Philosophical Works

"Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."

"In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is nether reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second."

"It has only been very slowly that scientific method, which seeks to reach principles inductively from observation of particular facts, has replaced the Hellenic belief in deduction from luminous axioms derived from the mind of the philosopher."

"But in connection with mathematics the one-sidedness of the Greek genius appears: it reasoned deductively from what appeared self-evident, not inductively from what had been observed. Its amazing successes in the employment of this method misled not only the ancient world, but the greater part of the modern world also."

"The Greeks... discovered mathematics and the art of deductive reasoning. Geometry, in particular, is a Greek invention, without which modern science would have been impossible."

"Now almost all the hypotheses that have dominated modern philosophy were first thought of by the Greeks... I shall regard them as giving birth to theories which have had an independent life and growth, and which, though at first somewhat infantile, have proved capable of surviving and developing throughout more than two thousand years."

"Progress in metaphysics, so far as it has existed, has consisted of gradual refinement of all these hypotheses, a development of their implications, and a reformulation of each to meet the objections urged by the adherents of rival hypotheses. To learn to conceive the universe according to each of these systems is an imaginative delight and an antidote to dogmatism."

"I do not know of any other man who has been as influential as he was in the sphere of thought. I say this because what appears as Platonism is, when analyzed, found to be in essence Pythagoreanism. The whole conception of an eternal world, revealed to the intellect but not to the senses, is derived from him. ...but for him, theologians would not have sought logical proofs of God and immortality."

"It is only in quite recent times that it has been possible to say clearly that Pythagoras was wrong."

"The combination of mathematics and theology, which began with Pythagoras, characterized religious philosophy in Greece, in the Middle Ages, and in modern times down to Kant. Orphism before Pythagoras was analogous to Asiatic mystery religions. But in Plato, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant there is an intimate blending of religion and reasoning, of moral aspiration with logical admiration of what is timeless, which comes from Pythagoras, and distinguishes the intellectualized theology of Europe from the more straightforward mysticism of Asia."

"Rationalistic as opposed to apocalyptic religion has been, ever since Pythagoras, and notably ever since Plato, very completely dominated by mathematics and mathematical method."

"Mystical doctrines as to the relation of time to eternity are also reinforced by pure mathematics, for the mathematical objects, such as numbers, if real at all, are eternal and not in time. Such eternal objects can be conceived as God's thoughts. Hence Plato's doctrine that God is a geometer, and Sir James Jeans' belief that He is addicted to arithmetic."

"Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as in a super-sensible world. Geometry deals with exact circles, but no sensible object is exactly circular; however carefully we use our compasses, there will be some imperfections and irregularities. This suggests the view that all exact reasoning applies to ideal as opposed to sensible objects; it is natural to go further, and to argue that thought is nobler than sense, and the objects of thought more real than that of sense-perception."

"… this little book […] seeks that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader, or it does not even seek him. Unaware of the time and the hour, it quietly waits for that right reader to come like the bridegroom and to bring the occasion along with him. Let each do a share-the reader therefore more."

"Father in heaven, how well we know that seeking always has its promise; how much the more, then, seeking you, the giver of all the promises and of all good gifts! How well we know that the seeker does not always need to wander out into the world, because the more holy that is which he seeks, the closer it is to him, and if he seeks you, O God, you are closest of all to him! But we also know that seeking always has its toil and its spiritual trial-how much more, then, the terror in seeking you, you Mighty One!"

"Whoever says that this stillness does not exist is merely making noise."

"If anyone has the task of preaching or teaching others about their guilt, of teaching-something that this discourse, which is without authority, does not do-he does have the consolation that the purest heart is precisely the one most willing to comprehend his own guilt most deeply."

"Alas, although there come to be more and more who know so very much, experienced people are becoming more and more rare!"

"The wedding ceremony is like a wreath of eternity, but love weaves it, and duty says it must be woven; and love’s delight is to weave it, and duty says it must be woven-every day from the flower of the moment. Here eternity is not finished with time, but the covenant is eternity’s beginning in time; the eternal resolution and the duty for eternity must remain with the wedded pair in the union of love through time, and there is be celebration at its remembrance and power in its recollection and hope in its promise."

