Interpretation of History
C. Dialectics and fate
4. KAIROS AND THE ABSOLUTE POSITION
The doctrine of the character of knowledge as a decision, like everything that makes truth relative, elicits the objection that this doctrine makes itself relative and thus refutes itself, if the doctrine of the character of knowledge as a decision is itself a decision, then its judgment about the ambiguity of being and knowing is also ambiguous. What is true, however, of all knowledge cannot be true of the knowledge of knowledge, otherwise it would cease to have universal
significance. On the other hand, if an exception is admitted, then for one bit of reality the equivocal character of being is broken. The point of view of the Unconditioned would be
reached at one point. Is that possible? It would be impossible if the removal of the ambiguity of existence were to occur at any place in existence. Whatever stands in the context of knowledge is subject to the ambiguity of knowledge. Therefore such a proposition must be removed from
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the context of knowledge. It must arise from another sphere than that of knowledge. It must be the expression of the relation of knowledge to the Unconditioned and therefore the expression of a basic metaphysical attitude. Our exposition leads inevitably to this conclusion. The judgment that is removed from ambiguity, the judgment of absolute unequivocal truth, can be only the fundamental judgment about the relationship of the Unconditioned and conditioned. At this point the subjectivity of the knower and the ambiguity of the known are excluded. The content of this judgment is just this—that our subjective thinking never can reach the unconditioned truth, that it must always remain in the realm of ambiguity. This judgment is plainly the absolute judgment which is independent of all its forms of expression, even of the one by which it is expressed here. It is the judgment which constitutes truth as truth. There is nothing that could escape this judgment. Yet it itself is the premise for all judging, questioning, answering. One therefore really has no right to call it a judgment in a particular sense; it is rather the
metaphysical meaning implied in judging. If, as here, it is made an articulate judgment, it loses as such the dignity that belongs to it as the meaning of judgment, it enters the context of
knowledge and thereby is subject to transcendent criticism. The absolute standpoint is therefore a position which can never be taken; rather it is the guard which protects the Unconditioned, averting the encroachment of a conditioned point of view on the sphere of the Unconditioned.
But the guardian is not the guarded, and if it claims to be such, it is the very one which abandons the watch and injures the holy. With these concepts the position of beliefful relativism is
grasped, i.e., of that relativism which overcomes relativism.
The problem of relativism or of the absolute position can be answered in three steps: relativity in the sense of infinite progress is valid for the relationship of form and material of knowledge.
Here there is no absolute standpoint except the one of pure form, through which, however, nothing real is recognized. The second step lies in what we have called the element of decision in knowledge and the element of fate in being. Here arise the concrete convictions the relativity of which does not come into consideration as methodical doubt and progress, but as ambiguity of the concrete fate. Judgment here replaces doubt; and creation, progress. The third step,
finally, is none other than the revelation of this ambiguity of all knowledge, that is, the guardian position which prevents any knowledge from pretensions to unconditioned validity.
We have characterized the absolute standpoint as a guardian standpoint, as one which is not actually a position, but only a battle constantly changing with the opponent, against any
standpoint that wants to set itself up as unconditioned. But the guardian is at the same time the one who points to the sanctuary he guards. His existence itself is an indication. The absolute standpoint, that is, the point from which relativism is overcome, is possible only as an indication and defense at the same time. Thus the basic principle of Protestantism, the principle of
justification through faith is applied to the question of truth—namely, that in the context of existence a visible realization of the holy is not possible, that all existence remains ambiguous with respect to the Unconditioned. This ambiguity, however, is not meant in the moral but in the religious sense. It reveals itself in morality also, but not only there. The fact that Protestantism frequently applied and still applies the theory of justification exclusively to morals, supported a
moralistic dissolution of the basic Protestant principle. At the same time it made it possible for Humanism to carry through a fateless, abstract idea of truth and to seize truth for itself.
Theological thinking was forced out of the sphere of truth into that of morality. The abstract thought of truth is sadly shaken at the present time. The question therefore arises whether a return to the absolute position of scholasticism shall take place, a position which will not resign itself to being guardian and indication but seeks to be an absolute standpoint itself. If this way is not possible, however—and it would be possible only through a catastrophe and a return of all Western spiritual life to primitive conditions—there remains only the alternative that the guardian point of view of Protestantism toward the question of truth be assumed. This is the burden of our argument in this discussion. It is the honest expression of our situation, suited to reality and the Kairos. The Protestant idea of truth is the concept of truth which is actually living, full of tension, disturbing reality and the spirit. Protestant ethics, its tensions and its greatness has always been fully appreciated but the Protestant concept of truth has never been developed. As a result, Protestant knowledge fell into a crisis completely unsolved until now. If this crisis is not to be concluded negatively and Protestantism is not to end in profane morals, a solution of the crisis must be found. Protestantism has a right to the consciousness of carrying in it a principle that is as yet fully inexhausted and that is of decisive, liberating and constructive significance in the problem of truth.
The doctrine of the guardian character of the absolute position gives the concept of the Kairos its final fulfillment. A moment of time, an event, deserves the name of Kairos, fullness of time in the precise sense, if it can be regarded in its relation to the Unconditioned, if it speaks of the Unconditioned, and if to speak of it is at the same time to speak of the Unconditioned. To look at a time thus, means to look at it in its truth. The truth of a time is its attitude toward the Unconditioned, by which it is supported and directed. Knowledge born in the situation of the Kairos then is not knowledge growing out of accidental arbitrary events of a period but out of the period’s basic significance. Therefore in all our considerations we spoke of fate and
understood in this word time’s being supported by the eternal. True knowledge is not absolute knowledge. The guardian puts an end to this arrogance; on the contrary, true knowledge is knowledge born of the Kairos, that is, of the fate of the time, of the point at which time is disturbed by eternity.
The dynamic thought of truth seems to throw the knowing subject into boundlessness and
instability, and it is comprehensible that the longing for limits and firmness rises against it, even if the stability is looked upon only as an ideal. Yet the actual danger for knowledge lies not in the dynamic but in the static idea of truth. The static idea constantly places the spirit before the alternative: to be one with truth or to be separated from the truth. And the attempted mediation by the idea of progress which tries to approach truth infinitely, falls completely on the negative side of the alternative. Here the case is as with the religious attitude of the mystics: unity with God, deification, or separation from God, distance from God: in this oscillation to and fro the life of the mystic passes. Life in the static idea of truth is also engaged in this same oscillation, insofar as it possesses sufficient seriousness and sufficient depth. Relativism is the weakening of
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the static idea of truth, which occurs as soon as consciousness seeks to escape from the desperation of that alternative. The dynamic thought of truth is not relativistic. It has nothing statically absolute, in reference to which it can be called relative, while the static thought of truth forces one to relativism, as soon as the arrogance of the absolute position is broken down. The dynamic thought of truth overcomes the alternative "absolute-relative." The Kairos, the fateful moment of knowledge is absolute, insofar as it places one at this moment before the absolute decision for or against the truth, and it is relative, insofar as it knows that this decision is possible only as a concrete decision, as the fate of the time. Thus the Kairos serves to reveal rather than conceal the Logos.
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