Egocentricity and Mysticism: An Anthropological Study 9780231542937

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
PART I. RELATING TO ONESELF
1. Propositional Language and Saying “I”
2. “Good” and “Important”
3. Saying “I” in Practical Contexts: Self-Mobilization and Responsibility
4. Adverbial, Prudential, and Moral Good; Intellectual Honesty
5. Relating to Life and Death
PART II. STEPPING BACK FROM ONESELF
6. Religion and Mysticism
7. Wonder
Addendum: On Historical and Nonhistorical Inquiry
NOTES
INDEX

Citation preview

EGOCENTRICITY AND

MYSTICISM

EGOCENTRICITY AND

MYSTICISM

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY

Ernst Tugendhat Translated by Alexei Procyshyn and Mario Wenning

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESSNEW YORK

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu English translation copyright © 2016 Columbia University Press Egozentrizität und Mystik. Eine anthropologische Studie copyright © 2006 Verlag C. H. Beck oHG, München All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tugendhat, Ernst, author. Title: Egocentricity and mysticism: an anthropological study / Ernst Tugendhat ; translated by Alexei Procyshyn and Mario Wenning. Other titles: Egozentrizität und Mystik. English Description: New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016012707| ISBN 9780231169127 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231542937 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Egoism. | Self-interest. | Self (Philosophy) Classification: LCC BJ1474. T8313 2016 | DDC 171/.9—dc23 LC record available at https://Iccn.loc.gov/2016012707

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Jacket design: Rebecca Lown References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

CON T EN TS

Translators’ Introduction vii Introduction xxv PA RT I. R E L AT I N G TO O N E S E L F

1. Propositional Language and Saying “I” 3 2. “Good” and “Important” 17 3. Saying “I” in Practical Contexts: Self-Mobilization and Responsibility 31 4. Adverbial, Prudential, and Moral Good; Intellectual Honesty

48

5. Relating to Life and Death 68 PA RT I I. S T E P P I N G BAC K F RO M O N E S E L F

6. Religion and Mysticism 89 7. Wonder

124

Addendum: On Historical and Nonhistorical Inquiry 135 Notes 143 Index 155

TRAN SLATOR S’ IN T ROD U CT I O N

Ernst Tugendhat’s Egocentricity and Mysticism is a remarkable work. Published in German in 2003, this text, which Tugendhat claims to be his final philosophical monograph, marks a return to the interests of his student days at Stanford (1946–49), where he attended seminars on Zen Buddhism and mysticism.1 In it, Tugendhat draws on his previous philosophical work on ethics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of action, and phenomenology to elucidate a deep, human need for what he calls peace of mind (Seelenfriede). He then proceeds to show why mysticism appears to us as a legitimate response to this need. Together with the subsequent collection of essays Anthropologie statt Metaphysik (Anthropology Instead of Metaphysics), the present work elaborates a new form of mysticism, differentiates it from alternative forms found in the most prominent mystical traditions, and shows how it responds to our need for peace of mind without committing us to problematic forms of transcendence or a withdrawal from the world.2 Along the way, Tugendhat also sketches a form of philosophical anthropology that reintroduces into philosophical discourse existential questions concerning life, death, and their importance for relating ourselves to our life as a whole. His naturalized version of anthropology sidesteps the dead ends of fundamental ontology and transcendental philosophy, on the one hand, and the increasingly technical and narrow problems countenanced by the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind, on the other.

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Although English-speaking readers are only beginning to become aware of Tugendhat’s significant contributions to contemporary philosophy, his earlier interpretations of Aristotle, Husserl, and Heidegger can be considered modern classics.3 His lecture courses on ethics and analytic philosophy of language have influenced an entire generation of German philosophers by introducing them to recent trends in Anglo-American analytic philosophy from the 1970s until the 1990s, while his early readers in the Anglo-Saxon world, like Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Robert Pippin, Michael Dummett, and Charles Larmore, credit him with bridging the analytic-continental divide. Rorty, for instance, emphasizes that Tugendhat’s work is “not only an admirable example of hard, concentrated, philosophical thought, but a successful attempt to build bridges between continents and centuries.”4 We are therefore confident that Egocentricity and Mysticism will bring English-speaking readers from both analytic and continental traditions to the same table, since it exhibits the exact virtues Rorty praises the earlier work for: the kind of conceptual analysis of core issues in the phenomenological and existentialist tradition that enriches both philosophical paradigms.5 We expect, however, that even seasoned readers of Tugendhat’s earlier work will be surprised by his turn to nonEuropean traditions, existential concerns, and mysticism in the present text. Not only is Tugendhat well known for championing a postmetaphysical view of reason seemingly at odds with the existential dimensions we usually attribute to mysticism or religion, but also his efforts to reclaim philosophical anthropology are downright untimely: where many contemporary thinkers are embracing increasingly specialized approaches to ever-narrowing philosophical problem-spaces, Tugendhat insists that Kant’s famous—and notoriously neglected—question “What is humankind?” should ground and coordinate philosophy’s division of intellectual labor. The “big questions” concerning the value and goal of a good life, he insists, need to guide contemporary philosophical research once again. For they provide the systematic coherence of and unity to the very intellectual engagements upon which the increasing subdivision and specialization of academic philosophy are premised.

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Indeed, with its breadth, systematic coherence, and untimely reoccupation of a traditional form of philosophical inquiry, this slim volume is likely to create the singular impression that it is bigger on the inside. And, despite Tugendhat’s light, generally nontechnical, and often personal manner of exposition and the clarity of his analysis, the sheer number of themes he examines threatens to overwhelm. By way of an introduction, then, we would like to map out the basic argument so that readers can better orient themselves. This will involve highlighting some of the more important features of Tugendhat’s argument and flagging some of the critical responses to them. We will also situate his conception of mysticism and take note of some of the stickier points of translation.

THE CENTRALITY OF PROPOSITIONAL LANGUAGE AND THE NEED FOR PEACE OF MIND

The first striking feature of this conceptually expansive text is its comprehensive vision: Tugendhat works across a variety of domains, traditions, and methods to present an intricate and sophisticated argument. In the first chapters of the book, he works to identify the essential features of human agency. On his view, what distinguishes us from other species are the pragmatic competencies involved in propositionally structured language use, which come to the fore in the way we use the word “I.” In contradistinction to the context-specific signal-languages of other higher animals, “speakers who can say I”6 or, simply, I-sayers (Ich-Sager) find themselves equipped with a language whose content transcends their immediate context. The context-transcending character of propositional content, Tugendhat argues, introduces new strata of evaluation: over and above the kind of situational adequacy or correctness that one finds in signal-language communication or the coping strategies of creatures limited to their environment, the propositional content of human language introduces indicative and subjunctive forms of evaluation that require us to return to one and the same idea from a variety of distinctive contexts. In other words, since propositional content is cross-contextually stable, it may therefore be

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evaluated from a variety of perspectives in a variety of situations with regard to its truth in the actual world or with regard to its significance or consequences in a variety of possible worlds. These evaluative dimensions imply that a competent speaker implicitly recognizes herself, first, as participating in some kind of a whole (a universe of discourse, a space of reasons) and, second, as necessarily occupying an epistemic perspective within this whole (a locus for deliberation and action-coordination, which is important to herself or to others). They also imply, third, that the epistemic privilege an I-sayer attaches to her perspective remains ontologically relative—other perspectives or loci are possible and, in the grand scheme of things, what one takes to be paramount is not so important after all. For Tugendhat, then, every utterance of “I” implies a dynamic mode of practical deliberation in which the fundamental content being reflected upon is intersubjectively available and context-independent. That is, each agent must take a stand on a given propositional content based on what she holds dear, while (implicitly) recognizing the relativity of her stance. The necessity of taking up an epistemic perspective while countenancing its relativity ensures a dynamic deliberative process in which a range of distinct perspectives on and assessments of the same content become available. And the availability of these contingent perspectives for the deliberative process allows an agent to acknowledge that what she holds dear may not be all that important in the end, or at the very least not the most important in the grand scheme of things. Recognizing this in the course of deliberation, Tugendhat contends, generates the existential concerns surrounding our finitude, the anxiety at the prospect of our death, and the motivation to have our achievements recognized by others. Thus, not only does saying “I” distinguish us from other higher animals in the crude sense that we can use and recognize indexical expressions, it also implies a form of practical deliberation that goes well beyond coping with one’s environment: because our goal-directed activities and intersubjective modes of assessment are inextricably bound up with context-independent contents, they are open to indicative and subjunctive considerations—concerning what is true, what would be a good or better course of action if things were different, if

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one were a slightly different kind of practical agent, with different abilities or priorities. The guiding insight in these opening chapters is that “good” depends upon this dynamic relationship between the epistemic necessity of taking a stand based on what an agent holds dear and the ontological relativity of any one such perspective that propositionally structured language makes possible. The simple fact of saying “I” implicates us in this dynamic. Framing matters in this way helps Tugendhat respond to his silent interlocutors from the continental tradition. His account of “good,” for instance, can be profitably read against Nietzsche’s in the Genealogy of Morality, which also involves taking a Yes/No stance toward a given performance from a unique first-person perspective, but does not depend on propositional content. More salient, however, is Tugendhat’s attempt to synthesize the Aristotelian and Kantian practical traditions by offering a novel “deduction” of prudential and moral goods out of what he calls the adverbial good. Such a synthesis might remind readers of Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology, in which a roughly Aristotelian theory of practical agency opens onto a broadly Kantian account of the preconditions for an agent’s engagements with the world. The connection is not accidental: Tugendhat was drawn to philosophy by studying Being and Time with his mother at the age of fifteen, and attended Heidegger’s courses in Freiburg during the 1950s. He continues his critical engagement with Heidegger’s work in Egocentricity and Mysticism by reconstructing and refining the latter’s existential analytic to circumvent the irrational implications of Heidegger’s thought.7 More specifically, Tugendhat treats the early Heidegger’s account of “Being-Toward-Death”8 as a foil to sharpen his own account of time consciousness, in relation to the experience of death as neither universal nor imminent. The defining feature of our finitude, for Tugendhat, is not the anxiety an imminent death might elicit in us (animals experience that too), but rather the sense that death is always on the temporal horizon, just outside the immediate context of our actions. This kind of death-experience becomes existentially significant, Tugendhat contends, because death appears as an event that will happen

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“soon enough,” but “not now.” The experience of death as a nonimminent threat thus increases the existential weight of an agent’s current endeavors: in reflecting on the fact that she will die “soon enough but not now,” an I-sayer realizes that the things she takes to be important need to be accomplished sooner rather than later. Mysticism, on Tugendhat’s account, is a tonic for the sense of oppressive inevitability that we experience when we reflect on the nonimminent and yet concrete prospect of our death and the urgency it imparts to our deliberations and actions. Tugendhat even seems to suggest, albeit implicitly, that mystical calmness is an alternative to Heidegger’s early conception of resoluteness as well as his later reflections on Gelassenheit, or releasement. Also, in contrast to the late Heidegger’s attempt to think beyond language, propositional language remains the condition that makes I-sayers both suffer from these kinds of existential concerns, which Tugendhat gathers under the label of “egocentricity,” and seek ways to alleviate this suffering. Lastly, contra Heideggerian “authenticity,” Tugendhat’s mysticism relinquishes neither propositional language nor rational deliberation on what one ought to do; the mystic retains an “egocentric care” (chapter 5, section 4). Against this background, in part 2 of the book Tugendhat turns his attention to a comparative analysis of Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism, and Judaism, which aims at a rigorous differentiation of religion and mysticism. On Tugendhat’s account, religion is no longer able to attenuate the stresses and anxieties of contemporary practical life, whereas mysticism presents us with a live option—indeed a practice, Selbstrelativierung, which amounts to “putting oneself into perspective”—for achieving peace of mind. Such practices, as Tugendhat will argue in the book’s final chapter on wonder, no longer need to be rooted in religion or religious doctrine per se. His postmetaphysical mystic may turn to philosophy just as easily as she might turn to Daoism’s effortless participation in the way of things, or to Meister Eckhart’s apophatic quest for God within each object, for all three express a concern for the world as a whole, which we encounter in a mode of wonder.9 The mystical sense of wonder, which Tugendhat elaborates via an extended discussion of

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Wittgenstein, rests on the idea that the mystic does not unburden herself of her egocentric passions and the suffering they engender by taking flight into Nirvana, but rather finds peace of mind in the realization or acknowledgment that, while the existence of the world as a whole remains incomprehensible, she can nevertheless enjoy a sense of familiarity or fittingness with it.10

THE PRIMACY OF THE PRACTICAL AND THE RETURN OF PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

As this synopsis illustrates, Egocentricity and Mysticism is an ambitious text, which raises at least three critical issues. From the broadest to the most specific, they concern the text’s place within contemporary debates, Tugendhat’s argumentative strategy, and the transition from the more recognizable material of part 1 to the comparative discussions in part 2. Our sense is that these three critical issues converge on Tugendhat’s appeal to philosophical anthropology, from which Egocentricity and Mysticism derives its strengths. That is why understanding what he means by “philosophical anthropology” will show why Egocentricity and Mysticism is not merely a “postanalytic” or “postcontinental” work, or a straightforward work of intercultural philosophy, but is something qualitatively new. The place to start is Tugendhat’s positioning of his conception of philosophical anthropology. According to him, the virtue of approaching philosophy from this viewpoint is that it combines the best features of analytic, continental, and comparative approaches to philosophy while leaving (some of ) their dogmas behind. As Tugendhat makes clear in his concluding reflections on method (see the addendum), which are critical of certain tendencies in analytic, continental, and comparative approaches to philosophy and the history of philosophy, “philosophical anthropology” reactivates the existential concerns that draw so many to philosophy (or religion) in the first place, but that tend to get lost in the specialized discourses of contemporary philosophy. Tugendhat’s appeal to philosophical anthropology is thus meant to ward off both the evacuation of

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existential content from ultraspecialized philosophical analyses, so much in evidence in some parts of analytic tradition, and the historical pedantry and hagiography that he thinks characterize (or stereotype) much of continental philosophy and the history of philosophy. Implicitly, Tugendhat is arguing that the “good” of philosophy is a mean between a deficiency and a surfeit of existential import. In this way, Tugendhat seeks to address the existential valences inherent in Kant’s question “What is humankind?” The notion of “philosophical anthropology” thus throws up the first critical issue, since both analytic and continental philosophers are likely to have something very different in mind than what Tugendhat means by it. Analytic philosophers, for instance, might expect Tugendhat to draw on the kind of empirical, evolutionary research one finds in cognitive psychology or cultural anthropology, especially given Tugendhat’s own appeal to the notion of cultural studies or cultural science (Kulturwissenschaft) (see addendum). Continental philosophers, by contrast, might take the same allusion to cultural science in a different sense, expecting Tugendhat to deploy the teleological, genealogical, or transcendental deductive explanatory strategies usually associated with continental approaches to philosophical anthropology, say, in the works of Karl Jaspers, Max Scheler, Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner, Ernst Cassirer, or even early Martin Heidegger. Both expectations will be disappointed—and roughly for the same reasons. Although Tugendhat is committed, here and elsewhere, to some form of naturalism, and occasionally draws on arguments from evolutionary theory, his general strategy in this work is to identify the relevant anthropological constants or framing conditions of specifically human action and deliberation.11 These constants, he argues, underwrite—and thus serve to unify—the variegated capabilities and competencies, cares and anxieties, anticipations and regrets that characterize the human condition. Although these features must, in the final analysis, be explainable in evolutionary or natural terms, Tugendhat does not engage in such an endeavor here. Like Freud, he is happy to bracket such considerations and simply insist that his account will, in the final analysis, be consistent with evolutionary accounts.

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The attempt to identify the constellation of anthropological constants that characterize humankind, while bracketing any developmental account of these constants’ historical emergence, provides us with the clue we need to understand Tugendhat’s “philosophical anthropology.” For it alerts us to the text’s reliance on indispensability arguments: Tugendhat consistently extrapolates his anthropological constants from our pragmatic engagements with the world and then shows how the kinds of deliberation we can undertake in light of these features produce specific kinds of existential concerns. In other words, his “philosophical anthropology” spells out the relevant “conditions of possibility” for our concrete abilities. Tugendhat’s approach thus differs from the one an analytic philosopher might expect him to use, in that his philosophical anthropology is not empirically grounded, even though it needs to be consistent with empirical findings. Continental philosophers may nod along, while wondering how this approach differs from theirs. We take the salient difference to consist in Tugendhat’s point of departure: in choosing our ability to say “I,” he aims to track our genuinely existential concerns for our finitude and a meaningful life back to their logical, semantic, or pragmatic preconditions. In so doing, however, he does not appeal to a transcendental theory of subjectivity, a fundamental ontology, or a historical process to ground them. In this sense, Tugendhat’s indispensability arguments remain decidedly postmetaphysical. Hence, the second critical issue that Tugendhat’s book as a whole and its philosophical-anthropological gambit throw up: How are we to organize and integrate the range of themes just mentioned according to their existential import and pragmatic preconditions, but in the absence of any transcendental or teleological explanation, that is, independently of any historical, developmental narrative or empirical findings? A good answer to this question will go a long way in clarifying the conceptual unity of Egocentricity and Mysticism. One way into this question is to turn to Tugendhat’s marriage of Kant and Aristotle. Like them, Tugendhat emphasizes the primacy of the practical: the question “What is humankind?” is to be answered by specifying the preconditions for our distinctively human

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mode of practical engagement with the world and with one another by analyzing the competencies and capabilities that differentiate us from other animals and the unique issues or obstacles that these capabilities give rise to. Put slightly differently, when we ask what it means to be human, or what differentiates us from other nonhuman animals, we initiate a kind of inquiry into the existential motivations, problems, and anxieties entailed by our defining features. For Tugendhat, “I-saying” provides a sufficient condition for distinguishing us from other animals, while opening up onto the themes more generally associated with philosophical anthropology. Focusing on what is involved in saying “I” allows Tugendhat to organize and coordinate his argument in a manner reminiscent of Kant’s first three questions: What can I know?, What should I do?, and What may I hope for? That is, in a manner similar to the way Kant’s critical philosophy addresses each question by characterizing the epistemological, ethical, and religious dimensions of our lives in terms of our cognitive abilities and their legitimate implementation, Tugendhat argues that the anthropological constants underwriting our ability to say “I” compose three interrelated regions of experience, or distinctive “wholes”: (1) a context-independent sphere of propositional content (akin to Kant’s first question); (2) the deliberative sphere of competing courses of action, priorities, etc., that the sphere of propositional content gives rise to, and in virtue of which we recognize one another and spur ourselves to act (akin to Kant’s second question); and finally (3) an ontological sphere representing the sum total of facts, propositions, perspectives, etc., in relation to which I-sayers discover their relativity and relatedness, learn to wonder at the interconnectedness of all things, and begin to take themselves less seriously by stepping back from their first-personal preoccupations as part of their attempt to make a home in the universe (akin to Kant’s third question). The transitions from one sphere to the next hinge on the role propositional content plays in each. Humans become I-sayers by learning to situate themselves in and navigate a universe of discourse or space of reasons, while the cultivation of the relevant abilities further burdens them with the normative, motivational, and recognitive worries that define the second sphere. The third, on

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Tugendhat’s account, simply follows from the interaction of the previous two: acknowledging that we must take a stand on a context-transcending propositional content and that our stance is merely one among many entails that no one perspective can be elevated above others in the grand scheme of things. Given the general shape of Tugendhat’s argument, a potential objection to his philosophical-anthropological approach begins to emerge, which has to do with its exclusive focus on the first-personal perspective. Even granting the methodological reservations against the third-person standpoint in existentially significant inquiry, the exclusive focus on the primacy of saying I and the privileged relationship of I-sayers to the whole raises questions concerning the role played by the second person (singular and plural). Although Tugendhat does allude to the second-personal perspective in his discussion of recognition, of how one might build up a sense of self-worth by being taken to be important by another, his analysis remains within the scope of “I”-saying. From a hermeneutic perspective, however, the second-person perspective is crucial in understanding the normative primacy of dialogical over monological approaches to a shared world in which other perspectives do not just coexist, but make claims on us. Hence, even if one is persuaded by Tugendhat’s criticism of Gadamer’s metaphor of a “fusion of horizons” and accepts his alternative account of definable forms of consensus and dissensus (addendum), intersubjective dialogue still constitutes a discursive realm that is irreducible to egocentricity. Following Heidegger, one might also respond to Tugendhat’s methodological emphasis on the first-person perspective by denying the centrality of propositional content, arguing that it—and hence egocentricity—does not form a primary dimension of encountering the world. First and foremost, such an argument would go, we cope with and are “always already” immersed in an environment that is disclosed to and through us in complex acts of practical engagement.12 As with every other “higher animal,” our ecological niche and ways of coping therewith underwrite the structurally secondary act of self-ascription. Furthermore, one may wonder whether Tugendhat’s analysis of I-saying as implying that each individual

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must take a stance while acknowledging a plurality of other individual perspectives is an anthropological constant or culturally universal. Other traditions, for instance, have emphasized the primacy of listening over saying, or of collective will formation over an individual’s stance taking.13 We leave these as open questions, worthy of further investigation.

TRANSCULTURAL MYSTICISM WITHOUT RELIGION

We can now turn to the third critical problem posed by Tugendhat’s text, which concerns the transition from part 1 to part 2. For some readers, this transition may feel a bit of a leap since the shift from the rather abstract set of considerations in part 1 to the more concrete, culturally specific ones in part 2 is rather abrupt. While the feeling is justified, it is not really problematic for Tugendhat’s approach, once we realize that part 2 is dedicated to developing a “therapeutic” counterpart to the “diagnostic” analysis of I-sayers’ egocentric predicament articulated in part 1. Moreover, the transition from the logical to the historical recalls Rorty’s remark, quoted earlier, about Tugendhat’s effort to bridge continents and centuries: he uses the framework developed in part 1 to bridge the spatially, temporally, and culturally distinct systems of thought and agency found in Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism, and Judaism to achieve a kind of “imaginary conversation”14 that is rarely attempted—let alone so successfully conducted as it is here. More specifically, the framework elaborated in part 1, which is gathered under the sign or heading of “egocentricity,” allows Tugendhat to bring these religions to the same table to examine how each negotiates the interplay between an I-sayer’s need to take a stand on something she holds dear and the anxieties produced by acknowledging the relativity of any such stand in the grand scheme of things. This framework allows Tugendhat to move beyond a futile attempt to assess, comparatively, these positions in terms of their truth-claims, which are accessible only to believers anyway, and instead focus on the practices each religion develops to attenuate the existential stresses created by egocentricity. In other words, he aims to

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understand each religion pragmatically via its strategies for surmounting existential anxieties, more specifically the practices each doctrine advocates for “stepping back” (Zurücktreten) from one’s pressing concerns and “putting oneself in perspective” (Selbstrelativierung) to attain peace of mind. Insofar as they offer an insight as to how to successfully step back from oneself while accepting the responsibilities arising from being one I-sayer among many in a universe that exceeds one’s cognitive grasp and control, Tugendhat contends, these doctrines can contribute to our postmetaphysical philosophical anthropology. But unlike ethical demands and ontological truth-claims, these insights and the mystical practices they advocate do not need to transform the reader into a believer, let alone a mystic; they are, on the contrary, in principle open to all competent speakers of a propositional language. The pragmatic, or practice-oriented, tenor of Tugendhat’s discussion of religion helps explain the distinction he draws between mysticism and religion. Indeed, his main reservation about religion is expressed in his judgment that, to us contemporaries, references to a transcendent personal god appear to violate the demands of intellectual honesty and to be rooted in wishful thinking. The assumption of a transcendent God is merely the projection of a giant will or superperspective outside of oneself that could potentially answer one’s unfulfilled wishes or falsely promise peace of mind. However, rather than flatly dismissing religious traditions on account of their problematic metaphysical baggage and unwarranted assumptions, Tugendhat distills potential conceptual and practical contributions of Chinese and Indian religious and philosophical traditions to the project of transcending—or at least offsetting—our structural egocentricity. The result is a form of rational mysticism that dispenses with conceptions of the ineffable, or the ecstatic experience of a union with God. The decentering potential of mysticism provides relief from suffering while remaining a mysticism of this world. Derived from a selective combination of various aspects of Eastern as well as Western conceptual sources, Tugendhat’s distinct form of rationally acceptable mysticism emphasizes the possibility of freeing oneself from clinging to one’s excessive acts of will

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without thereby becoming blind to the suffering in this world. Tugendhat’s commitment to intellectual honesty is further revealed by the fact that he does not suggest that peace of mind could be attained once and for all, as Christian soteriology or simplistic understandings of the Buddhist conception of Nirvana promise; neither does he hold that mysticism should be universally adopted, as it does not arise from a moral obligation. For although the existential unrest that I-sayers suffer from can be attenuated by practices of collecting oneself and by reducing one’s excessive desires, the ills of egocentricity and the calamities of this world cannot be overcome. Experiences of loss, injustice, and violence therefore call into question any attempt to equate the mystic’s peace of mind with a world-transcending bliss. As Tugendhat makes clear in his subsequent Meister Eckhart Prize speech, “On Mysticism,” suffering with others can only lead to a “higher form of mourning” in which elements of sadness and serenity coincide.15 It may be true that Tugendhat’s interpretation of Indian and Chinese wisdom traditions appears blurred through Western lenses. His conceptual analysis also ignores much of the recent scholarship in these areas. And yet, his readings of selected passages from the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and the Heart Sutra offer a refreshing and original interpretation. The detailed engagement with the Buddhist and Daoist primary sources, canons ignored by mainstream academic philosophizing, represents more than an orientalist’s longing for simple and exotic solutions to complex problems. Tugendhat emphasizes that he does “not wish to advertise Daoism as a doctrine of salvation,” but that he is convinced “that in it certain problems were identified, which we too can take seriously” (chapter 6). Thus, in treating Eastern mystical traditions as valuable conceptual resources to reveal and address certain philosophical-anthropological problems, he elaborates the building blocks of an innovative ethics and philosophy of action: for instance, Daoist wuwei, a natural form of acting without consciousness, instrumental calculation, or concern for recognition, becomes linked to Buddhist notions of universal empathy and disinterested love, and serves as an antidote or corrective to the egocentric tendency of taking oneself too seriously.

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By combining Daoism’s focus on cultivating attentiveness to achieve peace of mind within this world with the Buddhist conception of a genuine love for others, Tugendhat seeks to synthesize the constructive dimensions of these traditions. This leads him to a form of hybrid—some might say postmodern—mysticism that is at odds with traditional Western and Eastern conceptions of mysticism, but precisely insofar as it seeks to correct some of their blind spots. Traditional Western conceptions of mysticism, for instance, imply a form of illumination and union with a transcendent, personal entity (unio mystica). However, this kind of experiential mysticism cannot be universalized since it hinges on personal and privileged realms of experience. Traditional concepts of Eastern mysticism, on the other hand, can imply a problematic desire to flee from this world by abandoning all desires in a paradoxical act of wanting not to want, or an egocentric escape from egocentricity. Tugendhat’s “mysticism” is not without its problems, of course. For example, one may criticize his offhand dismissal of monotheistic religions on account of their “contractual”—quid pro quo—relation to God as a failure to take seriously the potential of Western mystical traditions. In fact, the reception of Egocentricity and Mysticism in Germany has been dominated by precisely this kind of attempt to defend Christian mysticism against Tugendhat’s dismissal.16 It is worth underscoring this, as Tugendhat does integrate the apophatic discourse of Christian thinkers like Meister Eckhart into his account, even as he rejects deistically centered traditions of mysticism. In a parallel to his critical appropriation of Christian mysticism, Tugendhat’s turn to the East is far from apologetic. For him, the Daoist alternative to Buddha’s rejection of this world, or the Mahayana Buddhist critique of the danger of denying one’s obligations within the world, reveals blind spots and potentials alike. In short, there can be no doubt that Tugendhat’s philosophical-anthropological appeal to a rationally convincing mysticism rests on assumptions that would not be shared by all Buddhists or Daoists. The emphasis on a rational approach to mysticism also contradicts postmodern critics of universal conceptions of rationality.

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Whether one is ultimately convinced by Tugendhat’s argument or not, his problem-focused staging of a debate among mystical positions performs a refreshing paradigm shift. In contrast to popular strains of intercultural philosophy, he is not interested in cultural and historical differences per se. His philosophical-anthropological approach drives him to presuppose that there are shared problems deriving from shared human needs across cultures and epochs. These shared problem spaces allow for a plurality of expressions and human experiences. They admit of differing cultural responses that can be compared, contrasted, and selectively appropriated and extended, based on whether we find them compelling, given everything else we know about the human condition.17 As a philosophical program, Tugendhat’s transcultural anthropology requires that philosophical inquiry focus on advancing substantive problems rather than exhibit fidelity to reconstructing entire traditions or blindly following authorities from a historicist perspective. The addendum of Egocentricity and Mysticism presents a justification of his unique combination of transcultural and systematic research. The first-person perspective plays a crucial role here as well. In contrast to objectifying traditions and thinkers from a third-person perspective, an investigation from the first person is exclusively guided by developing arguments based on reasons rather than referencing given historical or textual information.18

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

At first glance, Tugendhat’s German appears to be easily carried over into English. His generally light style is not overburdened by dense technical discussions, and he prefers fairly short, simple sentences. As a general rule, our translation tries to stay as close to the original as possible, while also preserving a sense of the flow and elegance of Tugendhat’s style. We felt, however, that small changes would add to the quality of the translation on a few occasions. For instance, the original German makes repeated use of the impersonal pronoun “one” (man), which is less common—and more

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cumbersome—in English. We decided to translate it with the first-person plural “we” wherever possible, thus reflecting the text’s methodological emphasis on the first-person perspective. As a general rule, we tried to be consistent in the translation of key terms. In a few passages, it seemed more logical to use the same English word for different German terms. On at least one occasion, for instance, we found it necessary to render the terms Staunen, Sichwundern, and Wundern as “wonder.” In these cases we indicated the different German terms in square parentheses. We extended this practice of including the German parenthetically to situations where we felt it would disambiguate translation decisions or clarify Tugendhat’s line of thought. We also decided to translate—rather than amend—the gendered personal pronouns of the original text as closely as possible, since Tugendhat speaks out against the “European-American fashion of having to say ‘he or she’ or even only ‘she,’ ” calling it “hypocritical” in a different text, and insisting that gender-neutral language would be an “adulteration of language.”19 Finally, we chose to use expressions that we hope will feel more familiar to English readers when translating the German Seelenfriede (literally, “peace of soul”) and Tugendhat’s abstract Selbstrelativierung (literally, “self-relativization”), by rendering the former as “peace of mind” (more colloquial and less burdened by Christian overtones than the concept of the soul, as the text expressly strives to move away from religion). Our translation of Selbstrelativierung as “putting oneself into perspective” might appear to be more contentious—especially since commentators like Dieter Henrich have drawn explicit attention to the abstractness of Tugendhat’s language here—but we feel that our choice is justified by the conceptual connection between Selbstrelativierung and Zurücktreten (literally, “stepping back” [from oneself ]). As Tugendhat makes clear, mystical experience involves a specific act of “self-relativization” in which one comes to see one’s place in “the whole.” In order to prepare for this experience, one has to first “step back” from one’s immediate concerns in order to reflect upon one’s place within a systematically integrated series of perspectives, where no one perspective has any more importance in the grand scheme of things than any other. Stepping back from one’s concerns then allows one

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to put oneself in perspective, to relativize one’s perspective, in relation to the whole one participates in, and to feel one with it. As they say, traduttore, traditore, or every translation comes with its own betrayals and shortcomings; if shortcomings there are, they are, of course, entirely ours. As Tugendhat says, however, “It is not the mistakes that frighten us, but the blind spots.”20 We hope that the reader will view what we may have missed from the perspective of the text as a whole, and hence as not so important in the grand scheme of things.

IN TROD U CTION

The word “mysticism” is used in many ways. Some take it to mean a special, intuitive illumination, but this meaning is rather marginal. More relevant is the widespread conception according to which mysticism consists in a feeling of subject-object unity: the mystic sees himself as somehow one [“in eins”] with God, with Being, with all things. This sense picks out an essential aspect of most mystical ideas in the East and the West, but it is in my opinion not the central one. I believe that all forms of mysticism are to be understood starting from a specific motive: the mystical feeling [das mystische Gefühl] of an all-encompassing unity is not simply something that overtakes someone, but rather is something sought for. Why? One answer to this question is: humans have a need for peace of mind [Seelenfriede]. Naturally, this response prompts further questions. Why is it that this need for peace of mind can arise in humans, in sharp contrast to other animals? It cannot be, as Buddha said, because they suffer, since other animals suffer too, but rather because the mind of human beings is in a state of unrest that other animals simply do not know. This unrest hinges on a specifically human kind of self-reference [Selbstbezug]. Perhaps this can be expressed as follows: the motive behind every form of mysticism is to get away from or attenuate the care for the self. In the case of mysticism understood in the sense invoked earlier of “becoming one,” this feeling of unity rests upon the need to release oneself from the isolation of human selfhood and from the peculiar manner in which humans take themselves to

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be important and care about themselves, even as they are concerned with other things as well. In other words, mysticism consists in transcending or putting into perspective one’s egocentricity, an egocentricity which other animals that cannot say “I” do not possess. If we want to understand what drives mysticism, we have to come to terms with the specific problems that egocentricity poses to I-sayers. It is only natural therefore to take up the questions raised in contemporary philosophy concerning the self and selfhood [Ich und Selbstsein] in such a way that those aspects of self-reference, which have come to be seen as hindrances to peace of mind, are also taken into account. Though what I have in mind first and foremost in speaking of humans is the men and women of our times, I am also trying to understand some aspects that, even before any cultural particularities, account for the way in which, in saying “I” and in virtue of the propositional structure of their language, humans distinguish themselves from all other animals. In the philosophical tradition of German Idealism and in psychoanalysis, there has been much talk of the I or the ego [dem Ich], but the misconception is thereby invited that there is an I, or an ego, inside each of us. Contemporary analytic philosophy, on the other hand, sometimes invokes the notion of a “concept of the self ”. However, “I” is first of all a word of our language, and I am not convinced that we would be talking of any such concept if we did not have the word first. The reason why I frequently speak about I-sayers and less so about humans or simply about us lies in the fact that humans do not come into the world being already able to say “I.” I am furthermore interested, in this investigation, in those qualities that humans have in virtue of the fact that they speak a propositional language and are able to say “I.” As for the most generally used alternative in contemporary philosophy, which is to speak of us, I only rarely have recourse to it, because it leaves open the question of who exactly is intended. Although it is of course appropriate to employ the first person in philosophical reflection—where it is a question of how we understand ourselves—to my mind it is helpful to always keep the contrast with other animals in view.

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If I frequently refer to “animals of other species,” what I mean thereby are those “higher” animals that are not able to say “I.” In all likelihood, all consciousness involves some form of self-reference, and so too does the consciousness that we impute to higher animals and that naturally infants possess as well.1 I, and most likely other people too, only have rather indistinct ideas as to how this kind of consciousness in general and the “egocentric sensibility” belonging to it—an egocentricity in scare quotes—are to be understood. In what follows these ideas will only serve as a vague foil. Other nonhuman animals have no notion of self and for that reason cannot take themselves to be important. Hence it would certainly be rather strange to imagine that they could wish to gain distance from themselves.

EGOCENTRICITY

AND

MYSTICISM

PART I

Relating to Oneself

1 PROPOSITIONAL LANGUAGE AND SAYING “I”

To be sure, not everything about the structure of human self-relation [Sich-Verhalten] can be understood by analyzing the use of the word “I.” Nevertheless, a great deal follows from such an analysis, and, to my mind, it is a worthy starting point. In chapter 3, I will return to this point and develop its implications by analyzing a peculiar semantic nuance revealed by the practical usage of this word. The investigations into the notion of the good in chapters 2 and 4 should flesh out this conception of self-relation [Selbstbezug]. A consideration of the relationship to oneself [Verhältnis zu sich] will then in chapter 5 go beyond what can be clarified by examining the uses of the word “I.” From a certain age onward, humans are “I”-sayers. But they are only capable of saying “I”—and indeed must also be so able—because they express themselves in a propositional language. The analyses of self-relation [Selbstverhältnis] that I will offer in part 1 are motivated by an idea of anthropological reflection, according to which the structure of propositional language is viewed as a product of biological evolution. From this vantage, many (though not all) of the defining features that we habitually use to characterize the difference between humans and animals—rationality, freedom, objectification of self and environment [Umwelt], awareness of values and norms, “I”-saying—become intelligible.1

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1.

Aristotle was the first to see that the fundamental differences between humans and other animals could be formulated in terms of linguistic structure. Indeed he makes this case in an isolated chapter at the beginning of his Politics (1.2.1253a7ff.). For the clarification of my own approach it is helpful to recall Aristotle’s position expressed in this passage. He compares the social structure of humanity to that of other animals, such as bees, and uses the difference in linguistic structure to illuminate the distinction between them: first, human language is a medium that enables individuals to form a social structure by relating to one another through representations of what each takes to be good; hence the question of justice always plays a role when considering human societies. Second, the fact that humans can relate to the good is grounded in the predicative structure of their language (logos). One can only have a conception [Vorstellung] of the good, as opposed to a mere sense of what is pleasant, if one understands what is good in the predicative sense of the term. From a contemporary perspective, one could further pursue this thought as follows: whereas the behavior that makes possible social cohesion in a bee colony is genetically predetermined and operates by means of chemical triggers, the connection of individuals in human social structures depends on those individuals’ representations of what is good for them. Evolutionarily, this can be understood as a gain in the adaptability of social organizations to new environmental conditions. If the manner in which individuals are related in a social structure depends on their representations of what is good for them and hence on norms, which (like anything that is taken to be good) are in need of grounding (Aristotle’s reference to justice says this much), then the social behavior [das soziale Verhalten] for this species is not genetically predetermined, but rather verbally and culturally conditioned: social structures can be dissolved and re-created according to the contingent conditions of each case.2 Aristotle’s insight that the consciousness of the good is grounded in the predicative structure of human language seems to me to have been a brilliant intuition, and I will return to it in chapter 2.

