Interpretation of History
C. Knowledge and decision
It becomes necessary to ask whether we are really justified in drawing knowledge into the historical sphere of decision. One might say: If the center of the personality may stand in the concrete decision, knowledge lies to the side of this center. It is an extra-personal, therefore a technical occupation, and, like all technical things, is to be settled purely objectively according to the objective relations of things. There may indeed be a decision for science, but there is no decision in science which is more than a passing of judgment in doubtful cases. There is rational necessity in all knowledge and therefore possible progress in rational analysis of things.
At this point, of course, naturalism and supernaturalism which we previously treated jointly, separate. The supernatural conception does not approve of a truth without decision although limiting this decision to one moment in the history of mankind and of individuals. Indeed, even within philosophy there are conceptions, not only in what we called the second line of
Occidental thinking, but also in the first, in which the decisive character of knowledge is
brought to clear expression. Take, for example, Fichte and the manner in which he makes every philosophy dependent on the character of the philosopher. Such an idea accords with the
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supernatural trend of thought. The main tendency of the methodical line, however, interprets knowledge without referring to history as a realm of decision.
The reverse is true of the second line. Although the philosophers of this trend of thought did not grasp the consequences of their interpretation of the world as a world of discord, some of those consequences still affected their systems. This, for example, is so with Schelling’s presentation of the history of religion. Here it is clearly discernible that the dynamics of the historical powers must likewise draw the theoretical consciousness into the historical process. Consciousness is not capable of turning freely to the eternal forms at all times. It is always the battlefield of divine and demonic forces, and its knowledge is determined by the position of this battle. We will subsequently consider the operation of this thought in Hegel’s philosophy of history. In Nietzsche it is essentially different. His position is remarkably equivocal. He fights for pure science, into whose waters, even if they are dirty, the truth seeker likes to dive, as long as they are not shallow. He offers energetic resistance to all interferences from the sphere of wish and feeling, even when religious. And yet he thinks consistently in terms of the Kairos. He knows that he is living in the hour of fate, the great moment, the beginning of the superman; he knows that one cannot think everything at all times and most surely not in all places of society. He knows that spirit is blood, and that only what is written in blood is worth reading and learning.
With this, the decision-character of truth is brought to clear expression.
Thus far the question of the historical character of knowledge has never been put or answered with entire clarity. For even in Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others, the fateful character of their own decision is obscure because they place themselves as it were in the absolute era, in the last stage of history, at the beginning of the end. From this point to be sure they can admit that even knowledge has a fateful character for all the past. But they themselves are standing in an absolute place, which cannot be affected by history. They themselves are exempt from the danger of decision: a defiance of human limitations which led to catastrophe first of all with respect to Hegel’s system.
The presupposition of all our thoughts was that truth is realized in a decision regarding the Unconditioned: stated in religious terms, that all knowledge of the truth in a certain stratum is knowledge of God. There is hardly a philosophy for which this statement would not be valid. In order to define it more exactly, we must consider the manner in which the relationship to God is to be understood. First of all, the possibility that is realized in rationalism of every form must be considered. God is identified with universality, eliminating by this means the element of
decision in the relationship toward Him.
There is no doubt that an element of universal validity is contained in all knowledge. This, however, is not a contradiction but a presupposition of the historical character of knowledge.
Decisions are made by the Ego, which insofar as it decides cannot itself be subjected to decisions. The profound quality of having a fate is peculiar to personality. Therefore the structure of personality itself cannot be subjected to change or fate. Only personality can be
confronted by the Unconditioned, can strive toward the Unconditioned. This means: Whether one is personality, whether one has fate, is not a possible subject of decision, since it is the necessary presupposition of decisions. This presupposition is implied in every act of knowledge.
Without it there would be no situation of deciding at all. The question is: What is the character of this prerequisite of decision? Obviously all those structures which constitute an Ego and make it capable of deciding belong to it. As far as the self faces logical necessities and alternatives it rests within the security of the Logos.
