Lev Shestov - Potestas Clavium - Preface: a thousand and one nights 2

Plato recognized anamnêsis (recollection) and believed in ideas, and it certainly was not reason that led him to this. Thus he fully deserved the harsh reproaches that Aristotle threw at him. It would, however, be naïve to imagine that Aristotle himself was free of all reproach in this matter and that he succeeded in securely establishing his philosophy. In regard to the fundamental problem of philosophy, the object of knowledge, he is quite as hopelessly confused as his teacher. He does not admit the existence of ideas; only particular objects are real for him. But the object of knowledge is, according to him, not the particular but the general, that is - contrary to the goal he had set for himself - not what exists but what does not exist. Even Aristotle's greatest admirers, such as Zeller and Schwegler, are obliged to recognize this.

Unfortunately, neither asks himself how it happened that so tremendous a genius, so great a scientist, could allow such a flagrant contradiction in his system, and why this very Aristotle, who had shown such great perceptiveness when it was a matter of discovering Plato's contradictions, became so blind and careless in regard to his own ideas. One would think that he, to whom truth was dearer than friendship, than Plato, than anything in the world, would have shown himself more demanding toward himself than toward his teacher. Furthermore, how does it happen that contradictions so essential, which should presumably have taken away all value from the philosophical work of these brilliant Greeks, did not and do not at all even today prevent these thinkers from remaining the guides of all who seek truth? As far as the fundamental problem of philosophy is concerned we are, indeed, still at the same point as the Greeks. Still today he who holds with Aristotle has a science of the nonexistent "general," while he who holds with Plato is condemned to a mythology that is completely unacceptable to the modern intelligence. Yet, both wished that philosophy have for its object that which exists and that it be a "rigorous science."

Listen with what assurance the modern Aristotle, Hegel, speaks of philosophy:

Das Wahre gelangt aber nicht nur zur Vorstellung und zum Gefühle, wie in der Religion, und zur Anschauung, wie in der Kunst, sondern auch zum denkenden Geist; dadurch erhalten wir die dritte Gestalt der Vereinigung (des Objektiven und Subjektiven) - die Philosophie. Diese ist insofern die hochste, freieste und weiseste Gestaltung.
[Truth, however, belongs not only to idea and feeling, as in religion, and to intuition, as in art, but also to the thinking spirit: thereby we receive the third form of unification (of the objective and the subjective) - philosophy. This is the highest, freest, and wisest form.]

Such, in fact, is the philosophic tradition: all the philosophers always tried to exalt their work as much as possible. And Aristotle himself is, in this respect, in no way inferior to Hegel. But Aristotle lived more than two thousand years ago. Philosophy was then only beginning its work. The cultured world then still did not know those two particular "cases" of revelation, each unique, that the Old and New Testaments were. But Hegel did know them; he spoke often of these "particular cases" and boasted that the German people to which he belonged understood these revelations more deeply than all other peoples.

     Or were these perhaps only words? Of course they were only words. Hegel was too close in spirit to Aristotle seriously to admit any mythology - whether the Homeric or the Biblical. Denkende Geist was everything for him, and that which did not find place in the thinking spirit was rejected as transitory, useless, meaningless. Like Aristotle, he wished above all that philosophy be a science, and science was for him, before everything else, that kind of knowledge which can be communicated and transmitted to others. The master had said: sêmeîon toû eidotos to dunansthai didaskeiv estin (the distinctive sign of knowledge is that it can be taught to others). And no one can any longer renounce these words. The distinctive sign of knowledge consists in the fact that it can be learned always and by all. Therefore, the philosophers, insofar as they were and are obliged to take account of revelation, always tried - contrary to the perfectly clear meaning of the Biblical account - to transform revelation into an aei on, to make of a historical fact, that is, that which happened only once and which (like every historical fact) was swallowed up by time, a permanent and unchanging thing. Even the Fathers of the Church, who had entirely assimilated the Greek philosophy, expounded the Holy Scriptures in such a way as to harmonize them with the first principles, prôtai archai, discovered by reason (lumen naturale). The birth of the Son, the Incarnation, the death of Christ were conceived not as particular events which happened once but as existing eternally. In connection with this there arose and developed the doctrine of the logos, outlined for the first time by the Hellenized Jew Philo, even though the logos is spoken of in the Bible only once, in the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel. The idea of the logos was elaborated by Greek philosophy, and minds with philosophic, that is atheistic, tendencies, minds that trusted only themselves, joyfully took advantage of the possibility that was thus given them of connecting revelation with reason, that is, the lumen naturale with the lumen supernaturale. It is unnecessary to say that it is the lumen naturale that profited and still profits from all the advantages of this union. Catholicism understood this very well and the Vatican Council decreed that Dei existentiam naturali ratione posse probari (the existence of God can be proved by natural reason).

