49618642 leo strauss philosophical texts

8/7/2019 49618642 Leo Strauss Philosophical Texts

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302 InterpretationThefirst of these two lectures, "Existential ism," was delivered by Professor

Strauss fourteen years earlier them the second one, "The problem of Socrates."They are, however, related to one another by the ir common concern to under-stand and to respond to the thought of Heidegger. Indeed, they are ProfessorStrauss's most extensive public statements about Heidegger ,at least sofar aswe know, and we have accordingly chosen to present them here together.

ExistentialismLEO STRAUSS

According to Dr. Victor Gourevitch , whose own lecture on Existential ism isreferred to by Professor Strauss in the text, this lecture was delivered in Febru-ary, 1956, at the Hi lle l Foundat ion of the University of Chicago. The lecturewas avai lable to the edito rs in a copy of a typescript with addit ions, correc-t ions, and alte rat ions by Professor Strauss' s own hand. The original of thist ypescript , with Professor Strauss's rev isions, can be found in the Strauss ar-chives at the University of Chicago. We have chosen to present the revisedversion in the text, while indicating in notes what the revisions were. However,where Professor Strauss merely corrected a typographical mis take, or where headded a comma or made other small changes of punc tuat ion, we have pre-.sented only the corrected version. We have also taken the l iber ty oj correct ing,without comment, a few misspel lings in the typescr ipt. We are grateful to Hein-rich and Wiebke Meier for thei r most generous help in deciphering ProfessorStrauss's handwriting.A more heavily edited version of this lecture, based on a typescript that

di ffe rs, in part, f rom the one we used, and on a copy that gives no indication ofhav ing been seen by Professor Strauss, was prev iously publ ished, under thet it le "An Introduction to Heidegger ian Existential ism," in Th e Rebirth of Clas-s ical Polit ical Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Le o Strauss (Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 (01989 by The University ojChicagoJ),pp. 27-46. We have noted in an epilogue what appear to us to be the mostimpor tant divergences between the earl ier vers ion and the present one.This series of lectures-a reminder of, the perplexities of modem man-

should help the Jewish students in par ticular towards facing the,perplexit ies ofthe modem Jew wi th somewhat greater cla rity. Existent ial ism has. remindedmany people that thinking is incomplete and defective if the thinking being, thethinking individua l, forget s himsel f as what he i s. It i s th e old.Socratic warn-ing. Compare ' Theodorus in the Theaetetus, the purely theoret ic; purely objec-t ive man who loses himself completely in the contemplation of mathematicalobjec ts, who knows nothing about himsel f and h is fel low men, in part icularabout his own defects. The thinking' man is not a pure mind. a pointer-readingobserver, for instance. The' question what am I. or who am I cannot be an-swered by science. for this would mean that there are some self-forgetting~C 1995 by The Univer si ty of Chicago. A ll r igh ts r es erve d.INTERPRETATION. Spring 1995. Vol. 22. No.3


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30 4 InterpretationTheodoruses who have gotten hold of the limits of the h~~pl.!?'y'~\;oJscientific method. For if they have not done SO,' if tbeirresultsare~Yprovisional , hypothetical, i t is barely possible that whatwe.caD'Jjnd,. out ' byexamining ourselves and our situation honestly, without the pnde'~d'th~"pre-lel)ce of scientific knowledge, is more helpful tIian'science.; . ';4Ex isten tia lism is a school of philosoph ic thought .. The ' name-isnot.likePlatonism, Epicureanism, and Thomism. Existential ism is a nameless move-ment l ike pragmatism or pos it iv ism. This is deceptive.' Existentialism owes itsoverr iding s ignificance to a s ingle man: Heidegger . Heidegger alone .broughtabout such a radical change in ph ilosophic thought as i s revolution izing allthought in Germany, in continenta l Europe , and i s beginning' to a ffec t evenAnglo-Saxony. I am not surpr ised by this effect. I remember the impress ion hemade on me when I heard him first as a young Ph.D. in 1922. Up to that time Ihad been par ticularly impressed, as many of my, contemporar ies in Germanywere , by Max Weber, by Weber's" intransigent devot ion to inte llectual hon-esty, by his passionate devotion to the idea of science, a devotion that wascombined with a profound uneas iness regarding the meaning of science. On myway north from Freiburg where Heidegger then taught, I saw in.Frankfur tamMain Franz Rosenzweig whose name will always be remembered when in-formed people speak about Existential ism, and I told him of Heidegger. I saidto him: in comparison with Heidegger, Weber appeared to me as an orphanchi ld in regard to preci sion, and probing, and competence. Ihad never seenbefore such ser iousness , profundity, and concentration in th e interpretation ofphilosophic texts . I had heard Heidegger 's interpretat ion of certa in sections inAristot le . Sometime Iater I heardWerner Jaeger in . 'Ber lin interpret the sametexts. Charity compels me to limit the comparison to the.remark' that there waspo comparison. Gradually the breadth of th e revolution of thought whichHeidegger was preparing dawned upon me and my generation. We saw withour own eyes that there ha d been no such phenomenon in the world sinceHegel. He succeeded in a very shor t t ime in dethroning the established schoolsof philosophy in Germany. There was a famous discuss ion between Heideggerand Ernst Cassirer in Davos which revealed the . lostness and emptiness of thisremarkable representative of established academic philosophy to everyone whohad eyes. Cassi rer had been a pupi l of Hermann Cohen, the founder of the neo-Kantian school.' Cohen had e laborated a system of phi losophy whose cente rwas ethics. Cassirer had transformed Cohen's system into a new system ofphilosophy in which ethics had completely di sappeared: it had been si lent lydropped : he had not faced the problem. Heidegger did face the problem. Hedec lared that ethics is impossible and his whole being, was permea ted by theawareness that this fact opens up an abyss . Prior to Heidegger 's emergence themost outstanding German philosopher-I would say the only German philoso-pher-was Edmund Husserl . I t was Heidegger 's cri tique of Husser l' s phenom-enology which became decisive: precisely because that cri ticism consisted in a

Existentialism 305radical izat ion of Husser l' s own quest ion and quest ioning. Brief ly , ,as' Husserl. .once said to me who had been trained in' the Marburg neo-Kantian school, the"neo-Kantians were superior-to all other German philosophical schools"but theymade the mistake of beginning wi th the roof. He meant: the primary theme ofMarburg neo -Kantianism was the analysis of science . But sc ience, Husserltaught, i s de riva tive-from our primary knowledge of the world of things; sci-ence is not the perfec tion of man's understanding of the world; but a specifi cmodif icat ion of that pre-scientif ic understanding. The meaningful genesis ofscience out of pre-scientific understanding is a problem; the primary theme isthe philosophical understanding of the pre-scientific world and therefore in thef irst place the analysis of the sensibly perceived thing. According to HeideggerHusserl himself' began with the roof: the merely sensibly perceived thing isi tself der ivat ive; there are not f irst sensibly perceived things and thereaf ter thesame things in a sta te of being va lued or in a state of affec ting us. Our p rimaryunderstanding of the world is not an under standing of th ings as object s but ofwha t the Greeks indica ted" by pragmata, things which we handle and use. 12The horizon within which Husserl had analyzed the world of pre-scientif ic un-derstanding was the pure consciousness as the absolute being. Heidegger ques-t ioned tha t ori entation by refe rring to the fac t that the inner t ime be longing tothe pure consciousness cannot be understood i f one abstrac ts from the fac t thatthis time is necessarily finite and even constituted by man's mortality. Thesame effect which Heidegger had in the late twent ies and early thirt ies in Ger-many, he had very soon in continenta l Europe as a whole . There is no longer inexistence a philosophic pos it ion apart f rom neo-Thomism and Marxism crudeor re fmed . Al l rat iona l" libe ral phi losophic positions have lost their signifi-cance and power. One may' deplore this but I for one cannot bring- myself tocl inging to phi losophic posit ions which have been shown to be' inadequate . Iam" afraid tha t we shal l have to make a very great effort inorder to find a sol idbas is for rat i_~!1.~Jl~_!ali~~, Only a great thinker could help us in our intellec-tual plight. But here is the great trouble, the only great thinker in our time isHeidegger.The only question of importance of course is the quest ion whe ther Heideg-

ger's teaching is true or not. But the very question is deceptive because it isIsilent about the question of competence-of who is competent to judge. Per-haps only grea t thinkers are really competent to judge or' the thought of grea tthinkers. Kant" made a di st inc tion between ph ilosophers and those for whomphilosophy is identical with the his tory of philosophy. He made a dis tinction, inother words, between the thinker and the scholar. I know that I am only ascholar . But I know also that most people that cal l themselves philosophers aremostly, a t best , schola rs. The scholar is radica lly dependent on the work of thegrea t thinkers, of men who faced the prob lems without be ing covered" by anyauthori ty . The scholar is cautious, methodic, not bold. He does not become lostto our sigh t in, to us inaccessible heights and mists as the great thinkers do. Yet


