II. Talk on the Common Course (1952)
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9. Discussion of the students' interpretations of the sayings. Summarize them so as to lead up to an evaluation of decision.
Zarathustra is interpreted as the man who established good and evil as absolutes and the Parsi religion is based on this distinction. He is interpreted as a metaphysician who claimed to know what the Good is or the idea of the Good, and who imposed on man the service of the Good or of God. He actually did no such thing, but it is true that such interpretation can be derived from him. He too gives us an answer to the ultimate threefold question: What is the meaning of Being? what is the value of Life? what is the being of Man? His answer is that either there is no answer to the question or that there are two answers: one says that Being is bad and meaningless and Life is destructive and valueless; the other says just the opposite, that Life is good, valuable and meaningful and bestows meaning on Being as the sustaining force of this world. The real answer lies in the decision of man, who must give his answer through deeds and not through words. Words are deeds, if they are true, because true words result in deeds. He who wants to speak the truth, must know how to handle bow and arrow well; he will need this knowledge. Man can speak the truth in absolute sincerity and then relate himself to an absolute which will enable him to establish meaningful and truthful relations, relations that make his life valuable and bring meaning into Being. But man does not know Truth, the absolute, and does not even have a definite idea of Truth like all metaphysicians do. The God of Zarathustra is Truth, but is not called God, but the "Truth thinking one." This God is placed so high above the world, that man can never reach Him and He does not care to reach man. Thus man, reaching out to the "Truth thinking one" but never reaching him, also places himself above the world, becomes its judge, that which God never is. Reaching out to Truth, man remains in the midst of the world, active here and now and aiming at improvement of life and world.
Laotse and Buddha had liberated the will and shown its power; Zarathustra makes the will free and creative by binding it to an absolute aim, the betterment of man, life and world. He claims for man the power of decision over value itself and places upon him the responsibility for whatever values life and world may have. Man does not know Truth, because he is not God, but man can be true himself and thereby establish truth on earth, Man can be truthful if he wants to be, he is a free being that can be or not be free. As distinguished from Kant's "categorical imperative" (which was conceived in line with the metaphysical interpretation of the religion of Zoroaster and the Hebrew-Christian tradition), Zarathustra's thought is based on a value-creating quality of man (as distinguished from the law- giving and law-abiding qualities of Kants man), on a kind of creative impulse which speaks to life and world with the voice of another categorical imperative: You, life and world shall be good and true because I, who can make you good and true, have decided to do so.
This capability of decision is Zarathustra's discovery. Human will becomes free and creative by transforming itself, not into "good will" but into the will for the good, which is the will to be true. We have thus far worked with the threefold ultimate question. All philosophical questions -- questions concerned with ends not with means, with intentional meaning not with functional ideas -- are related to the one central ultimate question. Have you ever raised such questions? -- Which questions did you ask in your childhood? -- In adolescence? -- Are there questions which have bothered you again and again? -- (Summarize the students' answers, break them down into categories, enlarge them and make them more relevant. Assign to each student one question for which he is to work out possible answers). We saw that whenever ultimate questions were raised in earnest, they were answered by the discovery of new values. What is the function of ultimate questions? -- Why can man raise ultimate questions?
10. Short discussion of the meaning of ultimate questions. Ultimate questions ask for the meaning of Being; do they not try to reach beyond the finite and indicate a discontent with the finitude of the world and human life? What distinguishes the finite from the infinite? Are they distinguished in quality? Are they not both temporal and spatial? Do ultimate questions aim perhaps at something beyond the temporal and spatial, which may be either finite or infinite? This something beyond the temporal and spatial we shall call the eternal.
Do ultimate questions attempt to transcend Being, as it is given in time and space? -- How is it possible to ask such questions at all? - What does the ability to ask such questions indicate? -- Who are we to ask such questions? -- Where does our mind get the notion of the eternal? -- Infinitude is only endless finitude; yet we possess the notion of something entirely different, which we call the eternal. But how can we even conceive of infinitude since we have experience with finite things only?
Let us start again with the question: Why are we here? -- In order to raise this question, we need the notion of Being, the notion of an I and the notion of situation, of self-location.