     But, I repeat, we must not deceive ourselves. One can obviously demonstrate the existence of God by means of rational arguments, and we have more than enough of this kind of proofs. But these can only hurt the cause that they are supposedly defending. Every time reason set about proving the existence of God, it required as a first condition that God be ready to submit Himself to the fundamental principles that reason prescribed to Him. The God proved by reason, whatever predicates the latter granted Him - omnipotence, omniscience, goodness - was God only by the grace of reason. And then He was quite naturally deprived of the predicate of life, because reason, even if it wished to, is completely incapable of creating anything whatsoever that is alive; this is not its affair. Furthermore, reason, by its very nature, hates life more than anything in the world, feeling it instinctively to be its irreconcilable enemy. Since reason appeared in the arena of history, its chief task has always been to struggle against life. And never perhaps has this burst forth with such self-evidence as in our day when, to the unanimous applause of the civilized world, panlogism and even - sit venia verbo [if one may use the expression] panepistemism loudly proclaimed their right to universal dominion. Such was the final result of the millennial struggle between the Jewish and the Greek genius, as it is commonly expressed. In philosophy it was Hegel who triumphed. In theology it was the Vatican Council which proclaimed, as I have already said, Dei existentiam naturali ratione posse probari.

     It must be said that this thesis, proclaimed in 1870 by the Vatican Council, was actually developed and affirmed throughout the historical development of Catholicism and was already in fact a dogma in the Middle Ages. It could not be otherwise, considering the alliance that was concluded between the Jewish spirit and the Greek genius. Christianity was born in Galilee. It was Renan, I think, who said that at the beginning of our era Judaea was the most ignorant country of the ancient world, Galilee the most ignorant region of Judaea, and in Galilee the carpenters and fishermen in the midst of whom the new doctrine was born formed the most ignorant part of the population of the region. How, then, could it have happened that the lumen naturale, which for centuries had been carefully nurtured in the lands of Greek culture, suddenly found itself in the possession of the uneducated carpenters and fishermen of Galilee? The Greeks were persuaded that reason was not only capable of demonstrating the existence of God and of explaining everything but that it could also fulfill all human aspirations. How, then, could they admit that the ratio naturalis which they possessed in the highest degree must bow down before the ratio supernaturalis of the Jews, that it was the Jews and not the Greeks who possessed the logos en archêi (in the beginning was the word)? How could they admit that when an ignorant Jew cried from the depths of the abyss (clamabat de profundis), God answered him, while when a cultivated Greek reasoned, his reflections led to nothing?

     It is clear that neither the Greeks nor the Romans, Jesus' contemporaries, nor the Europeans, our own contemporaries, ever seriously admitted that clamare de profundis could, as far as the search for truth is concerned, have any advantages whatsoever over dialectical thought. But I express myself too weakly: educated men of all times have known perfectly well that to cry - whether from the depths of an abyss or from the height of a mountain - is a completely useless and absurd thing, and that cries and entreaties have absolutely no connection with truth. This is the final meaning of Hegel's thoughts, quoted above, on the relationship between "religion" and "philosophy." He says that the truth is accessible in religion through imagination and feeling and in art through contemplation, but that it is in philosophy alone that it appears to the thinking spirit. And it is only in philosophy that it reaches its freest, wisest, most perfect expression.

     At first blush, it may seem that Hegel is only trying to be just and to render each its due. Religion, art, philosophy - each, in its own way, attains truth. But, in reality, it is not a matter of justice when Hegel declares openly that all advantages are with the thinking spirit; the other forms of perceiving the truth have great positive value, but this value attains superlative degree only in the case of the thinking spirit. Why is this? Why is the thinking spirit higher, freer and - into the bargain - wiser than any other form of the spirit's activity? Obviously Hegel could give us only one reason: such is the philosophical tradition. But Hegel is not content with these advantages. The pretensions of the thinking spirit are much more serious and important. It wishes to be the final court of appeal, it wishes to arrogate to itself the right to pronounce final decision over all the first and last questions of being. When man clamat de profundis, the thinking spirit knows that, no matter how desperate his cries may be, they will lead to nothing. You will succeed, if you take great pains, in deceiving your senses and perhaps imagining that you have seen God and that God has heard you. But this will be only a "religious" truth which, before the tribunal of the thinking spirit, will not show itself to be the highest, freest and wisest. Dei existentiam naturali posse probari ratione.