constantly made use of this kind of argumentation, had complete confidence in it, and could not take exception to it. Sigwart was already an old and sick man when Husserl's book appeared; he died before the publication of the edition of his Logik where his answer to Husserl appears. We must then believe that he carried his last doubts to the grave.

     Before the philosopher who left this world for another a truly tragic question arose. All his life he had believed that he was living in peace with reason, but here, at the brink almost of his death, Husserl comes to him to pour the poison of doubt into his soul. Sigwart died without having put his conscience at rest. Can we be certain that Husserl will preserve his faith to the end of his days? Will there not come to him also the fearful hour when he will find himself obliged to ask himself if reason is truly the heir of Saint Peter, the representative of God on earth, the supreme authority which alone possesses the right to speak in the name of Him who sent it and consecrated it king? And if he doubts - at the risk of being shut up in an insane asylum where the hoi polloi send the daring - will he not imagine that this tiny, essentially invisible, star of doubt which shines in him, is perhaps precisely that star of Bethlehem which leads man toward the supreme truth that is completely different from ordinary human truths? If you turn to the right you will lose your horse, if you turn to the left you will lose your life - as the Russian fable says. Remain on the middle way, the way of positivism and of well-ordered family existence. But it is not appropriate to the philosopher to even think of this! Ein verheirateter Philosoph gehört in die Komödie [a married philosopher belongs in comedy], according to Nietzsche.

     Husserl will perhaps take me at my word: I speak of the star of Bethlehem, of that absolute truth which he also tries to discover by means of his phenomenological method. He will tell me that I admit that the criterion of truth is one. But if I admit this, he will oblige me to accept all the consequences of this statement and will thus lead me again to swear fidelity to reason, the only legitimate master. But I do not believe that this objection is correct, even if one places himself at Husserl's point of view. I recall once again what I have said about different states of the soul, states whose "evidences" bring us testimonies so opposed that if one confronted them they would devour each other rather than come to agreement.

     The invisible star which is under discussion here does not at all resemble that to which the rationalists aspire. If one flees reason, this does not mean that one sets himself necessarily in such or such a determined direction.

     On a surface one can trace passing through a given point only one line perpendicular to a determinate straight line, but in a space of three dimensions one can trace an infinite number of these perpendiculars. One who is accustomed to planimetry can conceive only with great difficulty the laws of stereometry: until he becomes accustomed to conceiving the third dimension, he will obstinately repeat that, given a point and a straight line, one can construct only a single perpendicular, and he will be persuaded that he is right. This example will, I believe, render my thought clearer, insofar as analogies that are so distant can be of some use.

     The rationalist will perhaps answer that planimetry and stereometry do not destroy the unity of consciousness. But I wished to present here only a vague analogy, being obliged to use the same terms by means of which "common truths" are expressed. One can also tell me that, in debating with Husserl, I presume to put in the place of his binding truths my own truths that are just as binding. And this has already often been said to me by people who consider this "psychological" objection very serious. But I think it is not even worth the trouble to pause over this anecdotal argument.

     But there is still another thing which is much more important and cannot be passed over in silence. Husserl says, "The process of development of the rigorous sciences consists essentially in the transformation of the guesses of wisdom into rational formulas that are perfectly clear. The exact sciences have also had their long period of wisdom. And as in the course of the struggles of the Renaissance the sciences raised themselves from wisdom to scientific clarity, so philosophy, I dare hope, will also attain, in the course of the struggles we are now traversing, this scientific "rigor" (Logos, p. 339). We already know on what Husserl bases his hopes: he believes that phenomenology will lead humanity to the realization of this "great goal." And he is right to a certain degree, inasmuch as it is true that "wisdom" never succeeded in long fixing on itself the attention and interests of men. Almost everyone will readily agree with Husserl's words: "Wisdom, depth of thought, is a sign of that chaos which science tries to transform into a cosmos, into a simple and perfectly clear order." Man is a dzôon politikon, a social animal, and aspires to cosmos, a simple and clear order, for no social life is possible in chaos; this, I trust, does not require demonstration. Not only the naturalists but every man, among our contemporaries as well as among the ancients, considers and will for a long time still consider that it would be a "sin against science" (Husserl was not afraid to use a Biblical term, and I think that this is not a matter of simple chance; positivism also has its source in certain hopes that are not at all positive and that it is not advisable to examine) "to imagine a free conception of nature" (Logos, p. 335). This is true as long as centripetal forces dominate the soul, as long as man wishes to know what has meaning and is valid for all, as long as all his interests are bound to the empirical world and truth appears to him based in the final analysis on evidence which renders it convincing for each of us. For him "it is clear that the abstract or nomological sciences are the truly fundamental sciences, and that from their theoretical content the concrete sciences must draw everything that makes them sciences, namely, theory" (L.U., I, 235).

     But Plato speaks to us of a deep mystery that only the initiates know. This mystery consists in the fact that philosophers have only one purpose, which is to prepare themselves for death and to die. Husserl had certainly read the Phaedo and knew the passage of which I speak, but he does not take it into consideration, perhaps because in his judgment this is the domain of wisdom, of depth of thought. But if he thinks thus, then he does not see what is involved here. It is an incontestable fact that besides the centripetal forces visible to all, there are in the human soul centrifugal forces. These are less constant; they are distinguished only with difficulty and people so rarely notice them that when they manifest themselves and disturb or even alter the order established by men and which they believe is a cosmos instituted by nature itself, they are amazed as if at some supernatural event. But indignation and the protestations of reason are useless: the fact remains a fact.

     Plato is right. Men are not concerned only with living and with organizing their lives but also die and prepare themselves for death. And when the breath of death touches them, they no longer aspire to attach themselves more strongly to the center which binds men to each other but rather strain all their powers to escape beyond the limits of that periphery which even yesterday seemed to them eternal. And they then try above all else to destroy the illusion of the unity of consciousness as well as the evidences that nourish this illusion.

     Then they must, to speak in modern language, pass "beyond" human truth and error, beyond the truth and the error which are deduced from the fact of the existence of the positive sciences and of the most perfect of these, mathematics.

     Philosophy then no longer wishes and no longer can be a rigorous science which amasses truths that by virtue of their evidence must impose themselves sooner or later on all men. Philosophy then aspires, as to its timiôtaton (what is most important), to the truths which do not wish to be "truths common and good for all." And in the light of this search, it is the transformation of the "vague hopes of wisdom" into clear and simple "rational forms" which then appears as the philosophic sin, to speak Husserl's language. The truths convincing for all are treasures that rust, that moths destroy, and that have no value "in heaven." Even if they should be, as Husserl holds, outside time and space, they would not for all this become eternal. There are in "concrete" reality many more elements of eternity than in all the ideas discovered and remaining still to be discovered by phenomenology. If we still need a witness for the character of the goal that philosophy sets, I would recall these words of Nietzsche:

"A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes peculiar to him; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself - but whose curiosity always makes him 'come to himself' again." (Beyond Good and Evil, IX, 292)

One can, it is true, discern in these words certain nuances which could leave the way open to those who would like to find rational truths in them. Nietzsche, it will be said, also pretends to reach a truth that is obligatory for all. But we must not take everything literally and make a great thing of the least word. If we wish to understand a writer, we must know how to forgive him for what is inadequate in his works. We are all children of Adam, and even those among the philosophers who prepared themselves to die and saw the meaning of life in death continued to live and better arrange their existence.