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That Aristotle did not more fully develop this intuition that he presented in his Politics is a consequence of the fact that his view of the structure of human language was not yet well worked out. Nevertheless, I believe that his point of departure in the predicative structure hits on the essential.3 Only today one must speak more generally about the propositional and not merely the predicative structure of language.

2.

I speak of human language—in general—because the structure that we are concerned with is characteristic of all human languages. Apart from other aspects such as their syntactic structure, or the fact that they must be learned, all human languages distinguish themselves from the rudimentary languages of other species through the propositional structure of their semantics, whereas the languages of all other species are situation-relative signal-languages [Signalsprachen]. The paradigmatic features of propositionality are: first, that the elementary symbolic units of this language are predicative utterances—that is, they consist of a predicate (the “general term”) and one or more singular terms; second, that these utterances, and more complex ones as well, come in a variety of moods, the most basic of which being the assertoric and the practical (imperative, optative, or prepositional utterances expressing purpose [Absichtsätze]); and third, that these utterances can be negated, meaning that communication partners can relate to themselves and thereby to each other through Yes/No stances [Stellungnahmen].4 What the singular terms make possible is the situation-independence that is characteristic of propositional language. I will take up this issue in more detail in the next section of this chapter. The predicative utterance, and hence also every other higher-level propositional utterance, stands for something, a state of affairs, to which speaker and listener can relate— affirmatively or negatively, assertorically, or in the optative or imperative moods—as to something self-identical. Speaker and listener inform each other reciprocally about one and the same thing. No such commonly held

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thing is to be found in the languages of other species. For them, communication consists in a one-way transfer that follows a stimulus-response schema. In propositional languages the Yes/No stance taking takes the place of this stimulus and response. Even in the case of an imperative, whose use—one might think—should, in the manner of a stimulus, trigger an action on the part of one’s partner, the possibility of answering “No” effectively precedes the action, and here too the “No,” just like the “Yes” implicit in the action, refers to the very same thing that the speaker has in view.5 Both understand one and the same thing, which can, especially in an assertoric sentence, be something that has no bearing whatsoever on the speech situation at hand. A series of further aspects is tied up with this. First, one can take a stance not only by saying “Yes” or “No,” but also by abstaining, or by questioning and, based on this questioning, also by expressing doubt or deliberation. Second, insofar as that is true, the sign acquires a function outside of communication as well—one might say for thinking the individual, but that is precisely how something like thinking arises in the first place. (Nowadays the communicative character of human language is oftentimes stressed, and in certain contexts it makes good sense to do so; but the facts of the matter [Sachverhalt] are thereby stood on their head. For the languages of all other animals are communicative, but the special achievement of propositional language is that it also has an extracommunicative function.) Third, in both theoretical and practical deliberations, what is being asked is what speaks for or against that which is said in a proposition, and that which is being inquired into in this manner is reasons.6 The possibility for an inquiry into reasons is built into the semantic structure of assertoric propositions [Sätze]. Wittgenstein’s famous dictum that we understand an assertoric claim [Satz] when we know what is the case if the claim is true (Tractatus 4.024) can be supplemented by saying: and this we know when we know what counts as a reason for or against it. What is being learned when we learn the semantics of a language is not simply the association with objects, but rather the identification and justification rules informing such associations. It belongs to the structure of this language that the states

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of affairs given in the comprehension of propositions constitute objects of possible deliberation—of a possible inquiry into reasons. At this level of generality already certain central aspects of human behavior become comprehensible. The ability to deliberate [Überlegenkönnen], and hence to inquire into reasons [Gründen] for and against (Lat. rationes, Eng. reasons), is what is meant by rationality. Theoretical deliberation is concerned with the question of what is true, while practical reflection is aimed at the question of what is good or—as the case may be—better. (Practical reasoning arises when elementary practical utterances—expressions of purpose—are transformed into assertoric claims via the predicate “good.”) I will examine the significance that the word “good” holds for self-relation [Selbstverhältnis] in chapter 3. Deliberation and position taking [Stellungnehmen] have in common the consciousness of having options, and this awareness underwrites what we call human freedom: I will take up this problematic in chapter 4. It thus seems hardly plausible to see “reason” [Vernunft] as a power or faculty that humans simply “have,” given that humans manifestly can and must inquire into reasons because they inhabit the propositional structures of language. One may also find it noteworthy that, in the twentieth century, there were philosophical currents for which human freedom, or the objectification of self and one’s environment, was the reference point or benchmark of anthropological reflection (Existenzphilosophie, philosophical anthropology). Of course, it must remain an open question just how far one can go in imputing the mental traits of the human species in general to one central phenomenon, but insofar as this is possible, the propositional structure of language seems to approximate this role to the highest degree. Recently, Roger Scruton has adduced solid grounds in support of the idea that even the human understanding of music must be interpreted in terms of linguistic structure.7 In chapter 6, I will try to show how the phenomena of religion and mysticism can be seen in light of this structure. Naturally, there are human phenomena—one need only think of a smile—that children manifest before they have learned a language: among others, the very ability to learn such a language. This example helps make clear that there

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must be phenomena that do not depend upon language, but rather are genetically linked to it. Today one ought not to proceed from a phenomenon that cannot be linked to a coherent evolutionary hypothesis.8 If the phenomenon of freedom were independent of language and rationality, we could not understand it descriptively (chapter 4). Moreover, even if it could be described, it would not have any intelligible biological function. We know nothing about how human languages came into being. Among the approximately six thousand languages still in existence, there is none that is more primitive than the others. We therefore have no molds, or antecedent forms [Vorformen], for these languages. We do not know, and will probably never know, how the chasm between the languages of other species and the propositional language of humans was crossed over a period of perhaps several hundred thousand years. If we start from the finished product, however, its viability becomes manifest: with a rationality—or ability to inquire into reasons—made possible by propositional language, the species has reached an incomparably high cognitive level.

3.

Singular terms are an especially important achievement of propositional language. They make the context-independence of language possible. Without them it would be impossible for speaker and listener to intend [meinen] the same thing. Whereas the signs used in other languages can be described as quasi-predicates, which remain context-dependent [situationsbedingt],9 the elementary signs in propositional language (the singular predicative sentences) become—through the use of singular terms—context-independent propositions: the object designated by the singular term effectively takes the place of context [Situation].10 Humans no longer react—like other animals do—to their environment (and the linguistic signs belonging to it), but rather “refer” to individual objects that we can objectively identify in space and time, in order to say something about them via predicates. As an individual, every object is distinguishable from every other, and hence any

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reference to it presupposes an awareness of a universe, of a world of objects. It also presupposes the meaning of the identity sign, which is constitutive for reference (for all singular terms a, b, c, etc., we must be able to know whether a = b, etc.), as well as the unitary reference system for space and time: we would be unable to refer [referieren] to objects, if we could not make reference [bezugnehmen] to their spatiotemporal position. This system of reference owes its existence to the fact that there is a lowermost stratum of singular terms, whose function it is to refer in a context-relative [situationsrelativ] and ultimately speaker-relative manner: “deictic” or “indexical” expressions. Singular terms would not be able to fulfill their function—namely, to make reference to spatial and temporal positions [Raum- und Zeitstellen] as well as things context-independent— if they did not comprise expressions that already refer to both spatiotemporal positions and things in such a way that they mark them as relative to the speaker’s context. The ensuing situation relativity is grounded in the fact that deictic expressions always belong to a substitution system: the day that today we designate as “tomorrow” must be designated tomorrow as “today,” and both expressions must be replaceable by “objectively localizing” expressions. The referenced day is, for example, 3/5/1936. It is thereby integrated into a system of coordinates with a specific zero-point, but no absolute values: it is identifiable for the speaker insofar as it stands in an ever-changing relation to “now” and “today” (and similarly to “here”). It is this interchangeability between deictic and objectively locating expressions that enables the speakers of a predicative language to refer to an objective universe of individuals, that is, a universe of spatiotemporal positions and objects to which one can always return from within one’s ever-changing situation as a speaker as unique and independent of this speaker-relative situation.11 The reference of a proper name is only to be understood with recourse to the substitution system just described. One therefore is only able to refer to individuals if one at the same time relates to a world. The reference to context-independent and existing individual objects occurs of course for the purpose of communication in a community of speakers. Only because a community can agree, within a world of objects,

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which object is intended in each case can they—in that which is said about this object—intend (or negate and so on) the same thing. The community of speakers is itself part of the universe of objects (even persons are objects in this wide sense). One can imagine both the universe of objects and the subclass of speakers as varying in size. To better illustrate: the community of speakers can very well be a family and the universe of objects a room. Family members are able to identify and distinguish among the objects in this room, and are themselves a subset of these objects. Therefore they must also be able to identify and distinguish reciprocally among themselves. A corner of the room could serve as the zero-point of spatial coordination. And then one can imagine this miniuniverse infinitely expanded, and speak of any objects in space and time. In the same way, the community of speakers can be further enlarged, beyond family members, to anyone with whom one can reach an agreement about anything at all. One can therefore visualize what I am describing as a family-in-a-room kind of setup; the resulting structures will remain the same for all thinkable speakers and objects. Speakers can of course only reach an agreement about objective individuals if they can reciprocally identify each other. For example, speaker A only understands what speaker B identifies with the expression “this beetle” if A is able to identify B. Now, how does this reciprocal identification of speakers operate? A is only able to identify B when A knows which person from a given group is speaking. Just as B is able to speak about this beetle to which he points, A can know which beetle is being pointed at only if he identifies B as this person (at such and such a location). For each speaker, the entire system of identification is now intelligible only if he is also able to refer to himself. In some cases, however, a speaker refers to himself the way others refer to him, for instance, by pointing his thumbs to his chest and saying, “this guy.” But how does the speaker know that this chest is his own, and not that of another? What does “his own” mean here? Every use of the word “this” implicitly refers back to the intention of the speaker, because it points to an object in this speaker’s surroundings; this is true whether the speaker is someone else, or I myself. Hence, when B says, “this beetle,”

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A knows which beetle is intended if he can identify B, but he cannot refer to himself the way he would refer to something in his surroundings to which he can point (as at his chest). Speakers are not merely some thing in their environment. I think one can easily understand that (1) if, for every community of speakers, which means for every speaker, there is to be an objective universe of spatiotemporal individual objects, and (2) if this, as indicated, is only possible insofar as the speaker makes reference to the spatiotemporal relation in which objects stand to him, and (3) if he himself is a spatiotemporal object, then the speaker must be able to refer to himself in such a way—without having to say “this,” in which case he can only refer to something that he can point to in his environment. How then can he refer to himself ? By saying “I.” With “I” the speaker does not refer to himself “from the outside” (in his perceptual field), as he would with “this,” but rather “from the inside.” But what does that mean?

4.

What is the rule governing the use of “I”? A child has learned how to use “I” when he has grasped that each speaker, when he says “I,” refers to himself, and vice versa: if a speaker does not want to designate himself, as is always possible, in terms of externally identifiable features (for example, as the one bearing this proper name, or as the one who is now pointing to himself ), but simply wants to refer to himself, he must use “I.” The difficulty encountered by children here consists in learning the difference between the use of “I” and that of a proper name. Everyone in the child’s family, including the child himself, has a proper name, by means of which family members can refer to one another. This then means, however, that each of them, in using a proper name to refer to oneself, does so in precisely the same way as others do—namely, from the outside. Proper names point to deictic and localizing expressions (see section 3 of this chapter). Now what does it mean to refer to oneself ? At this point it is helpful to distinguish among various classes of predicates, to which singular terms can be added to create complete sentences.

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One can distinguish classes of predicates according to the kind or form of givenness of the particular object, under which it is to be determined whether the predicate accords with the object or not. Thus, there are, first, predicates in whose case we can settle via perception the question of whether they apply to an object or not. For instance, we decide that Peter is red-haired when he appears to us such that we can say: this person (an object in our perceptual field). In contrast, whether a specific predicate applies to Peter in virtue of causal or conventional relations cannot be determined on the basis of perception alone. Whether Peter is George’s father, or whether he is the president of a society, cannot be decided on the basis of a perception of this person. One can therefore distinguish among various “perspectives” from which predicates can accord with objects. If one has ascertained, from the appropriate perspective, that Peter is president, then one can naturally attribute this predicate to the object as well, even if one is using a singular term that does not belong to this perspective (for example, “this person is the president”). For all predicates that accord with an object do so regardless of which singular terms one uses. Now, in addition to perceptual predicates and predicates that accord to objects in virtue of some causal or conventional relation, there is a third class for which neither one nor the other holds, namely, predicates standing for states of consciousness and for a person’s bodily states and acts, insofar as the person is aware of them. One can, somewhat misleadingly, label these predicates as “inner.” A peculiar asymmetry affects these predicates, in the manner in which their application is established from the perspective of the very person with whom they accord, and from the perspective of other persons respectively. Other people recognize [erkennen] that a person is experiencing an “inner” state based on that person’s outward comportment, even though there are predicates that are not externally observable, but that can nevertheless be attributed in virtue of observable features; however, from the perspective of the very person to whom the predicate is attributed, no observation is required, and the predicate is available immediately. But what does “immediately” mean here?

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In the classical tradition of modernity stretching from Descartes to Husserl, this question was answered in such a manner as to imply that we each perceive inwardly that we find ourselves in such a state (which was as a rule understood as mental). But the consensus, which has rightly come to prevail in the meanwhile, is that this was a false interpretation. First of all, such a position would be false phenomenologically: inner perception of this kind cannot be ascertained. Second, such an inner perception, if it were to exist, could never be ascertained from the outside. And third, the assumption of inner perception would lead to a vicious regress. We can elucidate this in the following manner: if I say, “There is a tree in front of me,” and someone asks me, “How do you know?” I will answer, “Because I see it, so I know from observation.” Similarly someone can now return the question by asking, “How do you know that you see it?” Supposedly, one would answer, “Because I have an inner vision of myself seeing the tree,” which prompts the further question “And how do you know you have this internal vision of yourself perceiving the tree?”—and so on. The right answer to this line of questioning, however, seems to be rather: if I am in an inner state, then I also know that I am in this state. From a linguistic point of view, this can be clarified as follows: one has learned to utter the relevant sentence when one finds oneself in the appropriate state (not when one perceives that one finds oneself in this state).12 While I know directly that there is a tree in front of me when I perceive the tree—I could also know this indirectly, for example, if I am blindfolded, I can still know it because someone has told me—I know that I perceive the tree, or that I have a headache, or that I intend to go to the post office, or am going to the post office, not directly (through observation), but “immediately.” If I can express that I am in such a state, I am in it, and hence also know that I am in it. For this reason, it is important to connect clearly the immediate knowledge of my states and the use of that singular term—the “I”—with which I refer to myself. For just as one can say that the directly perceivable qualities are those that accord with an object from a “this”-perspective, one can obviously equally say that those qualities, which are not known

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to the one having them through observation, are known to him from an “I”-perspective.13 To be sure, a child can already naturally apply the relevant predicates to himself, even if perhaps he has not yet learned how to use “I”: Gerti says, for example, “Gerti wants chocolate” and not “I want chocolate.” In this case, it is reasonable to say that, even though he cannot yet use the word “I,” the child already possesses the concept of “I,” since he uses predicates from the “I”-perspective—that is, predicates that he ascribes to himself from this perspective, not from the “this”-perspective. It is important, as Strawson pointed out in Individuals,14 that even those predicates which are known immediately to the subject have a subject with whom they accord; furthermore, this very same subject is a corporeal one, and the accord of the predicates with this embodied subject can be verified externally by others. It is one and the same person who others know to be in pain who knows this pain immediately. Although pain, therefore, is known differently to the person in question and to others, we are nevertheless dealing with one predicate (we do not learn, says Strawson, different words for pain, depending on the perspective—internal or external—we adopt in ascertaining it). That the subject is this body, with which such predicates accord, appears even more clearly in actions. When someone says, “I am lifting this arm,” it is obviously this man who is lifting his arm. And yet, he says so—while acting so—not on the basis of any observation. Gareth Evans has shown that the same difference applies to many bodily [körperliche] predicates such as “I sit,” “I am cold,” and so on.15 How then are we to understand the referential function of “I”? The answer to this question is practically common knowledge in recent literature:16 (1) The word “I” does not refer to something in me called the I, but rather allows the speaker to refer to himself; and it is with this speaker that the internal predicates accord, not with an I. (2) The word “I” refers to the speaker, that is, it stands for but does not identify this person. All other deictic expressions, as well as all other singular terms generally, refer by identifying, that is, they specify—in a direct or indirect way—how the intended individual object is to be located, and how it is to be distinguished from all others. By saying, for instance, “this beetle,” I identify it as

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this beetle here, to which I am pointing; by saying “tomorrow,” I identify a certain day as that which comes after today, and the current day as that during which we are speaking, or I am speaking. But I myself am the one who speaks. I thereby identify myself, first, not for the sake of others, for when we do that, and we do sometimes, that has the same significance as when we extend our hand (he who answers “yes, it’s me” on the phone identifies himself perhaps, though not through the word “I” as much as through the sound of his voice). Second, I cannot identify myself with the word “I” for my own sake, because I can only identify something by assigning it a position relative to myself—and so my body too has a place in the common general system of coordinates. That is why, in those “I” utterances in which I only set forth internal predicates of mine, I cannot be in error about the subject: in such utterances I cannot misidentify myself, not so much because, by saying “I,” I necessarily identify myself correctly, but rather because, by saying “I,” I do not identify myself at all.

5.

However, in the context of my investigation, the flipside of this situation is more important, namely, that, by saying “I,” I nevertheless still refer to something: all the predicates that I attribute to myself are so attributed as to a person distinguishable from all the other objects and especially from all the other persons. On its own, the word “I” does not say anything about how I am to be told apart from other individuals, since it does not have an identifying function; it nevertheless implies that I am an individual, distinguishable from all other individuals within an objective universe, and that means that everything I predicate about myself—especially what I predicate about myself from the “I”-perspective—belongs to me as an individual different from all others. By not only having beliefs, wishes, intentions, and feelings, but also asserting them predicatively about myself, I objectivize [objektiviere] them. This act of predication effects the move from pre-propositional consciousness to “I”-consciousness. Self-consciousness is not an internal act

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of reflection upon a so-called “I”; it happens instead when I take my conscious states—intentions, feelings, and so on—and, by means of predicates, I attribute them to myself, and hence to a person who, in the real, objective universe of distinguishable objects, is one among them all. In the classical tradition of modernity, self-consciousness emerged as consciousness of oneself in opposition to a consciousness of objects; as here presented, however, “mere consciousness” does not mean object-consciousness, but rather the prelinguistic phenomenon according to which there are mental states that merely have the character of consciousness, where the latter is not yet a consciousness-of. With predicative language there arises at the same time [in eins] the awareness of other objects and of oneself as an object among others—and this in connection with the consciousness of an objective world, in which both I and the other persons each have a place. The speaker of a propositional language could have no consciousness of himself if he lacked a consciousness of the whole, of an objective world, and could have no consciousness of an objective world if he were unable to refer to himself. Because no one can say “I” for oneself alone—to understand this word is to understand that anyone who says “I” makes reference to himself (see section 4 in this chapter)—a plurality of I-sayers become a reality for me as soon as I can say “I” to myself. In this way, not only is an objective universe of independent beings constituted for me, of which I am a part; but, in turn, within this universe arises a further region of independent percipient I-sayers, each with his own feelings, wishes, beliefs, and so on. The rudimentary self-centering that most likely belongs to consciousness as such (see the introduction) metamorphoses into ego-centricity: now one not only has feelings, wishes, and the like, but also knows them to be one’s own. On the one hand, I-sayers care in the highest degree about themselves—about their feelings, intentions, and so on, which they now know to be their own—but they also know themselves, on the other hand, to be part of a universe of independent beings who are no less real than they are and who, in this respect, can call into question their own importance. But with the word “important” I have already anticipated the concern of the next chapter.

2 “GOOD” AND “IMPORTANT”

Of course, the phenomenon of human egocentricity cannot be understood from the vantage of the problem of reference alone. But this problem does foreground two aspects that will remain important for all others, including mysticism: First, that in saying “I” the conscious being objectivates itself. Second, in virtue of the fact that there ensues, at the same time as this selfobjectivation and of a piece with it, a consciousness of other objects and subjects, one sees and feels oneself as the center [Mittelpunkt] of the world, but because one perceives this world as at the same time a world full of such centers, one also has the possibility of retreating from the idea of being the center, whereas, when it comes to the so-called rudimentary “egocentricity” that other animals exhibit, nothing allows us to say that they are aware of themselves as centers of their world, and certainly not of ever being aware of other centers. Every I-sayer takes himself to be absolutely important, but is also aware, more or less explicitly, that others care about themselves just as much, and that he finds himself in a world in which he can also take others to be important, just as he can ultimately, that is, in relation to the world, deem myself more or less unimportant. All this by way of anticipation, and I do not want to get too far ahead of myself. It still remains to be clarified, first, how it is that people, because they can say “I,” take themselves to be important. Clearly it is through a

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transformation of the rudimentary self-centering of animal consciousness, whose foundation lies, as it will become apparent, in the same structure of propositional language. The phenomenon that needs to be clarified is the same that Heidegger had in mind when he said that one could assume as primordial the fact that human beings care for themselves [um sich sorgen].1 Of course the analysis must go back and find what lies behind such a proposition. In a first step, one can point to time consciousness and sense of the future, which humans, unlike other animals, possess.2 Having a consciousness of time is implicit in the phenomenon of the ability to refer [Referierenkönnen], and one of the preconditions of time consciousness is the ability to count, which in turn is grounded in the ability to use singular terms. It thus appears to be a matter of a simple addition to that which was elaborated in chapter 1, namely, that I-sayers experience the objects to which they can refer, and hence themselves as well, as extended in time, and therefore are able to refer to their own future. Aristotle had already pointed out that human desire [Wollen] is distinct from the merely “sensuous” desire of other animals in that humans are conscious of time, and hence relate to their own future.3 This is certainly an essential factor, but not the only one. To make that clear, we need only imagine that I-sayers—in spite of their knowledge that other temporal stages awaited them in the future—were to remain context-dependent [situationsbezogen] in their actions and pursuits. A necessary condition for being able to talk of care in connection with a being is that this being’s desire not only should be comprehensible relative to a situation, but also can be related intentionally to goals [Zwecke] (and especially to such goals as cannot be perceived in the situation at hand). That in turn seems possible only for a desire that takes its object to be good.

1.

We must therefore first and foremost clarify what it means to orient oneself deliberately [willentlich] toward what is good.4 The word “good” and

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the word “important” are as fundamental, in relation to I-sayers, as the word “I”: the clarification of “good” that I offer in the present chapter is only a first step, and will be further pursued in chapter 4. Hobbes believed that he could define the word “good” such that it simply stood for what each and every person independently wanted.5 The commendable thing about such a definition is that it avoids, as one indeed must, speaking of the good as something given independently of some desire, as if values existed in and for themselves. We must indeed define “good” subjectively, as dependent on desire, but we are bound to distinguish, with Aristotle, between two kinds thereof, namely, between the sensuous and the deliberative (reflective) desire. The behavior of the rest of the animals, Aristotle held, is solely determined through sensuous desire: what they crave at any one time is immediately motivated by the feeling [Gefühl] that they experience within the action situation [Handlungssituation]: pleasure or pain. In humans, by contrast, insofar as they can use practical utterances, the second kind of motivation is also present: this means that someone who acts in a certain way is not bound to do so by his feeling, but rather is moved to undertake such action by a deliberate intent or purpose [Vorsatz]; and what he undertakes he can also deliberate upon, and when deliberating upon such an intent or purpose, he asks whether it is good or whether it is better than the alternatives. The good or better is thus, generally speaking, the formal object of a practical deliberation. Such a desire residing within the compass of deliberation cannot be determined by feeling [Gefühl]—of pleasure or pain (or pleasant or unpleasant)—but rather by a representation [Vorstellung], namely, the representation according to which this desire is better satisfied this way or that. Of course, we can continue to speak here of a feeling that determines action, but in this case it would be the feeling that one has when one finds something to be better. I would like to add a few things for the sake of elucidation. First: it is significant that—in contrast to “pleasant”—“good” occurs from the outset in a comparative range and is related to a superlative (“better,” “the best”). The reason is that, in practical deliberation, one always stands before a choice, in the margins, or a range of several possibilities, whose

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relative merits are being considered with a view to establishing the best option. Second: we can naturally say about other animals as well that what they do is normally good for them, but this is a fact only ascribable by an observer, for there is no relation to something good in their consciousness, but rather (or at any rate this is how we imagine it) only a feeling. Third: when we deliberate, we always inquire after reasons, and therefore the good (or, more accurately, the better) can be defined as that which is justifiably chosen, or preferred,6 such that what I-sayers hold as good or better is not settled for them once and for all. Consequently (and contrary to Hobbes’s idea) something taken to be good has an inescapably objective component. (I leave aside here those meanings of “good,” where “good” does not constitute the object of an act, as, for example, in aesthetic judgment.)7 Fourth: the question as to what this justifiably chosen thing [that is, the good] is substantively admits of no general answer (cf., on this point, chapter 4), but a first response is: that which is beneficial for the I-sayer, the so-called prudential good, which also naturally includes future well-being, and from which the contrast arises between what is presently pleasant and those goods beholden to the future (“it would be more pleasant to stay in bed, but it is better to get up”). Fifth: roughly and with the help of this example we can drive home the point that all this talk of a deliberative desire [deliberativen Wollen] is to be understood in the sense not that the I-sayer, in experiencing such a desire, actually deliberates, but rather and simply that he can deliberate. The possibility of deliberating as to whether that which is desired is good or better, and hence the inquiry into reasons, belongs to the quest for something good. That is why the word “good” need not figure explicitly in a deliberate intent. In the context of my investigation, it is above all essential to understand that I-sayers’ desire first becomes context-independent when something that they regard as good can motivate them to act; we can therefore say that the ability to refer to something good in action achieves what singular terms accomplish with respect to the context-independence [Situationsunabhängigkeit] of language in general. Both—namely, singular terms and the reference to the good (in undertaking and deliberation)—belong to the structure of

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propositional language. (I will take up the close relationship between “I” and “good” in practical usage in chapter 3.)

2.

The simplest case where we can speak of “good,” and the deliberation over what would be better, is naturally that of instrumental thinking: one has a deliberate intent [Vorsatz], a purpose [Zweck], and deliberates [überlegt] upon the manner in which—or the means through which—that purpose is best realized. To clarify what it means for humans to care for their own life, it is helpful to think of it as a gradual process, much like in the case of children. A child does not begin by worrying about his life. At first the child’s intentions are as situation-relative as those of the animals of other species. Soon enough, however, the child learns, for instance, to build something: he discovers that he can undertake something as a purpose, and can deliberate over the means through which this purpose is to be realized. Instrumental thinking implies a view of the good on two separate counts: First, I must consider what would be the best way to achieve my goal. Second, I must envisage this goal itself as something good, as something that is not sensuously motivated but rather motivated by my will to achieve it. At first the child does all this as part of play, but then this kind of thinking expands to such a degree that it comes to embrace the how of one’s own future states—one’s life. This leads I-sayers not only to set themselves goals, but also to view their future as given, and as something to which they must relate in a purposive way. Life becomes a “final purpose” [Endzweck] for them, and they must care for it. This “must” is, for a being that is capable of deliberation, a biological imperative. The adult I-sayer must deliberate on what he—at the behest of this pregiven goal—must do, that is, what is the best for him to do. This however also implies that, since this goal is given indeterminately, not only the inquiry into the means but also the “how” of my life become objects of deliberation, and hence it is not only a question of how to survive, but also one of how I want to spend my life. Therefore, as soon as I-sayers see themselves confronted reflectively

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[überlegend] with their own survival, life enters a range of possibilities [Spielraum], and so they then ask themselves: What is the best way to lead it? Aristotle expressed the matter thus: other animals do what they do—not consciously, but rather factically—for the sake of their lives; for humans, on the other hand, who consciously relate to their life as a good one, the goal is not simply to survive, but rather to live well, whatever may be understood thereby. The care for one’s well-being [Wohl] thus appears too global and too uniform. Humans are not simply confronted with the question of the sole well-being of their lives. The transition from playful, or even earnest, but occasionally instrumental action to the care for one’s life takes place in diverse and fragmented ways. First off, the construction of a tower and many other things that the child and later the adult can do become ends in themselves. Second, care encompasses all temporal phases of one’s life. Third, I find myself in a common world with other I-sayers, whose wellbeing can strike me as more or less important, or indeed can become as important as my own (or even more important, as the case may be): the well-being of others too can thus become a final purpose [Endzweck]. And then there are also, fourth, shared activities, concerns, and goals, but I only invoke these further complications in passing here (I will take this aspect up again in chapter 4, section 5). I distinguish between the two expressions “end in itself ” [Selbstzweck] and “final purpose” [Endzweck] in the following way: the talk of an end in itself pertains to a doing [ein Tun]; thus, one does something as an end in itself when one does it for its own sake, and not as a means toward something else—as in, for instance, going for a walk or watching a soccer game. The talk of final purposes, on the other hand, pertains to something, to a being: I relate to something as a final purpose when I am concerned about this something’s very being and well-being; it is thus that I normally relate to my own life, and it is thus also that I can relate to the life of others (and of other animals too), as well as to the existence of a thing (for example, a work of art) or that of a more complex entity (for example, a state, a “fatherland,” humanity, the survival of a species).

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Thus, if instrumental thinking no longer consists in the pursuit of particular goals alone, but rather includes one’s life as goal and final purpose, this does not mean that we all relate uniformly and en masse, as it were, to the one good life, but rather that the ensuing plurality of ends in themselves and final purposes collectively determine what we regard as “good for ourselves,” which in turn decides whether we are “doing well” or not. In chapter 5, I will first broach the problem that arises from this for humans, namely, that, on the one hand, their life is about a multitude of things, while, on the other hand, they relate to it—their life—as one. When it comes to many of the goals (or evils) that we care about, we ourselves cannot do anything to help (or, in the case of evils, prevent) their realization. Their fulfillment depends on luck [Glück]. It is therefore better to speak of a multitude of wishes rather than purposes. Even in the case of those goals for whose realization one can do something, success still hangs on good luck. Considerations of luck (in the English sense)8 emerge simultaneously with considerations of purpose. Only to beings who are purposive and who can plan does that which is necessary for the achievement of their goals, but which they cannot do or plan for themselves, appear as good luck. This is why the tension between good and bad luck acquires a fundamental significance for beings who are bound to the good. (I will come back to this in connection with religion in chapter 6.) That is also why the word “care” is apt. For in the care that I, along with those who are important to me, should do well, we find both aspects: on the one hand, the motive for doing what I can for that purpose and, on the other hand, the tension, between anxiety [Angst] and hope [Hoffnung], as to whether I will have any luck with it. This doublet is characteristic of the manner in which deliberative beings conduct themselves toward their forthcoming lives.

3.

An action is called altruistic whose final purpose is not personal wellbeing, but rather the well-being of another. There are two possibilities for

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misunderstanding here. One is to gainsay altruism, or to find it incomprehensible; the other consists in mixing together two concepts of altruism, which really ought to be kept apart. With respect to the first misunderstanding: some find it remarkable that there is anything like altruism at all. It can be easily shown, however, that a species which, by virtue of its deliberative will [Wollen], possesses an explicit egoism could simply not survive if it were not at the same time capable of altruism. Without the altruistic behavior of their parents, for instance, the children of this species could not grow up. Fundamental instincts like the will to live or the love of one’s own progeny are very much in evidence with humans, but these instincts have been reshaped now by the deliberative structure of the will, which in turn is grounded in the propositional structure of language. As a consequence of this, I can, for instance, decide to go against instinct, and choose not to live on; similarly, the behavior [Verhalten] benefiting others, just like the behavior for personal benefit, is now only possible as instrumental care for the well-being of those concerned. It is the curse, so to speak, of I-sayers that what they do for the benefit of their own well-being and what they do for the benefit of an other’s well-being have to be, in both cases, deliberate and hence purposive. That explains why we are dealing with two target orientations here, which are in opposition to each other, and hence it is up to the I-sayers to decide how egoistically, or how altruistically, and toward whom, they will behave. Egoism and altruism obtain “simultaneously”: as soon as beings become egoists—and they do if purposive behavior is for them constitutive— they also become potential altruists. The second misunderstanding stems from a newly arisen shift in the usage of the word “altruism” in biology, whereby any behavior of an individual, irrespective of species, is called altruistic when it has effects that benefit other individuals, not oneself. This is an important way of posing the problem, but the ambiguity promoted with this usage can (though need not) lead us to lose sight of the fact that nondeliberative animals cannot be altruistic in the traditional sense, because altruism is a form of intentional and purposive action. Whereas for nondeliberative animals it

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is instinctually predetermined in what manner and to what extent they will behave “altruistically,” so to speak, for I-sayers the extent to which they will make their own well-being, or the well-being of others, their goal falls within the field of possibility characteristic of all deliberative action. There is an aphorism by Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human §57) according to which, when I sacrifice myself for another or for a cause, it is impossible to qualify that as altruistic, because I thereby satisfy my own inclination, which thus becomes my goal. The mistake in this line of reasoning consists in construing altruism in terms of making the well-being of another my goal. Could we then counter: When I care for the well-being of another (or, generally, for another), do I make this other’s well-being my own? How can we accommodate what is at stake in both this argument and the previous one without denying that it is reasonable to distinguish, within my own will [im eigenen Wollen], between my well-being and another’s? We do so by distinguishing between two concepts of personal well-being: an action is egoistic to the extent that it is geared toward one’s well-being and provided that the latter is stripped of all components that depend on the well-being of another. This may sound somewhat artificial, but it is sufficiently apt to avoid the conceptual confusion that would result from both arguments. What matters for my purposes here is that I can now distinguish between egoism and egocentricity. Even when it is not merely a question of my personal well-being, the structure of egocentricity is preserved, because I make the well-being of another my goal. To the extent that the well-being of another becomes a final purpose for me, it also belongs to that which is important to me, with all the affective corollaries of care, commitment, anxiety, hope, and so on. Consequently, there are two ways in which I can step back from myself and take myself to be of less importance: first, by taking my own well-being to be less important than that of another, and, second, by taking my affective egocentric entanglement as being, on the whole, less important. The demand that I take myself less seriously can be understood in either one of the two senses, but it is the second in particular that becomes crucial for mysticism. If the sentence “Take thyself less

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seriously” is understood in the first sense, it means “Do not value your egoistic worries [Sorgen] so highly against the altruistic ones,” but it can also have the second sense of attenuating all of one’s worries and affects, including the altruistic ones: it is therefore not in his egoism but rather in his egocentricity that a person is addressed. The degree to which one can live out this self-relation contained in all egocentricity can be higher or lower, depending on the very freedom that one has of behaving egocentrically—of taking less seriously one’s tendency to take oneself too seriously. How are we to understand this? In view of what can I be motivated to recognize the unimportance of my self-importance [Sichwichtignehmen]? “Is it not exorbitant,” we could thus ask, “to take yourself to be so important, as if you and your (egoistic and altruistic) worries were the only ones in the world?” The contrast implied here no longer concerns taking others to be important (that is, taking them up in my own care), but rather the fact—which was alluded to at the beginning of this chapter—that I find myself in a universe of “world centers.” It is no longer a question of expanding the sphere of my care, but rather of becoming aware of how small this sphere is, no matter how wide I make it. We can speak of three ways in which the capacity to step back from oneself manifests, and which are characteristic of deliberative beings. The first one concerns stepping back from immediate sensations with regard to one’s own goals and future: one learns how to contrast that which is pleasant or unpleasant in a situation with considerations related to the good; in other words, one learns how to put goals ahead of feelings and the future ahead of the present. This is where stepping back occurs, that is, to personal goals and then to personal well-being. The second step consists in stepping back from one’s personal well-being, because one takes an other (or others) to be equally important. With the third step, the I-sayer steps back from his egocentricity, out of an awareness of his and his worries’ insignificance within the universe. The first step is a necessity for deliberative beings; the second can be cultivated to a higher or lesser degree (I have left the issue of motivation out of this account); and the third is only a possibility, which I will take up in chapters 5 and 6.

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4.

In addition to the word, “good,” none of these three steps can be described without recourse to the word “important.” How are we to understand this? There are not only practical but also theoretical contexts in which this word proves indispensable. The reason is that deliberations—in the theoretical as well as practical spheres—do not proceed in a linear fashion alone, but must also take into account the relevance, or weight, that an element receives as part of a whole. In the theoretical sphere, for instance, when I seek to describe adequately the complex yet unified facts of a case file (think of something like a traffic accident), it is not enough to gather true statements, but rather I need to consider which aspects or factors are more (or less) important for an understanding of these facts. Similarly, in practical deliberation, it is not enough to say that such and such things, to which I relate in a voluntative manner, are good for me; the question is rather how important they are within the whole to which I relate voluntatively. Clearly, as soon as they behave deliberatively, that is, as soon as the category “good” comes into play for them, I-sayers are caught in a complex of goals, in which they must deliberate as to the relative worth of each goal, in relation to them and to one another. But that is a relation that cannot be expressed solely in terms of “good” or “better.” When something, in this sense, is more important to me than something else, it makes no sense to say that the one is better than the other; the word “good” alone does not include a reference to the totality of volitions. From priority wish lists, as they appear in rational choice theory, we are familiar with having to order a variety of goals according to their importance relative to one another. An additional feature of the problem discussed here is that desired objects in separate domains are related to one another in terms of their relative importance: the future is with regard to present significance, as we are significant for others and other things are in relation to their importance for me. Now, when in the third step we move on to an awareness of the unimportance of our self-importance, we are dealing with a new concept of practical importance or unimportance. Both the act of taking oneself to

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be important and the perception that oneself is unimportant [Sichunwichtigvorkommen] use the word “important,” but without specifying—as elsewhere in the practical sphere—the subject for or to whom something is important or unimportant. It seems to be clear what it means to say that X is important to me, or more important to me than Y, but what could it mean that I take myself to be important, or that I become aware of my own unimportance? Does it make sense to speak of importance and unimportance in the practical sphere, without adding, to whom? When we speak, as I have earlier, of one’s personal unimportance in the face of the universe, this would make some sense, if we imagined some “impartial spectator”—as he has been known in British moral philosophy since Adam Smith—and hence some imaginary God, to whom I must appear as relatively unimportant in comparison with the infinitude of all other beings, past, present, or future. Then the word “important” would be used in its normal sense, which I have elucidated earlier. However, the question that arises here is, would the situation of personal unimportance within the universe not persist just as well, even in the absence of such a God?

