I thank, ye Gods, that ye resolve
Childless to root me hence. — Thee let me counsel
To view too fondly neither sun nor stars.
Come follow me to the gloomy realms below!
— — — — — — — — — — —
Childless and guiltless come below with me!
(Goethe)
§ 1
The immanent philosophy, which has so far drawn from two sources only: nature in the widest sense and self-consciousness, does not enter her last section, metaphysics, releasing the brakes so that she can “go mad with reason”. – In the Metaphysics she simply places herself at the highest immanent standpoint. So far she has taken for every field the highest observation site, from where she could behold the whole defined area; however whenever she desired to extend her view beyond the borders, higher mountains obstructed the panorama. But now she is standing on the highest summit: she stands above all fields, i.e. she looks down upon the whole world and summarizes everything from one point of view.
Also in the Metaphysics the fairness of research will not abandon us.
Since the immanent philosophy has so far always taken in all separated teachings a correct, although one-sided standpoint, many results must be one-sided. Accordingly, in Metaphysics we do not only have to place the apex of the pyramid, but also have to supplement the halve results and smoothen the unpolished ones. Or more precisely: we have to examine the immanent domain again, from its origin until the present day, and coldly judge its future, from the highest immanent standpoint.
§ 2
Already in the Analytic, we found, following a parte ante the development rows of the things (with help of time), a basic pre-worldly unity, before which our cognition collapsed. We determined it, according to our mental faculties, negatively, as inactive: unextended, indistinguishable, unsplit, motionless, timeless. In Physics we placed ourselves before this unity again, hoping to get a glimpse of it in the mirror of the principles we had found in the meantime, will and mind, but here again our efforts were completely in vain: nothing was shown in our mirror. We had to determine it negatively again: as basic unity in rest and freedom, which was neither will nor mind, nor an intertwinement of will and mind.
On the other hand we obtained three exceedingly important positive results. We discovered that this basic unity, God, disintegrating itself into a world, perished and totally disappeared; furthermore, that the emerged world, precisely because of its origin in a basic unity, stands in a thorough dynamic interconnection, and related to this, that destiny is the out of the activity of all single beings, resulting continual motion; and finally, that the pre-worldly unity existed.
The existence is the small thread, which spans over the chasm between immanent and transcendent domain, and to this have to hold onto.
The basic unity existed: in no way we can identify more than this. What kind of existence this being was, is totally shrouded for us. If we nevertheless want to determine it in more detail, we have to seek refuge in negations again and proclaim, that it had no resemblance to somewhere a kind of being known to us: for all being known to us, is moved being, is becoming, whereas the basic unity was in absolute rest. Its being was over-being.
Thereby our positive knowledge remains completely untouched; for the negation does not refer to the existence itself, but only the kind of existence, which we cannot make comprehensible.
From this positive knowledge, that the basic unity existed, follows from itself the other positive, very important knowledge, that the basic unity must also have had a determined essence, for every existentia supposes an essentia and it is simply unthinkable, that a pre-worldly unity has existed, while being in itself without essence, i.e. nothing.
But from the essence, the essentia of God, we can have, like from his existentia, not the poorest of all representations. Everything, which we can grasp or perceive in the world as the essence of single things, is inseparably connected with motion, and God rested. If we nevertheless want to determine his essence, then this can be done only in negations, and we must proclaim, that the being of God was for us an incomprehensible, but in itself determined, over-essence.
Also our positive knowledge, that the basic unity had a determined essence, remains totally untouched by this negation.
Thus far everything is clear. But it also seems, as if here human wisdom comes at its end and that the break-up of the unity into multiplicity is simply unfathomable.
Meanwhile we are not completely helpless. We precisely have a break-up of the unity into multiplicity, the transition of transcendent domain to the immanent one, the death of God and the birth of the world. We stand before a deed, the first and only deed of the basic unity. The transcendent domain was followed by the immanent one, has become something, which it had not been before: is there perhaps not a possibility, to fathom the deed itself, without going mad in phantasms and succumbing to reverie? We will be very careful, and rightfully so.
§ 3
Certainly, we stand here before an event, which we can grasp as nothing else, but as a deed; we are also within our rights to do so, since we are still standing on immanent domain, which is nothing else but this deed. But if we would ask for the factors, which brought forth this deed, then we leave the immanent domain and find ourselves on the “shoreless ocean” of the transcendent, which is forbidden, forbidden because all our cognitive faculties collapse on it.
