The eternal prospect of philosophy.-- In general every period of contemplation that has been known to a nation endures for the least amount of time- it is by far the most ephemeral of all periods, sometimes never even attained to, and always arises only after the ages of darkness, of secrecy, of fear, of war, of luxury, etc. This fact demonstrates that the real value of history for the philosopher is that, through its study, the distances and the gulfs within perspective and knowledge that have been born open throughout the ages can finally be transposed within the soul of an individual; the inclination and disinclinaton for knowledge, the refinement of the spiritual life, the discovery of the nuances of the passions, in short the essential instruments for the practice of thinking- this all depends upon the capacity to grasp inwardly the divergence of those drives which could never be isolated, delimited, and set upon a peculiar development in the course of a single life. The more immense a consciousness a philosopher has of the world, and of the ages of the world, the more immense are his powers of creation: the Greek soul had to be fructified with the profound history of Asiatic conquest and self-conquest before the poets and philosophers could be born. For in grasping inwardly this divergence and isolation of the drives, in the effective diversification of them, in the enlargement of man’s sphere of consciousness over the drives, so the inner turmoil of the heart becomes greater: the contradiction of man’s drives urges new sufferings, passions, and longings without name to struggle for expression, urges the realization of new ideas in whose image their war can be arrested. However superficial, however given to luxury an age may become, we must know that the codification of historical knowledge is continually being enacted; that the consciousness of the history of the world is growing more and more immense and that, in this, the turmoil of the soul is also growing, and will eventually begin to lay its pangs upon those men in whom it’s contradiction has been grasped inwardly, urging them to create, urging them toward a life of contemplation. The true extent of this widening of perspectives has yet to even be attained; the loss of God and the longing and love for him; the convulsions and the exaltations of the religious conscience, the subsequent withdrawal into the chaos of existence, the self-determination of human destiny- the relationship between these periods of human struggle philosophers have yet to grasp inwardly, as a pathos, as a passion, as an unrest and turmoil within the soul itself, nor to arrive at that idea in whose image the inter-relation of the various drives and feelings developed within these different ages may be finally articulated, an idea that might be one day called the idea of ‘humanity.’
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The origin of ‘spiritual pain’.-- One must not mistake the “social contract” for morality. The social contract is much older, it is intended merely to expedite the functions of a society. We agree on the most basic things possible: not to steal, not to kill, (unless the person belongs to a different tribe or society) etc. Morality is much different. It evolves out of metaphysical, philosophical, and religious valuations of certain drives, impulses, passions. Just as the social contract evolves to allow the polis or social-political body to function more effectively, so morality evolves to allow man’s inner society, the inner polis of drives, passions, and hungers, to function more effectively. The former is very archaic, present even in the oldest and most isolated tribes, but morality is something we only see in higher culture. The contract, a product of reason, aided man in the struggle against physical pain and the forces of nature. But when life was settled, and the polis itself was firmly established, the ‘state of nature,’ the antagonism between man and nature, was drawn inward, was spiritualized, and man experienced the ‘inner antagonism of the drives’ and a consciousness of himself, or rather a ‘conscience’ of himself- the idea of “man” for the first time evolved here, where formerly there was, so to speak, only a fellow tribesman and an animal. For primitive man life was an endless multiplicity of experience- the confusion of the drives was not deleterious for him due to the fact that man was constantly engaged with the forces of nature and of beast; the drives were constantly pressed to discharge themselves in the most immediate way. Only when man came upon the period of reflection did this confusion strike him; with no immediate means to vent themselves, their confusion was brought inward, made conscious- ultimately spiritual pain owes itself to this.
The Greeks pitted themselves against this spiritual pain through art- ultimately they made everything into art, both man and the world; through art they unified certain drives and relieved their antagonism. This is why the Greeks portrayed Eros itself as the ‘inner antagonism’ - the son of penia and poros, lack and excess, which discharged itself in art and, in the vision of Plato, through the ascension of the entire scale of contemplation. But, instead of Eros- an inner antagonism, in Christianity there was transposed into the heart of the individual an ‘absolute longing,’ an inner lack which took the place of Eros and found its answer only in God. The theological category for this inner lack is quite various: finitude, creatureliness, etc. In any case the perfect antagonism was here realized, that one between the finite and infinite, the profane and the divine, the carnal and the holy: the entire order of religious thinking utilizes this antagonism to inform the unity of man’s psychic being. The ‘spiritual pain’ is discharged through the order informed by this perfect antagonism in the contemplation of God. The theological description of such is ‘kenos’ - the act of Christ’s self-emptying before God, which John of the Cross made use of in his own theological speculation. From it he invented the concept of a ‘dark night of the soul,’ in which all mortal and finite passions gradually detach themselves from their mortal and finite objects, through an intensive and terrible process of ‘purification,’ in order to gradually attach themselves to the divine principles. This principle is contained summarily in that strange doctrine of the theologians, dei virtutem sapientiam, “Knowledge is the virtue of God and the sin of man.” In man all knowledge, however wondrous, is communicated to carnal nature; in God, all knowledge, however meager, is communicated to the divine nature.
What is the meaning of the depiction of Eros as both the God of desire and- creation? All desire is the product of a turmoil within the drives, within man’s inner being: the desire for God, thus, a product of the most fervent, most violent war within the drives. Human desire is truly a miraculous thing, one must not suppose that it belongs to any of the beasts. The beasts hunger, the beasts thirst, but each of their hungers and their thirsts have definite objects. Man must invent beauty, he must invent God; until this moment the nature of desire is unconscious, lacks expression, exists only as a turmoil within the drives which longs for a resolution.
The influence of desire.-- It could be said of philosophy what Leon Battista Alberti used to say about painting: Narcissus was the inventor of painting, for what is painting but the act of embracing by means of art the surface of the waters? For that doctrine which claims that desire perverts and is antithetical to the search for knowledge fails to comprehend that desire remains an unconscious anxiety, an inquietude, until it is affirmed in some idea which can intelligibly formulize the mass of sensations and drives whose contradictoriness and turmoil constitute its affect, its pathos; this inquietude is itself the basis of a philosopher’s strength, the spur which has urged him along the path of knowledge. The illusion is created that, with the apprehension of knowledge, comes the extinction of that form of desire which perverts philosophical judgment: in reality desire has merely been formulized, expressed, and has only just begun to live. Only now, clearly expressed, the desire is free to walk under the banner of philosophy as a just, a rational love of beauty, freedom, or God, and the longing for the continual realization of these things. Philosophy itself, its worth, is in all likeliness only another product of this articulation and subsequent justification of desire: this is why the mutability of things has never honestly struck a note of fear in the heart of a philosopher, in fact his audacity may run to the point of excusing philosophy with that dictum, “Silent philosophia inter morem.” [In death, philosophy is silent. A take on the Latin motto, in war the laws are silent.]