But there is a second prerequisite of decision, namely the material in which it is carried out. The concrete decision, of course, is possible only in concrete material, in a formed, ambiguous world. This world is also a prerequisite of the decision. In order that personality can live in it as the material of its decision, it must stand opposite the Ego as a reality, foreign to it and yet capable of interpretation by it. Here, of course, no evidence but probability is demanded. The material is foreign to the Ego; it is given. It has the quality of not being part of the Ego. Its knowledge therefore can approach the ideal of evidence only in a slow progress. Here the Logos is estranged from itself, not, as before, remaining in itself. But even here the Logos is not in the Kairos, not in the sphere of decision. An epistemology whose problems lie between formal evidence and material probability, that is, an epistemology which lies between rationalism and empiricism, must miss the element of decision in all knowledge.
But such a doctrine overlooks a third element of knowledge which is neither formal nor
material, and through which alone knowledge becomes a spiritual matter. It is not a question of the application of the form to the material, of the evident to the probable, that is, a question of
"judgment." Judgment can be enhanced to the point of genius, but it does not therefore cease to be a technical function, withdrawn from decision in our sense. The third element of which we speak, is the meaningful interpretation of reality. We are not speaking of a religious-
metaphysical interpretation of our world as a special task, but of an understanding of reality, such as is inherent in all scientific work. All knowledge, even the most exact, the most subject to methodical technique, contains fundamental interpretations rooted neither in formal evidence, nor in material probability, but in original views, in basic decisions. This third element is to be found not only in the method, not only in the philosophic and categorical foundations, with which the sciences work; rather does it penetrate deep into material knowledge. This becomes immediately clear in the productive understanding of norms, the religious, the moral, the esthetic, and so forth. The formal evidence here reaches only as far as the constitution of the field of meaning itself, no further, and no norm at all can be taken from the material. Where it comes to a concrete formation of norms, concrete decisions are effective, and only insofar as this is true are concrete sciences of norms meaningful. The situation is just as distinct in history.
Where the collection of material and even ingenious judgment concerning the facts stop,
historical understanding has manifestly the character of concrete decisions. But even in the three sciences that I would call sciences of Gestalt (biology, psychology, sociology) there is an
element of interpretation, derived neither formally nor materially. And even in the physical sphere, yes, in the conceptions of logic and mathematics, this third element is noticeable. The
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formative power of knowledge, its actual life as distinguished from its technical tools, is achieved in this third element. Now it is important to ascertain whether this aspect is not
something which could become the object of perception itself in the act of knowing. If that were attempted, the third element itself, which is beyond the plane of form and material, would
become a formed material. This, however, would rob it of its special character, and knowledge would again be withdrawn from the sphere of decision. Only in the metaphysical view can that which must remain in the background in science gain suggestive, symbolic expression.
The assertion that there is an element of decision in knowledge has nothing to do with the doctrine of the primacy of practical reason. The decision which is spoken of here is not a moral one. It is moral just as little as it is intellectual. It lies in the deeper stratum upon which both of these rest and which we designate but indistinctly when we term it religious, for it is also not a question of decision in the sense of a specifically religious attitude. What is meant is the attitude toward the Unconditioned, an attitude which is freedom and fate at the same time, and out of which action as well as knowledge flows. Therefore, in every period in which religion is dominant in social life, the will to truth is subject to a special and outstanding responsibility quite independent of the moral one. And no moral greatness can balance defection from the truth in such a period: the defection from truth is not equal to immorality, but to a conscious devotion to the demonic in practice. Both are considered as aspects of the one act m which the
fundamental alienation from the Unconditioned is accomplished. Of course, there is a
responsibility for the single act in the moral field as well as in knowledge. That provides the possibility of transferring the responsibility in the sphere of truth to the moral plane of technical exactness, conscientiousness or honesty, i.e., of doing away with the element of decision
contained in knowledge itself in favor of a moral attitude in scientific work. This conception, familiar to modern culture, is possible only because the transcendental relation to the true has been lost as well as the transcendental relation to the good. Whoever wants to understand knowledge through analyzing the single act, must necessarily divide it into a technical side (which can be expressed in scientific genius) and a moral side (which can be enhanced as far as asceticism). He cannot see the third element, the quality of freedom and fate belonging to knowledge. As soon as we break through this superficial consideration, the responsibility on both sides becomes infinite and direct: the responsibility toward the true is as great as the responsibility toward the good, or rather, it is one responsibility. There can be no question here of a primacy of practical reason.
In this third element of knowledge its decisive character, its genuine historic quality, its position in fate and in the Kairos is rooted.