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306 . Interpretationwhile the grea t thinkers are so bold they are also much more cautious than weare; they see pitfalls where we are sure of our ground. We scholars live in acharmed circle, l ight-l iv ing like the Homeric gods, protected against theprob-lems by the grea t thinkers. The scholar becomes possible through the fac t tha tthe great thinkers di sagree. Thei r disagreement c reates a possibil ity for us toreason about the ir diffe rences-for wondering which of them is more l ikely tobe r ight . We may think that the possible alternatives are exhausted by the greatthinkers of the past . We may try to class ify their doctr ines andmakea kind ofherbarium and think that we look over them from avantage point .iBut wecanno t exc lude the possibil ity that othe r grea t thinkers might a rise in the fu-ture-in 2200 in Burma-the character" of whose thought ha s in no way beenprovided for by our schemata. For who are we to believe that we have foundout the l imits of human possibi li ties?" In brief , we are occupied with reasoningabout the l it tle we understand oflDwhat the great thinkers have said.The scholar faces the fundamenta l problems through the intermediacy of

books. If he is a serious man through the intermediacy of the great books. Thegreat thinker faces the problems directly.I apply thi s to my situation in regard to Heidegger, A famous psychologist I

saw in Europe, an old man, told me that in his view it is not yet possible toform a judgment about the significance as well as the truth of Heidegger'swork. Because this work changed the intel lectual orientation so radical ly" thata long long time is needed in order to understand with even tolerable adequacyand in a most general wayn what this work means. The more I understand wha tHeidegger is aiming at the more I see how much still escapes me: The moststupid thing I could do would be to close my eyes or to reject his work.There is a not altogether unrespectable just if icat ion for doing so. Heidegger

became a Nazi in 1933. This was not due to a mere error of judgment on thepart of a man who lived on great heights high above the lowland" of polit ics.Everyone who had read his first great book and did not overlook the wood forthe trees could see the kinship in temper and direct ion between Heidegger'sthought and the Nazi s. What was the p ract ica l, that is to say serious meaning ofthe ~ntempt for re~ona~~~Il~_S~and the p~s~Qf ~olutell~~~ which permeatedthe work" except to encourage that extremist movement? When Heidegger wasrector of the University of Freiburg in 1933 he del ive red an offic ial speech inwhich he identif ied himself wi th the movement which then swept Germany .Heidegger has not ye t dared to ment ion that speechin the otherwise completelist of his writings, which appear from time to time on the book jackets of hisrecent publications. Yet' in 1953~ he published a book, lectures given in 1935,in which he spoke of the grea tness and dignity of the National Soc ial ist move-ment. In the preface written in 1953~ he said that all mistakes had been cor-rected. The case of Heidegger reminds to a certain extent of the case ofNietzsche. Nietzsche, natural ly , would not have s ided with Hit ler. Yet there isan undeniable kinship between Nietzsche 's thought and fascism. If one rejects

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Existentialism . 307as passionately as Nietzsche did" the conservative constitutional monarchy aswel l as democracy wi th a21 view to a new aristocracy, the passion of the denialswil l be much more effective than the necessar ily more subtle int imations of thecharac ter of the new nobil ity. T021 say nothing of his" blond beast. Passionatepolit ical act ion against such things is absolutely in order but i t is not sufficient.I t is not even polit ical ly sufficient. Are there no dangers threatening democracynot only from without but from within as well? Is there no problem of democ-racy, of' industrial mass democracy? The off icial high pries ts of democracy withtheir amiable reasonableness were not reasonable enough to prepare 'us for oursitua tion: the dec line o f Europe, the danger to the west , to the whole weste rnheri tage which i s a t least as great and even grea te r than that which threatenedMedite rranean civil iza tion around 300 of the Christian era . It is childish tobel ieve that the U.N. organ iza tion i s an answer even to the pol iti cal problem.AndJO within democracy: i t suffices to mention the name of France-s-" and' thec0l!!l!l~rc;~alsaru:f!~gi~~_positivism with their indescribable -~uigarity. Theyhave indeed the merit of not sending men into concentration camps and gaschambers, but is the absence of these unspeakable evils suff icient? Nietzscheonce described the change which had been effec ted in the second half of thenineteenth century in continental Europe as follows." The reading of the morn-ing p-ray~ had been replaced by the reading of the morning p'a~r: not everyday the same thing, the same reminder of men's absolute d~ and exalted~~sti_I!)"butevery~~),Y.2!!!~t~ing_ne~ with no reminder of duty and exalted'r dest iny. ~_c j~iz~tion, knowing more and more about less and less, pract ica llmpossibil ity of concent ration upon the very few essent ia l things upon whichman's wholeness entire ly depends=-th is" s~iali zat ion com~nsa ted by shamuniv~y, by the stimulation of all kinds of interests and curiosities withouttrue pass ion, the danger of universal philist in ism and creeping-~~;r t-~~sm. Orlet me look for a moment at the Jewish problem. The nobility of Israel isliterally beyond praise, the only bright spot for the contemporary Jew whoknows where he comes from. And yet Israel does not afford a solution to theJewish problem. "The Judaeo-Chri st ian tradi tion"? This means to blur and toco~ceal grave differences. Cultur~ eJ~i~~ can only be had it seems at thepnce of blunting all edges.It would be wholly unworthy of us as thinking beings not to listen to the

crit ics of democracy even if they are enemies of democracy-provided they arethinking men and especially great thinkers and not bluster ing fools.As you may recall f rom Mr. Gourevitch' s lecture, Existential ism appeals to

a certain experience (anguish) as the basic experience in the light of whicheverything must be understood. Having this exper ience is one thing; regardingit as the basic exper ience is another thing. I ts bas ic character is not S! .laranteed~y_th~~xperience itself.l!


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308 Interpretationness which is vaguely felt but not faced. Given.thiscontext.the experience towhich Existentialism refers will appear as a revelation, as therevelation,,-.as '~authentic interpretation of the fundamental- uneasiness. But something more .isrequired which however is equally generally admitted in our t ime: the vaguelyfe lt uneasiness must be regarded as essenti al to man,and not only to present.day man. Yet this vaguely fel t uneas iness is dis tinctly a present day phenome-non. Let us assume however that this uneas iness embodies what all earlierageshave thought , i s the ! E E l ! . . of what earlier ages have thought; in that case thevaguely fel t uneasiness is the mature fruit of all ear lier human effor ts : DO returnto_~.~ld~_ inte!p~~t.i~n ..?(~l!~._u~~!.~_~~!!.Ei~~ibii- NOW--tliisis - a ~secondview generally accepted today (apar t f rom the fundamental uneasiness which isvaguely fel t but not faced); this second element is the belief in progress.I have already referred to the well known expression 'we know more and

more about less and less .'. What does this mean? I t.means that modem. sciencehas not kept the promise which it held out from its beginning' up to the end ofthe nineteenth century: that i t would reveal to us the 1n!~c~~r oftJl~ uni-~~l "S~ and the .tl"llt!t_~~ut 1!l1iI l ' You have in the education of Henry Adams amemorable document of the change in the character and in the claim ofsciencewhich made i tse lf felt in the general publi c towards the end of the last centuryand which has increased since, in momentum and sweep. You all know theassertion that ~alue.:iudgment~~ iIll~~s~i~_~C?to the scientist.in general andto the social scientist in par ticular. This means cer tainly that while science hasinc reased man's power in ways that former men .never dreamt of, itis abso-lutely incapable to tell men how to use' that power. Science cannot tell-himwhether i t is wiser to use that .power wisely and benef icently or . foolishly ' anddevil ishly. From this i t fol lows that science is unable to establish i ts own m~-ingfulness or to answer the quest ion whether and in what sense science is good.We are then confronted with an enormous apparatus whose bulk is ever increas-ing, but' which in i tself has no meaning. If a scientist would say as .Goethe' sMephisto s ti ll said that science and reason is man's highest power , he would betold that he was not talking as a scientist but was" making a value judgmentwhich from the point of view of sc ience is a ltogethe r unwarranted. Someonehas (spoken of a flight from scientific reason. This flight is not due to anypervers ity but to science itself . I dimly remember the t ime when people arguedas follows: to deny the poss ibil ity of science or rat ional value judgments meansto admit that all values a re of equal rank; and this means tha t respect for allvalues, universal tolerance, is the dictate of scientif ic reason . .But this t ime hasgone. Today we hear that no conclus ion whatever can be drawn from the equal-ity of all values; that science does not kgitimate nor indeed f Q ~ Q . i E l _ that weshould draw rational conclusions from scientific findings. The assumption thatwe should act rationally and therefore tum to science for reliable information=-"this assumption is wholly outside of the purview and interes t of science proper.The f light from scientific reason is's the consequence of the f light of" science

Existentialism . 309from' reason-from the notion that man is a rational being who perverts hisbeing if he does not ac t rat ionally. It goes wi thout saying that a science whichdoes not allow of value judgments has no longer any possibili ty of speaking ofp~~Sexcept in the humanly irrelevant sense of scientif ic progress : the con-cept of progress has accordingly been replaced by the concept of chan~. Ifscience or reason cannot answer the quest ion of why sc ience is good, of whysufficiently gifted and otherwise able people fulfil l a du~ in devot ing them-selves to sc ience , science says in effec t that the choice of science is not rat io-nal: one may choose with equal r ight pleas ing and otherwise satisfying myths .Furthermore, science does no longer conce ive of it sel f as the ~rfect ion of thehuman understanding"; i t admits that it is based on fundamental hypotheseswhich wil l always remain hypotheses. The whole s tructure of science does notres t on evident necess it ies. I f this is so, the choice of the scientific orientationis as groundless as the choice of any alternative orientation. But what else doesthis mean except that the reflective scientist discovers as the ground of hisscience and his choice of science-as groundless choice-an abyss. For a sci-entif ic interpretat ion of the choice of the scientif ic orientation, on the one hand,and the choice of alternative orientations, on the other , presupposes already theacceptance of the scient ific orientation. The fundamenta l freedom is the onlynon-hypothetical phenomenon. Everything else rests on that fundamental f ree-.dom. We are already in the midst of Existential ism.Someone might say that sc ience by itself as wel l as poor and stupid posit iv-ism are of course helpless against the Existential ist onslaught . But do we nothave a rat ional philosophy which takes up the thread where science and pos it iv-ism drop it, and for which poetic, emotional Existentialism is' no match?" Ihave asked myself for a long time where do I f ind that rat ional philosophy?" IfI dis regard the neo-Thomists, where do I f ind today the philosopher who daresto say that he is in possession of the true me~phy_!i~ and the .t rue~!hi~ whichreveal to us in a rational, universally -valid way the !1ature of being and thecharacte r of the good life?" Naturally we can sit at the feet of the great philoso-phe~; of old, of Platoand of Aristotle. But who can dare to say that Plato'sdoctr ine of ideas as he int imated it, or Aris totle' s doctr ine of the nous that doesnothing but think itself and is essentially related to the eternal vis ible universe.i s the true teaching?" Are those l ike mysel f who are inclined to si t a t the feet ofthe old philosophers not exposed to the danger of a weak-kneed eclec tic ismwhich will not wi thstand a single blow on the part of those who are competentenough to remind them of the singleness of purpose and of inspiration thatcharacter izes every thinker who deserves to be called great?" Considering theprofound disagreement among the great thinkers of the past, i s it possible toappea l to them without blunting al l edges? The place of rational philosophyproper is taken more and more by what was called in the country of its originWel tanschauungslehre, theory of comprehensive views. In this st age it is ad-mitted that we cannot refer to the true metaphysical and ethical teaching avail-