How do I know that I am? -- I know that things are because they act upon me, because I feel them and react to them; thus I also know that I am. Animals or even plants may know just as much. This knowledge needs no language and obviously does not develop a language. The very fact that I have a language to express this indicates that I know more than that I am. Knowing that I am, I merely know that I am something among other things. This never tells me that I am I, namely somebody, not only something. In Descartes' Discours de la Methode we find the greatest and most metaphysical analysis of the knowledge which I have of my own being. Descartes proceeded by thinking all things out of existence and saw that when he tried to think thinking itself out of existence, he was still thinking. From this he concluded: cogito ergo sum, I am thinking, therefore I am. But in this sense, thinking is one sensation among others; it assures me, as all sensations do, that I am, but not that I am somebody; it assures me of my being, but only as something submitted to sensations, either some thinking thing or some thing thought about. Nietzsche rightly maintained that Descartes' argument never proves that I am, but only that thinking is going on and that therefore thoughts exist. Where do I find assurance for this I?
How do I know that I am, a person, somebody, who has a name? The question of who am I can never be answered by replies which explain what I am. I know that I am I because I know that you are you. Persons exist as persons insofar as they mutually recognize each other as persons. A child goes through the experience of changing the mind of his mother; a person who has made up his own mind can agree with another person and through reason can be influenced by him. That is also how Descartes knew that he was he; this enabled him to bring a fully developed I into his inquiry, which then could not account for the I.
We learn of the I through and in relationship with the You. We learn to distinguish the I from the You, until eventually we are able to distinguish the I and the You within ourselves and begin to talk with ourselves. I can face myself as a You. But is it perhaps the other way round and I can recognize you as yourself only because I can face myself as a You? Perhaps both ways are right; at any rate, they result in the same thing, namely that it is impossible to think of myself as an I without thinking of you as an I, etc. We can look at this relationship from both sides, from our experience of an external You or from the experience of an internal I; the link itself between I and You is unbreakable.
How do we know that we are here? Because we know that we were somewhere else before and will go some other place after having been here? This implies that in order to know that we are here, we must also know that we are now here. And this now could not be, if there were not a then which preceded it. And the same is true for the future when we shall be at some other place. Here and now belong together; we are always here and now wherever and whenever we are. We cannot be now without being here and we cannot be here without now being. And this seems to be true for all things, for all organic and inorganic matter. Everything that is, seems to be contained in space and time, seems to be spaced and timed.
Is everybody contained in time and space in the same way as everything? Are we only timed and spaced or can we ourselves do some timing and spacing? Without such capacity we could never understand why we, in distinction from all other things, know that we are here and now. Animals, some of whom have a very developed sense of time and space, "know" only that at some moment they are at some place to which they were driven. To decide when to be here and when not to be there seems to require a very different relationship to time and space.
(Question the students: What do the painters think of our relation to space? What do the musicians think of our relation to time? Are we able to condition Time and Space or are we wholly conditioned by them?)
Is this relationship indicated in human consciousness? Animals, too, are conscious. Is it indicated in self-consciousness? (This is the opinion of all Western metaphysics from Aristotle to Hegel.) But animals, for all we know, may also be self-conscious. All these categories are scientific approaches to Being, approaches from without and categories which we need for observation and reflective evaluation of scientific research results. They are not categories we live by. Philosophically, we must look at Being from within and think in categories we can live by. The animal, no matter how conscious it may be of things that happen to It, never becomes aware of Being as such or of the Universe; similarly, no matter how much self-consciousness an animal may posses, it never becomes aware of being himself.
The category we live by is an awareness of the universe and of ourselves; our awareness makes use of consciousness and self-consciousness and can distinguish between them. We can distinguish because we are distinguished from Being. We are being who are above Being. This we call transcendence. If we say that man is a transcending being, we mean that he is not fully explainable by Being, not even by Being as a whole, as is the Universe. Because we are not wholly contained in Being, we are also not wholly contained in time and space. All other beings, except man, are determined and determinable by time and space. Only man is not fully conditioned by time and space, but has time and space; he can re-condition time and space because he is neither. We try to overcome time by "making time," speeding up, etc.; and we try to overcome space by "making a place for ourselves." (References: For time concepts related to this position, see St. Augustine, Confessions; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason; Kierkegaard, Concept of Dread; Bergson, Duree et Simultaneite; Heidegger, Sein und Zeit.)
According to Greek theory, the making of things is guided by an eidos, an idea which man must conceive first before he starts the process of fabrication. This idea is actually a free invention, an abstract time and space construction which man forms in his mind; out of it and according to it, he then makes and forms things. Modern mathematics, after having been liberated from all preconceived metaphysical notions which made mathematics purely reflective, has become intentional and inventive, working with freely constructed time and space concepts which philosophy is still unable to explain and which are called "models." Modern art has incorporated all kinds of ornamental abstractions and painters indulge freely in metaphorical space constructions. The same is true of modern composers with respect to time.