"Death does not have the power to create unhappiness."

"There is a government loan officer where the poor can go. The indigent person is helped, but do the poor have a joyful conception of this loan office? Likewise, there perhaps are marriages that seek God only in adversity, alas, and seek him as a loan office; and anyone who only then seeks him always runs this danger. Would such a late resolution, which even though worthy is still not bought at the last moment without shame and without great danger-would it be more beautiful and wiser than the first resolution of marriage?"

"The person who is without God in the world soon becomes bored with himself-and expresses this haughtily by being bored with all life, but the person who is in fellowship with God indeed lives with the one whose presence gives infinite significance to even the most insignificant."

"Time also is a good."

"Earnestness understands the same thing about death but understands it in a different way. It understands that death makes all equal, and this it has already understood, because earnestness has taught it to seek before God the equality in which all are able to be equal."

"See, one can have an opinion about remote events, about a natural object, about nature, about scholarly works, and about another human being, and so on about much else, and when one expresses this opinion the wise person can decide whether it is correct or incorrect."

"Das Leben Gottes und das göttliche Erkennen mag also wohl als ein Spielen der Liebe mit sich selbst ausgesprochen werden; diese Idee sinkt zur Erbaulichkeit und selbst zur Fadheit herab, wenn der Ernst, der Schmerz, die Geduld und Arbeit des Negativen darin fehlt."

"Die Kraft des Geistes ist nur so groß als ihre Äußerung, seine Tiefe nur so tief, als er in seiner Auslegung sich auszubreiten und sich zu verlieren getraut."

"Das Auge des Geistes mußte mit Zwang auf das Irdische gerichtet und bei ihm festgehalten werden; und es hat einer langen Zeit bedurft, jene Klarheit, die nur das Überirdische hatte, in die Dumpfheit und Verworrenheit, worin der Sinn des Diesseitigen lag, hineinzuarbeiten, und die Aufmerksamkeit auf das Gegenwärtige als solches, welche Erfahrung genannt wurde, interessant und geltend zu machen. – Jetzt scheint die Not des Gegenteils vorhanden, der Sinn so sehr in das Irdische festgewurzelt, daß es gleicher Gewalt bedarf, ihn darüber zu erheben. Der Geist zeigt sich so arm, daß er sich, wie in der Sandwüste der Wanderer nach einem einfachen Trunk Wasser, nur nach dem dürftigen Gefühle des Göttlichen überhaupt für seine Erquickung zu sehnen scheint. An diesem, woran dem Geiste genügt, ist die Größe seines Verlustes zu ermessen."

"Daran mitzuarbeiten, daß die Philosophie der Form der Wissenschaft näher komme – dem Ziele, ihren Namen der Liebe zum Wissen ablegen zu können und wirkliches Wissen zu sein – , ist es, was ich mir vorgesetzt."

"Denn die Sache ist nicht in ihrem Zwecke erschöpft, sondern in ihrer Ausführung, noch ist das Resultat das wirkliche Ganze, sondern es zusammen mit seinem Werden; der Zweck für sich ist das unlebendige Allgemeine, wie die Tendenz das bloße Treiben, das seiner Wirklichkeit noch entbehrt, und das nackte Resultat ist der Leichnam, der sie hinter sich gelassen."

"So wird auch durch die Bestimmung des Verhältnisses, das ein philosophisches Werk zu andern Bestrebungen über denselben Gegenstand zu haben glaubt, ein fremdartiges Interesse hereingezogen, und das, worauf es bei der Erkenntnis der Wahrheit ankommt, verdunkelt. So fest der Meinung der Gegensatz des Wahren und des Falschen wird, so pflegt sie auch entweder Beistimmung oder Widerspruch gegen ein vorhandenes philosophisches System zu erwarten, und in einer Erklärung über ein solches nur entweder das eine oder das andre zu sehen. Sie begreift die Verschiedenheit philosophischer Systeme nicht so sehr als die fortschreitende Entwicklung der Wahrheit, als sie in der Verschiedenheit nur den Widerspruch sieht. Die Knospe verschwindet in dem Hervorbrechen der Blüte, und man könnte sagen, daß jene von dieser widerlegt wird, ebenso wird durch die Frucht die Blüte für ein falsches Dasein der Pflanze erklärt, und als ihre Wahrheit tritt jene an die Stelle von dieser. Diese Formen unterscheiden sich nicht nur, sondern verdrängen sich auch als unverträglich miteinander. Aber ihre flüssige Natur macht sie zugleich zu Momenten der organischen Einheit, worin sie sich nicht nur nicht widerstreiten, sondern eins so notwendig als das andere ist, und diese gleiche Notwendigkeit macht erst das Leben des Ganzen aus."