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310 . Interpretationable in any of the great thinkers of the past. It is admitted that" there are nways of answering the fundamental quest ions , that there are n types of absolutepresupposi tions as Col lingwood ca lled them, none of which can be said to berationally superior to any other. This means to abandon the very idea of thetruth as a rat ional philosophy has always understood it. Itmeans justas in thecase of the social sc ienti st s" that the choice of any of these presupposit ions isgroundless; we are thus led" again to the abyss of freedom. To say nothing ofthe fac t that any such doct rine of comprehensive views presupposes that thefundamental possibi li ties are available or that fundamental human creat ivity is cat i ts end. Furthermore there is a radica l di sproport ion between the analyst ofcomprehensive views who does not face the fundamental questions ~.! !Y anddoes not even recognize them in their primary meaning, viz. as point ing to oneanswer only, and the great thinkers themselves . He is separated from them by a~~~ which is created by his p_~t~.!1.s!ednowledge o(_the utopian chara~~~

, .~f_~ginal philos()_Ehy.itself. How can we possibly believe tharo he is in aposit ion to understand the thinkers as they want to be understood and as- theymust have been understood if one i s to order and tabula te thei r teachings. Weare sufficiently famil iar with the history of moral philosophy in particular inorder not to be taken in for one moment by the pious hope that while there maybe profound disagreements among the ra tiona l phi losophers in a ll othe r re-spects, that they wil l happily agree regarding human conduct . There isonly onepossible way out of the predicament in which the doc trine ' Iof comprehensiveviews finds itsel f and that is to find the ground of the variety of comprehensive }views in the human soul or more generally stated in the human condition.If one takes this' indispensable step one is again already at the threshold ofExistentialism.There is another very common way of solving the so-called value problem.

People say that we must adopt values and that it is natural for us to adopt thevalues of our ~ie!y. Our" values are our highest principles if the meaning ofscience itself depends on values. Now it is impossible to overlook the relat ionof the principles' of our society to our society', and the de~ndence.~f.__!l_1~princi les on the socie . This means generally stated that the principles, thes"O-c ed categor ial system or the essences are rooted ult imately in the par ticu-lar, in something which exists. Exi stence precedes essence. For what el se dopeople mean when they say, e .g. that the Stoic natural law teaching is rooted inor relative to the decay of the Greek polis and the emergence of the Greekempire?"As I said ," sometimes people try to avoid the difficulty indicated by saying

tha t we have to adopt the values of our socie ty. This is al togethe r impossiblefor serious men. We cannot help raising the question as to the value of thevalues of our society. To accept the values of one's society because they are thevalues of one's society means simply to shirk one's responsibi lity, not to facethe situation that everyone has to make hi s own choice, to run away from one's

Existentialism' 311sel f. To find the solution to our problem in the acceptance of the values of oursociety, because they are the values of our society means to make philist in ism adut:y_and to make oneself ob~ivi~!:!~to the difference between true individualsand whitened sepulchres.The uneasiness which today is felt but not faced can be expressed by a

s ingle word: relat ivism. Existential ism admits the truth of relat ivism but i t real-izes that relativism so far from being a solution or even a relief, is deadly.Existential ism is the react ion of ser ious men to their own relat ivism.Existentia lism begins then with the reali zat ion tha t as the ground of a ll ob-jective, rat ional knowledge we discover an abyss . All truth , all meaning is seen

in the last analysis to have no support except man's freedom. Objectively thereis in the last analysis only meaninglessness, nothingness . This nothingness canbe experienced in anguish ~t_ this..expeti~!1..~e_~~!l0.t.r.~d_an.9J:>j~!!~e._exp!es-sion: because i t cannot be made in detachment. Man freely originates meaning,'lie"originates the"h~ri~~,'he abs~i~~ presupposition, the ideal, the project

"p~j.,.d".!" within which understanding and l ife a re possible. Man is man by vi rtue of suchI"

A-H.>l,/y a horizon-forming project, of an unsupported project, of a thrown project.f",d",'",/- More prec isely man a lways lives al ready within such a horizon wi thout being/;",,1 ) aware of its character; he takes his world as simply given; i.e. he has lost

himself; but he can call himself back from his lostness and take the respon-. sibil ity for wha t he was in a lost, unauthenti c way. Man is essent ial ly a socialbeing: to be a human being means to be with other human beings. To be in anauthentic way means to be in an authentic way with .. others: to be true toonese lf is incompatible wi th being fa lse to others. Thus there would seem toexist the poss ibil ity of an existential ist ethics which would have to be howevera strict ly formal e thics. However thi s may be, He idegger never bel ieved in thepossibility of an ethics.To be a human being means to be in the world. To be authenti c means to be

authent ic in the world; to accept the things within the world as merely factualaIid'one-;"s own being as merely factual; to risk oneself . .YsQ!I!~Jy..Jdespisingsham certainties (and all objective cer tainties are sham). Only ifman is in thisway do the things in the world reveal themselves to him as they are. Theconcern with objective certainty neeessat-uy narrows the horizon. It leads to theconsequence that man erects around himself an artificial setting which concealsfrom him the a.~r~~f which he must be aware if he wants to be truly human.To live dangerously means to think exposedly.We are ult imately confronted with mere factici ty or contingency. But are we

not able and even compelled to raise the quest ion of the c__ausesf ourselves andof the things in the world? Indeed we cannot help raising the questions of theWhere" and Whither, or of the Whole. But we do not know and cannot knowthe Where and Whi ther and the Whole." Man cannot understand himsel f in thelight of the whole. in the light of his Qrigfu_ or his enct. This irredeemable"ignorance is the basis of his lostness or the core of the human situation. By

, " (I ~


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312


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314' Interpretationexist ing individual who has nothing but contempt for Hegel 's understanding ofman in terms of universal history, to that Hegelian understanding. The si tuat ionto which existential ism belongs can be seen to be liberal 'democracy:;' :Moreprecisely a liberal democracy which has become-uncer t a in of itse!f:OJ;Wf itsfuture. Existentialism belongs to the decline ofEuropeorof.tbe,West.SI;.Tbisinsight has grave consequences. Let us look' back fora moment to Hegel.I Hegel 's philosophy knew itself to belong to a specific time. As the completionI or perfect ion of philosophy it belonged to the completion or fullness of time.This meant for Hegel that i t belonged to the pos t- revolutionary s tate, to Europeunited under Napoleon-non-feudal, equality of opportunity,even free enter- Hc')~/pri se, but a strong government not dependent on the will of the majority ye texpress ive of the general wil l which is the reasonable will of each; recognitionof the rights of man or of the dignity of every human being, the, monarchichead of the state guided by a first rate and highly educated civil service. ' Soci-ety thus constructed was the final society: His tory, had come:toits end.' Pre-c isely because history had come to i ts end, the. comple tion of philosophy , hadbecome possible . The owl of Minerva commences it s fl ight at .the beginning ofdusk. The comple tion of hi story is the beg inning o f the decline o f Europe, ofthe west and therewi th, since al l other cul tures have been absorbed into thewest, the beginning of the decline of mankind. There is no future for mankind.Almost everyone rebelled against Hegel's conclusion,no one 'more powerfullythan Marx. He pointed out the un tenable character of the post -revolutionary .M~")(set tlement and the problem of the working class with all i ts implications. Therearose the vis ion of a world society which presupposed and established for everthe complete victory of the town over the country, of the Occident" over theOrient"; which would make possible the full potential it ies of each, on the bas isof man having become completely collectivized. The man , of the world societywho is perfectly free and equal is so in the last analysis because.all specializa-t ion, all divis ion of labor has been abolished; all divis ion of labor ba s been seen, to be due ultimately to private property. The man of the world society goeshunting in the forenoon, paints at noon, philosophizes in the afternoon., worksin his garden after the sun has set. He is a perfect jack of all t rades . No onequestfoned the communist vision with greater energy than Nietzsche. He ,identi-fi ed the man of the communist world soc iety as the last man , that is to say, asthe extreme degradation of man . This did not mean however that Nietzsche N'lfz$ci\(accepted the non-communist society of the n i net e en t h ce n t u ry o r it s future. Asall continental European conservatives he saw in communism oniytbe consis-tent completion of democratic egali tarianism and of that l iberal is tic demand forfreedom which was not a freedom for, but only a freedom from. But in contra -di stinc tion to the European conservat ives he saw that conservat ism as such i sdoomed. For all merely defensive posi tions are doomed. All merely backwardlooking pos it ions are doomed. The future was with democracy and with nation-~ And both were regarded by Nietzsche as incompatible with what h C S a W

