The foregoing review of "free human criticism" was written by bits
immediately after the appearance of the books in question, as was also
that which elsewhere refers to writings of this tendency, and I did
little more than bring together the fragments. But criticism is
restlessly pressing forward, and thereby makes it necessary for me to
come back to it once more, now that my book is finished, and insert this
concluding note.
I have before me the latest (eighth) number of the "_Allgemeine
Literatur-Zeitung_" of Bruno Bauer.
There again "the general interests of society" stand at the top. But
criticism has reflected, and given this "society" a specification by
which it is discriminated from a form which previously had still been
confused with it: the "State," in former passages still celebrated as
"free State," is quite given up because it can in no wise fulfil the
task of "human society." Criticism only "saw itself compelled to
identify for a moment human and political affairs" in 1842; but now it
has found that the State, even as "free State," is not human society,
or, as it could likewise say, that the people is not "man." We saw how
it got through with theology and showed clearly that God sinks into dust
before Man; we see it now come to a clearance with politics in the same
way, and show that before Man peoples and nationalities fall: so we see
how it has its explanation with Church and State, declaring them both
unhuman, and we shall see--for it betrays this to us already--how it can
also give proof that before Man the "masses," which it even calls a
"spiritual being," appear worthless. And how should the lesser
"spiritual beings" be able to maintain themselves before the supreme
spirit? "Man" casts down the false idols.
So what the critic has in view for the present is the scrutiny of the
"masses," which he will place before "Man" in order to combat them from
the standpoint of Man. "What is now the object of criticism?" "The
masses, a spiritual being!" These the critic will "learn to know," and
will find that they are in contradiction with Man; he will demonstrate
that they are unhuman, and will succeed just as well in this
demonstration as in the former ones, that the divine and the national,
or the concerns of Church and of State, were the unhuman.
The masses are defined as "the most significant product of the
Revolution, as the deceived multitude which the illusions of political
Illumination, and in general the entire Illumination movement of the
eighteenth century, have given over to boundless disgruntlement." The
Revolution satisfied some by its result, and left others unsatisfied;
the satisfied part is the commonalty (_bourgeoisie_, etc.), the
unsatisfied is the--masses. Does not the critic, so placed, himself
belong to the "masses"?
But the unsatisfied are still in great mistiness, and their discontent
utters itself only in a "boundless disgruntlement." This the likewise
unsatisfied critic now wants to master: he cannot want and attain more
than to bring that "spiritual being," the masses, out of its
disgruntlement, and to "uplift" those who were only disgruntled, _i. e._
to give them the right attitude toward those results of the Revolution
which are to be overcome;--he can become the head of the masses, their
decided spokesman. Therefore he wants also to "abolish the deep chasm
which parts him from the multitude." From those who want to "uplift the
lower classes of the people" he is distinguished by wanting to deliver
from "disgruntlement," not merely these, but himself too.
But assuredly his consciousness does not deceive him either, when he
takes the masses to be the "natural opponents of theory," and foresees
that, "the more this theory shall develop itself, so much the more will
it make the masses compact." For the critic cannot enlighten or satisfy
the masses with his _presupposition_, Man. If over against the
commonalty they are only the "lower classes of the people," politically
insignificant masses, over against "Man" they must still more be mere
"masses," humanly insignificant--yes, unhuman--masses, or a multitude of
un-men.
The critic clears away everything human; and, starting from the
presupposition that the human is the true, he works against himself,
denying it wherever it had been hitherto found. He proves only that the
human is to be found nowhere except in his head, but the unhuman
everywhere. The unhuman is the real, the extant on all hands, and by the
proof that it is "not human" the critic only enunciates plainly the
tautological sentence that it is the unhuman.
But what if the unhuman, turning its back on itself with resolute heart,
should at the same time turn away from the disturbing critic and leave
him standing, untouched and unstung by his remonstrance?
"You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am--for
you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human,
and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized
into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better
self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I
resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain
'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another;
enough, I was not all in all, was not--_unique_.[102] But now I cease to
appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself
be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me:
consequently--adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it
now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic;
yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human,
humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the--unique."
We have to pay attention to still another sentence of the same number.
"Criticism sets up no dogmas, and wants to learn to know nothing but
_things_."
The critic is afraid of becoming "dogmatic" or setting up dogmas. Of
course: why, thereby he would become the opposite of the critic,--the
dogmatist; he would now become bad, as he is good as critic, or would
become from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. "Of all things, no dogma!"
this is his--dogma. For the critic remains on one and the same ground
with the dogmatist,--that of _thoughts_. Like the latter he always
starts from a thought, but varies in this, that he never ceases to keep
the principle-thought in the _process of thinking_, and so does not let
it become stable. He only asserts the thought-process against
stationariness in it. From criticism no thought is safe, since criticism
is thought or the thinking mind itself.
Therefore I repeat that the religious world--and this is the world of
thoughts--reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends
its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may "egoistically"
establish itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity of
thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of thinking?
This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to gibe
gently here and there at the thought of Man, of humanity and humaneness,
because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic fixity.
But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a--"higher"
in which it dissolves; for he moves only--in thoughts. This higher
thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of
thinking itself, _i. e._ as the thought of thinking or of criticism.
Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby, freedom of mind
celebrates its triumph: for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have
lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the--dogma of
free thinking or of criticism.
Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in
the right, _i. e._ in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism
alone, is "up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is no power
capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it is a pleasure to
see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of
thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it in
all its "turns."
I am no opponent of criticism, _i. e._ I am no dogmatist, and do not
feel myself touched by the critic's tooth with which he tears the
dogmatist to pieces. If I were a "dogmatist," I should place at the head
a dogma, _i. e._ a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete
this as a "systematist," spinning it out to a system, _i. e._ a
structure of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic, _viz._, an
opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking
against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking against what
was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the champion
of thinking; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I
consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts,
thinking, and mind is shattered.
Criticism is the possessed man's fight against possession as such,
against all possession: a fight which is founded in the consciousness
that everywhere possession, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and
theological attitude, is extant. He knows that people stand in a
religious or believing attitude not only toward God, but toward other
ideas as well, like right, the State, law, etc.; _i. e._ he recognizes
possession in all places. So he wants to break up thoughts by thinking;
but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It it not
thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable,
incomprehensible, that frees me from possession.
A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of
the limbs shakes off the torment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from
my breast the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoopla throws
off year-long burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking
jubilation could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and
believing.
"What clumsiness and frivolity, to want to solve the most difficult
problems, acquit yourself of the most comprehensive tasks, by a
_breaking off_!"
But have you tasks if you do not set them to yourself? So long as you
set them, you will not give them up, and I certainly do not care if you
think, and, thinking, create a thousand thoughts. But you who have set
the tasks, are you not to be able to upset them again? Must you be bound
to these tasks, and must they become absolute tasks?
To cite only one thing, the government has been disparaged on account of
its resorting to forcible means against thoughts, interfering against
the press by means of the police power of the censorship, and making a
personal fight out of a literary one. As if it were solely a matter of
thoughts, and as if one's attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish,
self-denying, and self-sacrificing! Do not those thoughts attack the
governing parties themselves, and so call out egoism? And do the
thinkers not set before the attacked ones the _religious_ demand to
reverence the power of thought, of ideas? They are to succumb
voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine power of thought,
Minerva, fights on their enemies' side. Why, that would be an act of
possession, a religious sacrifice. To be sure, the governing parties are
themselves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the leading power
of an idea or a faith; but they are at the same time unconfessed
egoists, and right here, against the enemy, their pent-up egoism breaks
loose: possessed in their faith, they are at the same time unpossessed
by their opponents' faith, _i. e._ they are egoists toward this. If one
wants to make them a reproach, it could only be the converse,--to wit,
that they are possessed by their ideas.
Against thoughts no egoistic power is to appear, no police power and the
like. So the believers in thinking believe. But thinking and its
thoughts are not sacred to _me_, and I defend _my skin_ against them as
against other things. That may be an unreasonable defence; but, if I am
in duty bound to reason, then I, like Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest
to it!
In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of faith, is the kingdom of
heaven, every one is assuredly wrong who uses _unthinking_ force, just
as every one is wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, or,
although he is a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love,
yet acts unchristianly; in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself
to belong though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he is a "sinner"
or "egoist." But it is only when he becomes a _criminal_ against these
kingdoms that he can throw off their dominion.
Here too the result is this, that the fight of the thinkers against the
government is indeed in the right, _viz___., in might,--so far as it is
carried on against the government's thoughts (the government is dumb,
and does not succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of), but
is, on the other hand, in the wrong, _viz._, in impotence, so far as it
does not succeed in bringing into the field anything but thoughts
against a personal power (the egoistic power stops the mouths of the
thinkers). The theoretical fight cannot complete the victory, and the
sacred power of thought succumbs to the might of egoism. Only the
egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears up
everything.
This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an
affair of the single person,[103] a mere pastime or hobby as it were,
and to take from it the importance of "being the last decisive
power"; this degradation and desecration of thinking; this equalization
of the unthinking and thoughtful ego; this clumsy but real
"equality,"--criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only
the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond thinking but--the
deluge.
Criticism does indeed affirm, _e. g._, that free criticism may overcome
the State, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach
which is laid upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and
impudence"; it thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence" may not
overcome, it alone may. The truth is rather the reverse: the State can
be really overcome only by impudent self-will.
It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that in the critic's new
change of front he has not transformed himself, but only "made good an
oversight," "disentangled a subject," and is saying too much when he
speaks of "criticism criticising itself": it, or rather he, has only
criticised its "oversight" and cleared it of its "inconsistencies." If
he wanted to criticise criticism, he would have to look and see if there
was anything in its presupposition.
I on my part start from a presupposition in presupposing _myself_; but
my presupposition does not struggle for its perfection like "Man
struggling for his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and
consume it. I consume my presupposition, and nothing else, and exist
only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not a
presupposition at all: for, as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the
duality of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an "incomplete" and a
"complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume myself, means only that
I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just
positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but
posited, and, again, posited only in the moment when I posit myself;
_i. e._, I am creator and creature in one.
If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away
in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher
presupposition again,--_i. e._ a thought, or thinking itself, criticism.
For that dissolution is to be for _my_ good; otherwise it would belong
only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which, in favor of
others, (_e. g._ this very Man, God, the State, pure morality, etc.),
declared old truths to be untruths and did away with long-fostered
presuppositions.