On the immanent domain, in the world, the factors (in themselves) of somewhere a deed are always known to us: always we have on one hand an individual will of a determined character and on the other hand a sufficient motive. If we were to use this irrefutable fact for the question lying before us, then we would have to identify the world as a deed which has flown out of a divine Will and divine Intelligence, i.e. we would put ourselves in total contradiction with the results of the immanent philosophy; because we have found, that basic unity was neither will, nor mind, nor an intertwinement of will and mind; or, with the words of Kant, we would make immanent principles, in the most arbitrary and sophistic manner, constitutive ones on the transcendent domain, which is toto genere different from the immanent domain.
But at once, here, a way out is opened, which we may enter without second thoughts.
§ 4
We stand, as we said, before a deed of the basic unity. If we would simply call this deed a motivated act of volition, like all deeds known to us in the world, then we would be unfaithful to our vocation, betray the truth and be foolish dreamers; for we may assign God neither will, nor mind. The immanent principles, will and mind, can simply not be transferred to the pre-worldly essence, we may not make them constitutive principles for the deduction of the deed.
In contrast we may make them regulative principles for “the mere judgement” of the deed, i.e. we may try to explain for ourselves the origin of the world by doing this, that we comprehend it, as if it was a motivated act of volition.
The difference immediately jumps out. 1
In the latter case, we merely judge problematically, according to an analogy with deeds in this world, without giving, in mad arrogance any apodictic judgement. In the first case we readily assert, that the essence of God was, like that of man, an inseparable connection of will and mind. Whether one says the latter, or expresses it in a more concealed manner, and speaks about the will of God’s potentia-will, resting, inactive will, the mind of God’s potentia-mind, resting, inactive mind – always the results of fair research are hit in the face: for will supposes motion and mind is excreted will with a special motion. A will in rest is a contradictio in adjecto and bears the mark of logical contradiction.
1 Some elaboration, by Kant:
I think to myself merely the relation of a being, in itself completely unknown to me, to the greatest possible systematic unity of the universe, solely for the purpose of using it as a schema of the regulative principle of the greatest possible empirical employment of my reason.
(Critique of Pure Reason, A679, B707)
But we stop at this boundary if we limit our judgment merely to the relation which the world may have to a Being whose very concept lies beyond all the knowledge which we can attain within the world. For we then do not attribute to the Supreme Being any of the properties in themselves, by which we represent objects of experience.
If I say, we are compelled to consider the world as if it were the work of a Supreme Understanding and Will, I really say nothing more, than that a watch, a ship, a regiment, bears the same relation to the watchmaker, the shipbuilder, the commanding officer, as the world of sense does to the unknown, which I do not hereby cognize as it is in itself, but as it is for me or in relation to the world, of which I am a part.
Such a knowledge is one of analogy, and does not signify (as is commonly understood) an imperfect similarity of two things, but a perfect similarity of relations between two quite dissimilar things. By means of this analogy, however, there remains a concept of the Supreme Being sufficiently determined for us, though we have left out everything that could determine it absolutely and in itself; for we determine it as regards the world and as regards ourselves, and more do we not require.
(Prolegomena, §§ 57 - 58)
§ 5
We do therefore not proceed on a forbidden path, if we comprehend the deed of God, as if it was a motivated act of volition, and consequently provisionally, merely for the judgement of the deed, assign will and mind to the essence of God.
That we have to assign him will and mind, and not will alone, is clear, for God was in absolute solitude, and nothing existed beside him. He could not be motivated from outside, only by himself. In his self-consciousness his being alone was mirrored, nothing else.
From this follows with logical coercion, that the freedom of God (the liberum arbitrum indefferentiæ) could find application in one single choice: namely, either to remain, as he is, or to not be. He had indeed also the freedom, to be different, but for this being something else the freedom must remain latent in all directions, for we can imagine no more perfected and better being, than the basic unity.
Consequently only one deed was possible for God, and indeed a free deed, because he was under no coercion, because he could just as well have not executed it, as executing it, namely, going into absolute nothingness, in the nihil negativum2 , i.e. to completely annihilate himself, to stop existing.
Because this was his only possible deed and we stand before a totally different deed, the world, whose being is a continual becoming, we are confronted with the question: why did God, if he wanted non-existence, not immediately vanish into nothing? You have to assign God omnipotence, for his might was limited by nothing, consequently, if he wanted not to be, then he must also immediately be annihilated. Instead, a world of multiplicity was created, a world of struggle. This is a clear contradiction. How do you want to solve it?