Existentialism 31 5to be the task of the twentieth century. He saw the twentieth century to be theage of world wars, leading up to planeta ry rule. Ifman were to have a futu re,this rule would have to be exercised by a united Europe. And the enormoustasks of such an i ron age could not possibly be discharged, he thought, by weakru:'dunstable governments dependent upon democratic public opinion. The newsituation required the emergence of a new aristocracy. It had to be a neWnobili ty, a nobili ty formed by a new ideal . This is the most obvious meaningand fo r this reason al so the most superfi cia l meaning of hi s notion of the super-man: all previous notions of human greatness would not enable man to face theinfmitely increased respons ibil ity of the planetary age. The invis ible rulers ofthat possible future would be the philosophers' of the future. I t is cer tainly notan overstatement to say that no one has ever spoken so greatly and so nobly ofwha t a philosopher is as Nie tzsche. Th is i s no t to deny that the philosophers ofthe future as Nietzsche descr ibed them remind much more than Nietzsche him-se lf seems to have thought , of Plato's' philosophers. For while Plato . had seenthe features in question as clear ly as Nietzsche and perhaps more clear ly thanNietzsche, he had intimated rather than stated his deepest ins ights. But there isone decisive difference between Nietzsche's philosophy of the future andPlato's philosophy. Nietzsche's philosopher" of the future is an heir to theBible. He is an heir to that deepening of the soul which has been effected bythe biblical bel ief in a God tI!_atis holy, The philosopher of the future as dis tin-guished from the classical philosophers will be concerned with the holy. Hisphilosophi~i!1g_~ill be infinsic_~)Y_religig\l~' This does not mean that he-be-li eves in God, the bibli cal God. He is an athe ist, but an a thei st who is wai tin_gfor a god who has no t ye t shown himself. He has broken with the bibl ica l faithalso and eSpeClally because t h e - b i b i i c a l ' God as the creator of the world isoutside the world: compared with the biblical God as the bighest good theworld is necessar ily less than perfect . In other words the biblical fai th neces-sari ly leads according to Nietzsche to other-worldl iness or ascet icism. The con-dit ion of the highest human excell ence i s' tha t man remains or becomes ful lyloyal to the ~~_; that there is nothing outside the world which could be of anyconcern to us-be it god or ideas or atoms of which we could be certain byknowledg~_ or by faith. Everyconcern for such a ground of the world as isoutside of the world, i .e. of the world in wh ich man lives, a lienates man fromhis world. Such concern is rooted in .tll(~.~~~i!eo escape ~!!l_the te~ ~dperplexing characte r of reali ty, to cut down real ity to what a oi3n can bear-it'is r o o t e d in-a ' d e s r r e f o r - c o n l f o r t .The FirstWorld W a r sh o o k Europe to i ts foundat ions. Men lost thei r sense

of direction. The faith _i!!_p.!_~gr~ssecayed. The only people who kept that faithin i ts original vigor were the communis ts . But precisely communism showed tothe non-communists the delus ion of progress. Spengler 's Decl ine of the Westseemed to be much more credible. But one had to be inhuman to leave it atSpengler's prognosis. _ I s there no ho~ for Europe I lI !dtherewith for mankind?


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Ex is te n ti al is m 31 7316 InterpretationIt was in ~e sPi?t of such ~ that Heidegger perversely welcomed 1933: He~ame. dlsap~lDted and with~w. What didthefaiIUlln;(thc'NlZis 'tCachhim? Nietzsche s hope for" a uni ted Europe ruling the plariet-'fof"'a'Europe"tonly united but revitalized b~ this new, transcendent respoO;ibilitY ofplane~,rule had proved to be a delusion. A world society controlled ~ither'by;W8Shing-~n or Moscow appeared. to be approaching. Foi;Heldegger ifdid 'noi 'Diak~ 'adiff~rence ",:hether Washmgton or Moscow would be the center: "AmeiiJa'andS~Vlet Russia. ar e .metap~ysicaUy the same." What is' decisive for him is 'thatthis world society IS to him more than a nightmare,' He calls it the" 'ght' 'f'th'

Id"I' - moewor: t means indeed, as Marx had predicted, the victory of an ev~oreurbanized, ev~ore completely technological~ IWest overthe'wholc" Wiet '~mpletc lev~lling and uniformity regardl~ , !~ ' i t ' isJ,brou~~f~tV6'lIOn com~slofnth0rhbY soapy advertisement ofthetoutpUt ofiD'ai,~~uc'ii:;:~itmeans umty ~ e u~ ~ce on the lowest Ievel, oomplete'emptinCs's;~tlire,~lf perpetuati~g roubne. without rhyme and' reason; no leisure, no concenira:-non, no elevation, no Withdrawal, but work and recreation; a o individuals andno peoples, but "lonely crowds." , . l ~"~ow can there ~ hope? Fundamental ly because the re is something f i t m a n

which C8l1Dotbe sat is fied b! this. world society: the des ire for the 'genuine;' forthe ~oble,. for the great. This desire has expressed itself in man's ideals, but aUpre~I~US Ideals h~ve proved to be related to' societies ' which w e r e not worldS O C I e t i e s . The old ideals will not enable man to overcome"the p o w e r , ' to 'rTiasier'the p?wer Of. technology. We may also say: a world .society can 'be humanonly If there ISa ~orld culture~ a culture genuinely uniting all men. Buttherenever ha s ~n a high culture without a rel igious bas is: the world soc:ietycan' behu~ only IfaU ~en are ge~uinely united by ~ world rel igion;'ButalJePs~greligions ar e steadily undermmed as far as their effective power ' iscon~cdby the progress towards a ~hnological ~~rld; ~iety:-'1ii~~~~:i~ff;a.;open ~r concealed world alliance of the existingreligions which ar e uni ted 'onl'by their common enemy (atheistic communism). Their union requires that' the;~on~ from themselves and from the world the fact" that 'they ar e incompat-lbl~ ~Ith each other-that each regards the others asindeed noble but untrue'This a s n~t ~ery promising. On the other hand," inan C8l1Dotmake~r fabricate ~world rel igion '. He c~. only p r e p a r e it by becoming receptive to i t. ADd"he~mes receptive to It If he thinks deeply enougli'abOut himself'and'bis:sitWl~bon. ," " i -r, ": '!',';:",~:;:;;,;-,;.;,(;O


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318 Interpretationt he re wi th t he c on ce rn w it h t he m a st er y o f b ei ng s. B u t t he w eS te rn e xp er ie nc e o fbeing makes possible in p ri nc ip le , c oh er en t s pe ec h a bo ut b ein g . - By o pe nin go ur se lv es t o t he p ro ble m o f b ei ng an d t o t he p ro bl em a ti c c ha ra ct er o f t he w es t-e rn u nd ersta nd in g o f b ein g, w e m a y g ain a cc ess to t he d ee pe st r oo t o f th e e ast .T he g ro un d o f g r ou nd s w hich is in dic ate d b y t he w ord b ein g will be the g round

.n ot o nly of relig io n b ut ev en of a ny possib le g ods. Fro m here on e ca n b eg in to )understand the p ossib ility o f a w orld relig ion . .

T he m eetin g o f ea st a nd w est d ep en ds on an u nderstan din g of b ein g. M orep recisely it d ep en ds o n a n u nderstan din g o f that b y v irtu e o f w hich' b ein gsare-csse , elre, to b e, as distin gu ished from en tia , 6 ta nts, b ein gs. E sse a sH eid eg g er u nd er sta nd s it m ay b e d esc rib ed c ru de ly a nd su perfic ia lly a nd e ve nm i sle ad in g ly , b u t n ot a lt og et he r m i sle ad in g ly , b y s ay in g t ha t it ' is a s yn th es is o fP la to nic id ea s a nd th e b ib lic al G od : it is a s im per so na l a s th e P la to nic id ea s a nda s e lu si ve a s t he b ib lic al G o d.

NOTES1. "compare" has b e en c ha n ge d by band by the insertion of the capitape~~, Tb c peri~ ~the

end of the previous word "warn ing" is the editors' com:ct ion of a c om m a that seems to l l l i re beenleft 1 J D C O I m : t e d in the typescript. .:.. ,':' , ,;'""."2. "thinking" added by band t o replace "theoretical" which has been ~ out : ' "'.co.i. '3. In the typescript the previous sen tence ends a f t e r th e word "obsetvcr," and the DeW.ODe

begins with the words "For instance, the .. . " Th e p u n ct u a ti on andcapitalizatiOD have beencbanged by band, . :. .4 . Cont inu at ion of the o ld p arag raph in the typescript,' but with a m a r g in a l i n di c at io n by hand

fo r a DeWone. '5 . Underlining added by band .6. "Weber's" added by hand to rep lac e "hi s" which ha s been crossed out.7 , " to l im it the comparison to th e remark" added by band to replace "to say" which h as b ee n

crossed out.8. Word added (in th e margin or between the lines) by band.9 , " in " added by hand to repl ac e " th e" wh ic h ha s be en c ro sse d ou t.10. Th e word "that" before ''the'' ha s been crossed out.11. " indica ted" added by hand to rep lace ' 'meant '' which has b e e n c r os se d out.12. The comma af ter "pragmata" and the words ' 'things which we handle and use" have been

added.by hand.d. Th e word "rationalistic" ha s been changed to ' 'rational" by hand by crossing,out the letters"istic, "

14. Th e word "I'm" ha s been replaced by "I am " by hand, by crossing Out .. 'm " and adding"am" above the l ine.

15. "of " added by hand to rep lace "about" which ha s been crossed out.16 . "Kant" added by hand to rep lace "Heidegger" which has b e en c ro ss e d out.17 . In another typescript, bu t not ODethat gives any clear indication of having been seen by

Profe&lOl"Strauss, this word ha s been changed by an unknown hand to "coWCRd." 'Ibis othertypescript, which has been c ircu la ting among Profcuor Strauss '. s tudents for SOtDe years , is theODe from which Thomas Pangle worked ined it ing this lec tu re for T he Rebirth ofC/Quiazl PolilicalRationalism. '" .