"This thoroughgoing scepticism is not what doubtless earnest zeal for truth and science fancies it has equipped itself with in order to be ready to deal with them — viz. the resolve, in science, not to deliver itself over to the thoughts of others on their mere authority, but to examine everything for itself, and only follow its own conviction, or, still better, to produce everything itself and hold only its own act for true. ... By the conversion of opinion held on authority into opinion held out of personal conviction, the content of what is held is not necessarily altered, and truth has not thereby taken the place of error. If we stick to a system of opinion and prejudice resting on the authority of others, or upon personal conviction, the one differs from the other merely in the conceit which animates the latter. Scepticism, directed to the whole compass of phenomenal consciousness, on the contrary, makes mind for the first time qualified to test what truth is; since it brings about a despair regarding what are called natural views, thoughts, and opinions, which it is matter of indifference to call personal or belonging to others, and with which the consciousness, that proceeds straight away to criticize and test, is still filled and hampered, thus being, as a matter of fact, incapable of what it wants to undertake."

"does not philosophy teach that if the infinite is thought outside the finite, then both become finitudes? Is it not repeated again and again: truth is the criterion of itself and of the false? Then if philosophy excludes something it renders itself finite. In order to prevent this, it must be willing to explain itself more specifically with regard to my obtuseness and what constitutes it."

"Each being is assigned only to himself, and the one who takes care to remain here has a solid foundation to walk on that will not shame him. If he then deliberates with himself about what he will, how far he wills, if by virtue of this deliberation he begins slowly and silently, his earnestness will not be put to shame. If, on the other hand, it pleases a man to wax serious in thought of what he will do for others, this demonstrates that basically he is a fool whose life is and remains a jest despite looks and gestures and powerful eloquence and careful theatrical postures, the existence of which means nothing except insofar as with the assistance of irony there can be a little amusement out of it."

"For the cultured it is truly too little to have to deal with an individual human being, even though that human being is himself. He does not want to be disturbed when he is to be built up, does not want to be reminded of all the trifles, of individuals, of himself, because to forget all this is precisely the upbuilding. The life of the congregation, the grand definition of the system, the purely human-all of which he does not tempt the individual to think about himself or want to finish something, but builds him up only by his thinking it over-are the subject for consideration in the present work. It is again this totality toward which it strives. The cultured person thus seeks the congregation, to call to mind a word of the poet to whom the present devotional work is so very much indebted and whom I do myself the honor of naming as the authority and as the chosen bard of the cultured, the pondering Professor Heiberg."

"By paying attention to the opinion of the visible reading public and of the usual reviewers, one falls into the most fatuous confusion."

"In the scholarly world much is made of classifying literature and assigning the writing of each individual author to its proper place in the age and the writing of the age and in that of the human race. Yet no one thinks about what might be gained if one or another literary type could be trained to read only prologues, but to do it so thoroughly that he would begin with the earliest times and advance through all the centuries down to our own day. Prologues are characterized by the accidental, like dialects, idioms, colloquialisms; they are dominated by fashion in a way entirely different from the way works are-they change like clothing."

"when the philosopher becomes blessed through his philosophy, this is an accidental blessedness. There is, then, something higher than philosophy. It is higher in that it includes me and similar bunglers. If this is so, then the question is: will philosophy continue to be called the absolute? But if it is not the absolute, then it must be able to state its boundary. If I wanted to be a poet, the esthetician would certainly instruct me about which capacities are required for that. I would then perceive that I am not a poet and would accept my fate. If, on the other hand, poetry wanted to claim to be the absolute, then it would not dare to exclude me, because the absolute cannot be anything that is not common to all."