5.

Another set of considerations can contribute to an understanding of this use of “important,” in which the word seems to mean something other than “important to” [“wichtig für”] someone else. Humans take themselves to be important and believe they have “value,” because (1) they deem themselves to be worthy of love and appreciation, and because (2) they have a sense that they can influence the course of events in the world. In a book dedicated to the theme of recognition,9 Tzvetan Todorov distinguished between the ostensibly early and vital recognition of one’s existence by others, which already occurs in the first year of life, and the later, self-cultivated need to be recognized for doing something well. The word “recognition” runs the risk of being used loosely, because I simply cannot properly recognize someone without also understanding that to mean: as

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something (for instance, as free, or as a legal person, and so on). In the second sense distinguished by Todorov, this is clearly stated: recognition as good, as a good such and such, is here an act of confirmation [das Anerkennen ist hier ein Schätzen]. In the first sense that he distinguishes, this is not so clear. Todorov claims that the small child (and later the adult) is recognized in his existence. If we were to take that literally, it would mean that the simple circumstance of existing is here being accommodated; however, such a matter of course is naturally not what Todorov had in mind.10 (In the tradition inaugurated by Fichte, thanks to whom the word “recognition” came into circulation in contemporary philosophy, it might also seem tempting to speak of recognition as an I, but that too would naturally go without saying. It is trivial to say that all I-sayers recognize one another reciprocally as I-sayers.) I believe that the first of the two meanings distinguished by Todorov should also be understood as valuation [Wertung], if only as a subjective one. When a person makes the well-being of another their final purpose (as, for instance, the mother does with her infant), that usually means that the well-being of this other is assigned a high, or great, importance within the person’s complex of goods, or for that person’s own well-being. The mother signals to the infant: you are important to me, and that seems to mean to the infant not only that he is important to her, but also that he himself has value, is important, or matters (without mentioning “what for”). He who is loved believes himself to be worthy of love, and this second element is precisely what lovers mean: in “You are important for me,” “You are important” is already implied. Todorov’s thesis lends support to the observations of René Spitz,11 according to which the awareness of being loved—of being a final purpose for others and important to them—is vital for small children. This leads to the hypothesis that, even before they can say “I,” children must experience that others take them to be important. Otherwise it would be difficult for them to bear the strains and vulnerabilities that egocentricity brings with it. In order to relate to their own well-being as a final purpose, it would seem they must have learned from experience that it was worth other

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people’s while as well as that they must make this well-being into a final purpose. That means, first, that in order to take something to be important in general, I-sayers must take themselves to be important, and, second, in order to be able to take themselves thus, they need to know that they are important to others. From this diffuse belief of being important to others, the idea would arise of being important (without “to”), of having value. The experience of being recognized is thus converted into a feeling of being worthy of recognition. The need to have our personal worth reconfirmed is preserved throughout life (perhaps because egocentricity is so hard to endure for life) and very soon widens out to include the further need that our deeds be recognized as good. In order to be able to emancipate themselves, in their desire, from context-dependency [Situationsbezogenheit], I-sayers manifestly need not only the word “good,” but also the word “important,” especially in the latter’s remarkable sense of feeling important (of having a sense of self-worth). Their whole life I-sayers remain insatiable in this need. They hunger for confirmation that they are worthy of love and appreciation; and, in the feeling of their own importance, love and appreciation are each further joined by that self-affirmation, which also inheres in this feeling, of implementing projects and of making a difference (and, for those moved by a hunger for power, the latter aspect of considering oneself to be important can become the dominant aspect). It is in contrast with or against this sense [Bewusstsein] of our own importance, a sense that is based on our personal significance [Bedeutsamkeit] within our small circle or sphere, that we can experience our insignificance vis-à-vis the universe (vis-à-vis wider and wider circles that go beyond our efficaciousness). Kant thus writes, at the end of his Critique of Practical Reason, that the sight of the “starry skies” “annihilates, as it were, my importance.”12

3 SAYING “I” IN PRACTICAL CONTEXTS Self-Mobilization and Responsibility

1.

What was worked out, in chapter 2, with the help of the word “good” would be unintelligible were it not for its connection to a specific use of the word “I.” In addition to the manner of using “I” described in chapter 1, there is also a special practical nuance without which human life would be impossible to imagine. This nuance appears in its most distinct form in the expression “It is up to me” [“Es liegt an mir”]. In analytic approaches to the theory of the self [analytischen Ichtheorie], as far as I can tell, this nuance has received very little attention in connection with the review of the uses of the word “I.” Tyler Burge and Sydney Shoemaker call attention to the fact that deliberation and changing one’s mind and behavior by the giving and taking of reasons can only be understood from the I-perspective.1 Burge writes, “The first-person-concept fixes the locus of responsibility” (253). What is meant by “locus of responsibility”2 can be explained along the following lines: others can ask me—but I can also ask myself—what my reasons are for believing or doing something. Furthermore, others can intimate—just as I too can—that the manner in which I have acted was not

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good, and that there are reasons for which I ought to have acted differently. The fact that I can be addressed in this manner is based on the ability of I-sayers, which I tried to demonstrate in the previous chapter, to deliberate and act for the sake of some good. Now, Burge’s thesis is that when an I-sayer is so addressed, it is as an I-sayer that he is addressed. Hence, the locus of responsibility is not something in me—some “ego”—nor is it something attached to me [an mir]. Rather, I am this locus as I. How are we to make sense of this? In the previous chapter, I developed the ideas of deliberation and motivation by the good [Motiviertwerden durch Gutes] from the structure of propositional language, and provisionally refrained from I-saying as such. Now, however, it is essential to show that deliberating and referring to reasons cannot be an anonymous event (Burge’s “a mere going on,” 251): it is a doing whose grammatical subject is “I.” I can indeed also say that someone else is deliberating, but my utterance is no mere reference to something that is happening, as it were, over there: deliberation can only occur when this other can say to herself, “I deliberate.” Therefore speaking that way in the third (and second) person is only possible because I am able to speak that way in the first. As we saw in chapter 1, one and the same being can be referred to by employing singular terms that belong to different “perspectives” (23–24). Hence, I am also able to say, “E. T. deliberates,” or “This man deliberates,” but if Burge’s thesis is correct, these expressions are secondary: if someone deliberates or reflects, he does so from the “I”perspective. Yet, even this is ambiguous. In chapter 1, I discussed a class of predicates that belong to me in virtue of my “I”-perspective (see section 4), namely, those predicates that stand for “inner” states. But when I think or deliberate, thinking and deliberation do not merely belong to me; they are not merely inner states, nor do I stumble across them in myself. Rather I am the one who carries them out: I am the actor—the agent, as Burge and Shoemaker say. At first blush, this seems right, phenomenologically speaking. But we must now ask ourselves, first, how does this square with that meaning of the word “I” that arose in connection to the problem of reference, and,

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second, how far does the thesis concerning the self-centeredness of action [“ich”-haftigkeit des Handelns] extend, and which actions fall under it? With respect to the first question: at its core, the explanation of “I” usage that I offered in chapter 1 ran like this: if someone wants to refer to himself not in some respect or other but rather simply as himself, he must do so with “I.” But what does this “himself ” [“sich selbst”] mean? What am I when I am given to myself as myself ? Manifestly, I am the speaker or thinker (see chapter 1, section 4). (Burge: “the referent is the author of the thought,” 245.)3 Therein lies a doing [ein Tun]. Now, I suggested in chapter 1 that all propositional utterances, or thoughts, come with the awareness of a range of options (which are then considered in deliberation): this is the leeway, the range of possibilities of a certain ability to do this or that [der Spielraum eines so oder so Könnens], which is implicit in any Yes/No stance taking. Both this ability and the stance taking are instances of an “I can,” “I take this view,” “I judge.” It is thus tantamount to saying: to be aware of oneself, to be self-conscious, means to be conscious of one’s self as a thinker in a space of taking potential stances [Spielraum von Stellungnahmen]. Left at this, the description remains vague and unhelpful. But before looking for a criterion that would allow for a better understanding of this “I can,” I turn to the second issue raised: Namely, do self-centered deeds [“ich”-hafte Tun] concern only thought, stance taking, and deliberation? But just as we cannot represent thinking or deliberation as an anonymous event, the same seems to hold for the majority of human actions.

2.

We thus need to address the issue of how we are to understand human action. What, in short, do Shoemaker and Burge mean by agency?4 Here, one can proceed from the contrast between two forms of utterance: “I do such and such” and “I find myself in such and such an inner state.” Obviously the difference here is between active and passive. But what is characteristic of the first type of utterance? Frequently, we say that an event is a deed—an action—if it is determined by an intention. However, the word “intention”

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[Absicht] is still too ambiguous. Even with respect to other animals we speak of an action when we imply that the event in question is determined by an intention (for example, “the cat climbs up the tree; it intends to get away from the dog”). The appeal to “active” constructions in this wide sense, in which actions can be imputed to other, nonhuman animals and action terminology can be used to refer to them, does not yet entail the contrast between “active” and “passive” that is at stake here. This indeterminacy can be avoided if, instead of “intention” [Absicht], we speak of “deliberate intent or purpose” [Vorsatz]. We already came across this concept in the previous chapter (see chapter 2, section 1). We saw there that only an I-sayer can have a deliberate intent. Having a deliberate intent means to aim at something good, a purpose, and pursue it; and an action’s irreducible propositional content, which is determined by such deliberate intent, expresses itself in that whatever we resolve to do can also be put into question with regard to its goodness in deliberation (see chapter 2, section 2). Now, for every deed that is determined by a deliberate intent, we need to distinguish between the attempt [Versuch] and its successful achievement [Gelingen].5 What it means for an act to be purposive is that the actor always attempts to achieve his goal but that his undertaking can miscarry or fail. Human deeds are generally so thoroughly determined by purposive relations [Zweckbezug] that the tension between attempt and success determines almost everything we call human action (exempting, of course, those kinds of activities, like swimming or taking a stroll, whose goals are internal to them). If it is true that the tension between attempt and success is associated with the goals of actions, then normally the term “attempt” may only be applied to other animals by analogy. Whether I achieve what I set out to do always depends on factors that are not within my power to control, but are still up to me. Hence we say, “It is (also) up to me, whether I achieve this.” In the phrase “It is up to me” we now have an “I”-expression that makes reference to an “I can” in a way that points to something irreducibly practical. What does it consist in? It is a mistake to discuss this expression, along with the closely related expression “I could have done otherwise,” only in connection with the problem of freedom, understood in terms of respon-

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sibility [Zurechnungsfähigkeit] (which I will come to shortly). Both expressions have a far wider range of use, because they can be used with respect to every action that is purposive, that is, deliberate, and hence to every action for which the difference between attempt and achievement obtains. Now, what is meant by the utterance “It is up to me”? What in me, or of mine, should it be up to that I achieve the goal? Think, for instance, of a runner. He is intent on winning. That is his goal. The crowd cheers him on, calling out to him, “Keep going! You can do it!” while the runner urges himself on: “I can do it, if only I want to, it’s up to me.” Alternatively, imagine someone who wants to draw a perfect circle. He too has a goal, and the deliberate intent to achieve it, namely, the goal to draw this circle as exactly as possible; and he too can urge himself: “Pay attention, focus, it is up to you whether it turns out well.” What do these utterances mean? These and other similar examples illustrate that, as soon as we act deliberately in view of something good, we no longer subordinate to our goal only the things in our environment, by reflecting on which among them can serve as a means for achieving this goal, but our inner states too must be subordinated to this purposive action and, insofar as they run counter to it, also brought under control. This explains why the inner life of a being who can be defined by a deliberate intent to achieve some goal falls into two categories: passive and active. On the one hand, I push myself, I focus, and so on; on the other hand, there are all the conflicting affects that I must bring under control: dullness and inertia, my wanton self, and so on. These are Aristotle’s sensuous motivations (see chapter 2, section 1), and, as he saw, they run counter to the view of something good and to deliberate intent. Aristotle, however, did not emphasize the tentative aspect, or moment of attempting, and thus also overlooked the self-centered [“ich”-hafte] moment. In any case, it is now clear that the contrast between the active and passive forms of activity, which is here at stake, cannot be left entirely to psychological description, but is a contrast, rather, that unfolds in action and from the perspective of the actor. The passive forms of action are not only those inner states an actor simply “has,” but also those that the actor

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experiences as factors conflicting with his actions. The actor finds himself struggling with his passive side. And when he succumbs to it, as in the case of a smoker who has set himself the goal of breaking the habit, or of someone who does not quite succeed in curbing his anger, or even in the case of the runner who “cannot go any farther,” it is customary in many languages to say, “It was stronger than me.” Because “it” can be stronger than me, the so-called passive is also active in a specific sense, but it is no activity of mine. The expressions “it” [es] and “I” thus have a similar sense as “the Id” and “the Ego” in Freud, only Freud made the self-centered character of action into an inner instance of deeds—the “ego” in me. In contrast, we can understand why it is so important to hold on to this parlance, or manner of speaking that is used in human languages: “It is up to me,” I am being addressed or appealed to. As soon as I make this into an instance of the psychic apparatus—the I or ego in me—I seal myself off from the locus of responsibility. If I am made responsible for something, or make myself responsible for it, it can only be I myself who is responsible, and this responsibility cannot be delegated, whether to the would-be “I” or to something else in or about me. Thus, the contrast to Freudian parlance serves to clarify what it means to say that I am being addressed as an “I.” It still remains unclear, however, what I am confronted with in “It is up to me.” Certainly with my will [Wollen]. But this response remains too indeterminate. In debates concerning the freedom of the will, the “I can (do such and such)” is defined by some authors as implying, “I can, which means: I do it, if I want to,”6 to which others counter that only the freedom of action, not the freedom of the will, is being defined thereby. In the well-rehearsed debate, these are generally the advocates of an absolute, acausal notion of freedom7—itself an absurd idea, which is taken up again and again only because no previous attempt has ever managed to connect plausibly the phenomenon of freedom with our conviction that all events are causally determined. But from what was said here so far it follows quite naturally, and in a manner that has nothing to do with acausality, to what extent we must speak not only of the freedom of action in the Humean

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sense but also of the freedom of the will: for, in saying “It is up to me,” the runner, the draftsman, the smoker, and the like encourage themselves not only to want [zu wollen] something, but to want it more strongly [stärker zu wollen]; insofar as one’s active, desiring [wollende] side struggles with one’s passive, inertial side, a choice is created, not only in which this or that can be done (at first, this difference plays almost no role; see chapter 3, section 3), but also where that which is done is to be more or less desired. Every goal-directed desire, which in its orientation toward a good finds itself in conflict with its own passivity, can be stronger or weaker. The “I can” is therefore not only a fact of action but also of the will, and it is precisely here that one can say to oneself, “It is up to me.” I myself as a desiring agent come to know myself as someone who can desire things with varying degrees of intensity, and this kind of experience is neither available nor possible outside of I-saying, because the gradation of desire is tied to the resoluteness with which an actor adheres to his goal, to his deliberate intent. Of course, this does not mean that we have gotten ourselves here into a realm of acausality: to the extent that I am able to exert myself or to concentrate, I come to a limit; the extent to which one is able to do so is causally predetermined, but where this limit lies is only to be fathomed by each individual himself, so much so that this limit is never a single, fixed magnitude, but forms a horizon or threshold within which he who would take the trouble oscillates, and indeed only to the extent that he exerts effort (“oscillates”: say, like a pole-vaulter who succeeds to jump to a certain height once, but never again). Hence, we are dealing here with a “more or less,” which—even if physiologically determined—remains nevertheless a fact of the will that would dissolve into nothing, were it not for the desiring actor who can say to himself, “I should be able to do it, it is up to me.”

3.

Until now, I have intentionally left the notion of deliberation by the wayside. For a start it was necessary to clarify the whole sphere of actions that can be designated as “I”-actions. There arose in the course of this clarification

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a series of analytically interrelated features that are characteristic of “I”actions: (1) a deliberate intent steers this kind of action (from an “I shall undertake X”), and this deliberate intent is directed toward something good as its goal or aim; (2) to all actions of this kind applies the distinction between attempt and successful achievement; (3) for all such actions, though more conspicuously in some cases than in others, the contrast between active and passive, or the necessity of self-control, is constitutive, (4) and this ties in with the fact that the desire enclosed in a deliberate intent can be stronger or weaker, (5) while the closely interrelated imperative “Apply yourself !” is always directed at me, that is, at someone who, in saying “I,” can exert their will such that the expression “It is (also) up to me” comes to signify “the extent to which I achieve this goal (also) hinges on how strongly I desire it, and how well I can bring the passive features in me under control.” In what relation does the notion of deliberation stand to these “I”activities? Is deliberation constitutive of an “I”-activity, or is it simply another one of them? To be sure, an I-sayer can allow deliberation to take the place of every deliberate intent. With a deliberate intent we orient ourselves toward a good; in deliberation, by contrast, we ask ourselves what the justifiably best is. In this respect, deliberation and deliberate intent belong together structurally (cf. Aristotle’s conception, Nicomachean Ethics 3.5). However, when one is oriented toward a good, one does not problematize it. He who puts the goal in question while running a race would be a bad runner. On the other hand, there is a deliberative element in every “I”-activity, which consists in reflecting on the best (external and internal) means for it. The runner, for instance, will reflect, during the race, on the best way to manage his energy reserves. But deliberation here is not a distinct activity of its own, and in speaking of a deliberate act we imply that the moment of deliberation is adverbial. If deliberation is a properly inner act, then it falls under the category of “I”-actions, and hence the five criteria of “I”-actions identified earlier apply to it as well. Yet deliberation also deserves some special distinction,

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which lies in the fact that the good to which it relates—the goal that deliberation is homing in on—consists in problematizing the good of any goal, by looking for the reasons that speak for or tell against its goodness. What this means in concrete terms hinges on the kinds of good, and this question will be dealt with in chapter 4. Here it simply comes down to noting that deliberation too is an “I”-activity that has its own aim, in the pursuit of which it finds itself: its own specific good is the review and clarification of what is better and best, and its aim therefore consists in relating, in this particular manner, to other aims (to their character of being good or better). Deliberation now seems to hold a special place of significance for our understanding of human freedom in the sense of responsibility. When we ask whether someone has acted responsibly, or of sound mind, we are asking whether the person was capable of deliberation: Did reasons determine, or could they have determined, his action, or was the action compulsive, unfree?8 Seen in this way, the locus of responsibility appears to be defined specifically by the capacity for the “I”-activity of deliberation. The expression “It is up to me” and the fact that one “could have acted differently” are related to the possibility of having chosen differently, and this choice, which is thus in one’s view, is a deliberate one. On the other hand, the formula “One could have also acted differently (better),” which is generally regarded as the standard form of responsibility, occurs equally with all other “I”-activities: whoever would encourage himself calls out to himself, “You can do this differently (better).” Therefore, it is by no means with respect to deliberation alone that we can admonish ourselves thus: such remonstrance is possible in the context of all other “I”-activities. I can say to myself, “You have acted imprudently,” just as I can say, “You have not focused enough on the goal, you have not pulled yourself together enough.” And thus the emotional aftereffects in both the general and the special case are the same: we reproach ourselves, are angry at ourselves (and with any act of import or significance for others, these others too can become angry at us), quarrel with ourselves (“How could I!?”), and feel ashamed.

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How are we to understand the fact that responsibility is not brought up in connection with the rest of “I”-activities? And why is it that, in the traditional debates about human freedom and responsibility that seek to elucidate “It is up to him/me” and “I could have done otherwise,” this vast domain of “I”-activities remains unaccounted for? A first answer to the latter question is that, in the traditional debate, the problem of responsibility is commonly made to converge with the spheres of morality and criminal law. In this regard, Anglophone thinkers frequently speak of moral responsibility.9 However, this limitation is a mistake: a person acts responsibly (and not compulsively) if he is able to act in accordance with his own (“prudential”) well-being. I will address the question of how the moral good ranks with respect to the prudential good in the next chapter. Here, it is simply a matter of showing that the question of accountability in the moral sphere and criminal law only requires that, in acting, the person have the ability to let himself be guided by considerations regarding what he holds to be good or bad for him.10 Whether one is responsible therefore hinges solely on whether one has the ability to deliberate prudentially. If, however, deliberation is only one activity among many, which can all be done better or worse, and for which one can encourage or reproach oneself, why is it then that we speak of responsibility only with respect to deliberation? The reason lies in the fact that the discourse about responsibility always presupposes that the person has chosen something instead of something else—one goal instead of another—whereas in other “I”-activities what one demands of oneself is not something opposed to something else, but rather a particular manner of relating to a goal: not to choose this good (or avoid it, as the case may be), but rather to approach whatever good is at stake with greater resolve. Upon closer scrutiny, the reproach that a person makes to himself on account of not having thought things through (or not having thought them through well enough) relates directly to that aspect of deliberation which it shares with the rest of “I”-activities, namely, the fact that it can be more or less strongly aligned with or oriented toward its good (which, in this case, consists in deliberating upon what is better). “You should have

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paid more attention,” I say to myself reproachfully: “You should have better weighed the factors of the situation that were germane to your wellbeing.” Having chosen A instead of B can never be at the forefront of such self-criticism, because one can only reproach oneself for some fault in one’s activity, and this activity consists in this case in a process geared toward choosing that which is better instead of worse. Others can accuse a person of having chosen wrongly—as it happens always in a criminal case, and for the most part when assigning moral blame; but the person can only blame himself for not having weighed the matter well enough, regardless of whether that matter concerns the person’s prudential good or some specifically legal or moral prescription. Hence, if we stick to the expressions “It is up to me” and “I could have done otherwise,” which are the conventional criteria for identifying the phenomenon of free will, then it follows that this phenomenon is more comprehensive, and that its focal point lies elsewhere than where it is typically sought. The ability to deliberate, which is constitutive for responsibility, is only one form of free will. What is characteristic of free will is not the phenomenon of choice (not even of deliberate choice), but rather the fact that I-sayers are capable of relating to a good more or less strongly. The relation to a good is as constitutive for this phenomenon as the fact that this exertion [Anspannung] in one’s orientation toward a good is something that an I-sayer is able to do only as an I-sayer. In saying “It is up to me,” an I-sayer confronts himself. And the same confrontation with oneself is carried out through self-reproach (“I could have tried harder”).

4.

Up until now, I have only mentioned the second standard formulation, “I could have done otherwise.” How, precisely, is it to be understood? In the conventional debate, we find discussions concerning whether the ability at stake here is, as Austin once put it, “iffy.”11 Those who argue for an acausal freedom believe that this ability or skill is not “iffy.” But it certainly is, and the question cannot be whether a conditional utterance is implied,

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but only how to understand it. Expanding the use of “It is up to me” allows us to better understand the question just posed. If one sticks to accountability alone, then the supplementation through a hypothetical sentence comes down to the following explanation: “I could have chosen otherwise (better)” means “Had I thought it through, I would have chosen otherwise (better).” Extending it to all “I”-activities, this explanation leads to a sentence like “Had I made more of an effort, I would have better achieved my goal.” I believe that there is something disappointing about both formulations, because they leave the conditional clause open in a peculiar way. Indeed, we must ask, on what does it then depend, in turn, whether I deliberate and whether I make an effort? Does it not stand to reason to say: for one thing, it partly depends on whether I find a good way to encourage myself, and whether in previous similar cases I have blamed myself retroactively? Encouragement and blame contain an affective-valuative moment, and it seems plausible that being motivated by a goal simply cannot get underway without this emotional and valuative moment. In chapter 2, I pointed out how astonishing it is that humans have the ability to be motivated not only by their emotions but also by the mere idea that something is good (see section 1). It is therefore unsurprising that such motivation should be codetermined by compatible emotions, and that this affectivevaluative moment will then be imagined as intersubjectively reinforced. For example, a mother wakes up her child: “You must go to school, so it would be good (!) if you got up.” Initially, she says this lovingly but after a while her tone becomes angry, and both the positive valuation and the anger are later internalized. Now, I believe that both these positive and negative affects must be incorporated in the conditional sentence, lest it should be left hanging. To be sure, if I make an effort, I will push myself harder, but what brings me to making more of an effort? Or again: had I thought things through, this would not have happened to me; I am terribly angry at myself for not having thought things through; however, I can also ask myself, why have I not done so? Surely because I did not see it as all that important, and that

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in turn is to say that the relevant affective basis was lacking; but since I am so angry with myself now, next time I am sure to think it through first. The view contained in the last clause caused much outrage when Moritz Schlick argued for it (or for something very similar) some seventy years ago. According to him, accountability [Verantwortlichkeit] should be “viewed from the sole perspective of its applicability to future behavior.”12 I do not know if the accusation applies to Schlick. At any rate, my suggestion is not that the effect of blame and affect on future behavior should replace free will, but rather that the I-sayer’s affective responsiveness [affective Ansprechbarkeit] to his freedom belongs to the very nature of this freedom. The fact that the matter is not typically seen this way is owed to the artificial isolation of a putatively pure phenomenon of willing, a perspective that could only suggest itself because the problem of responsibility had been set in a moral and legal context instead of a prudential one. Consequently, it is believed that moral blame and punishment imply that an act possesses a quality, which can be designated by expressions such as “moral blameworthiness”13 or “culpability,” and that punishment is the appropriate reaction to this quality: the perpetrator “deserves” it. It appears blatantly clear that such a construct is always absurd in the case of prudential self-blame [Selbstvorwurf]. It would not occur to anyone to think that a person who blames himself for something does so wrongly [zu Unrecht], because his action is only the effect of prior causes. The fact that he “deserves” both the blame and the affect simply means that the affect fits here (the same way that two cogs fit together), and it fits whenever the action was of such a nature that it could be altered by this kind of reaction. But this is the very reason why the affective reaction belongs to the full “if ”-sentence. If the action in question were coerced, it would be irrational to blame myself for it, because evaluative reproaches and their associated affects would have no bite. Self-centered ability and the affect of anger [Ärger] belong together, not because I “deserve” anger, but because this affect is one of the factors on which the ability in question depends. The same can be said when someone reproaches another, like the mother does the child in the previous example. The situation is not altered with regard

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to responsibility (and I leave the question of autonomy to the side here) if the mother reacts with the same affect when her child behaves badly from a moral point of view. And again nothing changes with respect to responsibility, even if she hits the child. The situation first changes, with respect to responsibility, if the capacity for self-control is not or not yet present, or if it is less strong than it is taken to be by the party who reacts affectively or punitively. This has serious consequences for a correct understanding of education and criminal law. But the fact that the affective reaction or the punishment is unfair to those with diminished responsibility, because it is unbefitting, is further confirmation that a responsiveness to these kinds of reactions belongs to responsibility itself, and that it is therefore right to take it up into the conditional sentence. Only when these reactions are integrated into the conditional sentence can diminished responsibility be safeguarded against disproportionate reactions. The failure to see things this way is based, first, on a misunderstanding of free will and, second, on a misunderstanding of punishment. The first is the consequence of an abstract formulation of the conditional sentence: he would have acted differently, if he had wanted differently. This formulation is not false, but unless we are clear on how the conditional is to be completed or complemented, it can mislead us to believe that the will operates in a motivationally neutral space. As for the second misunderstanding, in all talk of legal culpability the antiquated notion of punishment as retribution lingers on. It is this notion of punishment that the idea of the “moral desert” is supposed to vindicate. The word “desert” can be understood in one of two ways: in the traditional view, the word stands for a quality of the perpetrator with which the “deserved punishment” is then supposed to fit somehow metaphysically. On the view that strikes me as correct, the word “desert” simply means that blame, affect, and punishment are all meaningfully applicable to some behavior because they can act upon it. In the context of my investigation, it was only important that one could imagine self-centered ability as strongly independent of affective reactions, whether they be one’s own or those of someone else. Before this excursus on the sense of “I could have done otherwise,” I had gone so far as to claim

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that I-sayers are confronted with themselves in virtue of their affective selfreactions (chapter 3, section 3). This chapter proceeded from the result of chapter 1 that a speaker refers to himself with “I.” It remained somewhat nebulous, however, what “I myself ” meant. Initially, I said: the speaker, the thinker, the one who judgers and sees himself in a space of deliberative possibilities (chapter 3, section 2). In the interim, the scene has shifted in virtue of the general applicability of “It is up to me.” It has now become more plain to see that the center of “I myself ” is to be found in that nuance of “me” that comes to express itself in “It is up to me,” and indeed precisely because I am here confronted with myself. Another way in which an I-sayer is confronted with himself lies in the confrontation with his own life, which I will come to in chapter 5. The present form of confrontation with oneself consists in the fact that, with “It is up to me,” I affectively address myself, I appeal to myself. This self-mobilization [Selbtsaktivierung] (always with a view to an end, to something good) has the form of an imperative. One might think that, regardless of whether it is uttered by me or another, this imperative can only ever work if I accept it myself and can appeal to myself thereby. An “I”-activity can only be understood as the object of self-appeal in a self-imperative [Selbstimperativ].

5.

A further complication and burden for the egocentricity of I-sayers follow from the ability to self-mobilize. Already as children they are continually told—and learn to say it to themselves—how it all depends upon them: it is on you [es liegt an dir] that you made this mistake, you should pay more attention, you must push yourself more, it is your/my fault, and so on. And because it is assumed that the child is able to understand that it is up to him, he is encouraged, he is cheered on [man spricht ihm “gut” zu], but, precisely for this reason, when the child does not live up to these expectations, his behavior also becomes the object of disappointment and rebuke. “You did this well or badly,” we constantly say to one another, verbally or nonverbally, and we must first learn to let go of or at least muffle the anger.

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But then we continue to behave toward ourselves in the same manner, such that if things between two people do not go the way they had hoped, it is obvious that each one will hold the other accountable: “it is up to you, you did or did not do this, but you ought to, and so on.” How well things are going as long as reproaches come only from the outside, and one can in turn direct them toward the outside! Therefore, as much as the power of I-sayers to self-mobilize demonstrates an extraordinary expansion of their abilities—it is only thereby that they can set themselves goals and do something well, or for that matter miss their target and do something badly—it is also simultaneously the source of an unremitting suffering from oneself [an sich selbst] and mutual disappointment. It is not merely an additional source of suffering, which just adds to the physical pain, to the sorrow of loss, and the worries about the future; it is rather a new kind of sorrow, a suffering in and from oneself [an sich] in the narrow sense of self-mobilization, in which one suffers at one’s own hands. It is therefore a great kindness when certain philosophers, with their sights on the universal causal nexus, seek to treat the phenomenon of free will—the “I could have done otherwise”—as an illusion. Wouldn’t we all be much better off if we no longer made any demands of others and ourselves and no longer brought any charges either against ourselves or against one another? But the capacity for self-mobilization is a veritable biological phenomenon of our species, even though we do not understand its mode of action, and perhaps never will. To only deny this capacity, because it is itself causally determined (see section 2), or because the limits of compulsivity [Zwangshaftigkeit] are not conclusively set (section 4), is an illusion, which could only arise because the consequences of the supposition of freedom are merely considered in terms of mutual sentiments and criminal law, but not with respect to one’s self-relation. If one wanted to jettison the phenomenon of the power to self-mobilize, the very ability to carry out the realization of goals, and to want to do something well, would be thereby negated. It is logically impossible to desire to achieve a goal if one cannot also fail at it, and it is impossible to desire to do something well if one cannot also do it badly, just as it is impossible to

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desire to do something well if one cannot regret doing it badly and thus experience the appropriate affect. Alongside care [Sorge], the power to self-activate and the sorrow it brings thus clearly belong to the egocentricity of I-sayers as its constant elements. Just as the care for oneself and for others opens up a whole range of new emotions that other animals—in particular, those able to relate themselves to the future—do not have, so too the power to self-mobilize generates a whole other range of new emotions, which are special in that they bear upon one’s self. For instance, I take myself to be good or bad (in the eyes of or possible eyes of others), worthy or worthless, because I do or have done something well or badly: hence the emotions of shame for oneself [die Scham über sich] and, as a counterweight to it, pride. In order to understand this correctly, the question as to what it means to say that, in acting, we aim at the good must be taken up again and pursued beyond the point at which we left it in chapter 2. In the present chapter, it was not always clear what we were after in speaking of “the Good.” We need to distinguish among various forms of action-specific goods [Handlungsguten] and clarify how they relate to one another. In this chapter, I have tried to bring our understanding of “I” in line with what had been accomplished in the previous chapter in connection with “good.” In the next chapter we must in turn bring our understanding of “good” in line with what, in the present one, has been said about “I.”

4 ADVERBIAL, PRUDENTIAL, AND MORAL GOOD; INTELLECTUAL HONESTY

I will begin with a recapitulation. In chapter 1, I tried to show how the propositional structure of human language, the ability to deliberate, and the capacity to inquire into reasons (rationality) hang together. Initially, the relevance of the word “I” for propositional language seemed to be limited to the problem of reference. But in chapter 3, I showed that deliberation and rationality as such are only possible from the perspective of an I-sayer qua I-sayer. At the same time, I pointed to a peculiar power that I-sayers possess qua I-sayers, which I referred to as the power of selfmobilization (this is, of course, just a word): this ability belongs not only to our capacity for deliberation, but also to most forms of human action, which for that reason I called “I”-activities. It is also bound up, in the most intimate way, with a focus on what is good. The result is a complex and yet unified set of connections among propositionality, deliberation, the I-sayers’ confrontation with themselves, and their capacity to aim for or focus on what is good. This complex also coheres with the I-sayers’ exposure to criticism (perhaps a more neutral manner of speaking than saying “accusation”), which was highlighted at the end of the previous chapter. Rational beings are therefore—and not merely because they are rational but also because, as I-sayers, they tend toward something good

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in their deeds—those animals that are able to criticize themselves and one another. It seems to me that, within this structural whole, the element most in need of further illumination is the idea of aiming for what is good. Of the many uses of this word,1 only those come into question, in this context, where one speaks of “good” as an action goal [Handlungsziel]. However, the special meaning with which I began my investigation of the good as action goal in chapter 2—namely, as purpose for instrumental thinking— is insufficient for a full understanding of action-specific goods. Not only is it the case that the purposes of I-sayers fragment and multiply (see chapter 2, section 2), but this first meaning of action goal—as purpose [Zweck]— is merely one among many. In the philosophical tradition, the standard notions being distinguished with respect to action-specific goods have been particularly those of the prudential good and the moral good. However, not only has the relationship between these two concepts remained largely nebulous, but because of the primary emphasis on the moral good a further sense of the good as action goal, which I will refer to as the adverbial good, has been completely disregarded. My agenda for the present chapter is as follows: First (1), I need to state unambiguously what I understand by the adverbial good, and then (2) clarify how the prudential good, the adverbial good, and the moral good are to be seen in connection with one another. Third (3), it is the adverbial good that the second of the two meanings of recognition identified in chapter 2 (section 4), namely, recognition in the sense of respect and disrespect [Hoch- und Geringschätzung], refers to. This will lead me to expand on those aspects of egocentricity that I discussed in connection with blameworthiness [Vorwerfbarkeit] in the previous chapter. Fourth (4), the theme of recognition also prompts us to take up a phenomenon that has, somewhat surprisingly, remained unexplained until now—intellectual honesty—and shed new light on it. At the end of the chapter, I come back to (5) the problem of putting oneself into perspective already mentioned in the closing of chapter 2.

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1.

To explain what I mean by “adverbial good,” I can once again start out from a contrast with nonhuman animals, this time with respect to the forms that learning can take. While the young members of other species learn how they ought to react adequately to what they encounter in each given situation, and while this kind of learning indeed applies to human children too, it nevertheless makes up only a fraction of what the latter learn, because the praxis of I-sayers is largely context-independent. The main point consists in learning how to practice activities and, in the process, what is learned is always how to practice or perform well and better any given activity. This holds even for those activities that animals from other species learn. An animal learns how to perform such activities as the context demands; a human learns how to do them well and better. The respective activities here stand for something context-independent, and a context-independent spectrum of “what is better” comes to take the place of a situation-relative criterion of correctness. This always obtains for the many human activities that have no equivalent for other species, like speaking, arithmetic calculations, dancing, the performance of manual skills, and finally also for roles like that of the teacher or lawyer. With respect to all human activities, one can speak of degrees of excellence,2 as Iris Murdoch once put it,3 of a spectrum that goes from “worse” to “better” to “excellent” and remains always open at the higher end. Thus, as soon as the criterion of an act’s correctness is no longer determined by the action situation, the action breaks down, first, into a multiplicity of separate and distinct activities, where, second, each such activity appears within its own spectrum of “good” and “better.” Why “good” and “better” of all things, one may ask. Many activities, such as the practice of manual skills and the exercise of roles, are first and foremost functional-instrumental in character, and therefore it is possible to say that they concern the execution—as well as possible—of an instrumental function. However, this explanation fits some activities, particularly the artistic ones, only partially and arguably none completely. I do not have a satisfactory theory of the adverbial good;4 suffice it to say here that

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it always has to do with how such a doing is intersubjectively evaluated. In each case what is at stake is a preference order or ranking, which can rest on various grounds in terms of its content but always carries with it an intersubjective demand: an action will be recognized—in the sense of “appreciated,” as good or bad—depending on what level of “good” it achieves. Even when the activity is instrumental in character, what a clock-maker, for example, strives for is not only to make good clocks but also to carry out his activity well and be recognized and valued as a clock-maker. Formulations like “a good clock-maker” suggest that this goodness is to be understood as attributive: a good clock-maker is an analogue for a good clock. However, a functional understanding of the good does not fit every kind of activity, although it is true of all activities that the actor wants to perform them well (whatever that might mean: in the case of artistic activities it is clear that we have no easy answers). In all cases, it is possible to say to oneself that one could have done it better. It thus appears more reasonable to refer to the good that is at issue here as “adverbial good,” and to regard attributive discourse as secondary. Once again we stand before a phenomenon that, as a brute fact, is self-evident, but that can nevertheless engender in us a sense of wonder. It is striking not only the extent to which human learning amounts to the acquisition of the adverbial good, but also how important it remains for humans, throughout their lives, to carry out their activities well, and how much of that comes down to what children as well as grown-ups do for the sake of this adverbial good.5 It is therefore not the case, as the descriptions offered in chapter 2 would have made us think, that—by dividing tasks and taking on various roles—we do a great many things with a view to making one’s present and future life, as well as that of others, easier but that where such relief is not an imperative, we can let ourselves be guided by the immediate feelings of pleasure and displeasure; rather, it is that both beyond and even within instrumental action we are always aiming for something good, for that against which we can test our own [power of ] self-mobilization. In part our motivation for it is grounded in the need to be recognized as good, and this is a theme I will return to, but it is remarkable to what

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degree even our passive pleasures as well consist in being able to track how others excel at what they do.