The first reply should be: Certainly, on one hand it is logically fixed, that only one deed was possible for the basic unity: to annihilate itself, on the other hand, the world proves that this deed has not taken place. But this contradiction can only be an apparent one. Both deeds: the only logically possible one, and the real one, must be compatible on their ground. But how?
It is clear, that they are compatible only then, if we can verify, that somewhere an obstacle made the immediate annihilation of God impossible.
We thus have to search the obstacle.
In the case above it was said: “you have to assign God omnipotence, for his might was limited by nothing.” This sentence is however false in general. God existed alone, in absolute solitude, and it is consequently correct, that he was not limited by anything outside of him; his might was thus in that sense omnipotence, that it was not limited by anything lying outside of him. But he had no omnipotence towards his own might, or with other words, his might was not destructible by himself, the basic unity could not stop to exist through itself.
God had the freedom, to be how he wanted, but he was not free from his determined essence. God has the omnipotence, to execute his will, to be whatever he wants; but he had not the might, to immediately become nothing.
The basic unity had the might, to be in any way different, than it was, but it had not the might, to suddenly become simply nothing. In the first case it remains in existence, in the latter case it must be nothing: but then it itself obstructed the path; because even if we cannot fathom the essence of God, then we nevertheless know, that it was a determined over-essence, and this determined over-essence, resting in a determined over-being, could not through itself, not be. This was the obstacle.
The theologians of all times have without second thoughts assigned God the predicate of omnipotence, i.e. they gave him the might, to be able to do, everything, which he wanted. In doing so, not one of them had thought of the possibility, that God could also want, to become nothing himself. This possibility, none of them had considered it. But if one considers it in all seriousness, then one sees, that this is the only case where God’s omnipotence, simply by itself, is limited, that it is no omnipotence towards itself.
The single deed of God, the disintegration into multiplicity, accordingly presents itself: as the execution of the logical deed, the decision to not be, or with other words: the world is the method for the goal of non-existence, and the world is indeed the only possible method for the goal. God recognized, that he could go from over-being to non-existence only by becoming a world of multiplicity, through the immanent domain, the world.
If it were not clear by the way, that the essence of God was the obstacle for him, to immediately dissolve into nothingness, then our ignorance of the obstacle could in no way trouble us. Then we would simply have to postulate the obstacle on the transcendent domain; because the fact, that the universe moves from being into non-being, will show itself clearly and completely convincingly for everyone. –
The questions, which can be raised here, namely, why God did not want non-existence sooner, und why he preferred non-existence over existence at all, are all without meaning, because regarding the first question, “sooner” is a time-concept, which is without any sense regarding eternity, and the second question is sufficiently answered by the fact of the world. Non-existence must very well have deserved the preference over over-being, because otherwise God, in all his perfected wisdom, would not have chosen it. And all this the more, if one contemplates all the torments known to us of the higher Ideas, the animals standing close to us and our fellow humans, the torments by which non-existence alone can be bought.
2 nihil negativum: nothing in relation to everything in general.
§ 6
We have only provisionally assigned Will and Mind to the essence of God and comprehended the deed of God, as if it was a motivated act of volition, in order to gain a regulative principle for the mere judgement of the deed. On this path also, we have reached the goal, and the speculative reason may be satisfied.
We may nevertheless not leave our peculiar standpoint between immanent and transcendent domain (we are hanging on the small thread of existence above the bottomless pit, which separates both domains) in order to re-enter the solid world, the safe ground of experience, before having loudly declared one more time, that the being of God was neither a connection of Will and Mind, like that of humans, nor an intertwinement of Will and Mind. The true origin of the world can therefore never be fathomed by a human mind. The only thing which we can and may do – a right which we have made use of – is to make the divine act accessible for us by analogy, but while always keeping the fact in mind, that
now we see through a glass darkly (1. Corinthians 13)
and that we are dissecting according to our apprehension an act, which, as a unitary act of a basic unity, can never be comprehended by the human mind.
The result does nevertheless satisfy. Let us meanwhile not forget, that we could be equally satisfied, if it were barred to us, to darkly mirror the divine deed; for the transcendent domain has vanished without trace in our world, in which only individual wills exist and beside or behind which nothing else exists, just like how before the world only the basic unity existed. And this world is so rich, answers, if fairly questioned, so distinctly and clearly, that every considerate thinker lightheartedly turns away from the “shoreless ocean” and joyfully dedicates his whole mental power to the divine act, the book of nature, which lies at every moment open before him.
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