Fear and Trembling

Not only in the world of trade, but in the world of ideas as well, our age stages ein wirklicher Ausverkauf. Everything is to be had at such a bargain price that it becomes a question whether, in the end, there is anyone who will bid. Every speculative score-keeper, who conscientiously points up the significant progress of recent philosophy — every Privatdocent, repetent, student, every emigrant and subletter in philosophy — does not stop at doubting all things, but goes further. Perhaps it would be untimely and unseasonable to inquire of them whither, in fact, they are arriving; but it is at any rate polite and modest to take it as settled that they have doubted all things, since otherwise it would be a strange way of speaking, that they went further. This preliminary movement they have, then, all of them made, and presumably so lightly that they find it unnecessary to let fall a word as to how it was done; for not even he who, anxious and concerned, sought a little instruction found such a thing — any guiding hint, any little dietetic prescription as to how one is to comport oneself under this prodigious task. “But Cartesius has done it, has he not?” Cartesius — a venerable, humble, upright thinker, whose writings, surely, no one can read without the deepest emotion — has done what he has said, and said what he has done. Alas! alas! alas! it is a great

rarity in our age! Cartesius, as he himself often enough repeats, did not doubt with respect to faith. (“Memores tamen, ut jam dictum est, huic lumini naturali tamdiu tantum esse credendum, quamdiu nihil contrarium a Deo ipso revelatur ..... Præter cætera autem, memoriæ nostræ pro summa regula est infigendum, ea quæ nobis a Deo revelata sunt, ut omnium certissima esse credenda; et quamvis forte lumen rationis, quam maxime clarum et evidens, aliud quid nobis suggerere videretur, soli tamen auctoritati divinæ potius quam proprio nostro judicio fidem esse adhibendam.” Cfr. Principia philosophiæ, pars prima §28 and §76.) He did not cry fire and make it a duty for all men to doubt, for Cartesius was a quiet, solitary thinker, not a bawling street-watchman; he modestly confessed that his method had significance only for himself and was grounded in part in his own earlier botched learning. (“Ne quis igitur putet, me hic traditurum aliquam methodum, quam unusquisque sequi debeat ad recte regendam rationem; illam enim tantum, quam ipsemet secutus sum, exponere decrevi… Sed simul ac illud studiorum curriculum absolvi [sc. juventutis], quo decurso mos est in eruditorum numerum cooptari, plane aliud coepi cogitare. Tot enim me dubiis totque erroribus implicatum esse animadverti, ut omnes discendi conatus nihil aliud mihi profuisse judicarem, quam quod ignorantiam meam magis magisque detexissem.” Cfr. Dissertatio de methodo, pp. 2 and 3.) — What those ancient Greeks, who knew also somewhat of philosophy, took to be a task for an entire life, because the doubting facility is not acquired in days and weeks; what the old time-served combatant attained, who had preserved the equilibrium of doubt through every snare, who undaunted denied the certainty of sense and the certainty of thought, who incorruptibly defied the anxiety of self-love and the insinuations of sympathy — with that, in our age, every man begins.

In our age, no man stops at faith, but every man goes further. To inquire whither they arrive would perhaps be a piece of audacity; on the other hand, it is surely a sign of breeding and culture that I assume every man has faith, since otherwise it would be a strange way of speaking — that he goes further. In those ancient days it was otherwise; then faith was a task for the whole of life, because it was assumed that the believing facility is not acquired in days nor in weeks. When, then, the seasoned old man drew near to...