2.

How does the adverbial good behave relative to the prudential good (what is good for me)? And where, within the universe of possible action goals, are we to locate the moral good? With respect to the moral good, modern Western philosophy has inherited a less fortunate tradition. In antiquity, it appeared obvious that when the good was being talked about, what was meant was the prudential good. One could think that this was simply owing to the fact that the moral good was designated by another term (kalón, “beautiful”). But the issue is not simply terminological. (Similarly, it is not that significant if some of the modern ethical currents [for instance, Habermas or utilitarianism] substitute some other word [“right” (richtig)] for moral.). If, against ordinary language usage, Plato used “the good” in his principle reflections exclusively in the sense of the prudential good (cf. The Republic 6.505d), this was in fact already the consequence of his way of posing the problem: contra traditional, authoritarian moral conceptions, he wanted to show that morality is grounded—as far as its motivational force is concerned— in that which is good for an individual, hence, in the prudential good properly understood. This is a completely understandable notion, which was first thrown into doubt by a renewed authoritarian moral view, namely, Christianity. From a Christian perspective, morality is not of this world. The most important architects of modern ethics, Kant and Bentham, were manifestly incapable of seeing morality in any other way than in the stark opposition to prudential goods in which Christian tradition had placed it: in Kant, this came about because “pure Reason” replaces theological foundation, whereas Bentham simply left open (in contradistinction to Hume) what he thought the root of morality to be; it has thus become customary since Sidgwick to regard the prevailing moral sense as the court of appeals in matters concerning what is to be understood by morality, and even

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though this attitude was not reflective, it too derived from the Christian tradition. With respect to the moral good then, one can do no more than revive the tradition of antiquity in one way or another. And because the morality here at stake is a general anthropological phenomenon and not the “right” moral system, the question as to whether it was established in an authoritarian way or not must therefore remain open. On my view, the moral good is a case—to be sure, a special case—of the adverbial good. In keeping with the explanation offered by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice §66, the discourse about moral goods can be so defined as to say that morally good is that person who behaves the way we reciprocally demand of one another.6 For Rawls, this “we” stands for us now and for us in general, but if one wants to understand this definition in a general anthropological fashion, then the “we” stands for any moral community whatsoever. The moral good is distinguished from other adverbial goods in virtue of the reciprocal and unconditional character of these demands. By “unconditional,” I do not mean a Kantian imperative [Unbedingtheit] (a putatively unconditional “must”), but rather that what is demanded morally does not depend on whether one wants to perform this activity; in fact, all members of a community demand of one another reciprocally that they never act immorally regardless of what they do. In the case of other adverbial goods the demands are conditional and not reciprocal. Everyone demands of, say, a violin or soccer player that they play well—this is the universal aspect of the intersubjective recognition of the adverbial good— and everyone admires the player who excels in his performance, but no one can demand (and least of all formulate that demand reciprocally) that anybody else play the violin or soccer in the first place. In contrast, the demand that we all be morally good or at the very least not bad will be posed reciprocally—each to each—in every society. This coheres with the fact that, in saying that someone is “morally good,” we are under no obligation to specify a determinate aspect under which this person is good, nor do we need to provide any noun to which “good” would belong as an attribute. Hence, it is because the demand is reciprocal that any such aspect can be defined at all.7

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One could explain the difference between the moral good and the miscellaneous adverbial goods somewhat imprecisely in the following way: in human societies there is a division of labor—one person is a carpenter, another a farmer, another sings, and so on. Everyone expects every such person to be good at what they do, but everyone expects everyone else to be good at that which they reciprocally demand of one another. I do not think that the aforementioned differences between the moral good and the various adverbial goods are so great as to justify saying that the moral good cannot fall under the adverbial good. Those who do poorly or badly on a task that is important feel shame. Similarly, those who violate the moral good experience shame, unless they are “shameless.” Shame is the feeling of having lost value in the eyes (or the possible eyes) of others.8 It thus becomes apparent that both the moral good and the various adverbial goods concern an intersubjective criterion. Shame generally does not belong to the prudential good, but it is equally not an element in a presentation of morality that—like the Kantian—speaks of an absolute imperative [absoluten Müssen]. However, the moral good is a special case of the adverbial good and hence it does not concern just any kind of shame, but rather a sense of shame that is specifically related to the moral good, which is reflected in the fact that the feeling of shame is related to that of guilt.9 The fact that the feelings associated with morality are not only of shame but also of guilt is due to the fact that the reaction of others, in the event of morality, is not simply one of disrespect [Geringschätzung], but rather more like indignation, and that is because—if the system of reciprocal demands is shaken—the moral community as a whole is harmed: it is as if the rest of the members of the moral community had had the rug they were standing on pulled out from underneath them. How are we to understand now the connection between the moral good and the remaining adverbial goods, on the one hand, and the prudential good, on the other? First off, we need to understand that both the adverbial good and the moral good must have a place, as I would circumspectly put the matter for the time being, within the prudential good, or

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else they would not motivate anyone. On the other hand, every activity has its own justified spectrum of “better” and “worse.” For the time being, I want to leave the moral good to one side. For all other adverbial goods, it is also the case that everyone who wants to carry out a moral activity (and whoever wants to do so always wants to do it well and better) must follow the rules that apply to this activity, and not those rules that would be decisive of one’s well-being. Whoever dances, for example, complies with the rules of dancing, and if he wants to become a great dancer, his deliberation does not pertain to what would be better for him, but how he can improve or perfect his dancing. The same holds true in all cases of the adverbial good, even in those where that which makes a course of action [Handlungsweise] good or better is to a large extent determined by instrumental considerations, such as, for example, in the case of a craftsperson or engineer, of a teacher or lawyer, for whom the criterion of “good” is for the most part a function of “good for.” Here too this “for” is not normally related to the well-being of the agent, but rather to that of others. Were the relation of the adverbial good to the prudential good one of means to ends, we would not need to speak of the adverbial good as being a particular sense of the good. Its relation to the prudential good is a different one. For instance, whoever wants to be a good painter (or whatever else) and sets that as an end in itself also defines thereby a part of their prudential good through this activity, in the same sense in which a part of the prudential good can be defined through other ends in themselves, like taking a stroll or watching soccer. Now the moral good too has its own justification [Begründung], which, to be sure, is different from that of other adverbial goods.10 Here too it can be said that when someone wants to be moral (or wants to be moral to a specific extent), one also defines morality as a part of one’s prudential wellbeing. The only difference between this conception and Plato’s or Aristotle’s is that the moral good must, first, be only a part of the prudential good and that, second, it can be an autonomous decision of the individual whether and to what extent he wants to be moral. Despite its partial parity with other forms of the adverbial good, the moral good differentiates itself

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from them through reciprocity as well as through the fact that in many moral concepts what is at stake is not so much being good as not being bad (not being immoral as boundary condition of all forms of action).

3.

In chapter 2, we came upon the need of I-sayers to perceive themselves as important, as important for others. We are now confronted with the second of Todorov’s two meanings of recognition (see chapter 2, section 5), that is, with being recognized as good or bad (respect and disrespect). This sense of recognition is always related to those actions that can be carried out better or worse and, accordingly, to him who carries them out and who experiences this recognition-as-good-or-bad as an increase or diminishment of his importance; by dint of being esteemed or disdained, he sees himself as having worth or as being worthless. Being important or unimportant and having worth or being worthless are qualities that, because they are related to their I-activities, are attributed to I-sayers as I-sayers—as themselves— and that are experienced as such by the I-sayers themselves as well. We are now in a position to flesh out the remarks made at the end of the previous chapter concerning the aspects of I-sayers’ egocentricity that have unfolded in the course of their involvement with their self-activities. In chapter 3, I had not yet distinguished between the various forms of goodness to which I-sayers in their actions aim. For an I-sayer, each mistake for which he can reproach himself can be painful. With every mistake, even in the purely prudential realm, an I-sayer can say to himself that he has done something badly. But only with the adverbial good can he also be considered bad by others in this regard: he is a bad such and such, they say, and he too will say to himself, “I am bad in this regard.” In the special case of the moral good, this addition can be left out, and one can say, “He is a bad person,” “I am bad.” In addition to the simple fact that one is able to criticize or blame oneself, one therefore also experiences a loss in value, or depreciation. Provided that the prudential does not intermingle, as it happens in many cases, with the adverbial or even moral forms of evaluation,

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a mistake in the prudential realm simply translates, in affective terms, into anger (from the active perspective) and into regret (from the passive). In the purely prudential realm, regret does not yet have an intersubjective dimension. If, by contrast, the mistake is such that it involves an adverbial wrong whose perpetration was witnessed by others or is transparent to others, then one feels shame. Shame is the feeling of having lost one’s worth in the eyes of others; and if the mistake is imperceptible to others, one feels a variant of shame, for others could still become aware of it: hence one feels a loss of worth in the possible eyes of others. And if the mistake is such that it involves a moral wrong, one does not only feel shame, but also guilt (and this means that one anticipates not only the others’ disrespect but their indignation as well). And as in the case of shame, there is a similar variant of guilt, in those instances in which others are unaware of the wrong. An I-sayer’s egocentricity is therefore involved not only in his worry [Sorge] about remonstrations, which he can levy against himself, but also in the worry about losing self-worth, the worry of being blamed, of being the object of indignation, which he can incur from others and which he has for his part internalized: the fear of shame and guilt. Now, although every adverbial good is related to being recognized, it is nevertheless not exhausted in this relation. Here two problems arise. First, to what extent can one be happy to do something, and happy to do it well, without aiming for accolades [Beifall], even imaginary ones? Similarly, one could ask, is it not possible for a person to want to act morally or at any rate not immorally without being motivated by the prospect of being recognized, or even potentially recognized, by others? What would this mean for the moral sphere? Presumably, it would mean that the person is happy to act the way that he wants all others to act. I want to leave this question open. In any event, both these aspects—the happily-doing-somethingright and the desire to be recognized (if only in one’s imagination)—are for the most part connected. The desire to be recognized always works as an intensifier, and with regard to both the doing and the desire to be recognized, one can say that either one is desirable for its own sake, that it forms part of the prudential good.

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The more important problem in the present context is the second one: in being recognized as good or bad, the I-sayer enters the force field of value judgments, which are not subjective but rather contain an objective claim, and to that extent point beyond themselves. To recognize an act as good means to believe it is good—the agents of this recognition can err. This leads to a possible fork in the road for the one concerned, which affects his motivation and hence his action too: he can adopt the others’ belief, according to which what he does is good or bad, or he can give priority to being good or bad over the appearance of being good or bad. This difference between appearance and reality is distinct from the one brought up in the previous paragraph. The question there was whether there could exist a motive for action of this kind that was independent of any manner of reference to or expectation of being recognized. By contrast, we are now concerned with a distinction that is internal to the recognitive dimension itself. Adam Smith called attention to this difference in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (at the beginning of part 3):11 one can desire to be praised, but one can also desire to be praiseworthy and act accordingly. Adam Smith makes this distinction even for subjective forms of recognition (which always contain objective components as well); he says that one can desire to be loved, but one can also desire to be worthy of being loved. Hence, we are now confronted with an understanding of good and bad that is not independent of the dimension of being recognized but rather independent of factual recognition. Because recognition is a deeming-tobe-good, the difference between belief and reality is already implied in it: the recognizer believes that what he recognizes is good, and therefore he also believes that it is worthy of recognition (respect), in precisely the same way that one believes each belief one holds to be true. It follows from this that, because he is aware of this duplicity of recognition, because he knows that the one doing the recognizing is merely expressing a belief, whose very meaning implies that a distinction be made between being respected and being worthy of respect, the person who is being thus recognized finds himself at a crossroads: Should he accept the approval (or disrespect) that he is experiencing in actuality, or should he go by his own lights in deciding

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whether what he does is good—or worthy of respect? This duplicity is therefore only implicit in recognition itself; yet, for the person whose activity forms the object of recognition, this duplicity means that this person’s motivation can be governed more by the one side—approval or the lack thereof—or by the other—one’s independent (“autonomous”) relation to the good. Admittedly, there are many fields of activity in which these two prongs—namely, aiming at being respected and aiming at being worthy of respect—are not so obviously set apart from each other. This is because what is good poses no problem in these fields. For example, competition decides who is good or better at a sport, and for that very reason one can hardly distinguish here between being motivated by a desire to be good and being motivated by the desire to appear good. Things are different with respect to “creative” activities, because creativity presupposes that the criterion for “good” is not predetermined, just as it is not determinable through any objective procedure; instead, the deliberation as to how best to carry out such an activity forms part of the activity itself. This explains why, in artistic and scientific enterprises, activities that aim at approval and those aiming at the good face off as opposing alternatives, naturally with various mixed forms in between. Yet, even the autonomous orientation toward the good, for instance, in the artistic activity, remains within the purview of intersubjective recognition. First of all, an artist who would not be dictated to by fads also aims at a good, which needs to find an intersubjective recognition, lest it should lose the objective-intersubjective character that belongs to it as a good. Second, precisely those who are not oriented toward approval or fashion but rather autonomously aim at the good enjoy a special intersubjective appreciation. Morality too belongs to those fields of activity in which the two branches—the orientation toward that which is held to be good in my environment and the autonomous question concerning the good—can separate off. The way in which an I-sayer stands between appearance and reality is further complicated in the moral sphere by the existence of the

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difference, described in the second book of Plato’s Republic, between a motivation to be moral and a motivation to appear moral. But it is only within moral being that the further variance arises, to which I have alluded with respect to the other adverbial goods. The moral good is always related to a reciprocal demand [Gefordertes], but what is to be regarded as reciprocally demanded—as morally good—can be understood correctly or falsely, and it can be well or badly justified. This is where the same distinction arises, between what is factually held to be good by the moral community and what an individual can regard as well justified, and this distinction produces in the case of morality two concepts of conscience, one conventional and one autonomous. The autonomous moral thinker will only feel guilty when he transgresses against norms that he takes to be well founded. Thus, even if he is not being despised, and even if he has not acted basely according to the governing norms of his situation, the autonomous moral thinker can hold his action to be despicable or not. However, a concept of autonomous guilt—which would emerge completely outside the dimension of intersubjective recognition and therefore here of collective indignation— seems to me pointless.12 One might ask: If, for the I-sayer, the approval of others amounts to a boost in self-esteem [Selbstgefühl]—in importance—and therefore is something to be relished, where can he find the motivation to become independent from this approval and autonomously aim for the good instead? A possible answer to this question, which I have already alluded to, is that there is generally, at least in abstracto, something admirable in this very idea of an autonomous orientation toward the good. The explanation for the fact that someone can direct his activity at the good such that he becomes independent of others’ approval would then lie in the belief that he can have, according to which in doing so he becomes worthy of the highest acclaim. That this is so, however, appears—in turn—to require further clarification. It is therefore worthwhile to go into this typical attitude specifically, because I do believe that it is usually incorrectly analyzed. Here, we come face to face with that virtue embodied by Socrates, intellectual honestly.

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4.

We speak of intellectual honesty when a person does not pretend to know more than he really knows and when he takes pains not to hold his beliefs as being more justified than they really are. This attitude therefore stands for what Nietzsche simplistically formulated as the will to truth. My sense is that this attitude is a special case of the second fork alluded to earlier, according to which whoever desires to do something well is not governed by a concern for others’ approval and opinions, but rather independently asks how to do what he does best. Inquiring into the truth (or justification) of beliefs is also a deed, and so one can say: whoever is intellectually honest independently acts in accordance with what is good in their sphere. In every creative act, there is an attitude analogous to what intellectual honesty is in relation to a personal system of beliefs, hence within the theoretical sphere, and the autonomous self-relation to the moral sphere belongs here too. Since I know of no other terminological expression that is used for this attitude in the generic case, I will be employing the term “intellectual honesty” in a sense extended accordingly. Where necessary, I will distinguish between a wide and a narrow sense of “intellectual honesty.” This then will allow us to say, for instance, that painters like van Gogh and Cézanne, who did not play by the rules of fashion or approval, but rather independently sought for the best way to do what they did, exemplify the attitude of intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty is generally taken to be a virtue, but why? The usual understanding of all virtues as moral ones explains why intellectual honesty (in the traditional narrow sense) has been thought of as a moral virtue. This conception was especially prominent in Nietzsche.13 It is not, however, a plausible notion for three reasons: first, because intellectual honesty does not factually appear, or is at best marginally present, in well-known moral theories; second, because moral virtues as such involve consideration of others; and third, because the maxim of intellectual honesty is of itself directly applicable to morality (and it is not immediately evident why that ought to be seen as a moral demand).

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An important cue can be found in Iris Murdoch. Murdoch is one of the few philosophers who have dealt with the adverbial good at all, and argued that virtues are essential for all activities that can be performed better or worse. However, she still thought that the virtues requisite for these activities are the same as the traditional moral ones.14 That cannot suffice. To make any progress here, one must always proceed from a clear concept of virtue, and this concept should not already be tied down to “moral virtues.” In and for itself, the concept of virtue is wider, and we have, since Hume, distinguished between moral and prudential virtues. Here, I will proceed from the reflections on the concept of virtue that can be found in chapter 7 of von Wright’s Varieties of Goodness. First and foremost Wright builds on Aristotle, but he is also part of the tradition stemming from Hume. This implies, as against Aristotle, not only a different classification of virtues, but also a different structural understanding of what constitutes a virtue in general. Strangely enough, it is widely held today that Aristotle’s theory of virtue is grounded by a “teleological” concept. Rather, the opposite is the case. Aristotle eliminated the teleological elements that the word areté had in Greek, where it was a matter of course to speak of the (teleological) areté (of the goodness) of objects of daily use, from the word’s usage with reference to humans. And now it is precisely around this teleological aspect that Wright’s case against Aristotle is built. Initially Wright follows Aristotle in his general determination to understand virtues as dispositions whereby we relate to our own emotions (145– 47). However, whereas Aristotle takes the view that this self-relation to the emotions concerns the inner equilibrium of the emotions and no other telos external to them (a “mean,” which is not to be understood functionally) (Nicomachean Ethics 2.5–6), Wright emphasizes that virtue always concerns human well-being, either (in prudential virtues like courage and temperance) as personal well-being or (in moral virtues like goodwill and justice) as another’s well-being. On his account, the “role of virtue,” that is, its function—in contrast to Aristotle, Wright insists on its function—is to counteract the “obscuring effects” that affect can have on our orientation

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toward the goals of deliberation—toward personal well-being or the wellbeing of others. This conception can be integrated into the exposition of my third chapter such that virtues can be said to be those dispositions that an I-sayer needs in order to be able to overcome—be it the antagonisms or the distractions of—the emotionally passive element in himself, and direct himself toward that which to him is the binding good.15 It is this outcome of Wright’s conception, namely, that virtues are dispositions, that we need in order to orient ourselves—against the “obfuscating effects” of our passivity—toward that which we hold to be good, that can now without further complication also be translated into the adverbial good. The good is then neither one’s personal well-being, nor the wellbeing of another, but rather consists in carrying out a particular activity in the best possible way. There is probably no standard adverbial virtue analogous to the prudential and moral ones. Without a doubt, prudential virtues, particularly temperance and courage, and surely patience, resilience, and the like, are as necessary for any adverbial good as they are for the moral good. These virtues are also necessary for purely egoistic goals such as the pursuit of power or money and certainly for the pursuit of fame, since they are ultimately the very condition for the achievement of any goal that requires a special exertion and follow-through. Apart from the prudential virtues, no other specific virtues can therefore be named that would be generally necessary for all adverbial goods. Rather, a specific virtue is absolutely necessary in those cases where the two motives, namely, (1) to be as good as possible and (2) to win recognition, can part ways. Not only do they part ways, but also whoever would aim autonomously for the good can only do so by resisting the temptations of approval. The virtue of intellectual honesty (in the wide sense) is therefore a distinct virtue, which aims at a good that is neither one’s own nor another’s, but rather the good of the activity in question. Aristotle distinguished between the virtues in part by asking which emotions are those whose “obfuscating effects” (Wright) the agent must come to grips with, and this

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too applies to intellectual honesty. Not only does intellectual honesty have its own proper goal, but also it has its own proper opponent in the passive realm of emotions, namely, the pleasure of appearing good. Whoever aims to perform an activity well, and self-mobilizes accordingly, would like to believe that he will be recognized by others in that respect, and to the extent that he indulges in this belief, he blocks any further deliberation on how he could do it better than any given fashion envisages. Being out for how one could do something best—think, for example, of a painter or simply of the intellectual honesty of someone who inquires into the truth of his beliefs and accepted ideas—is always painstaking, because it requires that one go up against opposing, passiveemotional forces of the usual kind. In the special case of intellectual honesty in the narrow sense, a further motive intervenes, namely, that one does not easily relinquish one’s own—individual and collective—beliefs, particularly when personal or collective interests are attached to them; and in all cases of intellectual honesty in the wide sense, there is the positive countermotive of the pleasure of appearing good, of increasing one’s importance. I can synthesize these remarks about intellectual honesty as follows: (1) The theoretical virtue of intellectual honesty belongs to a more comprehensive class that I have here designated as intellectual honesty in a wide sense; as such, the basic concept of this virtue is not that of truth, but rather that of the good—of that good which every activity that one can do well or better is aimed at. Truth as the specific goal of intellectual honesty in the narrow sense is subordinate to the concept of the good; at the same time, the good that is at stake in every activity where one can speak of intellectual honesty in the wide sense can be designated as the true or real good, in opposition to the mere semblance of the good. (2) Intellectual honesty—in the narrow as well as the wide sense—is not a moral virtue. It is not motivated by reciprocal demands pertaining to the wellbeing of others. (3) Nevertheless, it is reasonable to call intellectual honesty a virtue, since it is an attitude that, in its confrontation with a specific sphere of emotional passivity, is still aimed at a good. Just as the opposing affect is a feeling sui generis—the enjoyment of approval and of one’s own

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importance—this good too is sui generis, such that the virtue of intellectual honesty (in the wide sense) is distinct from both moral and prudential virtues. The distinctiveness of intellectual honesty is grounded in the autonomy of the adverbial good. The motivation for being intellectually honest is therefore grounded already in the fact that I-sayers are happy to carry out activities and happy to carry them out well; this implies that they must also be able to deliberate about how best to carry them out. And this, in turn, ties in with a specific aspect of being recognized as good. To begin with, it is a fact that those who autonomously aim at the good and do not allow themselves to be influenced by a concern for being recognized will be recognized, in a seemingly paradoxical fashion, as worthy of recognition for resisting the pleasures of being recognized. This fact, however, is in turn grounded in that duplicity inherent in every act of recognizing something or someone as good, namely, that, although it only ever represents a belief or opinion, in keeping with its own meaning this act also points to the actual good. This doubling of belief and what in this belief is laid claim to must separate off in two branches for the individual concerned, since for him being recognized is only a belief and hence whether or not this belief is true remains an open question. Therefore, insofar as he enjoys the pleasures of being recognized, he knows that he is abandoning the directedness toward the actual good. This knowledge can be more or less conscious, and can become a motivational spur or not, as the case may be. This, in sum, is how I believe the motivation for intellectual honesty (as well as the motivation for truth in the narrow sense of intellectual honesty) should be seen. The motive for intellectual honesty is the fear of shame in the face of a specific form of vice and consequently the contempt for one’s own deed.16

5.

A peculiar aspect of human patterns of behavior is that they lead at various levels to “forks in the road.” Earlier philosophers would have perhaps spoken of “dialectic.” The complexity of these patterns of behavior implies

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not only that one can do this or that one way or another, but also that the individual finds himself faced with a choice between two opposing paths: Which does he want to pursue (or which one does he want to pursue more than the other)? One such fork arises, with respect to the adverbial good, from the complexity of the connection between being recognized and being worthy of recognition. Another fork manifested itself in chapter 2, in the way in which an individual can relate to final purposes—more egoistically or more altruistically. The bifurcation that lies in recognition implies that the individual merely chooses whether to orient himself more toward the thing or more toward social approval—and these are two concepts according to which he will understand himself. By contrast, what is at stake in the choice between egoism and altruism is how far one is willing to go in putting one’s own well-being on hold for the benefit of another’s. But even in the first case, what is demanded of the individual who does not give in to the path of social approval involves an element of self-abnegation or self-denial. In chapter 2, what was at stake for me, above all, in the distinction between egoism and altruism was developing first of all a concept of egocentricity that went beyond egoism. But the interpersonal relationship among humans cannot be meaningfully described solely in terms of the opposition between egoism and altruism. Humans normally find themselves together with others and acting with them, and it is only out of this collective being and activity that the various bifurcations arise. Humans typically understand themselves in terms of nonegoistic ends in themselves and final purposes, be they a collective being (as in the case of a couple, a family, or friends), or some cause and the collective commitment to it. Humans are manifestly in need of devotion; they normally need something that is distinct from themselves and in keeping with which they can live out their egocentricity without egoism in the narrow sense. In all such activities, there arise bifurcations where an I-sayer is required, at various levels, to put on hold not only his well-being but also his egocentricity. There is no social activity in which an individual is not required to learn how to delimit his desires and preferences relative to those of others. There

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is then the problem of altruists bent on domination, just as there is the question of the extent to which a person in love is capable of putting himself into perspective, such that he can cope with having to let the other go, or the extent to which a person who champions a certain cause, or is in competition with others for the sake of being recognized, can accept that others are being favored. Generally, we can speak here of partially putting oneself into perspective [Selbstrelativierungen]—to distinguish them from those (nonpartial) forms of putting oneself into perspective that mystics strive after (see chapter 6). To my mind, however, there is a continuum here. Whoever is able to accept, from within a set of interpersonal circumstances, the path of stepping back, because he has a point of reference, relative to which it is possible to take himself as less important, behaves at least partially as a mystic (in my understanding of the word). Naturally, there are various “innerworldly” aids that make easier this cutback of the “but I want to” in interpersonal relationships, but religion and mysticism have always had quite a functional significance here. In any case, this much ought to have become clear, namely, that egocentricity, which unfolds with the objectivating-propositional self-relation, requires at multiple levels that certain abilities be cultivated in order to attenuate it. The individuals of this species become egocentrists on their own, but they can only live well when they learn to understand themselves less egocentrically.

5 RELATING TO LIFE AND DEATH

At the end of the previous chapter, a form of putting oneself into perspective emerged in the way in which I-sayers are able to relate to other people as well as to objects. However, this form was still limited, whereas the one discussed in the introduction concerned the way in which an I-sayer relates to himself as a whole [im ganzen]. But this way in which I-sayers are capable of relating to themselves as a whole has not been discussed yet.

1.

An initial form in which humans do not simply say “I,” but instead relate to themselves, became apparent when we considered the statement “It is up to me.” As this phenomenon of self-mobilization was discussed in chapter 3, it applied to individual actions and to deliberation in individual contexts. Clearly though, I-sayers are able to relate to themselves in a way that not only is constitutive of individual actions, but also allows them to relate to their future lives, and hence to themselves as a whole. This much had already emerged in chapter 3. It now seems natural to ask whether the same structure of “It is up to me,” which was addressed in the third chapter with regard to individual actions or individual contexts of deliberation, can also be applied to me as a whole, that is, to my life. It is then possible to speak of

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the practical question in the widest sense of the term: a practical question that does not concern an individual intention, but life as a whole. The “to oneself ” in the first sense of the term (responsibility) would be related to the second sense of “to oneself ” (life as a whole). And only then would it also be possible to ask whether I can transcend myself as well, or at least put myself into perspective. One possibility for approaching the issue of how I-sayers relate to their lives, to themselves as a whole, is to let ourselves be guided by what was said about the prudential good. Even though the term provided the framework for discussing the different kinds of practical good in chapter 4, the prudential good itself was left in the background. In the second chapter, I alluded to the fact that even when individuals refer to their life in explicitly instrumental terms, they do not confront it as a monolithic purpose. Rather, life appears to them as comprising a plurality of ends in themselves and final purposes. What appears to an I-sayer as good in itself refers, first and foremost, to a plurality of concerns. The expression “prudential good” is at first simply a formula for this good conceived as a totality, and hence for everything that a human being cares about on the whole [im ganzen]. We can therefore attempt to understand the way in which I-sayers relate to themselves as a whole from the way in which they connect their manifold goods in light of a total good. At the beginning of his ethics, Aristotle characterized “the” good (of a human being) as the highest, all-encompassing purpose. In the philosophical tradition it has led to the concept of the summum bonum. This formulation, however, although formally unobjectionable, does not fit the way in which humans actually and spontaneously relate to their prudential good, to their good “as a whole.” Aristotle had already used, in addition to the formula of the highest good, another formulation, whereby he took up the way in which humans relate to their prudential good in everyday life, namely, through the question “How are you doing?” In Greek, this everyday question is, pos prátteis? (“How are you doing?”), which sounds similarly active in Czech, for example: jak se maš? (“How are you having yourself ?”). Other languages put it more passively, such as the German wie geht es dir? (“How is it going [for you]?”), while yet others

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make it sound more neutral, like the Spanish ¿Cómo estás? or the English “How are you?,” although the active form, “How are you doing?,” also exists in English. However individual languages have resolved this problem, it is always in such a way that the evaluative situation in which a human being finds himself is so addressed that his individual activities and concerns are taken into account. Everywhere there exists a form that is unambiguously recognized as basic in everyday parlance, whereby humans can reciprocally inquire into how well or badly—on the whole—hey have been doing. Furthermore, it is significant that the standard response to this question is usually not an emotional expression such as “I feel good,” but an objective evaluation expressed in terms of “good,” “bad,” and so on. The question, therefore, does not simply concern my overall affective condition [Gesamtzustand], but rather my overall situation [Gesamtsituation]. This situation is being evaluated, which is why it is also possible to err. It is true that the question of how one is doing refers to a feeling (“what mood one is in”). But this emotion is interpreted by both the questioner and the addressee only as evidence for how one’s various concerns, as a whole, are faring—to wit, whether one’s desires are fulfilled or not. And even though the question is how one is doing at a given moment, one’s momentary state has, of itself, a temporally comprehensive sense, because it refers to how I evaluate—at this very moment—the overall standing [Gesamtlage] of my life’s concerns [Belange], even as this life extends into the future. If therefore what ensues, as soon as purpose becomes the decisive consideration for a being, is a plurality of ends in themselves and final purposes (cf. chapter 2, section 2), the goal-oriented consciousness would come apart in the absence of a mechanism that could unify these manifold concerns in their significance for me. The question “How are you doing?” presupposes such a mechanism. This process of unification takes place in one’s affective condition even before I-sayers concentrate explicitly on their life and the unity of their manifold concerns. We can think of it this way: the status of individual concerns—whether things are going more or less well or badly for me with respect to them—is perceived as emotionally unified in a way that registers as a passive response for the individual concerned.

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The respective condition as a whole—the mood [Stimmung], to use Heidegger’s term—is evidently a result of the way in which the manifold emotional responses to the goods and ills of one’s situation are united in affectivity and ordered somehow, according to the importance they have for the person. The fact that an extraordinary event—a victory, love, or bereavement—at times affectively displaces all other concerns does not alter the structure in the least. One’s overall affective condition—one’s mood—is a so-called nondirectional affect, which is therefore different from the emotions that have determinate propositional objects in that this mood reveals how one is doing “on the whole.”1 Evidently, in each conscious moment of his life, an I-sayer is characterized by an overall affective condition [Gesamtbefinden], based on which he can respond with “well,” “badly,” and so on when he is being asked how he is doing. What is being evaluated when these words are used in this way? Evidently not the positive or negative status of individual concerns, but rather something as a whole. Is it now appropriate to claim that the object of this evaluation is, in each case, my life? Why call it “life”? The term usually has a biological meaning, which, however, cannot be the one intended in our context. Does the evaluation then concern a subjective life process? The easiest way to grasp what is meant is to focus on that mood which finds its natural expression in “I’d rather not live anymore.” It stands to reason that the valorization implicit in any total affective condition can be taken as an evaluation of my being-alive [Auf-der-Welt-Seins],2 as an affirmation or negation (with whatever tones in between) of life in the sense of existence, as a declaration whereby the I-sayer consents or not to the fact of his own existence. It is thus the opposite of nonexistence that is here meant by “life.” It therefore makes sense to claim that the object of evaluation is one’s own life; however, “life” here does not refer to the life process, nor is it a question of evaluating the quality of this process. Rather, what finds expression therein is one’s attitude toward life and thus also the willingness to live on, the “will to live” [Lebenswille]. For this very reason, it seemed more appropriate just now to use the formal expressions “being-alive” and

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“existing” instead of “life.” This implies that I-sayers always relate to their existence in evaluative terms, meaning that they can imagine preferring their own nonexistence. In other words, they are always within the horizon of Hamlet’s question, “To be or not to be?” However complex the substantive factors that motivate it, the evaluation of one’s life as good or bad has to do with the appraisal of this “to be” and hence with one’s willingness to live on. We are thus confronted with a further astonishing anthropological characteristic through which humans distinguish themselves from other animals: not only do they, as I-sayers, have an objectifying relationship to themselves, as I attempted to show in chapter 1, and not only do they have an awareness of their life extending into the future, but they also relate to their living on, precisely by way of taking an evaluative stance on their life and, as a limiting case, by desiring death. This evaluative stance taking is initially included in one’s overall affective condition only implicitly (with “good” or “bad,” the I-sayer assesses his life). However, the I-sayer can then also call into question and take an explicit stance toward his overall affective condition as well as the valorizations— implicit in his affects—of his various concerns. This explicit stance taking is a form of deliberation: the I-sayer can make explicit the fact that it is up to him how far he adopts or revises the valorizations implicitly contained in his overall affective condition and in his emotions. As is typical in all deliberative processes, he becomes aware of the scope of his freedom. At this level, the “It is up to me” of the capacity to deliberate, which I discussed in chapter 3 with respect to any possible context of deliberation, refers therefore to me, in the sense of my future life. I ask myself: How do I want to live? What should I regard as good for me? And hence that unified reference to the prudential good arises, which was Aristotle’s starting point.

2.