"Das natürliche Bewußtsein wird sich erweisen, nur Begriff des Wissens, oder nicht reales Wissen zu sein. Indem es aber unmittelbar sich vielmehr für das reale Wissen hält, so hat dieser Weg für es negative Bedeutung, und ihm gilt das vielmehr für Verlust seiner selbst, was die Realisierung des Begriffs ist; denn es verliert auf diesem Wege seine Wahrheit. Er kann deswegen als der Weg des Zweifels angesehen werden, oder eigentlicher als Weg der Verzweiflung; auf ihm geschieht nämlich nicht das, was unter Zweifeln verstanden zu werden pflegt, ein Rütteln an dieser oder jener vermeinten Wahrheit, auf welches ein gehöriges Wiederverschwinden des Zweifels und eine Rückkehr zu jener Wahrheit erfolgt, so daß am Ende die Sache genommen wird wie vorher. Sondern er ist die bewußte Einsicht in die Unwahrheit des erscheinenden Wissens, dem dasjenige das Reellste ist, was in Wahrheit vielmehr nur der nichtrealisierte Begriff ist."

"Denn ist das Erkennen das Werkzeug, sich des absoluten Wesens zu bemächtigen, so fällt sogleich auf, daß die Anwendung eines Werkzeugs auf eine Sache sie vielmehr nicht läßt, wie sie für sich ist, sondern eine Formierung und Veränderung mit ihr vornimmt. Oder ist das Erkennen nicht Werkzeug unserer Tätigkeit, sondern gewissermaßen ein passives Medium, durch welches hindurch das Licht der Wahrheit an uns gelangt, so erhalten wir auch so sie nicht, wie sie an sich, sondern wie sie durch und in diesem Medium ist. Wir gebrauchen in beiden Fällen ein Mittel, welches unmittelbar das Gegenteil seines Zwecks hervorbringt; oder das Widersinnige ist vielmehr, daß wir uns überhaupt eines Mittels bedienen."

"Dass die anderen Wissenschaften, sie mögen es mit Räsonnieren, ohne die Philosophie, versuchen, soviel sie wollen, ohne sie nicht Leben, Geist, Wahrheit in ihnen zu haben vermögen."

"Von allen Wissenschaften, Künsten, Geschicklichkeiten, Handwerken gilt die Überzeugung, daß, um sie zu besitzen, eine vielfache Bemühung des Erlernens und Übens derselben nötig ist. In Ansehung der Philosophie dagegen scheint jetzt das Vorurteil zu herrschen, daß, wenn zwar jeder Augen und Finger hat, und wenn er Leder und Werkzeug bekommt, er darum nicht imstande sei, Schuhe zu machen, jeder doch unmittelbar zu philosophieren und die Philosophie zu beurteilen verstehe, weil er den Maßstab an seiner natürlichen Vernunft dazu besitze..."

"Die Art des Studiums der alten Zeit hat diese Verschiedenheit von dem der neuern, daß jenes die eigentliche Durchbildung des natürlichen Bewußtseins war. An jedem Teile seines Daseins sich besonders versuchend und über alles Vorkommende philosophierend, erzeugte es sich zu einer durch und durch betätigten Allgemeinheit. In der neuern Zeit hingegen findet das Individuum die abstrakte Form vorbereitet; die Anstrengung, sie zu ergreifen und sich zu eigen zu machen, ist mehr das unvermittelte Hervortreiben des Innern und abgeschnittne Erzeugen des Allgemeinen als ein Hervorgehen desselben aus dem Konkreten und der Mannigfaltigkeit des Daseins."

"Das Analysieren einer Vorstellung, wie es sonst getrieben worden, war schon nichts anderes als das Aufheben der Form ihres Bekanntseins."