18. "character" added by hand to replace "possibility" which h as b ee n crossed out.19. Th e question nwt has been added by the editors to correct a period in th e typescript.

IIJMI,(I?. 1,.,(,,.,

fw"tyr,r/,.;';"J.1: ';:_";;01,'

Existentialism' 31920 . "of " added by hand to rep la ce "abou t" which h as b ee n crossed out. ." .21 . The word orde r he re has been changed by hand. The origina l typed phrase IS so radically

the intellectual orientation,"22 . "and in a most general way" added by hand. ....23 . The typescript has the words " low land" whi ch have been Joi ned mto a smgle word byhand..24. "which penneated the work" added by hand. ,

25 . "1953" a dd ed by the e di to rs to co rrec t "1952 " in the typescnpt.. . . "26 Th o rd s "as N ie tzs ch e do cs " hav e be en replac ed by "as pa ss io na tely a s N ie tzs ch e d idby ~d, b; ~ding "passionately as" af ter "as" and by cross ing out "does" and adding "did" abovethe line,27 . " a" a dd ed by hand to rep la ce " the " which has been cros~ out. .28 . " to " h as be en ch anged by hand by the inse rt ion of the ca pi tal l et ter . T he p en od at the endo f the prev io us wo rd "nob il it y" i s the ed itor s' c or rec tion o f a c omma that SCC I DS t o h av e b een leftuncorrected in the typescript.29. "his" added by hand to replace "the" which h~ been cros~ out. . the30 . "and" h as b een ch anged by hand by the ins er ti on ~ f. th e ca pi tal l et ter . The period af terp rev io us word "prob lem" i s a co rrec tion by hand o f the original comma.

31 . The das h ha s be en inser te d by hand ,32 . The wo rd s "as fo llows" have be en added by hand .3 3. " thi s" added by hand to repl ace " th e" which ha s b een crossed out.34. "wa s" added by hand to rep la ce " is " which has been crossed out. ,35 The word " is" h as be en added by hand , though no t, i t seems, by Professor Strauss S hand .36 : The typescript referred t o in note 17 apparenlly has the word "mind," confirmed. as s uc h by

an unknown hand, instead of ''understanding.'' , :. .37 . The words "we cannot r efer to the t rue metaphysica l and e th ical teach ing ava ilab le m anyof the great thi nker s of t he past .. It i s admi tted tha t" have been added by band, though DO t byProfessor Strauss's hand. . " . . ..3 8 The typ es cr ipt r efe rr ed to in note 17 has the word "sciences" mstead of. SCIent iSts .

39: The semico lo n af ter "groundless " and the words "we ar e t hu s l ed" h av e b een a d d e d byhand to rep lace "and leads us" which has been crossed out ,

40. The word "him" before "that" has been ~ out.. 17 I' . luded b the4 L "doctrine" is the reading of the typescnpt referred to. m note. . t IS mc. yedi tor s as a c or re ct ion f or the word "doc tr in es ," which appe ar s m th e ~ ~pt:4 2. The word "Yet " be fo re "ou r" ha s b ee n c ro sse d ou t a nd the capi tal let te r m Ou r ' has beeninserted by hand. .. f" times" has been43. "As I s aid, " added by hand . A capital letter a t the begmrung 0 someremoved by the editors.44, "wi th" a dd ed by hand to repl ace " to" which has been ~ssed out:, . "45 . The other typescrip t referred to in note 17 has the wor d 'Whence "~t ead of~.46. The other typescrip t referred to in note 17 has the word "whence, m brackets , instead ofthe phrase "Where and Whither and the Whole." ".. ..., .47. The ot her typescript refer red t o in note 17 has th~ w


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German NihilismLEO STRAUSSEDITED BY

David JanssensVrije Universiteit BrusselDaniel TanguayUniversity of Ottawa

The fol lowing lecture by Leo Strauss was del ivered, according to internaltextual evidence, on February 26, 1941, in the General Seminar of the GraduateFaculty of Polit ica l and Socia l Science of the New School for Soc ial Resea rchin New York. The text wil l prove to be of part icular interest both for students ofLeo Strauss 's thought and for those more general ly interested in the intel lectualclimate of prewar Germany. For the former, the lecture presents i tself as one ofthe rare occasions on which Professor St rauss suspended hi s customary re ti-cence and directly addressed an important contemporary issue. For the lat ter, i toffers an interes ting and compell ing outlook on the intel lectual currents of oneof thi s century's key periods. Finally, both audiences wil l find that ProfessorStrauss combines his philosophical rigor and perspicacity with firsthand knowl-edge of the problem under discussion. As "a young Jew, born and raised inGermany," he was without doubt well acquainted with the phenomenon of Ger-man nihil ism, the influence it exerted in postwar and prewar Germany, its keyrepresentatives and its historical origins.The basis of this edition is a typewritt en manuscript which can be found in

the Leo Strauss Papers (Box 8, Folder 15) at the Regenstein Library of TheUniversity of Chicago. The manuscript consists of twenty-five mostly typewrit-ten pages. It bears many correct ions and addit ions, some of them inserted bytypewriter, some by hand. In preparing the text, we have systematically incor-porated the changes and addit ions made by Professor Strauss so that the presentedition might faithfully reflect his actual presentation. We note the few in-stances in which we have edited for readabil ity. We have also taken the libertyof correct ing, without comment, a few misspell ings in the typescr ipt. At somepoints in the text Professor Strauss made a more substant ial addit ion in hand-Writing: these are mentioned in the text, with a short comment. In some casesthe handwri ting was di fficul t to read or altogether ill egible: this i s indica ted INTERPRETATION, Spring 1999. Vol . 26. ~o . 3


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354 . Interpretationbetween parentheses in the text, as well as in the notes. Certain words wereunderlined by Professor Strauss, some by typewriter, some by hand: in thepresent edition these have been italicized. With a view to restrict ing the numberof notes, sing le words which were e ithe r added or underl ined by hand are indi-cated in the text wi th an asterisk immediate ly fol lowing the word. Words fromlanguages othe r than English have been ita lic ized by the editors. Finally, Wehave added some addit ional information concerning names, sources and datesin the notes .As the reader wil l remark, the present edition begins with two di fferent t a-

bles of content s. The fi rst of these is part of the original typescript , while thesecond was found on a handwrit ten sheet attached to the typescript . The lat ter,however, provides a more accurate synopsis of the contents of the lecture as itis presented. For this reason, we have chosen to include it directly after theoriginal table of contents.We are grateful to Professor Jenny Strauss Clay and Professor Joseph Cropsey

for their generous help in deciphering Professor Strauss 's handwriting. ProfessorCropsey, Leo Strauss's literary executor, has also generously given permission forthis publication.

German Nihilism > 355Graduate Faculty of Poli tical and Social ScienceNew School for Soc ia l Research, 66 West 12 St reet , New York, N. Y.

General Seminar : Exper iences of the Second World War

February 26, 1941

German Nihil ism-Leo Strauss1. The questions: (a) What is nihili sm? (b) How far can nihil ism be said to bea specifically German phenomenon?II. German nihili sm is a phenomenon much broader than Nat ional Social ism.It can be d~scribed provi sionally as the passiona te reaction of a certain type ofyoung atheist to the communis t ideal .III. The nihilism of the young and the positivism of the old.

IV. The nihilistic meaning of the term "wave of the future."V. Nihil ism is def ined as the rejection of the principles of civil izat ion as such.VI. German nihilism rejects the principles of civilization as such in favor ofwar and of warlike ideals.VII. German nihili sm is a radica lized form of German mi lit ari sm.VIII. One of the root s of German mil it arism is moral ism.IX. The present Anglo-German war is a war about p rinciples.

German NihilismI. The questions: What is nihilism? And how far can nihilism be said to be aspecifically German phenomenon?2. German nihilism is the genus, of which National socialism is the best-known species.


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356 . InterpretationI. The ultimate, non-nihilistic motive underlying German nihilism.

3. The inseparable connection of morality and the closed society: themoral protest against the principle of modern civil isation: . .

II. The s ituation in which that non-nihi list ic motive led to nihi lism.4. German nihi lism is the reaction of a certain type of young atheist to thecommunist ideal or prediction.5. On the affini ty of youth to nihil ism, and the nihilistic consequences ofthe emancipation of youth.6. On the affini ty of progressivism to nihilism: progressivi sm leaves theaim undefined; i t therefore opposes an indef inite No to the given order .