We return to the practical question raised earlier (chapter 5, section 1). It is necessary to distinguish the way in which I-sayers are always passively confronted with this “on the whole” in their overall affective state—in

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which taking a stance on life is only implicit—from the explicit stance taking involved in the practical question. In the latter, the previous passive positioning and its implicit valorizations of individual concerns are being reflected on. One’s overall affective condition is, first of all, determined by the plurality of one’s concerns and their evaluations. Second, what it reveals is a unified evaluation of one’s own life as a whole. The practical question can then be understood as having distinct focal points and consequently as being more or less fundamental, depending on which of these components it takes up in a reflective manner. The practical question appears as less fundamental when it is only a matter of verifying the evaluations that are being presupposed in emotions. Is what I take to be good really good? And is it really as important to me as it appears in affect? Here, the question concerns the relative weight that various desires and concerns have for a person. Should we assume that one’s concerns are already ordered according to importance within one’s overall affective state? Or, alternatively, should we assume that they only become important during deliberation? The weight that they have in one’s overall passive-affective condition does not derive from their importance, but rather from their strength, which is best understood causally. On this view, it is only in deliberation that the I-sayer confers importance on his concerns. Even though he does not have his own substantive resources, it is still “up to him” to attribute an order of importance to his various goods. This ascription will depend on the perspective from which he considers these goods: For instance, will he consider them only from the perspective of the present or, as would be “rational,” with a view to his own future? Or, different still, would he see them from the perspective of someone who, in the face of death, reviews his life? It stands to reason that, in this scenario, the question as to how important individual concerns are to me can also touch upon the question as to how important I take myself to be in the world (see chapter 2, section 3). It would seem then that the “me” in the question “How important are the individual concerns to me?” does not refer to a fixed entity. Hence the

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practical question that focuses primarily on the value and importance of individual concerns points us to the more fundamental practical question in which this “me” is being problematized. Now the question is, “How do I want to or should I understand myself?”—which means, “How do I want to or should I live?” This question has three specific features: First, it concerns the “the How” [das Wie] of life, that is, not primarily its contents and concerns, but rather how (from what perspective) we relate to them. Second, the question implies that the I-sayer backs away from the distracting plurality of his concerns to become mindful of his life as a whole. And, third, it implies that he is no longer dealing with his individual desires only, but rather that he raises a question that any other person could raise with equal validity. The first point is the most fundamental. Even though the first stage of the practical question, which focuses on the evaluation of individual purposes, passes over to a second stage, in which life as a whole is being reflected upon, we are still dealing with two stages of the practical question that need to be distinguished structurally. Both stages of reflection can be described by saying that the I-sayer takes a step back: in the first stage, he steps back from the way in which he “immediately” or “affectively” relates to his desires and concerns, and asks himself deliberatively whether he has good reasons to accept the valorization and weighting contained therein.3 This question automatically leads to the second stage, when one becomes aware (which does not happen necessarily, and that is why it is a second stage) that any answer given in the first stage is relative to a certain conception of myself and of my life, which I can in turn problematize. This reflection on the self is not a reflection on an inner essence, but rather a reflection on one’s own life. And this reflection proceeds such that this life is not simply the result of adding up this and that concern; rather, each individual desire unfolds in a life that the I-sayer, owing to his temporal consciousness, knows to be transient. To this must be added such further universal characteristics of human life as being at the mercy of contingencies and of the ups and downs of affects. In chapter 2, I first distinguished the volitional behavior of I-sayers from that of other animals,

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based on the fact that I-sayers have an awareness of a practical future and are purpose- and goal-oriented. But this consciousness of time also implies that I-sayers, in contrast to other animals, are confronted with the transience of their life and of everything achievable within it. On the one hand, the negative character of these realities leads I-sayers to have a reason to deny their existence. This is the reason why many people, if they pose the practical question at all, only see it through its first stage. It is clear, on the other hand, that, if the second stage of the practical question is reached, what is at stake first and foremost is the goal of achieving permanence within transience as well as unity within the plurality of concerns. Let me start by giving an example as simple as possible, which arises within such a second-stage reflection. This example is not about certain contents, but rather concerns “the How” of life: Aristotle’s conception of ethics. In Aristotle’s virtue ethics, a general prudential aspect intermingles with a specifically moral one.4 If one leaves the moral aspect aside, Aristotle’s conception of ethics consists in a life of emotional equilibrium, as can be ascertained from Nicomachean Ethics 9.4. Such a life results from the desire to lead a coherent existence, which would remain stable amid change. Only then is it possible, according to Aristotle and Plato (Republic 443d), to be a friend to oneself. It is thus not the specific contents that matter, but rather “the How” of one’s life, the equilibrium of one’s own affects. Aristotle’s conception might appear inadequate from the perspective of the practical question. To start with, what is supposed to be unified is simply the affects and not one’s various aims and concerns. Second, death plays only a marginal role for Aristotle (as was typical of the entire ancient Greek civilization, he regards life as being marked by death, but does not mention a confrontation with death). I bring up this concept precisely because, even as it overlooks the aspect that I shall come to shortly, namely, putting oneself into perspective, and that leads to mysticism, it exemplifies the viewpoint of unification, which arises as soon as the practical question becomes the expression of a desire to gather oneself. This brings me to the second of the three points mentioned earlier (chapter 5, section 2). If, in contrast to Aristotle, one primarily relates the point of view of

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unification to the plurality of concerns and activities, what emerges is a reverse relationship, characteristic of human existence, between plurality and distraction, on the one hand, and unity and collectedness [Gesammeltsein], on the other. Here too the contrast with the life of other animals seems instructive: because other animals live in the situation at hand, there can be no distraction for them in the plurality of different activities and goals and no self-gathering either. On the one hand, humans become completely absorbed in their respective activities and individual worries. On the other hand, they are troubled by the question about what they want on the whole [im ganzen], about what matters to them in life. But because this question, in its obscurity, appears burdensome to them, an opposite dynamic manifests itself in the need for distraction. This tendency to get pulled in opposite directions, to be torn between absorption in details and the question concerning the meaning of life, seems to be a necessary effect of the context-independence of human desire, which is capable of setting many goals for itself, and yet operates within one life. It thus seems reasonable to search for unity not in addition to plurality, but rather in a unified “How” with respect to it. I have now arrived at the third of the three points mentioned. One might think that the second stage of the practical question is even more subjective than the first one, because it consists in a reflection on the “subject.” Rather the opposite is the case. In the first stage, the reflecting person has to judge for himself how important the individual concerns are to him, relative to one another. In the second stage, he regards these variously weighted concerns from the perspective of his life as a whole. This, however, is determined by the universal aspects of human life such as death, transience, contingency, and so on—aspects that are the same for everybody. The universal reflection on life and the question as to how to conduct it well, given its hardships, is therefore no individual affair. The question how to live well, which every individual asks himself, is asked of him as an individual. Yet, it can also be formulated anonymously, as Plato did when he asked, “How should one live well?” (Republic 352d), and hence it is a question that can be discussed in common with others. (It is also

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possible to raise the practical question in this second stage without raising it in the first.) Admittedly, a common starting point will not necessarily lead to the same answers. At issue here are possibilities, not necessities. Individuals can give each other reasons, but reasons can only suggest a mode of conduct: one can only show what other viewpoints are connected to it, and hence the “must” is only ever a relative one. Since what is here at stake is not a moral question, which would concern reciprocal demands, there is no necessity for the paths being pursued to be the same. At the same time, there is no reason for them to be different necessarily.

3.

Why is finitude a problem for human beings? It is a truism that everything that exists is limited in a variety of ways. For animals, which lack a sense of time, being limited has no significance, since they do not strive to go beyond their limits. Human egocentricity, on the other hand, implies care for the future: I-sayers want to cling to what they have, and so the fear of transience and the appreciation of permanence arise. However, they also fear an empty future, and so the torment of boredom and the need for change, which is the opposite of permanence, are born. In all things, they wish the future to be just the way they want it to be, and so—in the face of the impermanence and contingency of things—they experience their own impotence. There is no pursuit of goals without the experience of contingency. By way of technology, human beings try to reduce chance as much as possible, but chance cannot be overcome. Thus, unlike the capabilities of other animals, which are effectively limited to what is present, human capabilities involve a further limitation. That is, by transcending the present, consciousness comes to experience a dependence on factors that can, in some part, be overcome, but that in principle represent a dimension of withdrawal or unavailability [Unfügbarkeit]. Death is the paradigm case for these experiences of boundary and impotence. Before death, the egocentric will [das egozentrische wollen] stands bewildered, because it is impotent not only with regard to “the How” of

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the future, but with regard to this future itself, to its very end. Because awareness of impotence seems terrible, it is repressed as much as possible. Death is thus preeminently significant when it comes to reflecting on “the whole.” It seems reasonable to offer biological explanations for the fear of death (Angst vor dem Tod) because one can easily see that animals endowed with a sense of time would not survive without this anxiety. One can speak of death anxiety (Todesangst) with regard to animals of other species as well. The behavior of animals of many higher-order species, at least, suggests that in the face of mortal danger (for example, when being forced into the slaughterhouse), they experience an immediate death anxiety directly comparable to ours. The specifically human form of death anxiety is the fear of dying shortly or soon [gleich oder bald].5 This form of the fear of death can only be experienced by creatures who possess a sense of time, because, in order to experience this anxiety, one needs to understand words such as “shortly” and “soon,” as well as the word “not.” One can find oneself in a situation that, while posing no discernible physical threat, is still judged to be life-threatening (for example, being told that one will be executed tomorrow). If human beings were not afraid in such situations, they would be just as little capable of surviving as other higher animals would be if they did not fear a discernible life threat. Animal anxiety before death is not easy to describe. The specifically human form, on the other hand, has a clearly identifiable, one could even say intellectual, object: it is the thought of no longer living—shortly or soon. The moment one tries to articulate this thought with any precision, it becomes less clear why humans should have this anxiety. There is no reason to speak of life as the highest good and of death as the worst evil; such ways of talking are more an effect than a cause. The biological explanation, however, offers a sufficient reason. Physical pain is a comparable case. Why are we afraid of it? The answer “because it is an evil” again turns the issue on its head: we call it an evil precisely because humans seek to avoid it. The biological explanation also provides a sufficient justification for why we seek to avoid it.

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Let us therefore begin by provisionally accepting the biological explanation as a hypothesis. It remains to be seen how far it will take us. Now we have to turn to the question concerning the precise object of this fear of death. This question will help put the biological hypothesis to the test. When asked about the precise object of this fear, we first have to avoid the potential confusions created by discourses that treat “death” as an object. What is meant by death is not “some thing” in an ordinary sense, but rather an event: namely, the event that life ends.6 However, this is still ambiguous. Are we afraid (1) that life will end someday, or (2) that it will end now or soon? (In speaking of fear of Death with a capital D, one can immediately slip from one version to the other.) If one understands fear of death as being grounded in biology, then the second version receives support. In contrast, being afraid of ceasing to exist someday is, first of all, semantically unclear, because dying someday is a property, namely, the property of being mortal, and one can only be afraid of an event, not a property. This semantic difficulty can be avoided by saying not that one fears mortality, but rather that mortality fills one with a sense of sorrow or meaninglessness (many people believe that life would be meaningless if it ended with death).7 From a biological perspective, however, such a feeling is dysfunctional. While avoiding imminent death by any means available is a highly functional biological feature for creatures equipped with a sense of time, it can only be biologically dysfunctional to find the fact of mortality to be paralyzing. This is not to say that such a feeling is incomprehensible: not everything can be reduced to biological functions. Indeed, there have always been individuals—as well as entire cultures—who were afflicted by the awareness of human mortality, and who therefore searched either for immortality in the beyond or (as in the Gilgamesh epic) for an earthly cure against mortality. Yet the shock of mortality cannot be considered the primary phenomenon. It bears just as little on the fear of one’s own death as it does on the death of others. In the case of others, it is perhaps even more obvious that we fear losing them soon, and not that we will lose them someday. If mortality were the primary phenomenon with respect to anxiety, one

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would have to find astonishing the lengths to which human beings go, when threatened by death, to avoid it right now. This would, after all, only defer the inevitable, and yet this deferral seems to be more important than anything else. “Just not now, but later” one would say (think, for instance, of the conduct of Admet and his parents in Euripides’s Alcestis, or that of the Prince of Homburg in Kleist’s eponymous play). If mortality were the problem, such conduct would seem hardly rational; however, it is precisely rational what is to be expected if the biological hypothesis holds true. I therefore believe that the sadness occasioned by mortality is to be taken as an understandable but by no means necessary consequence arising from the insight that death can happen soon—at a moment’s notice. That this consequence is not necessary can be seen from the fact that one may not wish for a life that never ends.8 Even though this is only one possible view,9 it suffices to show that the contrary one is not necessary. Once it has been established that the fear of death is in each instance related to “shortly or soon,” the biological hypothesis also helps to keep the object of this anxiety free from additional explanations. Any form of metaphysical justification seems now particularly misleading, and especially those that see our fear of death as being grounded in a fear of nothingness. The mistake does not consist in the substantive talk of “nothingness.” This manner of speaking is perhaps not even misleading in our context because it is completely meaningful to say that he who dies disintegrates into nothing. From here it is only a small step (which can be considered innocent) to saying that he disintegrates into Nothingness. It is for this reason that not only Heidegger but also Thomas Nagel speak of the Nothing, or Nothingness.10 The real mistake lies in something that no longer seems a metaphysical problem, namely, that people take it as evident that their own ceasing to be has to appear to them as dreadful. Why is that? Even if they were to invoke the idea that humans are always concerned about their future, it would not follow. Why shouldn’t it be the case that we are always concerned with our future as long as we live, but not beyond that? Even if we give the fear of death its most matter-of-fact formulation by stating that it consists in the fear of ceasing to exist (the “nothing” is

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of course implied in this phrase), it is not obvious that the motivation for this fear has to be evident. Nor is it all that self-evident, if we disregard the biological hypothesis, that one wants to live on. This is not to say that humans do not always (or almost always) want to live on. Indeed, they usually desire it unconditionally. But the question was why. The fact that this phenomenon cannot be made comprehensible by itself provides strong support for the biological hypothesis. In the text cited earlier, Nagel characterizes well the psychology of the fear of death. Speaking for myself, at least, the thought of coming to an end feels just as Nagel describes it. It would feel dreadful to know that I would come to an end shortly, or soon, just as dreadful as the image of disintegrating into nothing (the two are one and the same, if one does not believe in life after death, but the first is seen from the perspective of life while the second from the perspective of the outcome). I believe now that I would experience it this way. However, whether or not I would experience death as dreadful, if I were to find myself directly before it in reality, I just do not know. Some people seem peculiarly calm when they face their immediate death: Would this fact not appear to us as utterly incomprehensible if we believed that the feeling of dread in response to the immediacy of death were the only comprehensible reaction? Whoever looks at it from the perspective of biology can say that fear no longer has any function once immediate death is unavoidable. The belief held by many who put themselves in the situation of someone dying, that it must be a dreadful experience for him, could be a mistaken one. The opinion that is sometimes expressed, that there can be no fear of death, but only of dying, does not seem thought through. Nobody knows how one will do when being immediately confronted by death, nor what kind of resources one will have left. Speculating about it beforehand cannot prepare one for the actual event. With respect to the fear of death then, we should neither project it into the immediate proximity of death, nor situate it in the distance that separates us from death. Rather, it belongs primarily there where it has a biological function, and that is wherever one believes that one will die shortly

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or soon. This does not preclude the fact that it is always possible—secondarily—to imagine (as perhaps one should be able to do) that death could happen anytime and, therefore, could also happen now. But this idea consists precisely in imagining what it would be like if one believed this very moment that one was about to die shortly or soon. This always-possible idea presupposes that the fear of death consists in the fear of dying shortly or soon, and it therefore needs to be distinguished from the similarly possible awareness that one is mortal. This awareness is simply the awareness that one will die one day (someday), and is typically not connected with anxiety, although through it one also imagines one’s own passing over into nothingness. It is thus not the knowledge that one will pass over into nothingness that one finds dreadful, but rather the knowledge that this passage is imminent, or the sense of what it would be like if it were imminent. This affective difference between two intuitions [Vorstellungen], which seem to have the same object (the passage into nothingness), is a strong reason to accept the biological hypothesis. Now what significance does one’s relation to death have for the practical question? The practical question consists in a reflection on life from the inner-worldly perspective of one’s goals and concerns. It is precisely that which one comes up against when being confronted by death. For in imagining what it would be like if one were to stop living, one cannot but imagine what exactly would thus stop or come to an end: one’s own life. The fact that one is in the middle of doing this or that, or has such and such concerns, etc., inevitably takes a backseat: what comes to an end is one’s life, regardless of whether one does this or that. Being confronted with one’s approaching death, whether in reality or in imagination, is thus a particularly obvious occasion for raising the practical question. The confrontation with death is, of course, only one potential trigger for the practical question. In the face of the actual certainty that one will die shortly or soon, the biologically determined anxiety can displace all other thoughts to such an extent that the thought concerning “the How” of life does not even emerge. If, on the contrary, one only imagines what it would be like if one were to soon come to the end of

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one’s life, the question as to how one’s life is going becomes especially relevant. The confrontation with death thus always has the unifying effect that is so important for the question concerning “the How” of one’s life (see chapter 5, section 2). Most importantly, the thought of one’s always-possible death gives the question of how one should live a special intensity, because in the face of one’s approaching death, only little time remains. He who believes that he has little time left sets different priorities, and this is how the conversion experiences in the face of death, which abound in the literature, are to be understood. It seems that anybody who has suffered a heart attack and experienced an acute fear of death decides—in the days following the incident— to change his life, before gradually falling back into his old routine. Death does not only prompt and intensify the practical question, but also enters into the content thereof. I have mentioned before the suffering that accrues to human life from the awareness of being variously limited, which in turn is due to time consciousness. Because humans always go beyond the present in their consciousness, they experience the impermanence of their circumstances. Death is the most extreme manifestation of the transience and unavailability [Unverfügbarkeit] of human life. How should one live in the face of an always-possible death? The human desire to live on unconditionally is biologically rooted. Yet, this changes nothing with respect to the fact that humans dread the passage into nonbeing, which they cannot oppose and are powerless against, being as they are at its mercy. How should one relate to this inescapable fact? One can try to escape it by hoping to live on in a beyond. But if one refuses this way out, is all that is left either to block it out or to “clench one’s teeth”? We have seen, however, that there is no analytic connection between the passage into nonbeing and the feeling of dread. It is only if one does not see anything else but oneself, hence from an undiluted egocentric perspective, that this passage must appear terrifying. This is why death, as well as other profound frustrations, lends itself to being used as a motivation to turn one’s gaze, always already directed at other objects, away from oneself and more intensely

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toward death. Even though every individual remains the volitional center of the world, as far as he is concerned, it is possible to see oneself as comparatively less important in relation to the world and the other centers in it. That is why the thought of death—the idea that one will die soon or shortly—can be a cause for taking up a position in the world but at its periphery.11 So perhaps death can only be accepted from the perspective of a mystical attitude. The thought of death, for this reason, has always been an important motivation for turning to mysticism.

4.

Simple deliberation, whether of a practical or theoretical nature, already requires I-sayers to step back from what they immediately desire or intend. In deliberation what is desired or intended is being bracketed, and is only examined according to its goodness or truth. The same metaphor of stepping back is employed in that form of deliberation in which an I-sayer relates to himself in the practical question: he now steps back from his individual wishes and concerns and gathers himself in the question concerning “the How” of life. Even though these two steps back are structurally distinct, the first one nevertheless leads to the second. Every practical question concerning justification, even at the lowest level, where it is a question of finding the best means for a given end, includes elements that point back to the question of how one wants to live. (When I ask someone in a city how I can best get to a place, there are no objectively compelling criteria for what counts as the most satisfactory response: it all depends, for example, on whether I prefer to walk quickly or slowly, and that may in turn depend on the kind of rhythm I want my life to move to.) These two steps back can be distinguished from a third, namely, the one that appeared at the end of the last section, and that, unlike the second step back, which was toward oneself, is a step back away from oneself.12 Just as the first of the three steps back leads by itself to the second step, without

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it being compulsory that individual humans follow it, the second step too leads by itself to the third. As long as one remains at the level of the plurality of individual activities and goals, one takes oneself to be absolutely important in one’s egocentricity. However, when one’s life is put into question, it seems only natural, on the one hand, that its limitations should be irritating: one is now confronted not only with individual limitations but also with the contingency and finitude of human life as a whole. Yet, it is also fully understandable that, by looking at oneself as a whole, one perceives oneself in one’s insignificance as well as the insignificance of one’s concerns relative to the world. This leads to a motivation, which one can yield to or not, to put oneself into perspective not only partially (cf. chapter 4, section 5), to see one’s own interests as relative. Stepping back from oneself means not only stepping back from egoism, but also from one’s own egocentricity. It affects every aim and desire one has, including those that are aimed at others, as well as those that are shared with others. We are thus confronted with that kind of putting oneself into perspective that was my starting point in the introduction and that, as will be shown in chapter 6, is the main concern of mysticism. The step back from oneself, which is the objective of mysticism, might appear paradoxical. For as much as I can step back from all kinds of things, I still remain myself. However, what is meant by “self ” (“sich”) at this point is “I want”: it is the clinging or cleaving that is characteristic of human egocentricity—the clinging or cleaving to the objects of the will, starting with the impossibility of letting go of the fear of death. In all three cases of stepping back, the step back is such that only I can take it: in each of them, it is as I that I am being addressed (cf. chapter 3, section 3). It is thus necessary to assume an egocentric concern [Sorge] for the mystic as well. He desires something for himself: to reach a certain condition and remain in it. This egocentric aspect of mysticism implies a crossroads that I shall only address at the end of chapter 6. However, the goal of putting oneself into perspective is not on the same level as other goals. It is therefore not self-contradictory to claim that one can be

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egocentrically concerned with freeing oneself from one’s own egocentricity or with limiting it. Whether the step back is to be understood as a negation of the will or simply as a curbing of one’s tendency to take oneself as important touches upon a distinction that is controversial within the tradition of mysticism itself (see chapter 6, section 5).

PART II

Stepping Back from Oneself

6 RELIGION AND MYSTICISM

1.

Religion and mysticism are forms of collectedness [Gesammeltseins] with regard to “the How” of life. In chapter 5, I spoke of the opposing tendencies between which human desire is caught because of its contextindependence, namely, the plurality and distraction of concerns, on the one hand, and the need for cohesion [Einheitlichkeit] as well as selfcollection [Sammlung] (chapter 5, section 2), on the other. In cultures more ancient than ours, religious rites not only served the purpose of creating social cohesion; they also contributed to the ability of each individual to collect themselves [Sichsammeln]. In chapter 5, I naturally started out from questioning and deliberating in order to emphasize the autonomously grounding character in virtue of which one desires self-collection. However, it is part of the essential meaning of the practical question that one should reach a state of firm conviction, an attitude in which one comes to a stance with regard to “the How” of life. This stance allows one to endure death and the other hardships of egocentric life that arise due to time consciousness. Let me consider two examples. Think of an Orthodox Jew who, in everything that he does, praises God with the designated blessing; and

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think of a Japanese Zen Buddhist who does everything he does in such a way that he regards his action as transparent in light of “emptiness.” In both cases, the person is obviously collected [gesammelt], and is so not apart from but rather within his manifold activities: the Jew gathers [versammelt] his life—everything he does—religiously around God, while the Japanese does so mystically, in relation to a universe that he understands as emptiness. Of both these reference points, God and the universe, one can say that they are “transcendent” in one way or another, that they are “not of this world.” God is transcendent with regard to everything in the world, just as the universe transcends, though in a different sense, every individual object that inhabits it. The word “religion” is sometimes used so broadly that it encompasses both of these possibilities. Should one therefore claim that, because of their anthropological structure, I-sayers can live scattered or collected lives, and that living collectedly is only possible by relating to something “not of this world”? There are, I think, only two other possibilities that allow one to collect oneself: The first is to understand oneself in relation to something that is “of this world,” for example, another person, or a community or cause with which one is engaged. The second option is simply to collect oneself in relation to oneself. The first possibility is constantly being pursued; yet one’s deeds and desires can only to a limited extent be understood in relation to other people or a cause. One’s life goes much further. This becomes particularly apparent in confronting death. One could perhaps say, for example, “I give myself completely to the love of this person, or of my family, or I surrender myself completely to this task, for it provides my life with meaning and unity.” In Either/Or, Kierkegaard explored these possibilities and identified the tender spot common to them all, namely, that one would necessarily “despair” upon losing this reference point (the love or the task). The two examples I have given do not fall under this verdict. One cannot take away the Orthodox Jew’s relation to God, just as one cannot deprive the Zen Buddhist of his relatedness to the emptiness of the universe. But what about the other idea just mentioned? Is it at all possible to simply collect oneself with regard to oneself? Apparently, this is precisely

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what self-collection and self-choice mean. The way Heidegger responded to Kierkegaard’s argument in Being and Time was an attempt to understand self-choice as a type of self-collection by sole reference to oneself. The fact that Kierkegaard had simply placed self-choice and its religious interpretation side by side, without deducing the one from the other, strengthened Heidegger’s conviction that, radically interpreted, self-collection could only be understood in relation to oneself. Is this a possibility? In the question “Is it ultimately possible to collect oneself with regard to one’s self?” the term “self ” appears twice. I think it would make no sense to replace the “self ” in the second position with the one in the first position. There is a need for self-collection to counteract the scattering effect of one’s many activities, but this “self ” cannot at the same time serve as the reference point [Hinsicht] for self-collection to take place. The Orthodox Jew and the Japanese Buddhist have such a reference point. The lovers and the like (in Kierkegaard’s examples) believed that they had one too, but it did not reach far enough. Mere self-reference cannot take on this role. My own suggestion in favor of the broadest formulation of the practical question—“How shall I live?”1—does not reach far enough either. It is true that one presupposes this kind of question when pursuing self-collection through autonomous action. This is why the response to my two examples is likely to be that, from my description of them, it remains unclear whether the Orthodox Jew and the Zen Buddhist are acting autonomously in their collectedness [Gesammeltsein], and are not, for instance, simply carrying on a tradition unreflectively. Yet, the mere questioning as such remains as formal as the talk of self-choice [Selbstwahl]. Is there something—the question then becomes—that can serve me, qua willing individual [Wollendem], as a reference point for making my individual acts of will converge? The answer to this question cannot be: yes, this reference point is the question itself. For thereby the question would lose its meaning. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, might have given too specific a response to this question, to wit, the relation to God. What can be said with certainty is that the answer can only be found in something that is

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“religious in the general sense” and “not of this world” (chapter 6, section 2). If this is correct, it means that, because of their anthropological structure, humans have an understandable need to collect themselves, and that in doing so they see themselves referred to something that is, in the vague sense used earlier, “transcendent.” It also means that, apart from religion in the narrow sense (here exemplified by the Orthodox Jew) or mysticism (exemplified by the Zen Buddhist), there is no other possibility for a “collected” existence.

2.

It is common to define mysticism as being, in some way, related to religion.2 I will do so myself as well. However, my definitions will depart from the standard ones because of the specific demands of an approach based on “the first-person perspective.” In this chapter, I am confronted with methodological difficulties that did not arise in part 1. What was at stake in those chapters was universal anthropological structures, which is why I did not need to go into specific cultural phenomena, even though much of what was elaborated there was interpreted—in part consciously and in part unbeknown to me, no doubt—from the viewpoint of my own culture. Here, however, the question is how humans respond to a specific universal anthropological structure, namely, the need for collectedness, and such responses are variously culturally inflected. This is not to deny, though, that these cultural expressions can have universal significance. Here I have to rely, therefore, on actual cultural forms of religious and mystical expression. In addressing historical and cultural phenomena, the question arises as to whether they should be considered from the first-person perspective (singular or plural) or from the third-person perspective. I shall explain this methodological difference in the addendum to this book. For now, suffice it to say, in a general way: a cultural and historical phenomenon is addressed from the third-person perspective when it is simply an object of investigation. In contrast, if the guiding question is what this phenomenon

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means for us, and whether it offers us good grounds for or against this or that path, then it is addressed from the first-person perspective. Almost everything that is being written today in phenomenology and the history of religion is done from the third-person perspective. Because I proceed from the first-person perspective, I must pay special attention, in defining “religion” and “mysticism,” to that which in them presents us with alternatives that are meaningful today. Earlier, I spoke of “religion” in a vague and general sense of the term, which also covered “mysticism” (chapter 6, section 1). In what follows, I want to speak instead of religion in a narrow sense, for which the belief in superhuman personal entities, that is, gods, is constitutive. In doing so, I shall primarily focus on the idea that is decisive for the Judeo-Christian tradition, namely, faith in the One God. The fact that I define “religion” and “mysticism” the way that I do has to do, on the one hand, with my attempt to take into account the fact that we stand within this Judeo-Christian tradition. On the other hand, it has to do with my belief that this tradition of faith is no longer a live option from the perspective of the first person, whereas mysticism, the way I define it, remains an option accessible to all humans. For this reason, it is important to me to provisionally define “mysticism” and “religion” as two distinct paths. This does not preclude the possibility of there being mystical strains within religion, just as it does not preclude Christian religion, for instance, from bearing some mystical traits as well. Even though the term “mysticism” can be traced back to a Greek expression, and has been used primarily in the West, the attitude that it denotes has been more at home historically in India and in East Asia, in contrast to Europe, where it is not primarily related to God. The standard definitions of “mysticism” are committed to either (1) the central idea of an immediate experience of God or of an ultimate reality (see Pye’s definition, chapter 6, note 2), or (2) the idea of a vision of, meditative immersion in, or awareness of being one with this reality. The first of the two views—which mandates entering into direct contact with something transcendent—is guided predominantly by Western religious mysticism. The second view—

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mandating meditative immersion—corresponds more to Indian and East Asian forms of mysticism. The first view has to be abandoned when religion in the narrow sense is no longer considered as a live option from the firstperson perspective. Can mysticism be understood as meditative immersion in an ultimate reality, as the second view would have it? This interpretation is perhaps applicable to nonreligious Western mysticism and, in India, to Vedanta mysticism, let us say, but not to Theravada Buddhism or Samkhya Yoga, for instance. Buddha’s meditative immersion is not aimed at an ultimate reality and, in general, it is not aimed at anything in particular. To simply speak of “meditative immersion,” on the other hand, would be too vague. It appears that the dynamic of Buddha’s meditative immersion is primarily determined by that which it is supposed to free one from, that is, in Buddha’s case, the “I” and its “appetites” [das “Ich” und seine “Gier”].3 In other forms of mysticism too, meditative immersion is to be understood primarily in terms of what one aims to become free from. Sometimes, what is nominated under that rubric is the manifold of the phenomenal world. But this too would in no way be universally applicable either: it would not apply, for instance, to Daoist mysticism. From other mystics too we hear that they seek to abstract from the sensuous manifold only insofar as their desire clings to it.4 Thus, it seems reasonable to define mystic meditation in general as a form of meditation through which one attempts to free oneself from one’s voluntative attachments. However, it is also entirely possible to dismiss the notion of “meditative immersion” completely. As important as such an option is for the vast majority of mystics, it would be misleading to claim, for example, that a Daoist sage or a Zen Buddhist would only be in a state of mystical awareness during meditation. This leads me to a definition according to which mysticism consists in (a) breaking free from one’s voluntative attachments (or desire or care), (b) in the face of (rather than “in meditative immersion in”) the universe (a term I prefer to “ultimate reality”). The second provision can also be omitted, in consideration of Theravada Buddhism or Samkhya Yoga. This definition can then be extended to

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cover religious mysticism as well, by allowing God to take the place of the universe. These reflections concerning the definition of “mysticism” were carried out from the third-person perspective, because the criterion so far has simply been that this definition should accommodate as much of what we commonly associate with this term as possible. The reader will have noticed that, in the background of all of this, there was also a desire to bring the result into harmony with the understanding of mysticism I presupposed in the introduction as well as in chapter 5. If I try to keep the definition of mysticism free of references to a certain condition of consciousness, as set out in the frequently cited definition by William James,5 it is because, from within a first-person perspective, I am striving to conceive of mysticism as an option open to every human being, which does not depend on special exercises, nor does it spring from a special disposition.

3.

Now, I believe not only that mysticism represents a distinct path from religion, but also that mysticism and religion pursue opposite agendas. Before going into this difference, however, the question arises as to whether they share a common starting point. Even though these paths lead in opposite directions, they must nevertheless share a common theme. In response to this question regarding their starting point, I can, however, only offer the following line of reasoning, which may appear rather artificial. An I-sayer does not only relate to individual persons and objects. As I have shown, in a certain respect, in chapter 1, and as in other respects appears self-evident, an I-sayer also always has an awareness of allness [Allheit]. This allness, we could say, surrounds humans on all sides with its vastness (greatness), power, and mysteriousness beyond comparison. In comparison to it, humans feel small, impotent, and ignorant. There are a variety of ways in which humans experience the contrast between small and large. They start off by being “the small ones” in their childhood. They then enter into an enduring competition based on

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various criteria of reciprocal comparison and dependence: they are small and dependent, yet they want to be and to appear larger and more important. In these cases smallness and greatness are experienced as relative, no matter how close one may have come to greatness, power, and knowledge. By contrast, within the universe—allness—one cannot but feel small, impotent, and ignorant. Here the I-sayer sees himself, and the other I-sayers, confronted with a greatness that is not just relative, and hence is beyond comparison; he stands before a power without match and, against everything he has learned and mastered in detail, a mystery beyond measure.6 Even though the relationship to this incomparable greatness has something to do with the experience of the relative difference between small and great, it remains a sui generis experience. However tempting it is to see it as a projection of the infantile experience of one’s own smallness, as Freud does in The Future of an Illusion, it would nevertheless be rather misleading, Without a doubt, we are dealing here with an anthropological constant. I-sayers inevitably relate to one another as I-sayers based on some relative ratios of smallness or greatness. However, in the face of the universe and fate, they have an awareness of orders of greatness and smallness that are no longer simply relative—provided, of course, they do not repress it. This is how expressions like the “highest” (and because it is beyond anything high, also beyond comparison) and the “sublime” were born. Most recently, we have also been coming across the expression “wholly other” (because the wholly other differs differently from the mere differences among distinct things). If one now asks how this confrontation with a “wholly other” that is incomparably great, mighty, and nontransparent is experienced emotionally (that is, provided these aspects are not being repressed), Rudolf Otto’s concept of a specifically numinous “state of mind” [Gemütsgestimmtheit] seems to me to provide an answer.7 Otto distinguishes among various determinations or moments of the “numinous.” The mysterious (mysterium) and the terrifying (tremendum), which is also experienced as alluring or fascinating (fascinans), are united experientially in “dread” (for a

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better expression Otto resorts to the English awe); while the “all powerful,” that which is “great beyond comparison” and in relation to which one feels small, takes center stage. Otto takes these emotional aspects, which he synthesizes in his concept of the numinous, as the essence of the religious. Most of his examples are also taken from religions (in the narrow sense). On the other hand, he places little emphasis on the personal aspect and largely prefers to employ the neuter gender—the numinous [das Numinose] and the like. I would like to suggest that what we have here is a fact of consciousness that is fundamental for both mysticism and religion. One could call it protoreligiosity or, equally accurately, protomysticism. However, I wish to emphasize that this first, or “proto,” form is to be interpreted only in a conceptual or psychological sense, not in a historical one. No hypothesis concerning an archaic form of religiosity is tied to it, even though such a view would fit well with the way in which the religion of archaic men was for a while represented in the study of religions, when it was based on the Polynesian concept of mana.8 What one can find rather inadequate about Otto’s account is that he refers to religious consciousness simply as a fact, and presents the religious concept of the numinous as something humans just happen to relate to as a matter of fact. But, one may ask, why should this be so? To my mind, it is because, first of all, I-sayers live by the contrasts between small and large, dependent and powerful, knowledge and ignorance. And, second, it is because they do not just relate to individual people and objects but find themselves in a universe that, confronted at the emotional level, feels immeasurably great, mysterious, and so on. Following Mircea Eliade, we can also refer to the numinous as the “sacred,” in contrast to the “profane.”9 Both the sacred and the profane pertain to the way in which I-sayers, in contrast to animals of other species, relate to their world. Both emanate from the egocentric, goal-oriented desire of I-sayers. On the one hand, I-sayers have their egocentric goals and therefore consider whatever they come across in the world from an instrumental standpoint. This is the profane dimension. On the other hand, the

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world as a whole confronts them in the guise of a force that is impervious to instrumental behavior [Instrumentalisierung].

4.

One can think of religion and mysticism as two distinct and, in their agendas, even opposite branches stemming out of the foundation of consciousness, which in turn is directed at the numinous. (Later we will see how they become entangled again. But to understand this properly, it is useful to emphasize their distinctness first.) The problem that religion and mysticism hold in common but solve in opposite ways is that of contingency. It arises directly from the basic anthropological structure according to which human volition is future- and hence goal-oriented (chapter 2), on the one hand, while, on the other, being always determined by wishes in the narrow sense of the word, that is, by cravings, whose realization does not depend on oneself alone (chapter 2, section 2). Neither the one nor the other obtains for other animals. Because human volition is goal-oriented, it always finds itself caught in a tension between success and failure. This tension implies, first of all, that humans need to exert themselves for success, that they need to put in an effort (chapter 3); it also means, second, that they know the success does not depend on them alone. Furthermore, one’s volition is oriented toward goals—most importantly toward the avoidance of ills—which are known to exceed one’s active contribution. It is for this reason that these goals should be characterized not so much as objects of one’s desire but as objects of one’s wishes. Far more than any particular object then, it is the consciousness of a radical deficiency with regard to what one can achieve through one’s own action that characterizes human desire. This deficiency affects not only the realization of one’s hopes, but also the fulfillment of one’s most essential goals: life, health, nourishment, and connecting with other people. The misfortunes that animals of other species only confront when they strike are anticipated by humans in their possibility. Thus, they live their whole lives in a state of tension between fulfillment and disappointment that is

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beyond their control, and consequently in the constant fear of frustrations, misfortunes, and, of course, the gravest of them all, death—be it their own or the death of those closely and most intimately connected to them. Historically, humans have come up with two ways to alleviate this condition of suffering—religion and mysticism. The two paths imply a different, even opposite, interpretation with regard to the numinous universe in which humans find themselves. The path of mysticism consists in putting the weight of one’s wishes into perspective, or even denying them. This involves a transformation of one’s self-conception. The path of religion, on the other hand, leaves wishes as they are and undertakes instead a transformation of the world by means of a wishful projection. In the process, the power that surrounds human beings on all sides is condensed into discrete beings on whose action depends, so humans imagine, their own good or bad fortune and who in turn can be influenced by us. Such manipulation or influence is indeed conceivable through rites and magic, but it is plausible to think of these powerful beings as personifications, so that one may relate to them the same way one relates to powerful fellow human beings: by pleading, thanking, acknowledging their might, and taking oneself to be answerable to them. I have interpreted the religious by emphasizing the aspect of the numinous, first because this aspect is also fundamental to mysticism. Second, I do not think that the relation to the numinous can be deduced from the pragmatic-magical element highlighted earlier. If the numinous were not already present as an independent factor, it would be quite plausible to think that I-sayers had an exclusively instrumental relationship to their environment. This relationship would be not only technological but also “religious” to the extent that it would imply a belief in forces on which humans would depend for their success and happiness, and which could be influenced through ritual and magic. The glorification of God, which is a crucial dimension to our understanding of “religion,” cannot be derived from the pragmatic motive alone. To my mind, several elements combine in the phenomenon of religion—as understood in the narrow sense defined earlier (chapter 6, section

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2)—not all of which can be reduced to one another. First, there is the feeling of the numinous. Second, there is the pragmatic motive just discussed. Third, there is the element of personification. Fourth, there is the belief (not always present) that the divine is good—the very source and guarantor of what is right—to the point where God is represented as good in an “incomparable” way. Once faith in God has reached this point, it can also take on aspects that I consider as primarily belonging to mysticism. This is an issue to which I shall return. Now, if one wonders about the origins of the belief in gods (my third element earlier), I think that one can hardly look for them anywhere else than in the pragmatic motive. The reason why humans need gods in the first place is because they hope to influence the world to further their own wishes.10 To my mind, the fact that, contrary to older conceptions, the more recent historiography of religion emphasizes the impossibility of empirically verifying the hypothesis of a religious mana stage (a phase in which the numinous was not yet experienced in the shape of gods) only proves that the pragmatic motive was quite understandably already universally present along with the numinous. The alternative view would be to treat the belief in gods as if it were an innate a priori for humans instead of trying to understand it from the standpoint of their anthropological structure. And if the pragmatic and the numinous are coevals, it also means that the numinous as such does not entail belief in gods, and that is why, lacking such belief, the numinous could be developed in a different direction in mysticism. Nowadays, the belief in gods, together with the pragmatic motive underlying it, can only be seen as wishful thinking. (Admittedly, one hardly needs to talk about this at all, if one does not think from the firstperson perspective [see chapter 6, section 2].) It is the case not merely that the existence of God is impossible to prove, but rather that the existence of God or gods does not even make sense to us. Nobody believes any longer that gods live on Mount Olympus or that God lives above the clouds: such belief would contradict everything we know. But even if one were to claim instead that God exists outside of space and time, we would

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be unable still to make the slightest sense of the idea that anything can exist but cannot be found in space. Furthermore, once it has been shown to rest on a wish, the belief in God would not be able to clear the hurdle set by intellectual honesty. (I know that this issue is not fully settled for the believer. All I wanted was to put my cards on the table, not to talk anybody out of anything. Right now, I am simply speaking in the firstperson singular.) What remains of my two examples earlier (see chapter 6, section 1), judging from the first-person perspective, is only the example of the Zen Buddhist. Put more generally, if it is true that it is impossible today to be religious in the narrow sense, and if it is also true that one can only collect oneself with respect to something one cannot lose, then this inalienable something can only be the mystically interpreted universe.