"Das Bekannte überhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist, nicht erkannt. Es ist die gewöhnlichste Selbsttäuschung wie Täuschung anderer, beim Erkennen etwas als bekannt vorauszusetzen, und es sich ebenso gefallen zu lassen; mit allem Hin – und Herreden kommt solches Wissen, ohne zu wissen, wie ihm geschieht, nicht von der Stelle. Das Subjekt und Objekt u.s.f., Gott, Natur, der Verstand, die Sinnlichkeit u.s.f. werden unbesehen als bekannt und als etwas Gültiges zugrunde gelegt und machen feste Punkte sowohl des Ausgangs als der Rückkehr aus. Die Bewegung geht zwischen ihnen, die unbewegt bleiben, hin und her, und somit nur auf ihrer Oberfläche vor."

"Science presents this educative movement in all its detail and necessity, as well as presenting, in its configuration, everything that has already been reduced to a moment and property of spirit. The goal is spirit’s insight into what knowledge is. Impatience demands the impossible, namely, the attainment of the goal without the means. On the one hand, the length of this way has to be endured, because each moment is necessary;—on the other hand, we have to dwell on each moment because each is itself an entire individual shape and is considered absolutely only insofar as its determinacy is considered as a whole or a concretion, or the whole is considered in the peculiarity of this determination.—Since the substance of the individual, since even the world-spirit has had the patience to pass through these forms in the long expanse of time, and to undertake the prodigious labour of world-history, in which it displayed in each form as much of its entire content as that form was capable of holding, and since the world-spirit could not attain consciousness about itself by any lighter labour, then in accordance with the Thing the individual certainly cannot comprehend his own substance with less labour; and yet, at the same time, he has less trouble, since in itself all this is accomplished,—the content is already the actuality razed to a possibility, the immediacy overcome, the configuration by now reduced to its abbreviation, to the simple thought-determination. Already something thought, the content is property of the substance; it is no longer the Being-there that needs to be converted into the form of Being-in-itself, it is rather the in-itself—no longer merely in its original state nor immersed in Being-there—but already recollected, that requires conversion into the form of Being-for-itself. The nature of this operation must be described more precisely."

"The individual whose substance is the more elevated spirit runs through this past, in the way in which someone who takes up a higher science goes through the preparatory information he has long since absorbed, in order to bring its content to presence; he revives the recollection of it, without interest in it and without dwelling on it. The singleton must also pass through the educational stages of the universal spirit with regard to their content, but as shapes already discarded by the spirit, as stages on a way that has been prepared and levelled. Thus, as regards information, we see that what in former ages occupied men of mature spirit, has been reduced to the level of information, exercises, and even games of boyhood; and, in the pedagogical progression, we shall recognize the history of the education of the world as if traced in a silhouette. This past Being-there is already acquired property of the universal spirit that constitutes the substance of the individual and so, in appearing externally to him, constitutes his inorganic nature.—In this respect education, considered from the side of the individual, consists in his acquiring what is thus present before him, absorbing into himself his inorganic nature, and taking possession of it for himself. But, considered from the side of the universal spirit as substance, this is nothing but the fact that the substance gives itself its self-consciousness, and produces its becoming and its reflection into itself."

"Die Aufgabe aber, das Individuum von seinem ungebildeten Standpunkte aus zum Wissen zu führen, war in ihrem allgemeinen Sinn zu fassen, und das allgemeine Individuum, der Weltgeist, in seiner Bildung zu betrachten. – Was das Verhältnis beider betrifft, so zeigt sich in dem allgemeinen Individuum jedes Moment, wie es die konkrete Form und eigne Gestaltung gewinnt. Das besondre Individuum aber ist der unvollständige Geist, eine konkrete Gestalt, deren ganzes Dasein einer Bestimmtheit zufällt, und worin die andern nur in vermischten Zügen vorhanden sind."

"The true is the whole. But the whole is only the essence completing itself through its development. Of the absolute it must be said that it is essentially result, that only in the end is it what it is in truth; and precisely in this consists its nature: to be actual, subject, or becoming-its-own-self. Though it may seem contradictory that the absolute is to be conceived essentially as result, a brief consideration clears up this semblance of contradiction. The beginning, the principle, or the absolute, as it is initially and immediately expressed, is only the universal."

"Knowledge conceived as an instrument is a means to the end of power. The goal of philosophy, however, is not to gain power over the Absolute but to know it as it truly is."