III. What is nihi lism? And how far can nihilism be said to be spec ifical ly Ger-man?7. Nihi lism is the reject ion of the principles of civili sat ion as such. Civil-isation is the conscious culture of human reason, i .e . science and morals.8. Nihili sm in the sense defined is characterist ic of present day Germanyrather than of any other country.9 . German nihil ism rejects the principles of civi lisation as such in favor ofwar and the warlike virtues.10. German nihilism is therefore akin to German mili tarism.11. German nihilism is a radicali zed form of German mili tarism, and tha tradicaliza tion i s due to the victory of the romantic opinion concerning themodem development as a whole.12. Gennan nihilism is related to the reaction to the modern ideal whichis character is tic of German idealist philosophy: morali ty of self-sacr if iceand self -denial vs. moral ity of self -interest ; courage is the only unambig-uously non-utilitarian virtue. .'13. German idealism, while opposing Western philosophy, claimed to be asynthesis of the modem ideal with the pre-modem ideal; that synthesis didnot work; the influence of German idealism made the acceptance of themodern ideal impossible; the Germans had to fal l back on the pre-modemideal: that is to say, on the pre-modern ideal as interpreted by Germanidealism, i .e ., as interpreted in a polemic intention against the enlighten-ment: and therefore: on a modem distortion of the pre-modem ideal. .14 'The modem ideal is of English origin: the German tradition is a tradi-tion of criti cism of the modem ideal. Whi le the Engli sh found a workingamalgamation of the modem ideal with the classical ideal, the G.ermansoveremphasized the break in the tradition so much th~t t~ey were ultl~a~elyled from the rejection of modern civilisation to the rejection of the pnncI_pleof civili sat ion as such, i .e., to nihi lism. The English gentl:m:n as an Im~perial nation vs. the German Herren as a nation of provincial, resentfu .fanatics.

German Nihilism' 357GERMAN NIHILISM.LECTURE TO BE DELIVERED ON FEBRUARY. 26, 1941.I. What is nihilism? And how far can nihilism be said to be a specifically

German phenomenon? I am not able to answer these quest ions; I can merely tryto elaborate* them a li ttle . For the phenomenon which I am going to discuss, ismuch too complex, and much too little explored, to permit of an adequatedescription within the short time at my disposal. I cannot do more than toscratch its surface.2 . When we hear at the present t ime the expression "German nihilism," mostof us naturally think at once of National Social ism. It must however be under-stood from the outset that National Social ism is only the mostfamous* form ofGerman nihi lism-its lowest, most provinc ial, most unenlightened and mostdishonourable form. It is probable that i ts very vulgari ty accounts for i ts great ,i f appalling, successes. These successes may be followed by failures, and ult i-mately by complete defeat. Yet the defeat of National Socialism will not neces-sari ly mean the end of German nihil ism. For that nihil ism has deeper roots thanthe preachings of Hitl er, Germany's defeat in the World War and al l that.To explain German nihilism, I propose to proceed in the following way. I

shall first explain the ultimate motive which is underlying German nihilism; thismotive is not in i tself nihil is tic. I shal l then descr ibe the situation in which thatnon-nihi list ic motive led to nihil ist ic aspirat ions . Finally , I shal l attempt to givesuch a definition of nihilism as is not assailable from the point of view of thenon-nihilistic motive in question, and on the basis of that definition, 1 to describeGerman nihilism somewhat more fully.3. Nihilism might mean: velle nihil, to wi ll the nothing, the dest ruc tion of

everything, including oneself , and therefore pr imari ly the wil l to self -des truc-tion. I am told that there a re human beings who have such st range desi res. I donot believe, however, that such a des ire is the ult imate motive of German nihil-ism. Not only does the unarmed eye not not ice any unambiguous signs of a wil lto seij'*-destruction. But even if such a desire were demonstrated* to be theul timate motive, we stil l should be at a loss to understand why that desire tookon the form, not of the mood called fin de steele or of alcoholism, but ofmili tarism. To explain German nihil ism in terms of mental diseases, is even lessadvi sable than it is to explain in such te rms the desire of a cornered gangster tobump off together with himself a couple of cops and the fellow who double-crossed him; not being a Stoic, I could not call that* desire a morbid desire. 'The fact of the matter is that German nihil ism is not absolute nihil ism, des ire

for the destruction of everything including oneself, but a desire for the destructionof something specific:" of modem civili sat ion. That, i f I may say so, limitednihilism becomes an almost* absolute nihil ism only for this reason: because thenegation of modem civilisation, the No, is not guided, or accompanied, by anyclear positive conception.


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358 . InterpretationGerman nihil ism des ires the destruct ion of modern civil isat ion as far as mod-

em civili sa tion has a moral meaning. As everyone knows, i t does not object somuch to modern technical" devices. That moral meaning of modern civilisationto which the German nihil ists object, is expressed in formulations such as these:to relieve man's estate; or: to safeguard the rights of man; or: the greatest possiblehappiness of the greatest possib le number. What i s the mot ive underlying theprotest against modern civilisation, against the spirit of the West*, and in particu-lar of the Anglo-Saxon* West?The answer must be: it is a moral protest . That protest proceeds from the

convict ion that the internationalism inherent in modem civil isat ion, or, moreprecisely, that the establishment of a perfectly open soc ie ty which i s as it werethe goa l of modem civil isation, and there fore al l aspira tions direc ted towardtha t goa l, a re irr econc ilable with the basic demands of moral life. That protestproceeds from the conviction that the root of all moral life is essentially andtherefore eternally the closed society; f rom the convict ion that the open societyis bound to be , if not immora l, at l east amora l: the meet ing ground of seekers o fpleasure, of gain, of irresponsible power , indeed of any kind of irresponsibi li tyand lack of seriousness.'Moral l ife, i t is asser ted, means serious life. Seriousness, and the ceremonial

of seriousness-the flag and the oath to the flag-, are the distinctive featuresof the closed society, of the society which by its very nature, is constantlyconfronted with, and bas ical ly oriented toward, the Ernst/all, the ser ious mo-ment, M-day, war. Only life in such a tense atmosphere, only a l ife which i sbased on constant awareness of the sacriJices* to which it owes its existence,and of the necessity, the duty of sacri fice of l ife and al l worldly goods, i s t rulyhuman: the subl ime is unknown to the open soc ie ty.' The soc iet ies of the Westwhich claim to aspire toward the open society, actually are closed societ ies in astate of dis integrat ion: their moral value, their respectabili ty , depends entirelyon their s ti ll being closed societies.Let us pursue this argument a l it tle fur ther . The oeen soci~~~ it is asser ted, is

actually impossible. Its possibility is not proved at all by what is called theprogress* toward the open society. For that progress is largely fictitious ormerely verbal . Certain basic facts of human nature which have been honestlyrecognized by earlier generations who used to call a spade a spade, are at thepresent time verbal ly denied, superficially covered over by fic tions legal andothers, e.g., by the belief that one can abolish war by pacts not backed bymi li tary forces punishing him who breaks the pact, or by cal ling ministri es ofwar* ministries of defence,* or by calling punishment sanctions , or by callingcapital punishment das hochste Strafmass? The open society is morally infer iorto the c losed soc iety al so* because the former is based on hypocrisy.The convic tion underlying the protest against modem civi lisa tion has ba-

sically nothing to do with bellicism, with love of war; nor with nationalism: forthe re were closed soc iet ies which were not na tions; i t has indeed something to

German Nihilism' 359do wi th what i s ca lled the sovereign sta te, insofa r as the sovere ign state offersthe best modem example of a closed socie ty in the sense indicated. The convic-~ion I am trying to describe, is not, to repeat, in its origin a love of war: itISrat~er a.love. of mor~lity, a sense of respons ibil ity for endal2[~red moralit.The historians 111 our mids t know that convict ion, or passion, f rom Glaukon'sPlato's brother's, passionate protest against the city of pigs, in the name ofnoble vir tue. They know it, above all , f rom Jean-Jacques Rousseau's passionateprotest against the easy-going and somewhat rot ten civil isat ion of the century oftas te, and from Friedr ich Nietzsche 's passionate protest against the easy-goingand somewhat rott en civili sation of the century of indust ry. It was the samepassion-let there be no mistake about that-which turned, if in a much more~assionate and inf initely less intel ligent form, against the alleged or real corrup-non of post-war Germany : against "the subhuman beings of the big ci ti es (dieUntermenschen der Grossstadts," against "cultural bolshevism (Kulturbolsche-wismusy;" etc. That passion, or conviction is then not in itself nihilistic, as isshown by the examples of Plato and Rousseau, if examples are needed at all.(One rr:a~even wonder whether i t was not a sound demand, remembering, e.g.,the deCISIOnof the Oxford students not to fight for king and count ry and somemo:e recent facts.) While not being nihilistic in itself, and perhaps even notent~rely unsound, that conviction led however to nihil ism in pos t-war Germanyowing to a number of circumstances. Of those circumstances , I shall mention inthe survey which fol lows, only those which , to my mind, have not been suffi -ciently emphasized in the discussions of this seminar nor in the l iterature on thesubject."4. On~ would have .topossess a gift which I tota lly lack, the gi ft o f a ly rica l

reporter, 11 1 order to give those of you who have not lived for many years in~os t-war Germany, an adequate* idea of the emotions underlying German nihil-ism.' Let ~e tentati.ve~~ define nihilism as the desire to destroy the presentworld and Its potentiul it ies, a desire not accompanied by any clear conceptionof what one wants to put in its place. And let us try to understand how such adesire could develop.No one could be sat isfied wi th the post -war world. German libe ral democ-

ra~y of all .d~scr i~tions. seemed to many people to be absolutely unable to copewi th the ~Iff~cult les with which Germany was confronted. Thi s c reated a pro-f?und prejudice, or confirmed a profound prejudice already in existence, againstl iberal democracy as such. Two art iculate alternatives to l iberal democracy wereopen ..O~e was simple react ion, as expressed by the Crown Prince Ruprecht o fBavana 11 1 about these terms: "Some people say that the wheel of his tory cannotbe turned back. This is an error." The other a lt ernat ive was more interest ing.The older ones in our midst still remember the time when certain people as-ser ted that the confl icts inherent in the present s ituation would necessar ily leadto a rev? lut ion, accompanying or fo llowing another World War-a rising of theproletana t and of the proleta rianized str ata of society which would usher in the