5.

I have already indicated (chapter 6, section 4) why I see a certain polarity existing between religion and mysticism. In both religion and mysticism, one has recourse to the numinous universe in working through the (real or feared) frustrations of one’s desires. The difference is that, in religion, this is done by populating the universe with entities that are supposed to provide assistance. To the mystic, on the other hand, the act of becoming aware of the existence of the numinous—whether it is called the universe, or Being, or Dao, or even God—serves as a point of reference. With this point of reference in his views, the mystic steps back—be it absolutely or only minimally—from his wishes and seeks to reach peace of mind [Seelenfriedens]. Before I can turn to mysticism in more detail, some basic contrasts and points of divergence are in order. It does not matter if these at first appear to be somewhat schematic. We can distinguish among the various shapes in which mysticism (in the sense defined previously in chapter 6, section 2) appears to us according to two points of view. First, how is the stepping back from the “I want” understood—in relative or absolute terms? Second, how is the universe in which one holds oneself in abeyance understood? Is

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it understood as a plurality in its unity, or as the disappearance of the many in the one? According to the first point of view, the following contrast emerges: (A) The goal is the complete renunciation of all volition—a “peace of mind” (if one can still speak of some such thing) that is sought beyond this concrete world in a pure state of consciousness (pure, that is, free from all objects and volition). The result is a form of world negation or denial similar to that which is characteristic of the various forms of Indian mysticism. (B) The other possibility is, to my mind, best represented by Daoism. The peace of mind that one strives for has to be possible in our normal lives. The will is not being denied, but rather being put into perspective and restricted. Frustrations are not being overcome, but rather integrated. With respect to the universe in which the mystic holds himself in abeyance, to which the mystic adheres, or in view of which he withdraws, we must first realize that this universe is always One [ein Eines]—it is the world in its unity. However, this one universe can be seen in two different ways: first, as (i) a One in which everything that is manifold disappears, or second as (ii) the given universe, namely, a plurality of things in space and time, but seen in a unified way. According to the first interpretation, the mystic’s aim is to become one with the One (in the so-called mystic union, unio mystica). According to the second, the mystic holds himself in abeyance in the world: instead of seeing everything from the egocentric perspective, he sees himself from the perspective of the world.

6.

It seems intuitively clear that (B) goes with (ii), which is also the case in Daoism. However, (A) does not always go with (i). As much as it is true that in all forms of type (A) mysticism, the multiplicity of objects disappears with the multiplicity of wishes, within traditional Indian mysticism it is only in the Vedanta schools that we find this interpretation. Vedanta assumes that the soul—Atman—in abstaining from everything becomes one with the ultimate ground [Urgrund] of the world—Brahman. In

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Samkhya Yoga, the mystic only becomes immersed in the ground of his soul, but does not experience this as a unification with Being. In the case of Buddhism, the mystic does not become immersed in anything: the mystical exercise is interpreted in a purely negative way as a form of abstention. The ideal is emptiness. These three forms of world-denying mysticism can nevertheless be seen as variations on the same basic concept. All of them strive for a form of meditation whose aim it is to abstain from all desire—from all “appetites” [Gier], as the Buddha is reported to have said—and at the same time from any multiplicity whatsoever. They all strive for the same pure (volitionless and objectless) state of consciousness, except they each interpret it differently. In Samkhya, this state is seen as purusha (the ground of consciousness), in Vedanta as a unity with Brahman, and in Buddhism as emptiness. The Buddhist version is the simplest because it refrains from reaching for any further interpretation and because it regards the practical motive—the desire to be released from suffering and appetites—as the only one relevant for the mystical dynamic. Vedanta, on the contrary, regards itself as truth: the many are just an illusion; only the One is real. From the first-person perspective, it is rather to be doubted, first, whether this ontologicalepistemological justification does not conceal in fact the practical orientation. Second, the question needs to be asked whether it makes any sense to speak of a Being that is only Being or a One that is only one. The same difficulty can be felt with regard to those Western mystics who see themselves not (or not only) as theological, but as ontological or henological. Even though this ultimate reality is professedly not describable in words (such as “Being” and the like), the question nevertheless arises as to how the very idea of such an ultimate reality beyond plurality is to be understood. The difficulty of answering such questions can be seen as confirmation that the true mystical goal and the true mystical experience cannot consist in a theoretical reduction of the plurality of things, but rather in a practical reduction of wishes and consciousness. The meaning of the One is thus completely circumscribed by the subjective aim of achieving peace of mind.11

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In his book Mysticism East and West, Rudolf Otto emphasizes the extent to which the mystical doctrines of the Vedanta philosopher Schankara and of Meister Eckhart converge in their affirmation of an absolute Being.12 To me, this only shows that this word usage is problematic on both sides. I have the same difficulty when Karl Albert, in his Einführung in die philosophische Mystik [Introduction to Philosophical Mysticism], speaks of a “Being” that stands opposed to the many beings.13 In the Chandogya Upanishad a father explains the idea of an all-pervasive Being to his son as if this Being were like a “juice” coursing through all substance, or like a “breeze,” according to a similar description in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.14 These are allegories. However, if they are allegories of Being, how is it possible to avoid the identification of Being and substance?15

7.

Buddhism does not fall victim to skepticism of this theoretical kind. It is therefore best to direct at it the most important, that is, practical, questions regarding this first group of mystical doctrines, though these questions of course concern the other varieties of Indian mysticism as well. The reason that Buddha offers in The Four Noble Truths for letting go of all appetites is that all suffering is due to them. For him, the ultimate goal of the mystical process is to be released from the suffering of this life. The retreat from desire—from the appetites—is thus only a means to an end. It is in this respect that, between the way in which it is elsewhere discussed and the way in which I have here introduced it, mysticism undergoes a peculiar reversal: what mysticism is all about is not, first and foremost, a way of curbing the will, but rather a release from suffering. This is also the reason why the step back in this form of mysticism is an absolute step. If the reason for this step is rooted in the will, then there is no inducement to want to step back from it completely. This is also the reason why that from which one aims to step back in Indian mysticism is not something specifically human: other animals suffer just as much as humans; furthermore, in making desire responsible for suffering (which is

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plausible only to some extent),16 Indian mysticism does not take the will [der Wille] in its specifically human aspect, but rather in terms of what it shares with the desire [Wollen] of other animals. In this respect, what distinguishes humans from other animals is, according to the Indian perspective, not that humans are in need of mysticism, but rather only that they are capable of practicing it. But if suffering is the problem, to what extent is it plausible to choose such a radical way? This is only necessary if one describes the fact of suffering in as extreme a fashion as Buddha did in his “first noble truth.” According to him, the reality of human and, more generally, animal life does not consist exclusively in the readily acknowledged and trivial fact that life is filled with suffering; rather, it is that life, correctly understood, is nothing but suffering. If one agrees with this interpretation, one must feel quite motivated in fact to opt out of this life. Yet, would not suicide offer a much easier solution than mysticism? At this point it is necessary to take into account the Indian doctrine of Samsara, the eternal cycle of life through infinite rebirth. It shows, first of all, that, from an Indian perspective, suicide would not offer a way out from life. Second, this doctrine explains the overly bleak concept of life that lies at the basis of Indian mysticism specifically.17 It is chiefly such aspects associated with the Samsara doctrine that make Indian mysticism appear so peculiar to the outsider. What may seem all the more astonishing is that nobody in the tradition of Indian mysticism called this doctrine into question, seeing as it only came into being gradually during the time of the Upanishads, but then asserted itself in such a way that it was not even discussed any longer. Most peculiar of all is the way in which this doctrine combines biological and moral elements: depending on how well or how badly one behaves in this life, the rebirth would necessarily occur at a higher or lower level of being (Karma). To the outsider, this has all the appearances of a priestly subterfuge, since the concept of Karma so clearly fulfills two functions at once. On the one hand, through fear and hope, it is supposed to motivate humans to perform morally good acts; on the other hand, its function

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is to keep the lower castes from revolting against their status, since they themselves bear the responsibility for it. The doctrine of Samsara and Karma also has an immediate impact on how the mystic believes he can reach his goal. To reach the goal of being released from suffering once and for all requires more than the occasional state of mystical enlightenment. When the Buddha reached enlightenment, for example, he touched upon Nirvana, but then returned to life. It was only in death that he dissolved into Nirvana once and for all. The tradition thus distinguished between two conceptions of Nirvana. Behind this distinction stands the conviction that he who has reached complete enlightenment will no longer be reborn, on the grounds that it is only one’s raw appetites that bring forth rebirth. A complex system was even developed to determine how many rebirths would still be necessary if one had reached a certain point on the path toward enlightenment. We may wonder how it was possible to know all this in such detail. For us, what is most difficult to comprehend about this form of mysticism is the extent to which it is shot through with what, to us, would appear as peculiar empirical assumptions. In contrast to the other, more theoretically grounded Indian conceptions of mysticism, Buddhism possessed a potential that went well beyond this original and seemingly primarily pessimistic concept. In Mahayana Buddhism, Nirvana was interpreted as emptiness (sunyata), and this led to a new outlook. Buddha had already taught that the soul and the self did not exist. This teaching was then taken up in such a way as to permit the designation of the person as empty, to underscore its insubstantial character. However, the same expression was also used in a positive sense for Nirvana,18 and this eventually led to the opposition between Nirvana and Samsara, between the mystical One and the worldly Many, being dismissed.19 This thought was then further developed, especially in Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhism. In Chinese Buddhism, the distress over rebirth and, with it, the primary orientation of the mystical dynamic toward the problem of suffering seem to recede into the background. In Zen Buddhism, emptiness is seen more

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like the transparency that all things acquire in the presence of the One, as illustrated in East Asian painting. It is less clear to me to what extent this is already in evidence in the different strains of Indian Mahayana Buddhism. These historical questions are less important in this context, where we are simply concerned with the differentiation of various concepts and options. Structurally speaking, with the thesis that Nirvana is not to be opposed to the world, Buddhism changes from a mysticism of type (i), as I called it earlier, to a mysticism of type (ii). Admittedly, the different currents of Mahayana and Zen Buddhism as well have retained the manner of speaking in antinomies, which happens to be specific to the tradition of Buddhism alone. Perhaps one could say therefore that what expresses itself here by means of a mysticism of type (i) is a mysticism of type (ii). This explains the peculiar “dialectical” utterances by Nagarjuna, according to which in all things one is neither to affirm nor to deny anything. It may also explain the assurances given in Zen Buddhism that the One and the Many are in fact one, even though it is not specified how this is to be understood. In contrast, in the tradition of Daoism, which has significantly influenced Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, we find a kind of mysticism that from the outset connects structures (B) and (ii), and thus can be expressed without any paradox. In Daoist mysticism, the One (the Dao) is from the outset simply the One, with regard to which everything manifold is to be seen. Daoist mysticism is firmly grounded in this world, from which it seeks no escape. Suffering plays no significant role in it: it is simply something to be integrated, definitely not eliminated.

8.

Both Buddhism and Daoism are forms of mysticism. They both strive for peace of mind by way of a stepping back from one’s own desire. However, precisely because they share this generic commonality, some basic characteristics of Daoism can best be illustrated by contrast with Buddhism. Even though the Daodejing distinguishes the Dao as an original principle that precedes Being and Nonbeing, it is, at the same time, the

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foundation of the law governing the coming into existence and the disappearance of everything (of the “ten thousand things”). In other words, it is the One of this world. In contrast to Buddhism, Daoism is a mysticism of type (ii), just as it is, again in contrast to Buddhism, a mysticism of type (B) (chapter 6, section 5). That means that, like Buddhism, Daoism stands for the renunciation of greed [Gier], but only because greed is an excess. Unlike Buddhism, Daoism does not aspire to the renunciation of all craving. Like the Buddhist, the Daoist mystic wants peace of mind, except not outside of this world but rather within it. Unlike the Buddhist, the Daoist does not want to be liberated from suffering, but rather aims to integrate it. His problem is not suffering but desire, and not even desire in general, but rather that kind of desire especially that is specific to human egocentricity. This is why Daoist mysticism is of particular importance to me: the step back that is central to it concerns precisely those aspects of human desire that I sought to bring out in the first chapters of this book. Through their situation-transcending—objectifying and temporalizing—desire, that is, through their reflective comportment, I-sayers become even more vulnerable. These additional vulnerabilities can lead them to a second level of reflection, where they ask themselves how they want to relate to this excessive desire [überschießenden Wollen]. Daoist mysticism is an attempt to solve this problem by offering an extreme idea, to wit, that of retracting these additional volitional feelers. I do not wish to advertise Daoism as a doctrine of salvation. I simply think that in it certain problems were identified, which we too can take seriously. What are these excesses of desire that Daoism aims to break down or limit? I shall first invoke an idea that is rather only marginally present in Daoist writings. It is particularly emphasized in chapter 17 (“Autumn Floods”) of the Zhuangzi,20 where it is written that whoever confronts the universe governed by Dao becomes aware, in the face of its immensity, of the relativity of all distinctions between “great” and “small,” and thus calls to mind his own smallness and insignificance.

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This leads to a second idea that takes pride of place in the Daodejing as well as in the Zhuangzi. Because of their need for recognition, it appears important to humans to appear important (see chapter 2, section 5). That one ought to seek validation and fame and that one ought to put oneself on display are components of human desire from which the Daoist sage aims to become liberated. Daoists speak of nonaction (wuwei) in this context. What is meant is not inaction, but a doing that should be as lacking in intention as nature’s is. Of course, humans would not be able to act at all if they did not act deliberately. What the Daoists have in mind can be described as follows: First, in one’s deeds (including political ones), one should not strive for recognition. Second, to keep the sphere of doing as tight as possible, one should not set oneself unnecessary goals—Laozi recommends the care for one’s own body over the striving for fame (Daodejing, §§13 and 44). In addition, one should not be overly concerned with the future, and should be free of hastiness. Third, in acting, one should not reflect on oneself; in other words, one should be acting without self-consciousness.21 This idea was later taken up in Zen Buddhism. A third complex of ideas concerns the belonging together of opposites. Here, as well, Daoists draw on nature. Everything in nature is in a constant up and down: birth and death, growth and decline, rise and fall. This is also true of human existence. He who sees things from the perspective of the Dao accepts and even welcomes changes in fortune, even adverse ones, because they are part of the whole cycle. The contrast with Indian mysticism becomes here especially obvious. Death and suffering are accepted by the Daoists because they form part of the natural cycle of things. When Laozi says, “he who sinks, rises” (§41), he does not just mean that the two are connected, but rather that one becomes more attentive when the Dao is in decline, for it is easier to remain egocentric when the Dao is on the rise. In contrast to Heraclitus, of whom this doctrine of the belonging together of opposites is reminiscent, the Daoists do not believe that oppositions make life more intense, more

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meaningful. The point is rather that whoever drifts too far to one side and does not know how to keep still will meet with a bad end (Daodejing, §16). It is not hard to understand to what extent the issue of the solidarity of life and death etc. is connected to the specifically human form of desire. Unreflective natural beings are simply subject to the ups and downs of the natural cycle (one might also think of it as a curve, a rising and falling parabola). At any moment, such beings are only aware of that position on the curve that they happen to occupy. Humans, on the other hand, see themselves as rising or falling. They reflect on what is happening and are, in their temporal anticipation, at the mercy of emotions like worry [Sorge], hope, and anxiety. They can only come to know peace therefore in a second act of reflection in which they no longer conceive of themselves as rising or falling, but rather cultivate in their lives a sense of the unity of this curve. It is this unity that is referred to as Dao. In this second reflection, the emotion known as peace of mind is achieved. For other animals, there is neither first nor second reflection, neither worry and hope, nor the possibility of achieving peace of mind. However, because in this second reflection the Daoist sage reaches a state of peace amid struggle, and because this state can appear to approximate that of natural entities, Laozi can say that the goal of the sage is to become once more like a baby (§55). A passage from the Zhuangzi that may otherwise appear enigmatic can also be understood along these lines. In chapter 6 we read that fish flourish in the water, humans in the Dao. The following interpretation suggests itself: animals other than humans live in a specific environment, whereas humans live under ever-changing conditions and in a mode of constant inconstancy. This is why they can only reach constancy by explicitly referring to the Dao, which is the unity of opposites. I believe that this Daoist doctrine of opposites can speak to us more directly than similar theories in our own tradition. This is because the latter are connected to ontological structures that come with additional difficulties and obscurities, while the Daoists exclusively focus on problems related to human action and desire. The idea that our capacity to understand is primarily tied to the Western tradition seems like a prejudice to

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me. The Daoist teaching concerning opposites contains only a minimum of theoretical assumptions. Its intention is purely practical, namely, to reach tranquility through an awareness of the unity of the entire curve. However, things cannot be left at that, seeing as we are also acting beings. We are not simply at the mercy of fate, but rather actively intervene in it. This raises a further problem that Zhuangzi addresses with the conceptual pair of “heaven and human,” and that is most clearly expressed at the beginning of chapter 6: “There are some things which man can do nothing about”22 and these should be referred to as “heaven” (without any religious connotations). “Human” refers, in this context, to the scope of one’s own activity. It is essential that humans do not interfere with the doings of heaven. In a different passage (chapter 17), we read: “do not let what is human wipe out what is Heavenly; do not let what is purposeful wipe out what is fated.”23 Chapter 6 explains that this is not so easy: “How, then, can I know that what I call Heaven is not really man, and what I call man is not really Heaven?”24 The answer is that one must always already be wise to know. This shows, once and for all, that wuwei does not imply quietism. One should make the best of the range of actions available; yet, one should not run up against the limit of this range, even though there are no simple criteria for determining where to locate it. To know this limit would presuppose that one is a “true human.” What follows in the text is a lengthy exposition of the “true human,” including his capacity to step back from excessive desire, which I have discussed earlier. Therefore, to acquire the kind of sensitivity that allows one to discriminate on a case-by-case basis, one has to have cultivated a sage’s general readiness to efface himself in view of the Dao. “In view of the Dao”: To what extent, you will wonder, is this view of the Dao a necessary condition for being a “true human”? Could it not be done without the Dao? And is this not perhaps just an empty phrase? Is it not in fact a question of attitude, of human conduct? Indeed, some of the passages of the Zhuangzi read like wisdom teachings. In the Daodejing as well, there are passages that virtually function like prudential advice

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(“he who behaves in such and such a way will live longer”). And yet, it is always the Dao that one has recourse to. The previously interpreted passage, which seemingly only addresses the attitude of the “true human” in the context of the question concerning “heaven and human,” ends with the sentence: “If he (the true human) is an ideal for humans, how much more is that on which the myriad things depend and which underlies all changes an ideal?” This is followed by a short paragraph on the Dao, which had already been described previously as the only dimension that cannot be lost. Then there is an enumeration of persons who “possess it.” What is meant here by “it”? Is it the Dao or the right attitude? And finally there is a narrative section describing a mystical immersion into the Dao.25 I do not think that this gloss is a mere add-on: the true human assures himself in the mystical immersion into the Dao, whose name—as this passage states—is “peace in the midst of struggle.”26 But the problem is, of course, not only one of interpretation. The substantive question is: Can an I-sayer collect himself and step back from himself, from his own desire, without that happening in relation to something else? Does it suffice for him to simply relate to his life and have a certain life aspiration, for example, that of realizing peace of mind? Earlier (chapter 6, section 2), I denied the very possibility of collectedness by mere self-relation. But what I meant there by self-reference was specifically the formal aspect of a reflection on oneself in the course of choosing and questioning. This formal self-reference certainly cannot suffice, because the question is: How should one live, or how does one want to live? And this question is aimed at “the How” of life. We are now facing just such a How. Is the idea of leading a life in such a way as to achieve peace of mind thinkable without reference to something else? Just like happiness or pleasure, peace of mind is not something to be targeted directly. Using the terminology of the Daoist, one can say: if one follows the Dao, peace of mind follows by itself. Analogously, I made the point earlier (chapter 6, section 1) that the Zen Buddhist collects himself by doing everything he does in relation to emptiness. The Dao and emptiness are not far apart from each other.

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But, one could ask again, are they not both empty phrases? What kind of peculiar reference points are they? Does the Dao—or emptiness—not take the place of God here? One could, however, also ask the counter question: Does not God, when serving this function, take the place of the Dao? Whoever finds the reference to God more acceptable will take exception to the impersonal aspect of the Dao, or emptiness. In the Christian tradition, it seemed obvious that, as the belief in God fell away, the only thing left was the concern for oneself, which occupied one till death. But the counter question is: Is not everybody in fact occupied, till death, with the universe of people and things? Is it not plausible, then, to see this universe as a unified How, in view of which one can step back from oneself ? Here it is important to recall the first aspect that I emphasized with respect to the Daoist stepping back from oneself—namely, that of appearing insignificant to oneself [Sich-unwichtig-Erscheinen]. How can one appear insignificant to oneself without this appearing to take place in relation to something? (Of course, someone could reply that this is precisely why it would be absurd to take oneself to be unimportant except in concrete contexts, be it within a group or relative to a cause.)

9.

Earlier (chapter 6, section 4), I stated that religion and mysticism are opposed to each other in terms of the way in which they address the problem of contingency. This claim presupposed that religion was defined the way that I defined it, namely, as a projection of one or multiple gods, which stems from a “pragmatic motive” (see chapter 6, section 4). As one can see especially in the case of the monotheistic faiths, religions can also incorporate the mystical motive, which is opposed to the pragmatic one. Nevertheless, the reason for contrasting not only the pragmatic motive but also the religious one with the mystical lies in the fact that, in my view, the pragmatic reason is essential for religion (in the sense in which I defined it, as belief in gods). This correlates with the fact that, even though the mystical is an undeniable component of religion, it is by no means self-evident

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where religion—the belief in God, which is rooted in humans’ need for help—takes this mystical element from. Of course, when I speak of the mystical factor in religion—especially in Christianity—I do not mean “mysticism” in the generally accepted sense of a specific mode of experience. The term must continue to be understood in the sense I have assigned it, namely, that of a not only relative but rather radical stepping back from oneself, from one’s own “I will.” From its ground up—that is, the pragmatic motive—religion emerges as a form of concern for the realization of wishes. Prayer, it is tempting to think, is primarily a form of petition. How is it possible, then, that prayer can suddenly turn upside down, as it were, and change into the opposite of a petition for the realization of wishes? In Gethsemane, Jesus first asks God to take “this cup” away from him, but he then adds: “Yet not what I want, but what you want,”27 just as it is stated in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.” This is an attitude that coincides with Zhuangzi’s teaching “of heaven and human.” The only difference is that Jesus expresses the readiness to submit to the will of God, and even makes God’s will his own. Zhuangzi, in contrast, refers impersonally to heaven but takes up the givens of his situation in an equally positive manner into his own will (one’s unfortunate fate is being “welcomed”). What are the respective motivations of the believer and the Daoist? This question can be answered more easily for the Daoist, I think, than for the believer. For the Daoist the acceptance of what is given is a direct result of his immersion in the relatedness of opposites and, as such, of his stepping back into the unity of the world. And what of the believer? Wherefrom does his acceptance come? It is not possible to claim, by analogy with the explanation just given, that believing stems from an insight into God’s essence. Rather, it must be said (and this at any rate is the generally accepted view) that it comes from obedience to God. But should such a basic attitude as the acceptance of what is given be understood as a virtue, namely, the virtue of children? This would fit the model called into question earlier (chapter 6, section 3), according to which religion is to be

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understood as the projection of infantile experience. If, however, one is not willing to accept that obedience to Jesus and other religious saints is the ultimate determining factor or motive, then I think one must agree that the mystical motive is crucial for believers too: what is meant by “God” is the Dao, not an entity with the characteristics of a person. For a better understanding of this problem, it seems helpful to me to draw on Eckhart’s “Counsels on Discernment,” which focus thoroughly on the idea of “Thy will be done.”28 The Counsels deal with the right relationship to God and to one’s own life. This is why prayer is also being addressed, however peripherally (§1). Eckhart states that the best prayer is not the one in which we ask God to give us something; the best one is not even the prayer “Lord, give me yourself, or give me everlasting life,” but “Lord, give me nothing but what you will.”29 Eckhart characterizes the attitude expressed in such a prayer as one in which one’s own self is being abandoned (§3). Like Zhuangzi in a similar context (see chapter 6, section 8), Eckhart speaks of the “true man” and states that there is nothing which can make him “except giving up his will” (§11).30 What he means thereby is the same thing that Zhuangzi has in mind when he speaks of the acceptance of heaven. To claim that one should abandon one’s will is, of course, a misleading way of speaking. What is intended is only ever one’s self-will [Eigenwille], that is, the insistence that things should go exactly as one wishes them to. To become free of this insistence requires precisely an act of will [ein Wollen]: that higher kind of will that I earlier referred to as a “second reflection” (chapter 6, section 8). This is what Eckhart calls “good will,” that is to say, a will “without any self-seeking” (§10).31 Of course, many of the expressions used here can be misunderstood, and “ego-attachment” [Ich-Bindung] is no exception, since the step back effected by the “good will” can only be understood as an “I will.” What Eckhart broaches here through the abandonment of “ego-attachments,” and hence subjectively, is elsewhere referred to objectively as “lack of attachment” with regard to objects, or as “freedom” from objects (§6), or even “remain(ing) unimpeded” (§7). He also illustrates this idea (§23) with

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a well-known quotation from Paul, “Possessing, we should as if we possess nothing, and still we should possess all things” (2 Cor. 6:10).32 Of course, this whole position, here as in Daoism, which comes down to a retreat into a merely passive attitude, also lends itself to misunderstanding. After all, it is a question of making the most of a given situation and freeing oneself from unproductive emotional excesses. One should not say, Eckhart warns, that “Things will never go right for me till I am in this place or that, or till I act one way or another. I must go and live in a strange land, or in a hermitage, or in a cloister” (§3).33 What Eckhart has in mind, therefore, is no retreat from the world. This would be a singular act, and an act of self-will at that, whereas the true step back is such that it must be taken again and again, in each situation. What is the justification for this attitude? Eckhart, like other mystics, answers this question in a twofold manner: first, subjectively, insofar as this attitude leads to a constant “disposition” (§6) and to inner “peace” (§7); second, in an objective manner, by pointing out that it is only in this attitude that one is standing by God. This is expressed in a way that is unavailable to those forms of mysticism that are not directed at a personal God. When one’s self-will has been abandoned, one “has been formed and shaped into God’s will” (§10).34 According to Eckhart, these two dimensions (the subjective and the objective) are equivalent: “Because as much as you are at peace, so much are you in God, and as much as you lack peace, so much do you lack God.”35 Eckhart does not see this mysticism as involving a retreat from the world of objects, “everything tastes to him [the true man] of God” (§6).36 He remains “in every place and among all people.” He does not approach God by “running away, by shunning things and shutting himself up in an external solitude.” Rather, one needs to “practice a solitude of the spirit.” What matters is “to break through things and to grasp one’s God in them” (§6). This is very similar, for example, to the attitude of the Zen Buddhist, who sees emptiness not outside, but within things. Emptiness is what makes these things transparent. It is also similar to the view in Mahayana

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Buddhism which holds that, by becoming aware of their emptiness, humans become open to emptiness (see chapter 6, section 7). I can now return to the problem that I brought up earlier with respect to Jesus. To what extent does God function as God in this context, and not as Dao? I am, of course, using the term “Dao” as a shorthand for any kind of nonpersonal conception of the numinous, in view of which a human steps back from himself. Indeed, to introduce the attitude of self-abandonment, Eckhart started out—in the very first counsel of his treatise—from obedience, but never came back to it subsequently. One could be led to believe that, by interpreting what Zhuangzi had called—without reference to a person—“heaven” and “fate” as equivalent to the way Jesus sees the will of God, Eckhart was led to an irreducibly personalist conception. Yet, we must ask ourselves: When God is no longer asked for anything, does the will of God still have the same normal function, which made one hope for or fear the direction in which God’s will would strike? Effectively, what is called God’s will throughout Eckhart’s text stands for what is actually given at any moment in time. This is not a peculiarity of Eckhart’s text, but rather the result of a transformation in the nature of prayer from supplication to a declaration of acceptance of what is given. One could say that the religious attitude in this case incorporates the mystical attitude. But one could also say that, in doing so, it ceases to be religious and passes over into mysticism. It all depends on how one understands the term “religious.” Yet, it should also be clear that we are not dealing here simply with a question of terminology, but rather with a problem that admittedly can only be seen from the first-person perspective. The extent to which it is possible to be a mystic without having a religion (in the narrow sense) does not arise as a problem for anyone belonging to a Buddhist or Daoist tradition. But it does arise for those who belong to the Christian tradition. If they believe that they can no longer think of themselves as religious, they need to ask themselves to what extent their mystical self-concept (if they have one) still contains components that can only be understood in a personal sense, as it happens in thanks and praise giving, and as it is also the case with the undeniably

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personal overtones of Eckhart’s concept of acceptance. Is it exclusively owing to the fact that we belong to the Judeo-Christian tradition that we cannot give up our personalist assumptions (“thy will be done”)? Or is it an indication rather that humans are from the get-go so extensively dependent on personal relationships that, when they seek to collect themselves in relation to the numinous, they cannot do so without the projection of a divine person, which is to them essential?

10.

When one compares the Christian with the Daoist attitude, as we just did, one notices that the Daoist is lacking in love. The Daoist sage is friendly and benevolent, but also withdrawn and self-sufficient. The question that arises is whether, and in what way, the idea of a universally selfless love could emerge in religion, on the one hand, and in mysticism, on the other. The most impressive example of a conjunction of mysticism and universal love is reflected in the Bodhisattva ideal found in Mahayana Buddhism. However, we wish to understand this connection in a more fundamental way. In the Old Testament the sentence “Love thy neighbor” was a commandment. To the question as to why one should love one’s neighbor the answer was simply: because God has commanded it. The idea of selfless love is here, in the personal aspect of religion, grounded in the crass form of authority and obedience. If we ask what the ground for this commandment is, no answer is forthcoming, or we move round in circles. In the New Testament, love continues to be a divine commandment, but this time the commandment is shored up by the idea that God loves human beings (1 John 4). The motivation for selfless and universal love comes from the wish to be close to God. Admittedly, the issue of comprehension is thereby deferred by one step only, because God’s love for humanity (or the idea of Him being love [1 John 4:16]) is just postulated as a fact. This fact is accepted with wonder and humility from within the religious attitude. Upon reflection, however, this fact appears as an ultimate reality (theologians speak of “revelation”). This difficulty seems to me to

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be foundational. I cannot see how the idea of universal love can be made intelligible from within the religious attitude as such (that is, without the addition of a mystical element). Let us now turn to a consideration of Mahayana Buddhism. The transition from the Arhat—the ideal of an ascetic and meditative sage in Theravada Buddhism—to the boundlessly gracious Bodhisattva is perhaps the most astonishing event in the history of mysticism. Even though the Bodhisattva aspires to salvation in Nirvana, he postpones its attainment until all creatures have been saved, a task in which he is actively engaged. Occasionally this is characterized in such a way that a second but equally important motive comes to light, in addition to that of wisdom: it is the quality of compassion.37 Yet, such an additive characterization of the new ideal is unsatisfactory. How could the new concept be understood in a coherent way? And how could it intelligibly distinguish itself from the old ideal and assert itself against it? In such a way as to leverage the objection against the old ideal that, by exclusively striving for his own salvation, the Arhat has not really freed himself from his self-centeredness [Selbstbezogenheit].38 Admittedly, one could argue that it was not selflessness [Selbstlosigkeit] that the Buddha strived for, but rather the release from suffering, and that such release can only be achieved by each person for him- or herself. Clearly, there are two concepts of selflessness at play here. It was the meditative ideal of the Buddha to achieve the truth, which for him (as well as for almost all strains of Indian mysticism) consisted in the realization that nothing determinate and therefore no self [nichts Ichhaftes] exists in reality. This is different from the attitude of selflessness, which consists in making the well-being of others one’s own goal (altruism). Selflessness in either of these two senses presupposes the negation of the other. At the same time, against the Arhat’s striving for Nirvana it could be objected that, as long as he endeavors to attain the condition of selflessness, he still seeks to achieve something for himself, though he pretends to be convinced that this “self ” does not exist. If in this manner we believe we can prove to the Arhat that he is guilty of a contradiction,39 then the ideal of the Bodhisattva must appear to us

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as entangled in an even more severe contradiction.40 If it is true that, in reality, no individuals and no selves exist—which is the general Buddhist assumption, to which the Mahayana and Theravada (and for that matter Vedanta Buddhism as well) are equally committed—then it must also be true that there are no persons to whom the Bodhisattva could show compassion either. Wisdom and compassion would therefore be two conflicting paths. Conze shows that this contradiction has indeed been seen and accepted in Mahayana Buddhism; when one treats contradictions as Nagarjuna learned to do, it becomes possible to leave everything at that. However, even though this was the last word on the matter in Mahayana Buddhism (and probably in Zen Buddhism as well), it need not be so “for us,” that is, on the merits of the matter itself. Of course, a contradiction like the one between wisdom and compassion only emerges when wisdom, and hence mysticism, is understood—as in Buddhism and in Vedanta—in such a way that the One to which the mystic relates is a One in which everything manifold disappears rather than the unity of this world (see chapter 6, section 5). However, the fact that it is also possible to interpret the mystical in this second sense not only is demonstrated by Daoism, but is also quite clear, it seems to me, from the matter at hand. Even in Mahayana Buddhism, we come across views to this effect, especially in the teaching concerning the “mutual interpenetration” of all things, as defended in the Ganda Vyuha in the Avatamsaka Sutra.41 This teaching is obviously an attempt to reinforce ontologically the Bodhisattva ideal of universal love. If one does not shy away from this contradiction in praxis, one need not shun the doubling in theory either. Such doubling does not even amount to a contradiction: ultimately and truly, one could say, everything is just One, and the equivalent of this One in the world of appearances (or the domain of human false consciousness) is the unity and mutual interpenetration of all things. However, if one starts from the distinctions that I introduced earlier (chapter 6, section 5), and keeps in mind that the thought of a unity in which the manifold disappears is a problematic construction, which is most probably rooted in a practical idea (a certain idea of mysticism) (chapter 6, section 6), and if, on the other hand, one takes into account

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that the unity of the world is an indubitable fact for I-sayers, which can be variously interpreted, be it in terms of Daoism or some other philosophy, then the first member of the theoretical doublet—the One in which the manifold disappears—can be omitted. And now this entire line of thought can be reversed. Instead of starting, like Mahayana Buddhism, from the idea of universal love as if this idea were a new motive, and instead of asking how to prevent this idea from coming into conflict with the presupposition of mystical unity, it seems far more natural to start from the more plausible concept of a this-worldly [diesseitigen] mysticism (on the model of [ii]) and to set forth the idea of universal love as the only convincing embodiment of the mystical attitude. The core of such a this-worldly mysticism consists in taking oneself to be less important relative to the world, that is, relative to the other beings one encounters in the world, and hence, first and foremost, relative to other human beings. At the end of chapter 4, I attempted to show that there is a mystical dimension to any form of holding oneself in abeyance for the benefit of others: the transition between one’s partial attempts to put oneself into perspective and the absolute form that such efforts take in mysticism is gradual and smooth. What is specific to the mystical act of putting oneself into perspective is that it is carried out vis-à-vis the universe, and hence vis-à-vis everybody and everything. The criticism formulated by Mahayana Buddhism against the older form of mysticism focuses on the primarily passive and contemplative attitude of the mystic. The mystic might object to the ideal of universal love on the grounds that it leads back to goals, and hence right back into the domain of egocentricity. But his objection in turn can be dismissed by means of a concept of active love, for which—quite appropriately—the term “compassion” is used rather than the ambiguous “love.” It could therefore, reciprocally, be objected that the contemplative mystic, in striving for his own peace of mind, remains especially bound by egocentricity, which could only be overcome through an active attitude of universal compassion. If an active attitude is to replace the mystic’s contemplative disposition altogether, this attitude could hardly be imagined as anything other

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than universal compassion or disinterested love. The term “kindheartedness” [Herzensgüte] suggests itself here. It is probably part of the concept of kindheartedness that it is “extended equally to all.” But how should we conceive of such evenhanded and disinterested conduct, if not in terms of mysticism? Where else would such kindheartedness, which is extended to all equally, come from? It is not a genuinely moral concept;42 nor is kindheartedness to be understood as a genetic disposition. If some people give the impression that they possess kindheartedness “by nature,” this apparent naturalness arises rather from the fact that the possibility of cultivating a mystical outlook—by stepping back from oneself—is rooted in the natural structure of I-sayers. In contrast with other, differently justified concepts of love, is not mysticism then likely to appear as the only comprehensible justification of the attitude of universal love? The only other justifications (by commandment and by prefiguration), as we know them from the Old and the New Testament, can only be understood, according to their own meaning, as secondary. The way in which Jesus connects unconcern about the future (Matt. 6:25) to universal love (wherein he comes close to Daoists) can reasonably be seen as mysticism in religious dress. Mahayana Buddhism appears, at any rate, to be the clearest example of a belief system in which an attitude of nondiscriminatory and disinterested love has been explicitly linked to the mystical act of stepping back from oneself, as a consequence thereof. The apparent contradictions arising thereby were treated as merely an effect of the specifically escapist, individuality-erasing character with which mysticism was identified in Buddhism. (It is better to understand contradictions as the effect of theoretical confusion, rather than as signs of a more profound wisdom.) Conze has shown that even Theravada Buddhism knew the idea of universal goodness, even though in it the “unlimited good will” was only intended as a preparatory exercise for complete renunciation.43 Having resolved the contradiction apparent in the criticism that Mahayana Buddhism directed at the Theravada ideal, it is now possible to apply this criticism to all other types of mysticism that are primarily

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contemplative, such as the Vedanta, but also Daoism. As long as mysticism is taken to consist in a primary focus on one’s own peace of mind, I-sayers will not have managed to step back from themselves absolutely. Ultimately, the ideal of the Bodhisattva is the only consistent mystical attitude.

7 WONDER

The aspect of the numinous to which Rudolf Otto refers as mysterious (mysterium) and awe-inspiring (mirum) (chapter 6, section 3) remained in the background in chapter 6. When, in a mystical encounter with the world, human beings take a step back from their objects of concern, they must pay explicit attention to the world, instead of relying on the tacit sense of allness [Allheit] that, as shown in chapter 1, belongs from the outset to the objectifying consciousness of I-sayers. The Daoist mystics, for example, do just that when they speak of the Dao, which holds sway over heaven and earth. How can this attentiveness to the world be communicated in such a way as to meet contemporary demands? In asking this question, it is a good idea to follow Wittgenstein. In “A Lecture on Ethics,”1 he, on the one hand, referred to his felt perplexity at the existence of the world as his “experience par excellence” (8). On the other hand, he regarded the propositions [Sätze] by which he expressed this perplexity—“how peculiar that anything exists at all,” “how strange that the world exists”—as meaningless. The linguistic expression of such experiences is, according to him, “nonsense” (8), a “hopeless running” (12) against the limits of language. In the Tractatus, it was clear—and hence there was no need to specifically show—that propositions like these could not fit into the semantic

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theory of the early Wittgenstein. In his “Lecture on Ethics,” by contrast, Wittgenstein provides a justification for why such propositions could not have any meaning. This justification, which seems plausible even beyond the Tractatus, runs as follows: it is impossible to wonder at something if one cannot imagine that this something may not have existed at all. One might have expected Wittgenstein to once more turn to this problem from the perspective of the semantics that he developed in his later philosophy. He did not do so, however, even though mysticism had been an essential preoccupation for him.2 Did it cease to be important, or did Wittgenstein take the argument developed in the lecture to be conclusive? Whatever the case may be, it is necessary to take this problem up afresh, because the possibility of being explicitly attentive to the world is foundational for mysticism. Besides, Wittgenstein was not the only one to have taken an interest in such propositions. Other twentieth-century philosophers, especially Heidegger, did so as well.3 Why were twentieth-century philosophers particularly drawn to mysticism? Thinking about this question helps us better understand what gives these propositions their weight. For they replace the earlier formula by which Western philosophy had expressed the process of becoming attentive to a totality. Aristotle claimed that the concept of being and the concept of the One are the most universal concepts (Metaphysics 1001a22). This is why the most universal question is, what is being as being (1003a21)? This too was an attempt to establish firmly the highest mode of wonder. Aristotle does not mention wonder in this context, but uses the notion of aporia (1028b3), which for him was equivalent (see 982b17). What are we to make of the fact that, in the twentieth century, the notion of wonder at the world replaced the earlier formula of wonder at the being of beings? In keeping with today’s standard historicizing narrative about the “end of metaphysics,” the answer would be: because metaphysics has come to an end, it has become impossible to use its basic formula anymore. Yet such ideas, according to which some things are no longer “possible,” as if the time of metaphysics were over like that of a plant, stand the matter on its head. Instead of talking like this, we can reflect on

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those aspects of the old formula that are unsatisfactory and that justify reformulating it now. The Aristotelian formula concerns a universal feature shared by all individuals. It ignores the fact that all individuals belong together with everything else in the world. It does not mention the universe, but only what is “universal”: one moves from one individual to the next and takes stock of what they have in common (“what belongs to it as such” [1003a21]). The new formula of wonder is, from the start, directed at the entire region in which everything is, and in which one can move from one individual to the next. This is the justification for speaking of a “world” and, in general, for using formulations with a that-clause (for example, “that something exists”).4 I come now to the reservations or objections regarding this formula of the perplexity [Sichwundern] at the existence of the world. Strictly speaking, there are two such skeptical worries. First, the question arises whether the proposition “something exists,” or “the world exists,” has any intelligible meaning at all. Second, if this proposition does have a meaning, does it even make sense to say that one can be perplexed by it (or find it peculiar)? In his lecture on ethics, Wittgenstein restricts himself to the second question. It is the first question that poses the true difficulty, and he only alludes to that when he remarks that we are dealing with a misuse not only of the term “wonder” [Staunen], but also of the term “existence” [Existenz]. Is it true that one misuses the word “exists” when one asserts that anything at all exists, or that the world exists? This much is true: the term is not being used in its conventional sense. Yet, in view of the unique character of the subject matter, this is not surprising. The question then has to be whether “exists,” even in this unusual use, has an intelligible meaning—an “explicable” one, to speak like later Wittgenstein. In the background of Wittgenstein’s reference to misuse stands that meaning of “exists” that Russell believed he had reduced all ordinary existential propositions to, that is, the meaning that is expressed by the existential quantifier of modern logic. This reduction is problematic, however, since Russell’s explanation of existential propositions implies a so-called universe of discourse.5 In other

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words, it presupposes an objective universe of objects in space and time, which we can allegedly go through in sequence and identify individually as a, b, c, and so forth. This is what is presupposed when we follow Russell in interpreting the proposition that an F exists to mean that one out of all those objects (identifiable as a, b, or c, and so on) has to be F. Therefore, this usage of normal existential propositions in Russell’s sense presupposes an accessible objective world: it presupposes that a, b, c, and so forth exist as well, yet not in the sense of “exist” that can only be defined by recourse to them. When we wonder at the fact that something exists, what we mean by “something” is one of the objects designated as a, b, or c, and so forth. The proposition that the world exists refers to the entire universe of discourse, to the totality of objects. But what does this mean? We can also speak of a world that is only possible, or imagined, or dreamt-of. And we can refer to the actual world as the existing one (this is simply a question of terminology). If one uses the term “exists” in this way (in the sense of “actually existing”), this usage is quite different from the one in “lions exist.” But the two meanings have something in common. It is therefore hard to see why it should be illegitimate to use this term with reference to the world. Let us now move on to the second difficulty, and the only one Wittgenstein explicitly emphasized, namely, that we can only wonder at something if we can imagine its opposite. It makes sense, but why does the incriminated proposition (that “the world exists”) fail to fulfill this condition? Even on the account that I offered of the first difficulty, this contrast between “it is so” and “it is not so” is also implied in the proposition that “the world exists.” Every morning when I wake up, I can be perplexed by the fact that I am once again in the actual world and no longer in an imaginary one. This could be countered by saying that what I am perplexed at, in this instance, is not so much the fact that the world exists, but rather that the objective world, common to all, is available to me again. But the contrast between this actual world and the various modes of an imaginary world cannot be denied. It is such an obvious contrast that philosophers have time and time again considered whether and how it would be possible to prove that the world in which I take myself to be in is the real one.

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Others have inquired about the way in which an objective and shared world is constituted for us. Wittgenstein is thus mistaken when he states, “I cannot even imagine that the world does not exist.”6 Toward the end of his lecture, Wittgenstein tries to shed some light on this problem of the perplexity at the existence of the world from yet another angle. We are perplexed, he claims, by what is out of the ordinary, and by what we initially take to be incomprehensible. But if we do not want to see this extraordinary thing as just a miracle [als Wunder], and leave it at that, we then inquire into its reasons, that is, we look for an explanation. Apparently, Wittgenstein wants to say that speaking of a perplexity at the existence of the world does not fit our ordinary concept of perplexity [Sichwundern]. That the world exists is nothing out of the ordinary, but rather the most selfevident fact there is, which is why we cannot ask for its reasons. But does this count as an objection to the real possibility of experiencing wonder at the existence of the world? While Wittgenstein’s initial reservation (that one should also be able to imagine the opposite situation) only had to do with a necessary condition for wonder, his second reservation touches upon the question of whether we can even speak of wonder and perplexity in this context at all. Let’s assume we cannot. Would it not be appropriate then to ask what other word would be suitable to characterize this attentiveness to the fact that the world exists? Now the question is no longer whether it is meaningful to pay heed to the existence of the world; it is rather whether it is meaningful to express this heedfulness or attentiveness as perplexity and wonder. In this context, it is remarkable that Wittgenstein, when he introduces the propositions expressing wonder at the existence of the world, does not even speak of perplexity. Instead, he uses purely cognitive expressions: in the German translation, wie sonderbar [how peculiar] and wie seltsam [how strange], and in the English original “how extraordinary.” Perhaps what is essential here is not the nuance of perplexity, but rather the idea of simply taking note [Aufmerken]? In perplexity and wonder, an additional emotion is expressed, which is so strikingly different from the rest that Spinoza dropped it again from his

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catalogue after Descartes had introduced it as the first of his six primary emotions.7 According to Descartes, the function of all other emotions is to focus the attention of the individual on issues that are good or bad for him or her, whereas the function of wonder is to call attention to objects that warrant consideration simply on cognitive grounds (§76). When is this supposed to happen? Descartes says: whenever something is new (§53) or unfamiliar (§75). However, this would unnecessarily narrow the scope of wonder. In Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, for example, “wonder” is defined as “the emotion excited by novelty or by something strange or not well understood.” It would thus seem better, for a start, to hold on to the formal determination or rule, according to which one feels wonder whenever something is noteworthy, even if it is of no utility to the person. Next we would need to ask under what condition something is noteworthy at a purely cognitive level. Descartes also leaves open the question as to what the specifically emotional component of wonder amounts to. Noteworthiness therefore seems to remain too formal an aspect. I would next like to go one step further into the history of the problem. It is well known that Plato and Aristotle considered wonder to be the starting point of philosophizing. In his monograph Über das Staunen [On Wonder],8 Stefan Matuschek sought to emphasize the emergence, at this point, of two opposing objectives. For Aristotle, perplexity—to the extent that it is relevant to the scientist—is only an occasion to start asking for reasons; wondering ceases as soon as the reasons become known. According to Plato, the philosopher reaches higher stages of wonder (ekplexis) as he ascends toward the realm of ideas. Matuschek is of course not without justification when he interprets this divergence in terms of two competing conceptions of philosophy, which he then traces throughout the history of European philosophy and mysticism. And yet, it seems no less justified to take into account a structural differentiation that becomes visible here in the concept of perplexity. Ecstatic wonder, of which Plato speaks in Phaedrus (250a), comes from attending to objects [Aufmerken auf Gegenstände]. For Plato, these objects are ideas, but structurally this could be seen as just one case of attending to or

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taking note of something. In contrast, when we are perplexed about a state of affairs, we are dealing with a proposition. Whenever we say, “how strange that .  .  . ,” a proposition follows, for example, a predicative proposition: “how strange that the door is open,” or with one of Aristotle’s examples (Metaphysics 983a15), “people begin by wondering that the matter is so,” for example, “the incommensurability of the diagonal of a square with the side.” Or it could be an existential proposition (“how strange that only three sheep are left in the barn”). And every time, whether these propositions are used in everyday contexts or in science, it seems only natural that perplexity should in these cases lead to asking, “Why? How can this be explained?”—in other words, to questions of justification. When one is perplexed that p, it would be nonsensical to stop at acknowledging the peculiarity one is perplexed by. A peculiarity of this kind appears more like an illumination: one understands that acknowledging something noteworthy must lead implicitly to questioning the reasons why it is the way that it is. In contrast, if one wonders (for whatever reasons) at something, one apparently thinks that this thing is so remarkable that one must pay attention to it, and could perhaps immerse oneself in it. It seems useful to distinguish also verbally here between, in the one case, perplexity (about the fact that p) and wonder (at A), in the other. It is part of the meaning of what we refer to as wonder [Staunen] that one can sustain it for a longer period of time—it is therefore an activity of the kind that Aristotle referred to as energeia (Metaphysics 9.6). In that respect, it is similar to the two modes of behavior of viewing and contemplating, which are Aristotle’s standard examples,9 whereas the form of attentiveness or notice [Aufmerken] that is expressed in the perplexity [Sichwundern] about the fact that p constitutes an event, which points beyond itself (to questions of justification), and is therefore fleeting. The precise manner of using these German terms is not at issue here, especially since there are no exact equivalents of these verbal variants in other languages. Rather, what is at issue is the fact that, for beings who speak a propositional language, there are all these various ways in which they can become attentive to something: they can take notice that p, on the

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one hand, and of A, on the other. Standing in wonder before something is less likely today to make us think, like Plato, of transcendent entities such as the ideas; it is far more natural for it to evoke for us instead an experience of beauty (Plato also started with it in Phaedrus and the Symposium) and especially of works of art. By the same token, we can always stand in wonder before a human being, or a beetle, or a cell structure. Whenever we stand before a work of art and allow ourselves to be touched by it, we see this work as something in which we can immerse ourselves—as something that has captivated us, perhaps even shocked us. Think of a self-portrait by Rembrandt, for example. The viewer is here doubly addressed: first, by Rembrandt’s gaze, and then by the aesthetic quality of the image. Must we call such attentive self-immersion in an object “wonder”? The answer is, not necessarily; but we can. This term is particularly fitting in such cases where we are prone to exclaiming, “how astonishing that this (image, human being, and the like) should exist.” In this case, wondering at A also expresses itself in a proposition, and so Wittgenstein’s criterion—according to which perplexity or wonder always presupposes that its object could also not exist—would be satisfied here as well. Except such an existential proposition obviously does not lead to asking for a reason. Should we then say that the feeling of something being immeasurable and inexplicable belongs to the experience of wonder? If so, we could say that perplexity, which is inherently conducive to an inquiry about reasons, and wonder have this in common, namely, that in both we are thrust against the limits of our own understanding. Therein lies, it would appear, that special emotional element that sets perplexity and wonder apart from mere attentiveness [Aufmerken]. The only difference is that this confrontation with our own ignorance functions, in the case of perplexity, as an occasion for further inquiry, whereas in wonder it manifests as an awareness of something that lies beyond the realm of all possible explanation. But that does not mean that, in wonder, we abdicate all desire to explain. Wonder would rapidly wane if we did not want to explain as much as possible about whatever triggered it—the Rembrandt, the beetle, the cell, and so forth. But the fact that such a thing exists at all seems to be beyond

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explanation, unlike the “is” of a proposition that causes perplexity. This is why the two attitudes of perplexity and wonder can be combined. The fact that a natural scientist studies the functioning of an ant does not mean he does not wonder at the very existence of this species. The fact that an art historian does research on the Rembrandt painting does not prevent him from finding its very existence beyond comprehension. It is necessary to further distinguish a third form of perplexed attentiveness [sich wundernden Aufmerken]. At the circus, for example, the audience is astonished [staunt]. Here as well, it is not a question of inquiring into reasons. Just as little is it a matter of a contemplative engagement with an object: what makes the audience wonder [staunt] is not a thing, but rather a performance, or a chain of events. The existence of this “inferior,” curiosity-driven form has often been emphasized by authors who have discussed wonder.10 Both kinds of wonder can be captivating, but in different ways. A common element in both is the fact that their object (singular or plural) is perceived such that it surpasses our own understanding or capacity to explain. The thrill of a circus act comes from not being able to understand how it is done; we may not grasp it, but we do not doubt that it is in itself quite understandable. In contrast, he who wonders at something beautiful, or a work of art, experiences it (if he indeed wonders) as something inscrutable. There is a dynamic to each of these three forms. But whereas the dynamic of perplexity consists in pointing away from itself toward an inquiry into grounds or reasons, both forms of wonder have an inner dynamic that allows them to last longer. Wondering at something makes us tarry with it for its own sake—the dynamic here is one of self-immersion—whereas the dynamic of wondering at a performance consists in the rapid succession of peculiar effects, which is essential if wonder is to last, and whose function it is to prevent boredom from setting in. Therefore, the three forms stand for three ways in which human beings, who in virtue of their propositional language are able to respond to reasons, come up against the limits of their ability to find them.

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It cannot be the task here to go into all the different ways we wonder at the fact that A exists. However, it seems reasonable to ask what it means that we can wonder not only at A, for whatever reason, but also at the sheer fact that A exists. It is possible, for example, to simply let a beautiful object or work of art act on our senses or emotions. Yet, when we wonder at it, we not only react subjectively, but also perceive it as an independent entity. In other words, we behave not only aesthetically toward it, but also cognitively. And this objectifying attitude is intensified even further when our wonder is directed at its very existence (“how astonishing that this chaconne exists”), for then it is seen as having a place in the world. The world is the stage on which we can find it astonishing that this too exists: everything else is now a foil, and this entity appears center stage [Mittelpunkt]. We possess the capacity to become so engrossed in something being true that our own egocentric position as a focal point [Mittelpunkt] recedes into the background. It is also conceivable that only our own perceptual shortcomings prevent us from experiencing the same wonder at other centers or focal points. It can therefore be said that any such proposition of the form “how astonishing that A exists” points to the mystical. The world is the site of all these propositions. This is why every time we wonder at the fact that A exists, a reference to the world is also implied. If we want to make explicit what is only implicit, we can use, for example, Wittgenstein’s proposition “How extraordinary that the world should exist” (8). One reason why Wittgenstein believed that we cannot wonder at the existence of the world was because he thought it was only possible to experience wonder or perplexity before something extraordinary (Descartes also thought so). But once we realize that what arouses wonder and perplexity lies in the awareness that we are confronted with something that is not understood, it becomes clear that rarity is just one of many cases. Even the entry on wonder in Webster’s Dictionary rightly states, “or something not well understood”; yet the use of “or” is incorrect, precisely because the general case is rather: once understood, what is out of the ordinary no longer provokes any astonishment.

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If only what is extraordinary could arouse perplexity, philosophical wonder would have to be incomprehensible; this is in fact what Wittgenstein himself thought, which is why he understood philosophy exclusively as a form of therapy. Philosophical wonder bears on that which is taken for granted in any act of understanding, and which cannot be understood by explicitly focusing on it. The locus classicus for this sense of wonder is the passage in Plato’s Theaetetus in which Socrates calls attention to those elements of understanding, like being, number, and identity (184bff.), that do not derive from sensuous experience. Why is it that in philosophy we wonder at the meaning of such terms? Augustine’s dictum, to which late Wittgenstein also has recourse, is relevant here: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.”11 The same goes for the proposition “the world exists.” We can wonder at it as well. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between wondering about the understanding of this proposition and wondering at the fact that the world exists. Philosophical wonder concerns only the structures of our understanding, not the world or the objects in it. It is nevertheless possible to combine the two by saying, “How wondrous that we can wonder at the fact that something (or the world) should exist.”

ADDENDUM On Historical and Nonhistorical Inquiry

Two methodical aspects of this book might strike the reader as especially peculiar. It might seem peculiar first that, in the first five chapters of this book, I spoke in such an unhistorical manner about human beings as Isayers, and, second, that in chapter 6, I established connections between historical phenomena that are so very far apart. Is it possible to speak about what is human in such general terms, or should all claims about humans be related to a specific period and culture? This question shows the extent to which the two peculiarities are intertwined. If everything were only intelligible in relation to its time and culture, it would be impossible to connect cultural phenomena in any way other than chronologically. But the question can also be posed the other way around. Is it at all possible to speak of a historical period without thereby making universal anthropological assumptions? If one asks, for example, how it is possible to lead a humane life under the conditions of global capitalism, one presupposes a concept of human life that cannot be derived from a specific historical period. Any attempt at understanding an epoch presupposes such descriptive anthropological concepts. Anglo-American philosophy discusses anthropological concepts and problems in philosophical subdisciplines such as the philosophy of

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language, the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind, and so forth. In these subdisciplines, it is taken for granted that the given subject matter is to be treated in a nontemporal manner. However, the compartmentalization into individual subdisciplines cannot stand. Every philosophical question should be once again traced back to a more fundamental one, and since the somersaults of ontology and transcendental philosophy are no longer convincing, the question as to how we should understand ourselves as human beings takes center stage. Social philosophy cannot fulfill this function, because it does not form the basis of all other philosophical subdisciplines and because it too has a specifiable anthropological foundation (see chapter 1, section 1). And yet, it will be argued, concepts must be understood in their historical conditionality. I believe that the extent to which anthropological concepts can be put under scrutiny from a historical perspective is overestimated today. It is not even clear how this idea of historical conditioning is to be understood. Are we to think, more synchronically, of a dependency on socioeconomic conditions, or—more diachronically—of an immanent history of ideas? These two approaches preclude each other. According to the first perspective, a concept can only be understood if the causes leading to its formation are known. According to the second perspective, understanding a concept requires us to know its prehistory. Both approaches seem mistaken to me. To understand a concept is to be able to explain the corresponding word in the sense of this concept. For such a task, the concept’s earlier history is just as irrelevant as etymology is for the meaning of the word. What is possible, of course, is to prove that the scope of a concept is narrower than it was thought to be. To take an example, it is sometimes suggested that there are human languages that lack a certain structure previously taken to be universal. Or one comes to the realization that what used to be regarded as just is based on the special outlook of a social class. Such a procedure allows for a description of existing concepts as limited, but not for the discovery of those new concepts needed to replace the old ones.1 Let us now turn to the second peculiar feature mentioned in the beginning of this addendum. How is it to be evaluated? It is connected to my

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distinction between the first- and the third-person perspectives (see chapter 6, section 2). The wording is no doubt less than clear, and perhaps there is a better name for what I mean by it. This distinction between two manners of relating to historical material is in turn grounded in a grammatical distinction. Suppose a certain individual—person A, for instance, a previous philosopher—has said or written such and such; let us call it p. Now, the historian or contemporary philosopher—person B—has two possibilities for relating to A and p. He can give an account of what A said, including A’s own justification for p. But he can also ask himself whether p is justified. The first option is what I have been referring to as the third-person perspective. I call it “third-person,” because person B speaks about the opinions and reasons of person A. The other option is what I referred to as the “first-person perspective”: “first-person” because, in this case, person B is less concerned with what person A said and why A takes that claim to be justified. Instead, person B wants to know for himself whether the claim is true. This presupposes, of course, that person B can relate to the same subject matter (the same propositional content) as person A, and hence that this subject matter can be understood without reference to time and place. At stake is a certain bifurcation [Gabelung] that pertains fundamentally to the way in which a human being can absorb what an other says. One is either interested in the fact that the other person has said p, or one takes it as incidental that this other person ever existed, and it all comes down to p and whether p is justified. A philosophical text, for example, will usually include such a justification already, and the difference between the two perspectives becomes even more pronounced in this case. If person B considers the text from the third-person perspective, he will accept the justification offered by person A, since it is part of the text, but will not inquire whether this justification is convincing. In third-person accounts, person B is primarily interested in person A and in p only insofar as it was stated by A, hence only as a form of indirect speech. From the first-person perspective, B is not interested in A, but only in p. Let us apply this distinction to the history of philosophy. (Later on I will ask how far-reaching it is.) There have been periods in the history of

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philosophy that were primarily receptive. For the most part, what these periods were interested in was to know what had been said in the history of philosophy. And this whether one took oneself to be part of a tradition (as was the case, for instance, with the scholastics), or whether one believed that the history of philosophy (and with it the history of humanity, or of “the West”) unfolded according to a certain immanent principle, as was the case with Hegel in one way and with Heidegger in the other. There are still philosophers who believe that there will always be Thomists, Hegelians, and Heideggerians, and take themselves to be such, but this attitude is rather difficult to understand and take seriously nowadays. A philosopher is not someone who belongs to a certain tradition, but rather someone who asks certain substantive questions. A philosopher only turns to earlier philosophers to the extent that he believes we can learn something from them about these substantive issues. In other words, we relate to these philosophers from the first-person perspective. This means not only that we evaluate the arguments we find in a philosopher’s work in terms of soundness [Triftigkeit], but also that we will only engage with those thoughts of a philosopher that appear important to us. Quite often, we have to wear both hats at the same time, that of a philosopher and that of a historian, because we know that, in pursuing a philosopher’s thoughts independently of their original context, we may miss out on something important. Nevertheless, the results of a third-person inquiry can only provide a foundation. From the third-person perspective, it might appear aesthetically satisfying to restore the internal consistency of a philosopher’s thoughts. But whoever sets out to consider those thoughts from the first-person perspective will not shy away from registering ruptures and contradictions. Philosophies are not works of art. In so-called continental philosophy, especially since Hegel and then again since Heidegger, there is a tradition according to which what matters is to present the thought of every early philosopher as internally consistent—What for? Above all, this tradition mandates that some unifying thought-historical connection be found with respect to both individual concepts and overall philosophical positions. If the moniker “continental philosophy” has any meaning today, it

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is to designate this philosophical persuasion. One can clearly see, however, that philosophical concepts and problems do not have an immanent history the way that plants do. Such mechanisms of immanent development as imagined by Hegel and Heidegger simply do not exist. This can be made plain in the relatively simple situations in which the relationship between a philosopher and one of his predecessors comes to the fore— as, for instance, Aristotle in relation to Plato, Spinoza to Descartes, or Hegel to Kant. What “led” from one to the other? First of all, there was a multiplicity of causal relations of a social, economic, and psychological nature, about which we will always know too little. Second, there were the very reasons that the later philosopher had for distancing himself from his predecessor. But this means that the first-person perspective was always already the perspective that philosophers adopted toward one another in the history of their discipline. At this point, the follow-up question arises as to how far it is possible to interrogate causally the new conception held by a later philosopher relative to an earlier one. However, to the extent that such a causal interrogation of a rational argument [eine Argumentation nach Gründen] succeeds occasionally, the argument itself goes up in flames: for it was these causes all along, and not the alleged reasons, that were decisive for the philosopher’s opinion. (This is why we normally only look for causes once the reasons appear rather unconvincing.) The causal interrogation of reasons is a form of destructive groundwork: in light of it, the opinion under scrutiny must be either justified differently or entirely dismissed. Whoever practices philosophy from the first-person perspective can only attach a negative significance to the traditions in which they find themselves working. It is an either/or kind of proposition, wherein either I can justify an inherited opinion, which thereby ceases to be merely an inheritance, or I break away from it because it seems unjustified to me. Therefore, a person belonging to the Western philosophical tradition, for example, will first of all regard the history of this tradition as if it were a quarry. He will treat it irreverently, and only extract from it what he needs in order to address what he sees as a substantive issue. He will also

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incorporate elements from other traditions, though he will do so in a more circumspect manner, since he is not likely to understand them as well. This brings me to the question of how legitimate was my attempt, in chapter 6, to bring together elements from different traditions in such a simple or unmediated manner. Just as, in matters of justification, I can argue with any historical philosopher at will, I must also be able to establish connections between the justifications offered by philosophers belonging to different civilizations, provided that they are discussing the same subject matter, or at least I believe that they do so. This assumption of mine is, of course, fallible. I have thus far spoken only of the confrontation with philosophers of the past. But if we want to know how far-reaching this first-person method of inquiry is, the answer seems obvious enough: it extends as far as reasons do. This is why I could investigate mystical and religious positions from the first-person perspective. For they too are, under normal circumstances, argued for or justified somehow; and even when they are not explicitly, we can still ask ourselves what reasons are implied. The only difference is that, instead of claims, justification concerns an entire praxis. To investigate a practice from the first-person perspective means to consider it as one’s own, and hence to assess whether it is based on good or bad reasons. But, just as with the justification of claims, the interpreter can adopt a thirdperson perspective and limit himself to simply understanding the reasons as stated. I would like to clarify my distinction between the two approaches (from the third- and the first-person perspectives) by contrasting it to a similar distinction that was essential for Gadamer’s conception of hermeneutics. In part 2 of Truth and Method, Gadamer introduces the idea of historical understanding, which he opposes to the objectivist concepts of nineteenth-century historiography. The Gadamerian hermeneutician does not aim at objectivity, but brings his subjectivity into play, and enters into a “dialogue” with what he wants to understand. To grasp the horizon of understanding of the interpretandum, the interpreter has to be concerned with the same subject matter, and to reflect back on his own horizon of

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understanding. Gadamer believes that the aim of understanding is the “fusion” of one’s own horizon with the horizon of an other. My conception is comparable with Gadamer’s insofar as he speaks of a dialogue and a shared subject matter. He also speaks of “truth,” but never of reasons. The reason behind it is that Gadamer adopted Heidegger’s concept of truth, which is not based on the giving of and asking for reasons. But if we give up reasons, we should in fact abandon the word “truth” as well. It thus remains unclear in Gadamer’s case what the shared “subject matter” is to consist in and what the “dialogue” is supposed to look like structurally. The fact that he speaks of a “fusion” seems to me as characteristic of his position as it is unsatisfactory. If instead the dialogue is understood as a debate over reasons, then no fusion can arise, but only definable agreements and disagreements. My concept also differs from that of Gadamer’s in that, for me, the firstperson perspective is not better or more accurate than that of the third person. We are simply dealing with two perspectives that are rooted in a common grammatical and semantic structure. Although I believe that the first-person perspective is more important as a direction of inquiry, it nevertheless presupposes the most extensive third-person investigation possible. It is impossible to engage with a philosophical position unless one knows it. But it is also necessary to set one’s priorities and make a judgment call as to how well one needs to know a position in order to be able to engage with it. Gadamer and I agree on this much, namely, that “historical” engagement must also be possible with positions that do not stand in a diachronic relationship to our own (and this is where Gadamer’s understanding of the historical is fundamentally different from that of Heidegger). In this respect, there is an additional ambiguity in the usage of the term “historical.” Does it only imply a diachronic relationship, or a synchronic one as well? In my opinion, the humanistic concept of the one diachronically understood history of our own culture should be discarded in favor of a universal concept of cultural science [Kulturwissenschaft]. It is an open question to what extent the past episodes of our own cultural history or

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those of other cultures will be of significance for us. And the only way to settle this question is by posing our own problems. The universal human dimension goes as far as understanding does, by which I mean (in contrast to Gadamer) an understanding based on reasons. What that means substantively can and must be adjusted empirically. But what such adjustments imply is that we have always been aiming for a universal idea [Vorstellung] of what it is to be human.

N OT ES

Translators’ Introduction 1. Ernst Tugendhat, Anthropologie statt Metaphysik (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), 176. Chapters 7–9 include elaborations of the themes developed in Egocentricity and Mysticism. 2. As many commentators have noted, Tugendhat seems to oscillate between a trenchant critique of robust, metaphysical notions of transcendence, which he aligns with religious doctrines of an eternal afterlife or a divine being, and a deflationary notion of transcendence wherein an individual “steps back” from her primary concerns to consider her contingent position within a greater universe and “puts herself in perspective” with respect to this “whole.” We will return to Tugendhat’s discussion of transcendence later. 3. The slow reception is partially due to the fact that only two of Tugendhat’s works have been translated into English thus far: Self-Consciousness and SelfDetermination (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989); Traditional and Analytic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For an overview of Tugendhat’s work prior to Egocentricity and Mysticism, see Santiago Zabala, The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat, foreword by Gianni Vattimo, trans. Santiago Zabala and Michael Haskell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 4. Review of Traditional and Analytical Philosophy: Lectures on the Philosophy of Language, Journal of Philosophy 82, no. 12 (1985): 720–29. 5. This is the guiding theme of Santiago Zabala, The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy. 6. Christian Skirke translates “Ich-Sager” as “speakers who can say I” in his review of Egocentricity and Mysticism in European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2005): 306–11. While the emphasis on linguistic competency rather than actual selfascription is important, we decided for the literal translation. 7. See ibid., 310. For Tugendhat’s critique of the conception of truth as disclosure, see Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967).

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8. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 233–36. 9. Tugendhat has subsequently revised his position about the object of the mystic’s wonder. The mystic need not attend to “the world” or “the universe” as a whole, but may simply turn to “everything other in its uniqueness.” Tugendhat, Anthropologie statt Metaphysik, 8. 10. In his review article of Egocentricity and Mysticism, Dieter Henrich suggests that mystical experience involves finding ourselves at home in a universe that precedes and is indifferent us. See Dieter Henrich, “Mystik ohne Subjektivität?,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 54, no. 2 (2006): 169–88, at 183. 11. We expect Tugendhat’s demarcation of “I”-sayers from other higher animals to be subject to powerful criticisms from those working on issues related to animal cognition. For one may well wonder whether some of his categorical claims about the differences between “higher animals” and humans are consistent with empirical work on animal cognition and social behavior. Ravens, for instance, exhibit the kinds of problem-solving skills and inferential abilities Tugendhat associates with propositional content, and some primates appear to have the ability to reason counterfactually. These seem to suggest that his demarcation criteria are neither necessary nor sufficient. Yet, it would be premature to interpret the descriptive claim that members of the human species are qualitatively distinct from other species as a normative claim that they are in some ethical sense superior. Tugendhat does not claim that humans are superior to other nonhuman animals but does think that the contrast is “instructive” (chapter 5, section 2) for a better understanding of the human condition. 12. For this kind of objection to be compelling and thus avoid simply gainsaying Tugendhat’s starting point, it would require significantly more development than we can give it here. We can, however, point to a productive point of insertion for it in Tugendhat’s own argument, namely, his discussion of the “adverbial good,” from which the discursive notion of prudential and moral goods is to be derived. 13. Hans-Martin Barth contrasts, from a theological perspective, Tugendhat’s approach to the “culture of hearing the I” as well as “Thou-sayers” in his review “Egozentrizität, Mystik und christlicher Glaube,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 46, no. 4 (2004): 467–82. 14. Tugendhat, Anthropologie statt Metaphysik, 52. 15. Ibid., 186–89. 16. See the contributions in Klaus Jacobi, ed., Mystik, Religion und intellektuelle Redlichkeit: Nachdenken über Thesen Ernst Tugendhats (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2012). 17. In her review Susanne Köbele speaks of an “empirically grounded universalanthropological hermeneutics” that fails to properly address the problem of justifying moral claims by deducing them from given needs. Köbele, review, Arbitrium 27, no. 1 (2009): 11–19, at 14.

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18. In his discussion of the methodological addendum to Egocentricity and Mysticism, Kurt Flasch emphasizes that history writing combines both a firstand a third-person perspective. The third-person perspective can, according to Flasch, prevent the first-person approach from mistaking merely subjective reasons for objective reasons. Flasch, Philosophie hat Geschichte, vol. 2, Theorie der Philosophiehistorie (Frankfurt: Klosterman, 2004), 40–46. 19. Ernst Tugendhat, Dialog in Leticia (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 11–12. 20. Tugendhat, Anthropologie statt Metaphysik, 9.

Introduction 1. “Some sort of non-conceptual egocentric activity” is what Tyler Burge calls it: see Crispin Wright, Barry C. Smith, and Cynthia Macdonald, eds., Knowing Our Own Minds: Essays in Self-Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 248.

1. Propositional Language and Saying “I” 1. Cf. Tugendhat, Aufsätze, 1992–2000 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), 141ff. and 207ff., as well as the essay “Nietzsche y la antropología filosofíca,” in Tugendhat, Problemas (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2002), 206ff. 2. Cf. the discussion in my essay “Moral in evolutionstheoretischer Sicht,” in Tugendhat, Aufsätze, 1992–2000, 199–224, at 211ff. 3. The otherwise ambiguous expression lógos can only be understood here in the sense of lógos apophantikós (De Interpretatione 4). The translations known to me, which, in this context, render lógos as “language” and “speech,” are misleading, and so the point on which Aristotle depends is lost: for he concedes that the rest of the animals too have a language (cf. phoné, semeíon, a10–11), just not a predicative one. 4. Cf. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), lecture 28. 5. For more on Yes/No stance taking and the contrast with situation-bound signal-languages see ibid., lectures 12 and 13. 6. For this conception of “reasons,” cf. Thomas M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), chap. 1. 7. Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), chaps. 3 and 5. 8. Cf. Tugendhat, “Nietzsche y la antropología filosofíca,” 207–8. 9. On the concept of a quasi-predicate, see Tugendhat, Vorlesungen zur Einführung, lecture 12. 10. Cf. ibid., esp. lectures 21–25. 11. Cf. ibid., lectures 25 and 26.

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12. Cf. Sydney Shoemaker, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), chap. 6, esp. §7. 13. One can understand this talk about the “I”-perspective differently, by saying that everything that is believed to hold from one’s own self is also thereby understood as part of one’s I-file, as Perry calls it. What is meant thereby is not only the determinations that each of us knows about ourselves in some manner, the way others know them, but also the sum total of the determinations that one believes to be in accord with oneself. When the I-perspective is understood in this manner, the possibility that the subject of these predications is misidentified is no longer excluded. This second concept of the I-perspective is therefore crucial, because opinions about oneself can only become effective [handlungswirksam] in triggering action when they belong to one’s own I-file. In the I-file of a person, that which one knows from the I-perspective, in my sense of the expression, constitutes a remarkable subregion, without which one could not generally attain to a representation of “myself.” Cf. John Perry, The Problem of the Essential Indexical (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), and Perry, “Myself and I,” in Philosophie in synthetischer Absicht, ed. Marcelo Stamm (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1998), 83–103, esp. 94–96 and 100–2. 14. Peter Frederick Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), 87ff. 15. Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference, ed. John McDowell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), chap. 6. 16. Cf. Manfred Frank, ed., Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewusstseins (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1994).

2. “Good” and “Important” 1. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), §§4 and 41–42. 2. Heidegger held that time consciousness had its origin in Care (ibid., §65). For a critique of his view, cf. my essays 1 and 10 in Tugendhat, Aufsätze, 1992–2000 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001). 3. De anima [On the Soul] 3.10.433b5–10. 4. One last remark about Heidegger in this regard: the word “good” (or its cognates) is nowhere to be found in his work. 5. Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), chap. 6. 6. Cf. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen über Ethik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993), 50–51. 7. For the concept of the good in general, cf. ibid., 49ff., and (extensively and fundamentally) G. H. von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness (London: Humanities Press, 1963). 8. English in the original. Tugendhat here departs from the standard, idiomatic sense of Glück, which is always positive (that is, good luck), in favor of the more neutral sense of “luck” in English (that is, good or bad luck). In so

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doing, Tugendhat incorporates the notions of moral or social luck into his account.—Trans. Tzvetan Todorov, Life In Common: An Essay In General Anthropology, trans. Katherine Golsan and Lucy Golsan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 81–82. But cf. chapter 7. Cf. René Arpad Spitz, No and Yes: On the Genesis of Human Communication (New York: International Universities Press, 1957). Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 5:162.