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360 . Interpretationwither ing away of the State, the class less society, the aboli tion of all exploita-t ion and injus tice, the era of f inal peace. It was this prospect at least .as much asthe desperate present , which led to nihil ism. The prospect of a pa~lf led planet,without rulers and ruled, of a planetary society devoted to productIOn and con-sumption only, to the production and consumption _ofspiritual ~~.!Wt_~.mat~r ial merchandise, was posi tively horrifying to quite a few very intel ligent andvery decent, if very young, Germans. They did not ?bject to t~at pro~~ect be-cause they were worrying about their own economic and socia l. posinon; . forcer tainly in that respect they had no longer anything to lose. NO.rdid the~ objectto i t for rel igious reasons; for , as one of their spokesmen (E. Junger) said, theyknew" that they were the* sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of godlessmen. What they hated, was the very prospect of a world in which everyonewould be happy and satisf ied, in which everyone would have his l it tle pleasureby day and his little pleasure by night, a world in which no great he~rt coul?beat and no great soul could breathe, a world without real, unmetaphonc, sacn-fice, i.e. a world without blood, sweat, and tears. What to the communistsappeared to be the fulfi lment of the dream 9~~~?d., appeared to those youngGermans as~~~~.test ,9~!?~?~ment of humanity, .as the coming of the end ofhumanity, as the arrival of the latest man. They did not really know, = thusthey wer'e unable to express in a tolerably clear language, what they desired toput in the place of the present world and it s all egedly necessary future or se-que l: the only thing of which they were absolutely certam was tha t the presentworld and all the potentiali ties of the present world as such, must be des troyedin order to prevent the otherwise necessary coming of the communist finalorder: literally anything, the nothing, * the chaos, the jungle, the Wi ld West , ~heHobbian s tate of nature, seemed to them infinitely better than the commumst-anarchist-pacif ist future. ' Their Yes was inart iculate- they were unable . to saymore than: No! This No proved however sufficient as the preface to action, tothe action of destruction. This is the phenomenon which occurs to me firstwhenever I hear the expression German nihilism. .I t is hardly necessary to point out the fal lacy committed by the youn~ men 11 1quest ion. They s imply took over the communist thesis that the proletar ian re~o-lut ion and proletar ian dictatorship is necessary, if civil isation is not to pensh,But they insisted rather more than the communis ts on the conditional ~~aracterof the communist prediction (if civil isat ion is not to per ish). That condition lef troom for choice: they chose what according to the communists was the onlyalternative to communism. In other words: they admitted that all rat ional argu-ment was in favour of communism; but they opposed to that apparently invinc-ible argument what they called "irrational decision." Unfortun~tely, all rationalargument they knew...2.f.,~s histC!!_icalargument, or more precisely: st.atementsabout the probable future, predictions, which were based on analysis of t~epas t, and above all , of the present . For that modem astrology, predict ing socIal

German Nihilism' 361science, had taken hold of a very large part of the academic youth. I haveemphasized before that the nihil ists were young people."5. One or the other modem pedagogue would perhaps feel that not everything

was bad in that nihil ism. For, he might argue , i t is not unnatural that the intel-ligent section of a young generation should be dissatisfied with what they are toldto believe by the older generation, and that they should have a s trong des ire for anew word, for a word expressing their longings, and, considering that moderationis not a virtue of youth, for an extreme word. Moreover, he would conceivablysay, it i s not unnatural that the young people, be ing constitut ionally unable todiscover that new word, a re unable to express in a rt iculate language more thanthe negation C ? f _ th~,3.spirations of the older generat ion. A lover of paradoxesmight be tempted to assert an essential aff inity of youth to nihil ism. I should bethe las t to deny the juvenile character of that specific nihi lism which I have triedto describe. But I must disagree with the modem pedagogue all the more in so faras I am convinced that about the most dangerous thing for these young men wasprecisely what is called progressive education: they rather needed old-fashionedteachers, such old-fashioned teachers of course as would be undogmatic enoughto understand the aspirations of their pupils. Unfortunately, the belief inold-fashioned teaching declined considerably in post-war Germany. The inroadswhich Will iam II had made on the old and noble educational system founded bygreat liberals of the early 19th century, were not discontinued, but rather enlargedby the Republic, To this one may add the influence of the political emancipatiQ.!1.of youth, the fact frequent ly referred to as the children's vote. Nor ought we toforget that some of the young nihil ists who refused to undergo severe intellectualdiscipline," were sons or younger brothers of men and women who had under-gone what may be described as the emotional discipline of the youth movement,of a movement which preached the emancipation of youth. Our century has oncebeen called the century of the child: in Germany it proved to be the age of theadolescent. Needless to say that not in all cases was* the natural progress fromadolescence to senil ity ever interrupted by a per iod however short of maturi!Y,The decline of reverence for old age found its most tel ling express ion in Hitler 'sshameless reference to the imminent death of the aged President Hindcnburg.I have alluded to the fact that the young nihilists were atheists. Broadly

speaking, pr ior to the World War, atheism was a preserve of the radical lef t, justas throughout history atheism had been connected with philosophic mater ial-ism. German philosophy was predominantly idealistic, and the German idealistswere theists or panthei sts, Schopenhauer was, to my knowledge, the fi rst nonmaterialist and conservative German phi losopher who openly professed hisatheism. But Schopenhauer 's inf luence fades into insignif icance, if comparedwi th that of Nietzsche. Nietzsche asserted that the atheist assumption is not onlyreconcilable with, but indispensable for, a radical anti-democratic, anti-socialist,and anti -pa~ifist policy: according to him, even the communist creed is only a


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362 . Interpretationsecula ri zed form of theism, of the beli ef in providence. There is no other phi-losopher whose inf luence on pos twar German thought is comparable to that ofNietzsche, of the atheist Nietzsche. I cannot dwell on this important point, sinceI am not a theologian. A gentleman who is much more versed in theology thanI am-Professor Carl Mayer of the Graduate Faculty-wi ll certainly devote tothis aspect of German nihilism all the attention it requires in an article to bepublished in Social Research:"The adolescents I am speaking of, were in need of teachers who could ex-plain to them in art icula te language the posit ive, and not merely destruct ive,meaning of their aspirat ions. They believed to have found such teachers in thatgroup of professors and writers who knowingly or ignorantly paved the way forHitler (Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck, Carl Schmitt, [illegible], Ernst Junger,Heidegger). I f we want to understand the s ingular success, not of Hitler , but ofthose writ ers, we must cast a quick glance at thei r opponents who were at thesame t ime the opponents of the young nihi lists. Those opponents committedfrequent ly a grave mistake. They bel ieved to have refuted the No by refutingthe Yes, i .e . the incons is tent , i f not si lly, pos it ive asser tions of the young men.But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. And many op-ponents did not even try to understand the ardent pass ion under lying the nega-tion of the present world and its potentialities. As a consequence, the veryrefutations confirmed the nihilists in their belief; all these refutations seemed tobeg the quest ion; most of the refutat ions seemed to cons is t of pueris decantata,of repeti tions of things which the young people knew al ready by heart. Thoseyoung men had come to doubt ser ious ly, and not merely methodically or meth-odologically, the principles* of modern civilisation; the great authorities of thatcivil isation did no longer impress them; it was evident that only such opponentswould have been l ist ened to who knew that doubt from their own experience,who through years of hard and independent thinking had overcome it. Manyopponents did not mee t that condit ion. They had been brought up in the beli efin the principles of modern civil isation; and a belief in which one is brought up,is apt to degenerate into prejudice. * Consequently, the attitude of the opponentsof the young nihi lists t ended to become apologetic. Thus it came to pass thatthe most ardent upholders of the principle of progress , of an essential ly aggres-sive principle , were compel led to take a defensive stand; and, in the realm ofthe mind, taking a defensive stand looks like admitting defeat. The ideas ofmodern civil isat ion appeared to the young generat ion to be the old ideas; thusthe adherents of the idea.~.~r__I2!~o$!:~~?ere in the awkward position that theyhad to resist, in the manner of conservateurs, what in the meantime has beencall ed the wave of the future. They made the impression of being loaded wi ththe heavy burden of a tradi tion hoary wi th age and somewhat dusty, whereasthe young nihi lists, not hampered by any tradit ion, had complete freedom ofmovement-and in the wars of the mind no less than in real wars, freedom ofaction spells victory. The opponents of the young nihilists had all the advantages,

German Nihilism' 363but likewise all the disabilities, of the intellectually propertied class confronted bythe intel lectual proletarian, the sceptic. The s ituation of modern civil isat ion ingeneral, and of i ts backbone, which is modern science, b;th~at~ral-~~d-~;~il inpartlCll],if, appeared to he comparable to that of scholasticism Sh0111vbefore theemergence of the new science of the 17th century: the technical perfect ion of themethods and terminology of the old school, communism included, appeared tobe astrong argument against the old school. For technical perfect ion isapt to hide thebas ic problems. Or, if you wish, the bird of the goddess of wisdom starts i ts f lightonly* when the sun is set ting. I t was cer tainly character is tic of German post-warthought that the output of technical terms, at no time negligible in Germany,reached astronomic proportions. The only answer which could have impressed theyoung nihil ists, had to be given in non-technical language. Only one answer wasgiven which was adequate and which would have impressed the young nihilists ifthey had heard it . It was not however given by a German and it was given in theyear 1940 only. Those young men who refused to believe that the period followingthe jump into l iber ty, fol lowing the communist world revolution, would be thef inest hour of mankind in general and of Germany inpart icular , would have beenimpressed as much as we were, by what Wins ton Churchill said after the defeat inFlanders about Bri tain 's f ines t hour. For one of their greatest teachers had taughtthem to see in Cannre the greatest moment in the life of that glory which was. * R II ~r )ancient orne. i. J f~-s i ~ r6. I have tried to c ircumscribe the inte llec tual and moral si tuation in which anihilism emerged which was not in all cases base in its origin. Moreover, I take

it for granted that not everything to which the young nihilists objected, wasunobjectionable, and that not every writer or speaker whom they despised, wasrespectable. Let us beware of a sense of solidarity which is not limited bydiscretion. And let us not forget that the highes t duty of the scholar, t ruthfulnessor justice, acknowledges no limits. Let us then not hesitate to look for onemoment a t the phenomenon which I call ed nihi lism, from the point of view ofthe nihili sts themselves. "Nihil ism," they would say, i s a slogan used by thosewho do not understand the new, who see merely the rejection of their cherishedideals, the des truction of their spiri tual property, who judge the new by its f irstwords and deeds, which are, of necessity, a carica ture ra ther than an adequa teexpression. How can a reasonable man expect an adequate expression of theideal of a new epoch at i ts beginning, considering that the owl of Minerva star tsi ts flight when the sun i s setting? The Naz is? Hitle r? The less i s said about him,the better. He will soon be forgotten. He is merely the rather contemptible toolof "History": the midwife who assists at the birth of the new epoch, of a newspirit ; and a midwife usually understands nothing of the genius at whose bi rthshe assists; she is not even supposed to be a competent gynecologist. A newreality is in the making; it is transforming the whole world; in the meantimethere is: nothing, but-a fertile nothing. The Nazis are as unsubstantial asclouds; the sky is hidden at present by those* clouds which announce a devas-