3. Saying “I” in Practical Contexts 1. Sydney Shoemaker, “On Knowing One’s Own Mind,” Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988): 183–209, reprinted in Shoemaker, The First-Person Perspective, and Other Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 25–49; Tyler Burge, “Reason and the First Person,” in Knowing Our Own Minds, ed. Crispin Wright, Barry C. Smith, and Cynthia Macdonald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Hereafter Burge’s article is cited parenthetically in the text. 2. Here and further down, in English in the original.—Trans. 3. In English in the original.—Trans. 4. In English in the original.—Trans. 5. For the conceptual pair attempt-success, cf. Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (London: Ghatto and Windus, 1959), p. 107ff. 6. Other than Hume, a classic case is the chapter “Free Will” in G. E. Moore, Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912). 7. Cf., for example, Charles Arthur Campbell, “Is Free Will a Pseudo-Problem?,” Mind 60 (1951): 446–65. 8. Cf. Tugendhat, “Der Begriff der Willensfreiheit,” in Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992); and Peter Bieri, Das Handwerk der Freiheit (Munich: Karl Hanser, 2001). 9. In English in the original.—Trans. 10. Cf. Tugendhat, “Der Begriff der Willensfreiheit,” 341: “For the individual, the perspectives of morality and law are simply further factors, which he regards as good or bad for himself. And like every other situational factor that he finds to be good or bad, he can factor morality and law into his deliberations just as easily as he can omit them. If the individual identifies with a moral or legal norm, it means that what in these norms is designated as good in itself or socially good is regarded by the individual himself as being in one way or another good for him. If, however, the individual does not identify with the norm, then he must take note that violating this norm attracts a penalty, and this penalty in turn is as yet another potential evil to be included in his deliberations—if he is responsible.”

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11. The first sentence of John Langshaw Austin’s paper “Ifs and Cans” reads, “Are cans constitutionally iffy?” Austin, “Ifs and Cans,” in Philosophical Papers (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 153–80. 12. So holds Ulrich Pothast, ed., Seminar: Freies Handeln und Determinismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1978), 138. The relevant chapter from Mortiz Schlick’s book Fragen der Ethik (Vienna: Verlag von Julius Springer, 1930) is printed in the same volume. Contra Schlick, cf. Campbell, “Is Free Will a PseudoProblem?,” 52n2. 13. Campbell, “Is Free Will a Pseudo-Problem?”

4. Adverbial, Prudential, and Moral Good 1. Cf. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen über Ethik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993), 49ff.; and (extensively and fundamentally) Georg Henrik von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness (London: Routledge, 1963). 2. In English in the original.—Trans. 3. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 61. 4. Wright discusses several aspects of the adverbial good under the heading of “technical goodness” in Varieties of Goodness, chapter 2, §§9–12. Citations to Wright’s text hereafter given parenthetically in the text. 5. Cf. also what John Rawls develops under the (remarkable) title of “the Aristotelian principle”: Rawls, Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), §65. 6. For the following, cf. Vorlesungen über Ethik, 56ff., and (for a more accurate, but still rudimentary approach) Aufsätze, 1992–2000 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), 163–64. 7. I had not yet clarified this point to myself in Vorlesungen über Ethik, 56. 8. Cf. Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Shame and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). 9. Shame possesses a wider range than the adverbial good: people feel ashamed in the eyes of others or in the possible eyes of others for every possible thing that they find to be bad about themselves, for example, for their (supposed) ugliness, but also for the (supposed) defects of their family members. However, it is not moral shame alone but rather all shame at failure in activities that one takes to be important that is particularly acute, due to its connection with autonomous activity [Selbsttätigkeit] and the associated notion of culpability. 10. Cf. Tugendhat, “Wie sollen wir Moral verstehen?” [How should we understand morality?], in Aufsätze, 1992–2000. However, I have in the meantime come to see as false many of the claims that I made earlier about moral justification. For the relation to the prudential good, cf. also “Wir sind nicht fest verdrahtet” [“We are not hard-wired”] in the same volume, 150–51. 11. Adam Smith, “On the Love of Praise, and of That of Praise-Worthiness,” in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 113–34.

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12. Such a distinction between authoritarian and autonomous conscience can be found in Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics (New York: Rinehart, 1947), published in German as Psychoanalyse und Ethik. 13. Cf. Nietzsche, Daybreak, preface, §4; Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §344. 14. Murdoch, Sovereignty of Good, 86, 89–90. 15. Wright himself does not mention I-saying. I find it all the more remarkable that Aristotle—who barely ever mentions an I-relation [Ich-Bezug]—does precisely that in his discussion of the virtues. He writes that states [hexeis] (this is his umbrella term for virtues and vices)—are “the things in virtue of which we [!] stand well or badly with reference to the passions.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Jonathan Barnes, trans. W. D. Ross, and rev. J. O. Urmson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2.5.1105b25f. The discussion of “we” can only be interpreted such that it refers to “I”: in each case, it is I (who or what else could it be otherwise?) who am behaving well or badly relative to my affects. This aspect naturally carries over without difficulty into Wright’s position, since it is independent of the difference discussed earlier. 16. There are two early failed attempts on my part to deal with intellectual honesty: the first in my habilitation thesis, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 322; the second in a lecture I gave at a number of German universities in 1994, the manuscript for which I have since scrapped. I now believe that only the subsumption to what I call “intellectual honesty in the wide sense”—hence the subsumption of the true under the good—leads us out of the aporia. I now also believe that Nietzsche was right in thinking that the motivation for inquiring into truth (or justification) there where it is not pragmatically conditioned cannot be understood in relation to the theoretical sphere alone, but is rather a question of value [Wertfrage]. His mistake was merely that he classified this question of value incorrectly. By itself, truth—or, in contemporary parlance, rationality—cannot motivate, and were it not for pragmatic motives, on the one hand, and the motive to comport oneself estimably [schätzenswert], on the other, we would be left helplessly at the mercy of wishful thinking.

5. Relating to Life and Death 1. Cf. my previous exposition of these connected issues, which I have developed in the form of a critical interpretation of Heidegger in Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979), 200ff.; translated into English as Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination, trans. Paul Stern (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), 171ff. In this chapter too, I am still clearly strongly influenced by Heidegger. 2. Tugendhat’s use Auf-der-Welt-Seins varies and critically shifts the focus of Heidegger’s in-der-Welt-sein. Tugendhat’s formulation is particularly successful because, unlike Heidegger’s “being-in-the-world,” auf-der-Welt-sein actually belongs to idiomatic German.—Trans.

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3. This roughly corresponds to what Harry Frankfurt had in mind with his secondorder desires. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 1 (1971): 5–6. The two stages of the practical question I distinguish thus amount to a differentiation internal to his second stage. In Problemas, where I took Frankfurt’s distinction as my starting point, I therefore spoke of a second and third stage of desire. Tugendhat, Problemas (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2002), 216–17. 4. Cf. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen über Ethik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993), lecture 12. 5. I developed this idea in more detail in my article “On Death.” Tugendhat, “On Death,” in Aufsätze, 1992–2000 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), 70–71. In some respects I now diverge from the position articulated in it. At the time I could not really explain to myself the wish to continue living at all costs, because I did not yet possess the biological hypothesis defended here. However, the article was the point of departure for this book. 6. Once this is clear, speaking of “death” for short is, of course, harmless. 7. See Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament (referred to as “Prediger Salomo” in Luther’s translation). 8. See Bernard Williams, “The Marcropulos Case,” in Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers, 1956–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 82–100. 9. See the contrasting conception in Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 224. 10. Ibid., 226. 11. Cf. Tugendhat, “On Death,” 87. 12. In chapter 2, I also discussed three steps back, but it is only with the third step that the differences match here and there.

6. Religion and Mysticism A preparatory work for this chapter, in which I described the relation between religion and mysticism somewhat differently, is “Raíces antropológicas de la religión y de la mística,” in Problemas (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2002), 215ff. 1. Cf. chapter 5, section 1, above as well as Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 193ff. and 295ff.; translated into English as Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). 2. See the definition provided in Michael Pye, ed., Macmillan Dictionary of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1994): “a heightened form of religious experience in which the subject feels the immediate presence of God or of some ultimate reality resulting in an expansion of consciousness and in a feeling of transcending the ordinary world.” 3. Tugendhat renders the Buddhist term Ta‫ؾ‬hā as Gier, “greed.” We have decided to translate Ta‫ؾ‬hā as, depending on the context, “greed,” “appetites,”

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or “craving.” Buddhism draws on this concept to emphasize an individual’s tendency to attach herself to what she experiences. The literal meaning of Ta‫ؾ‬hā is “thirst.”—Trans. 4. See, for example, the words of Chinese Zen Master Sengcan: “To set up what you like against what you dislike / This is the disease of the mind. . . . When a mind is not disturbed, / The ten thousand things offer no offense.” Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (London: Rider, 1974), 77ff. 5. See William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, 1902), chap. 17. 6. See the concept in Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H.  R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1968), §4, of a feeling of “absolute dependency,” which he equates with the awareness of having a relationship with God. 7. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1923). 8. See, for example, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Phänomenologie der Religion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1956), §§1–4. 9. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, 1959). 10. I leave it open as to how far the belief in gods is also at the root of the universal tendency of humans (or of “primitive” people) to give animistic interpretations to everything that happens. 11. On occasion we receive confirmation of this from the mystics themselves. See, for example, the quotation from Sengcan in chapter 6, note 4. There we also read: “The object ceases when the subject is quieted.” 12. See Rudolf Otto, West-Östliche Mystik, 3rd ed. (Munich: Beck, 1971). Translated into English as Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism, trans. Bertha L. Bracey and Richenda C. Payne (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1987). 13. Karl Albert, Einführung in die philosophische Mystik [Introduction to Philosophical Mysticism] (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 7 and passim. 14. See ibid., 93. 15. See my criticism of the concept of Being in Parmenides and Heidegger in “Das Sein und das Nichts” (“Being and Nothingness”) as well as in other essays included in Philosophische Aufsätze [Philosophical Essays] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992). 16. See Arthur C. Danto, Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy (1972; New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 69. 17. Arthur Danto emphasizes, in the third chapter of Mysticism and Morality, the moment of boredom that inheres in the concept of an endless chain of rebirths. 18. See Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1951), 130ff.; and W. Schumann, Mahayana Buddhismus (Munich: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1990), 32–33.

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19. See the end of the Heart-Sutra, in Edward Conze, ed., The Diamond and the Heart Sutra (London: Buddhist Wisdom Books, 1958). 20. I have read the book Zhuangzi in the two often significantly different translations—Richard Wilhelm, Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland (Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederich Verlag, 1972); and Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968)—but rely more on Watson’s translation. I have used the Daodejing in Robert G. Henricks’s translation Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching (New York: Ballantine, 1989). I also draw on Max Kaltenmark, Lao Tseu et le Taoisme (Paris: Seuil, 1965). Citations to the Daodejing are hereafter given parenthetically in the text. 21. English in the original.—Trans. 22. Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 80. 23. Ibid., 183. 24. Ibid., 77. 25. Wilhelm, Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, 88. 26. Wilhelm skips the enumeration of persons. In my interpretation of the sentence just cited, there where Wilhelm takes the subject to be “nature” (the sky) (87), I follow Watson by translating the subject as “it.” 27. Matthew 26:39. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, augmented 3rd ed., ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 28. I am quoting from the edition by J. Quint, Deutsche Predigten und Traktate (Munich: Hanser, 1963). The English edition used is the Classics of Western Spirituality volume of Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. E. Colledge and B. McGinn (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1981), 247–84. 29. Eckhart, Essential Sermons, 248. 30. Ibid., 259–60. 31. Ibid., 257. 32. Ibid., 282. 33. Ibid., 249. 34. Ibid., 257. 35. Ibid., 207. 36. Ibid., 253. 37. See the text cited by Conze, Buddhism, 125. 38. See ibid., 126–27; and Danto, Mysticism and Morality, 75. 39. See Conze, Buddhism; and Danto, Mysticism and Morality. 40. See Conze, Buddhism, 129. 41. See Daisetz T. Suzuki, Karuna: Der Bodhisattva-Pfad im Buddhismus und im Zen (Bern: Otto Wilhelm Barth, 1989), 71ff. 42. But it is a concept that can be integrated into morality; for that, see the penultimate passage of “Wie sollen wir Moral verstehen?” (“How Should We Understand Morality?”), in Aufsätze, 1992–2000 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001). Or one takes “morality” in a wide sense and then speaks, with Bergson, of the “two sources of morality.” Jesus distinguished between two levels of morality.

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The first is that of commandments, while the second is the “perfect” one of the “kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:16ff.). 43. Conze, Buddhism, 102, 128.

7. Wonder 1. Wittgenstein, “A Lecture on Ethics,” Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 3–12. Hereafter citations given parenthetically in the text. 2. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Briefe an Ludwig von Ficker, ed. Georg Henrik von Wright (Salzburg: Müller, 1969), 35, as well as Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Religious Belief (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 3. See the last section of Elenor Sain and Tobias Trappe’s article “Staunen” (“Wonder”) in Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer, eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Basel: Schwabe, 1998), 10:115–24. 4. This is also the case for Heidegger, who admittedly uses less precise formulations. To take an example, in the epilogue to “What Is Metaphysics?” he mentions the “wonder” “that beings exist” (“Wunder,” “dass Seiendes ist”) (Heidegger, Wegmarken [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2004], 103, 105)—which would be a tautology. Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?,” trans. David Farrell Krell, in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 82–96, at 95. At the beginning of the Introduction to Metaphysics, he has recourse to Leibniz’s question “Why is there something at all rather than nothing?” (which asks for reasons). In his late philosophy, Heidegger states again and again that metaphysics does not ask about “Being as such” or “the truth of Being”; it only asks about the Being of beings (see, for example, Walter Kaufmann’s translation of “Introduction to ‘What Is Metaphysics?,’ ” in Pathmarks, 277–90, at 279–80). This is only a slightly obscure version of what I claim earlier. The contrast in orientation intended here is that between the Being of beings and the phenomenon of the world. 5. English in the original.—Trans. 6. Tugendhat selectively quotes Wittgenstein here, potentially altering the latter’s remark slightly. In his lecture, Wittgenstein says, “It is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing” (12). It should also be noted that Tugendhat’s discussion hinges on distinguishing between perplexity (Sichwundern) and wonder (Staunen). Wittgenstein, however, never talks of “perplexity”—Tugendhat simply reads the notion into Wittgenstein, mentioning that he has done so only in passing a few paragraphs after introducing the distinction.—Trans. 7. Descartes, Les passions de l’âme. Spinoza, see no. 4 under “Definitions of the Emotions,” in part 3 of his Ethics. 8. See Stefan Matuschek, Über das Staunen: Eine ideengeschichtliche Analyse (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991), esp. 22–23. 9. Thus, I do not think that the concepts of Aristotle and Plato are as different as Matuschek takes them to be. 10. In the case of Descartes, see Les passions de l’âme, §78.

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11. Augustine, Confessions 11.14; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), §89.

Addendum 1. On the idea of a progressive derelativization of concepts, see my article on philosophical method in Tugendhat, Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992), 261ff., esp. 271. See also my lecture “Kann man aus der Erfahrung moralisch lernen” [“Is it Possible to Learn Morally from Experience?”], in Probleme der Ethik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984), 87ff.

IN D EX

Acceptance, 114, 117, 118 Accountability, 40, 43 Achievement (Gelingen), 21, 23, 34–38, 42, 46; the adverbial good and, 51; intellectual honesty and, 63; mysticism and, 98; and peace of mind, 110–12 Action: active form of, 35–36; attempt, 34, 38; in Daoism, 111; deliberate intent and, 34–35, 38; deliberation and, 37–38; deliberative, altruism and, 24–25; freedom of, 36–37; goal, 49; “good,” 58; “I”-, 38–39; intention and, 33–34; nonaction, 109; passive form of, 35–36; without self-consciousness, 109; success, 34, 38 Action-specific goods, 47, 49 Adverbial good, xi; animals and, 50; definition of, 50–51; for I-sayers, 56; moral good and, 53–54, 60; within prudential good, 54–55; prudential good and, 52, 55; recognition and, 57–58; shame and, 148n9 Adverbial virtue, 63 Affective condition, 70–71; stance taking and, 72–73 Affective responsiveness, 43 Agency, 33

Albert, Karl, 104 Allness (Allheit), 95 Altruism: Buddhism and, 119; deliberative action and, 24–25; egoism and, 24, 66; evolution and, 24; “final purpose” and, 23–24; “putting oneself in perspective” and, 67; well-being and, 24–25 Anger, 43f, 57; and passive action, 36 Anglo-American analytic philosophy, viii Animals: adverbial good and, 50; cognition of, 144n11; death anxiety for, 78; humankind and, xxv–xxvi, 3–4, 72, 144n11; “I” saying and, xxvi–xxvii, 144n11; misfortunes of, 98–99 Anthropology: constants, xiv; structure, 92. See also Philosophical anthropology Aristotle, xv; on death, 75; on desire, 18–19; on ethics, 75–76; on “good,” 69; on “I” saying, 149n15; on language, 4–5, 145n3; lógos, 145n3; Nicomachean Ethics, 75; perplexity for, 129–30; Politics, 4; on “the How” of life, 75–76; on virtue, 62–64, 149n15 Artistic activities, 59 Assertoric, 5–6

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Attempt, 34–38. See also Achievement Attentiveness, 132 Authenticity, xii Behavior: human patterns of, 65–66; instrumental, 98; towards self, 45–46 Being, 104 Being-alive, 71–72 Being and Time (Heidegger), 91 Bentham, Jeremy, 52 “Better,” “good” and, 50–51 Bifurcation, 137 Blame, 42–43 Blameworthiness, 49 Buddhism, xx–xxi, 89–91, 150n3; Arhat in, 119–20; Bodhisattva in, 119–20; Daoism and, 107–8; emptiness in, 116–17; mysticism and, 94; suffering in, 104; Theravada, 94, 119–20, 122; Vedanta and, 102–3, 120; Zen, 106–7, 116. See also Mahayana Buddhism Burge, Tyler, 31–32 Causal relations, 139 Children, 44–46 Christianity, 52–53; love in, 118–19, 122; mystical factor in, 114; mysticism and, xxi, 117–18 Cohesion, 89 Collectedness (Gesammeltsein): mysticism as form of, 89; religion and, 89, 91–92; self-relation and, 112; unity and, 76 Compassion, wisdom and, 120 Confirmation, 29 Conscience, morality and, 59–60 Consciousness: “I”-, 15–16; predication and, 15–16; propositional language and, 16; religious, 97; self-, 15–16, 109; self-reference and, xxvii; time, 18 Content, ix–x

Context, propositional language and, ix–x, 8 Context-independent (Situationsunabhängigkeit): content, x; desire, 20–21; language, 9, 20–21; objects, reference to, 9–10 Contingency, 98, 113 “Counsels on Discernment” (Eckhart), 115 Creativity, 59 Criminal law, 40–41, 147n10 Criticism, 48 Critique of Practical Reason (Kant), 30 Cultural phenomena, 92–93 Culture, 141–42 Daodejing, 109, 111–12 Daoism, xx–xxi; action in, 111; Buddhism and, 107–8; doctrine of opposites, 109–11; emptiness and, 112–13; important in, 109; love in, 118; motivation for, 114–15; nonaction (wuwei), 109; smallness in, 108; “stepping back” in, 113; “true human” in, 111–12; unity in, 110 Daoist mysticism, 94, 107–8 Death: Aristotle on, 75; awareness of, 82; confrontation with, 82–83; experience of, xi–xii; fear of, 78; future and, 77–78; life and, 83; mysticism and, 84; as object, 79; proximity of, 81–82; selfreflection and, 82 Death anxiety (Todesangst): for animals, 78; biological explanation for, 78–80; for humankind, 78; mortality and, 79–80; motivation for, 81; nothingness and, 80 “Deduction,” xi Deictic expressions, 9 Deliberate desire, 19–20 Deliberate intent (Vorsatz), 19, 21; action and, 34–35, 38; deliberation and, 38; desire and, 37; goals and, 35

Index Deliberation (Überlegenkönnen), xv, 7; action and, 37–38; deliberate intent and, 38; “good” and, 19–21; “I”-actions and, 38–40; “I” and, 32; of I-sayers, x; “it is up to me” and, 72; practical, x; responsibility and, 39–40; stance taking and, 72–73; “stepping back” and, 84 Deliberative action, altruism and, 24–25 Descartes, René, 129 Desire (Wollen), 150n3; Aristotle on, 18–19; context-independent, 20–21; Daoism and excesses of, 108; deliberate, 19–20; deliberate intent and, 37; goal and, 37; sensuous, 19 Dialogue, 140–41 Discourse, universe of, 126–27 Disinterested love, 122 Disrespect, 49; recognition and, 56, 58–59 Distinguished, 29 Distraction, plurality and, 76 Eckhart, Meister, xii, xx–xxi, 104; on acceptance, 118; “Counsels on Discernment,” 115–16; on God, 116–17 Ego, xxvi, 36 “Ego-attachment” (Ich-Bindung), 115–16 Egocentricity, xii; egoism distinguished from, 25, 66; of I-sayers, xxvi, 47, 56; mysticism and, 85–86; reference and, 17; “stepping back” from, 26; transcending, xxvi Egoism: altruism and, 24, 66; egocentricity distinguished from, 25, 66 Either/Or (Kierkegaard), 90–92 Eliade, Mircea, 97–98 Emptiness: in Buddhism, 116–17; Daoism and, 112–13; God and, 113

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Encouragement, 42 “End in itself,” 21–22 Enlightenment, 106 “Es liegt an mir.” See “It is up to me” Evolution, xiv; altruism and, 24; of language, 8 Existence: of God, 100–1; Wittgenstein on, 127–28, 133, 153n6; wonder at, 127–28, 133, 153n4 Existentialism, vii, xiii–xiv Explanation, 131–32 Fear: of death, 78; of nothingness, 80–81 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 29 “Final purpose,” 21–22; altruism and, 23–24 Finitude, 77 First-person perspective, xvii–xviii, 92–93; of philosophy, 139; third-person perspective and, 137, 140–41, 145n18 Flasch, Kurt, 145n18 Freedom, 7, 43; of action, 36–37 Free will, 36–37, 41; as illusion, 46; misunderstanding of, 44 Freud, Sigmund, 36; The Future of an Illusion, 96 Future: death and, 77–78; for I-sayers, 21; sense of, 18 Future of an Illusion, The (Freud), 96 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, xvii, 140–41 Gelingen. See Achievement Gesammeltsein. See Collectedness Goals, 23; action, 49; deliberate intent and, 35; desire and, 37; “it is up to me” and, 34–35; order of, 27 God, 100, 113–18 Gods, 99–100; belief in, 100–101, 151n10; Daoism and, 117; Eckhart on, 116–17; emptiness and, 113; existence of, 100–1; love and, 118

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“Good,” xi; action, 58; actionspecific, 47, 49; Aristotle on, 69; “better” and, 50–51; definition of, 19; deliberation and, 19–21; intellectual honesty and, 64; language and, 4; Plato on, 52; social structure and, 4; understanding of, 51. See also Adverbial good; Moral good; Prudential good Greatness, 96 Guilt, 54, 60 Heaven, 115 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 138–39 Heidegger, Martin, xi–xii, 71; Being and Time, 91; continental philosophy and, 138–39; on wonder of existence, 153n4 Hermeneutics, 140–41 Historical: inquiry, 135–42; to logical, xviii; phenomena, 92–93, 135–37; use of term, 141–42 Hobbes, Thomas, 19 “How are you doing?,” 69–71 “How do I want to or should I live?,” 74–77 Humankind: agency of, ix; animals and, xxv–xxvi, 3–4, 72, 144n11; death anxiety for, 78; future for, 77; history and, 135–36; language and, ix–x, xxvi, 5; linguistics and, 4; peace of mind for, xxv; reason for, 7; “true human,” 111–12; “what is humankind?,” xv– xvii. See also I-sayers Hume, David, 62 “I,” ix–x; -actions, 38–40; -activities, 39–40, 48; concept of, xxvi; -consciousness, 15–16; deliberation and, 32; first-person perspective and, xvii–xviii; perspective, 13–14, 146n13; referential function of, 14–15; use of, 11, 31

“I can,” 34–35 Ich-Bindung. See “Ego-attachment” Ich-Sager. See I-sayers “I could have done otherwise,” 41–42, 46. See also Free will Id, 36 Important, 16; being, 30; being loved and, awareness of, 29–30; in Daoism, 109; I-sayers as, 17–18; recognition and, 28–30; selfimportance, 26–28; unimportance of self-importance, 27–28 Individuals (Strawson), 14 Inner perception, 12–13 Insignificance, 113 Instrumental behavior, 98 Instrumental function, 50 Instrumental thinking, 21–22 Intellectual honesty: the “good” and, 64; motivation for, 64–66; for Nietzsche, 61, 149n16; recognition and, 65; as virtue, 61–65 Intention, action and, 33–34 I-sayers (Ich-Sager), ix, 3; adverbial good for, 56; allness and, 95; deliberation of, x; egocentricity of, xxvi, 47, 56; future for, 21; as important, 17–18; moral good for, 56; perspectives of, x; philosophical anthropology and, xv; prudential good for, 56; regions of experience in, xvi; self-mobilization of, 45–46; self-relation for, 68–69; “stepping back” of, xix; translation of, 143n6; “what is humankind?” and, xvi–xvii “I” saying: animals and, xxvi–xxvii, 144n11; Aristotle on, 149n15; self-reference and, 11; self-relation and, 3; “what is humankind?” and, xvi–xvii “It,” 36

Index “It is up to me” (“Es liegt an mir”), 34–36, 41–42, 68–69; deliberation and, 72 “I want,” stepping back from, 101–2 James, William, 95 Jesus, 117 Judaism, 89–91 Judeo-Christian tradition, 93 Kant, Immanuel, viii, xv; Critique of Practical Reason, 30; first three questions, xvi; on morality, 52, 54 Karma, 105–6 Kierkegaard, Søren, 90–92 Kindheartedness, 122 Language: Aristotle on, 4–5, 145n3; context-independent, 9, 20–21; deictic expressions, 9; evolution of, 8; gender-neutral, xxii, 97; the “good” and, 4; humans and, ix–x, xxvi, 5; objectivity locating expressions, 9; philosophy of, vii; predicates, 11–16; semantics of, 6–7; signal-language communication, ix; singular terms, 8–9; situation-relative signal-, 5; translation and, xxii–xxiv, 143n6. See also Propositional language; specific words and phrases “Lecture on Ethics, A” (Wittgenstein), 124–25 Life: being-alive, 71–72; death and, 83; “how do I want to or should I live?,” 74; “the How” of, 74–76; mood and, 71 Linguistics, 4 “Locus of responsibility,”31–32; definition of, 39; passive action and, 36 Logical, historical to, xviii Lógos, 145n3

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Love: being loved, awareness of, 29–30; in Christianity, 118–19, 122; in Daoism, 118; disinterested, 122; God and, 118; in Mahayana Buddhism, 119–23; in religion, 118–23; universal, 119–21 Luck, 23, 146n8 Mahayana Buddhism, 106–7; emptiness in, 116–17; love in, 119– 23; mysticism and, 121; Theravada Buddhism and, 122 Meditative immersion, 94 Metaphysics, 125–26 Mood, 71 Moral blame, 43 Moral good, xi; adverbial good and, 53–54, 60; Christianity and, 52–53; for I-sayers, 56; notion of, 52; within prudential good, 54–55; prudential good and, 55; shame and, 54 Morality, 152n42; conscience and, 59–60; Genealogy of Morality, xi; Kant on, 52, 54; law and, 147n10; Plato on, 60; Sidgwick on, 52–53 Moral responsibility, 40 Moral virtue, 61–63 Mortality, death anxiety and, 79–80 Motivation, 42; for believer, 114–15; for Daoist, 114–15; for death anxiety, 81; for intellectual honesty, 64–66; recognition and, 51–52 Murdoch, Iris, 50, 62 Mysticism, xii; Buddhism and, 94; Christianity and, xxi, 117–18; contingency and, 98, 113; Daoist, 94, 107–8; death and, 84; decentering potential of, xix; definitions of, 92–95; East Asian, xxi, 94; egocentric aspect of, 85–86; as form of collectedness, 89; Indian, xxi, 94, 102–3, 105–6; Mahayana Buddhism and, 121;

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160

Mysticism (continued ) meaning of, xxv; peace of mind and, vii, 102; points of view influencing shapes of, 101–2; rationality and, xxi; religion and, xii, xviii–xxii, 95–98, 114; “stepping back” in, 85, 104; suffering and, 105; in third-person perspective, 95; transcendental, xviii–xxii; in twentieth century, 125–26; unity and, 102; universalized, xx–xxi; universal love and, 121; Western, xxi, 93–94, 103; wonder and, 144n9 Mysticism East and West (Otto), 104 Nagel, Thomas, 80–81 Nature, 109, 122 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 75 Nietzsche, Friedrich: on altruism, 25; Genealogy of Morality, xi; intellectual honesty for, 61, 149n16; will to truth, 61 Nirvana, 106–7, 119 Nonaction (wuwei), 109 Norms, 4 Nothingness, fear of, 80–81 Numinous, 96–97; Otto on, 124; religion and, 99–100 Object: death as, 79; existing individual, 9–10; predicates and, 12; speakers and, 10–11; “this”-perspective, 13 Objectivity locating expressions, 9 One, 120–21 Oneself, 90–91. See also”Putting oneself in perspective” Otto, Rudolf: Mysticism East and West, 104; on numinous, 124; on “state of mind,” 96–97 Passive action, 35–36 Peace of mind (Seelenfriede), xx; mysticism and, vii, 102; need for,

xxv; propositional language and need for, ix–xiii; translation of, xxiii Perception, inner, 12–13 Perplexity, 127–28; for Aristotle, 129–30; attentiveness and, 132; proposition and, 130; wonder and, 128–32 Perspective: “I,” 13–14, 146n13; of I-sayers, x; predicates and, 12; second-person, xvii; “stepping back” and, 84–85; “this”-, 13. See also First-person perspective; “Putting oneself in perspective”; Third-person perspective Philosophers, xiv–xv, 138–39. See also specific philosophers Philosophical anthropology, vii, 135–36; existentialism and, xiii–xiv; I-sayers and, xv; objections to, xvii; primacy of practical and return of, xiii–xviii Philosophy: academic, viii; analytic, viii, xiv–xv; “big questions” of, viii; continental, xiv–xv, 138–39; firstperson perspective of, 139; history of, 137–39; of language, vii; of mind, vii; subdisciplines of, 135–36; wonder and, 129, 134 Plato: on “good,” 52; on “How do I want to or should I live?,” 76–77; on morality, 60; Republic, 60; wonder for, 129–31 Plurality, distraction and, 76 Politics (Aristotle), 4 Position taking (Stellungsnehmen), 7 Practical: deliberation, x; primacy of, xiii–xviii; reasoning, 7, 30 Praise, 58. See also Recognition Prayer, 114 Predicates, 11–12; consciousness and, 15–16; immediacy and use of, 12–14 Pre-propositional consciousness, 15–16

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161

“Profane,” 97 Proposition, perplexity and, 130 Propositional language: consciousness and, 16; context and, ix–x, 8; peace of mind and, need for, ix–xiii; pragmatic features of, 5; singular terms in, 8–9; situationindependence of, 5–6; structure and, 7–8; wonder and, 130–31; yes/ no stance in, 5–6 Prudential good, xi, 69; adverbial good and, 52, 55; adverbial good within, 54–55; for I-sayers, 56; moral good and, 55; moral good within, 54–55 Prudential virtue, 63 Punishment, 43–44 Purpose, 19; “final,” 21–24. See also Deliberate intent “Putting oneself in perspective” (Selbstrelativierung), xii, xix; altruism and, 67; translation of, xxii

9–10; “I,” 14; point of, 101. See also Self-reference Regret, anger and, 57 Religion: believers and, motivation for, 114–15; collectedness and, 89, 91–92; contingency and, 98, 113; elements of, 99–100; love in, 118–23; monotheistic, xxi; mystical factor in, 114; mysticism and, xii, xviii–xxii, 95–98; numinous and, 99–100; self-collection and, 89–91. See also specific religions Religious consciousness, 97 Republic (Plato), 60 Respect, 49; recognition and, 56, 58–59; worthy of, 58–59 Responsibility: deliberation and, 39–40; “I” -activities and, 39–40; locus of, 31–32, 36, 39; moral, 40; punishment and, 43–44; selfmobilization and, 31–47 Russell, Bertrand, 126–27

Rational choice theory, 27 Rationality, 7, 48–49, 73, 80; mysticism and, xxi Rawls, John: on moral good, 53; A Theory of Justice, 53 Reactions, 44–45 Reason (Vernunft): for humans, 7; postmetaphysical view of, viii; practical, 7, 30 Rebirth, 105–6, 151n17 Recognition, xvii, xx, 49; adverbial good and, 53, 57–58; being worthy of, 66; Daodejing, Zhuangzi, and, 109; importance and, 28–30; intellectual honesty and, 65; motivation and, 51–52; respect/ disrespect and, 56, 58–59 Reference: to context-independent objects, 9–10; egocentricity and, 17; to existing individual objects,

“Sacred,” 97 Samkhya Yoga, 94, 103 Samsara doctrine, 105–6 Schlick, Moritz, 43 Second-person perspective, xvii Seelenfriede. See Peace of mind Selbstbezug. See Self-reference Selbstrelativierung. See”Putting oneself in perspective” Self, xxvi; behavior towards, 45–46; blaming, 43; conception of, 99; identifying, 15 Self-choice (Selbstwahl), 91 Self-collection (Sammlung), 89–91 Self-consciousness, 15–16, 109 Self-control, 44 Self-esteem, 60 Selfhood, xxvi Self-importance, 26–28 Selflessness, 119

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162

Self-mobilization, 51; in children, 45–46; of I-sayers, 45–46; responsibility and, 31–47 Self-reference (Selbstbezug), xxv, xxvi, 112; consciousness and, xxvii; “I” saying and, 11 Self-reflection: death and, 82; “how do I want to or should I live?,” 74 Self-relation (Sich-Verhalten), 7; collectedness and, 112; for I-sayers, 68–69; “I” saying and, 3. See also Self-reference Self-will, 115–16 Self-worth, xvii, 30, 57 Semantics, of language, 6–7 Sensuous desire, 19 Shame, 54, 57; adverbial good and, 148n9 Shoemaker, Sydney, 31–32 Sich-Verhalten. See Self-relation Sidgwick, Henry, 52–53 Singular terms, 8–9 Situation, “How are you doing?” and, 70 Situation-independence, of propositional language, 5–6 Situation-relative signal-languages, 5 Situationsunabhängigkeit. See Context-independent Smallness, 95–96; in Daoism, 108 Smith, Adam, 28; The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 58 Social structure, the “good” and, 4 Socrates, 60–65 Spatiotemporal position, reference to, 9 Speakers, objects and, 10–11. See also I-sayers Spitz, René, 29 Stance: taking, 72–73; yes/no, 5–6 “State of mind,” 96–97 Stellungsnehmen. See Position taking “Stepping back” (Zurücktreten), xix; in Daoism, 113; deliberation and,

84; from egocentricity, 26; from “I want,” 101–2; manifestations of, 26; in mysticism, 85, 104; perspective and, 84–85; from self, 84–85; transcendence and, 143n2; translation of, xxiii–xxiv; from well-being, 26 Strawson, Peter Frederick, 14 Subject-object unity, xxv Success, 34, 38 Suffering, 98–99; in Buddhism, 103–6; Daoism and, 107–10; death and, 83; mysticism and, 99, 105; from oneself, 46. See also Self-mobilization Theory of Justice, A (Rawls), 53 Theory of Moral Sentiments, The (Smith), 58 Theravada Buddhism, 94, 119–20; Mahayana Buddhism and, 122 Third-person perspective, 92; firstperson perspective and, 137, 140–41, 145n18; mysticism in, 95 “This”-perspective, 13–14 Time consciousness, xi, 18, 83, 89 Todesangst. see Death anxiety Todorov, Tzvetan, 28–29, 56 Transcendence, xix, 90, 92, 143n2; egocentricity, xxvi Transcendental mysticism, without religion, xviii–xxii Translation, xxii–xxiv, 143n6 “True human,” 111–12 Truth, 141; intellectual honesty and, 64; will to, 61 Überlegenkönnen. See Deliberation Unimportance of self-importance, 27–28 Unity, xxv–xxvi; collectedness and, 76; in Daoism, 110; to mystic, 102; subject-object, xxv

Index Universal causal nexus, 46 Universal love, 119–20; mysticism and, 121 Valuation, 28–29 Value, vii; being important to and, 28–30; the Good and, 51f; intellectual honesty and, 149n16; judgments, 58 Vedanta Buddhism, 102–3, 120 Vernunft. See Reason Virtue: adverbial, 63; Aristotle on, 62–64, 149n15; intellectual honesty as, 61–65; moral, 61–63; prudential, 63; role of, 62–63 Vorsatz. See Deliberate intent Well-being (Wohl): altruism and, 24–25; care for one’s, 22; “stepping back” from, 26 “What is humankind?,” xv–xvi; “I” saying and, xvi–xvii Will: free, 36–37, 41, 44, 46; self-, 115–16; to truth, 61

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Wisdom, compassion and, 120 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, xiii; on assertoric claim, 6; on existence, 127–28, 133, 153n6; “A Lecture on Ethics,” 124–25 Wohl. See Well-being Wollen. See Desire Wonder, 124–34; at existence, 127–28, 133, 153n4; mystic’s, 144n9; perplexity and, 128–32; philosophy and, 129, 134; for Plato, 129–31; propositional language and, 130–31; sense of, xii–xiii Wright, Georg Henrik von, 62–63 Wuwei. See Nonaction Yes/No stance, 72–74; in propositional language, 5–6 Zen Buddhism, 106–7; emptiness in, 116 Zhuangzi, 108–12, 152n20 Zurücktreten. See “Stepping back”