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364 . Interpretationtat ing storm, but at the same time the long-needed rain which wil! bring newl ife to the dried up soil; and (here I am almost quoting) do not lose hope; wha tappears to you the end of the world, is merely the end of an epoch, of the epochwhich began in 1517 or so. - I frankly confess, I do not see how those canresist the voice of that siren who expect the answer to the first and the lastquestion from "History," from the future as such:" who mistake analysis of thepresent or past or future for philosophy; who believe in a progress toward agoal which is i tself progressive and therefore und:fin~ble; who are not guidedby a known and stahle s tandard: by a s tandard which IS stable and not change-able, and which is known and not merely beli eved. In other words, the lack ofres istance to nihil ism seems to be due ultimately to the deprec iation and thecontempt of reason, which is one and unchangeable or it is not, and of science.For if reason is changeable, it is dependent on those forces which cause itschanges; it is a servant or slave of the emotions; and it will be hard to make adis tinction which is not arbitrary, between noble and base emotions, once onehas denied the rule rship of reason. A German who could boast of a l ife-longintimate intercourse with the superhuman father of all nihil ism, has informed usas* rel iably, as we were ever informed by any inspired author, that the or igina-tor of all nihil ism admitted: "Just despise reason and science, the very highestI I"12power of man, and I have got you camp e e y.7. I had to condense a number of recollections of what I have heard, seen,and read while I was living in Germany, into the foregoing fragmentary re-marks, because I had to convey an impression of an irrat ional movement and ofthe frequently irrat ional react ions to i t, rather than a reasoned argument. I havenow, however, reached the point where I can venture to submit a defini tion ofnihi lism. I do thi s not without trepida tion. Not because the definition which Iam going to sugges t, does not l ive up to the requirements of an orderIy* def ini-tion (for I know that sins of that kind are the ones which are more easilyforgiven); nor because it is in any way novel , but for preci sely the oPPosit.ereason.') It will seem to most of you that it is a commonplace and that Itconsists of commonplaces. The only thing which I can say to justify myse lf, isthis: I expected to find a definition of nihilism as a matter of course in. r : t r.Rauschnina' s well-known book. Only my failure to discover such a def init ionin that book, gives me the courage to indulge in what you will consider atriviality, if a necessary triviality.I shall then say: Nihilism is the reject ion of the principles of civi lisation ~ssuch. A nihil ist is then a man who knows the principles of civilisation, if only 11 1a superficial way. A merely uncivilised man, a savage, is not a nihil ist . This isthe di ffe rence between Ariovi stus, the Teutonic chieftain whom Caesar de-feated and Hitler who otherwise have the character is tic quali ties of the perfectbarbarian (arrogance and crue lty) in common. The Roman soldier who di~-turbed the circles of Archimedes, was not a nihilist, but just a soldier. I saidcivilisation, and not: ~. For I have noticed that many nihilists are great

German Nihilism' 365lovers of culture, as dist inguished from, and opposed to, civil isation. Besides,the term culture l eaves it undetermined what the thing i s which i s to be cul ti-vated (blood and sailor the mind), whereas the term civilisation designates atonce the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant ofc itie s, and not a rust ic; a lover of peace, 'unCIna t of w a r ; apoIi te being, and nota ruffian. A tribal community may possess a cul ture, i.e . produce , and enjoy,hymns, songs, ornament of their clothes , of their weapons and pottery, dances, *fairy tales and what not; i t cannot however be civil ised." I wonder whether* thefact that Western man lost much of his former pride, a quiet and becomingpride, of his being civilised, is not at the bottom of the present lack of resis-tance to nihilism.I sha ll try to be somewhat more precise. By civil isat ion, we understand the

conscious culture of humanity, i .e . of that which makes a human being a humanbeing, i e . the conscious* culture of reason. Human reason is act ive, above all intwo ways: asregulat ing human co. t:and as attempting tounderstand whatevercan be understood by man; aspiactlcal reason,a:ndastheoretlCaIreason-:--fhepIITa;:s"ofcl~llIsation'aretherefore'morals and science. and t;oth-uni~d. For sciencewithout morals degenerates into' cynicism, -a~d-ihus destroys the basis of thescientific effort itself; and morals without science degenerates into superstition andthus i s apt to become fanatic cruelty. Science is the at tempt to understand theuniverse and man; i t is therefore identical with philosophy; i t is not necessari lyidentical with modern* science. By morals, we understand the rules of decent andnoble conduct, as areasonable man would understand them; those rules are by theirnature applicable to any human being, although we may allow for the poss ibil itythat not a ll human beings have an equa l na tural aptitude for decent and nobleconduct. Even the most violent sceptic cannot help from time totime despising. ora t l east excusing, this or that action and this or tha t man; a complete analysis ofwhat is implied insuch an action ofdespising, oreven excus ing, would lead tothatwel l-known view of morals which I sketched. For our present purpose it willsuffice if I i llust rate decent and noble conduc t by the remark that it i s equallyremote from inabili ty to infl ict phys ical or other pain as from deriving pleasurefrom inflict ing pain." Or by the other remark that decent and noble conduct has todo, not so much with the natural aim ofman, aswith the means toward that aim: theview that the end sanctifi es the means, is a tolerably complete expression* ofimmoralism.I deliberately excluded "art" from the defini tion of civili sat ion. Hi tler, the

best-known champion of nihilism, is famous for his love of art and is even anart ist himself. But I never heard that he had anything to do with sea rch for truthor with any at tempt to inst ill the seeds of virtue into the souls of his subject s. Iam confirmed in this prejudice concerning "art" by the observation that thefounding fathers of civil isation who taught us what science is and what moralsa re , did not know the term art as i t is in use since about 180 years, nor the term,and the discipline , aesthet ics which is of equal ly recent origin. This is not to


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366 . Interpretation German Nihilism' 367deny, but rather to assert, that there a re c lose re lat ions be tween science andmorals on the one hand, and poet ry and the other imitative arts on the other; butthose relations are bound to be misunderstood, to the detr iment of both scienceand moral s as well as of poe try, i f science and moral s are not considered thepillars of civilisation."The definition which I suggested, has another implication, or advantage ,which I must make explici t. " I tentatively def ined, at the beginning, nihil ism asthe desire to destroy the present civilisation, modem civilisation. By my seconddefinition I intended to make clear that one cannot cal l the most radical cri tic ofmodem civilisation as such, a nihilist.Civil isation is the conscious culture of reason. This means that civil isat ion isnot identical with human life or human existence. There were , and there are,many human beings who do not par take of civil isat ion. Civil isat ion has a natu-ral basis which i t finds, which it does not crea te, on which it is dependent, andon which it has only a very limi ted influence. Conquest of nature, if not takenas a highly poetic overs tatement, is a nonsensical express ion. The natural bas isof civilisation shows itself for instance in the fact that all civilised communitiesas well as uncivilised ones are in need of armed force which they must useagainst their enemies from without and against the criminals within .8. I presume, it is not necessary to prove tha t nihili sm in the sense defined i s

dominant in Germany, and that nihil ism character izes at present Germany morethan any other country. Japan, e.g ., cannot be as nihil ist ic as Germany, becauseJapan has been much less civi lised in the sense defined than was Germany . . . ! f . .nihil ism is the rejection of the principles of civil isat ion. as such, and if civil isa-t ion is based onrecognit ion of the fact that. the subject of civil isat ion is Jnan.as!!1_~,n,very interP-retat~?E~~Lc~.c:~!:,~~~~~I_p~ra~~Tn-termsor-races: ~ ~ t l o n i : _or of cultures, is strictly speaking nihilistic. Whoever accepts the Idea of aN~fcii~~~~'G~~an-orFaust;C"scTecnce, e.g, rejects eo ipso the idea of science.Different "cultures" may have produced different types of "science" ; but onlyone of them can be true, can be science." The nihilist implication of the nation-alist interpretat ion of science in par ticular can be described somewhat differ-ently in the following terms. Civilisation is inseparable from learning, from thedesi re to leam from anyone who can teach us something worthwhile , The na-t ionalis t interpretat ion of science or philosophy implies that we cannot reallylearn anything worthwhi le from people who do not belong to our nat ion or ourcul ture. The few Greeks whom we usually have in mind when we speak of theGreeks, wer

49618642 leo strauss philosophical texts

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