From Fear and Trembling.
I will consider yet another case: that an individual wants to save the universal by his concealment and silence. For this I can make use of the legend #[196]# of Faust. 93 Faust is a doubter, †† an apostate of the spirit who goes the way of the flesh. This is the poet’s view, and even though it is repeated over and over again that every age has its Faust, nonetheless one poet after another doggedly goes down the same beaten path. Let us make a slight alteration. Faust is the doubter ϰατ’ εξοχην [in the eminent sense; par exellence]; but he has a sympathetic nature. Even in Goethe’s version of Faust I feel the absence of a deeper psychological insight into the secret conversations that doubt carries on with itself. In our time, when of course everyone has experienced doubt, no poet has yet taken any steps in this direction. So indeed, I think I would like to offer them royal bonds on which they could write of all the many experiences they have had in that connection—they would scarcely be able to write more than what would fit in the upper margin.
Only when one turns Faust in upon himself like this, only then can the doubt appear in such poetic fashion, only then does he himself really discover all of its sufferings in actuality. Then he knows that it is spirit that sustains existence, but he also knows that the security and happiness in which people live are not grounded in the power of the spirit, but can easily be explained as an unreflective bliss. As a doubter, as the doubter, #[197]# he is higher than all this, and if anyone wants to deceive him by getting him to imagine that he has gone beyond doubt, he easily sees through it, for the person who has made a movement in the world of spirit—thus, an infinite movement—can immediately detect in the response whether the one who is speaking is a man who has been sorely tested or is a Münchhausen. 94 Faust knows that he can accomplish with his doubt what a Tamerlane 95 accomplished with his Huns: alarm and terrify people, cause existence to buckle under their feet, sow disunity among people, cause the scream of anxiety to resound everywhere. And if he does this, he is nonetheless no Tamerlane—in a certain sense he has the authorization of thought and is authorized to do this. But Faust is a sympathetic temperament, he loves existence, his soul knows no envy, he realizes that he cannot stop the fury that he is certainly capable of awakening, he desires no Herostratic honor 96 —he remains silent; he conceals the doubt more carefully in his soul than the girl who conceals beneath her heart the fruit of a sinful love; he tries as best he can to walk in step with other people, but what takes place within him is something he consumes within himself, and in this way he presents himself to the universal as a sacrifice.
Sometimes, when an eccentric thinker #[198]# raises the whirlwind of doubt, one can hear people complain, saying: “Would that he had remained silent.” Faust realizes this idea. Anyone who has an idea of what it means that a person lives by spirit also knows what the hunger of doubt means and that the doubter hungers just as much for the daily bread of life as for nourishment of the spirit. So even though all the pain Faust suffers can constitute a quite good argument that it is not pride that has possessed him,…But he is a doubter. His doubt has annihilated actuality for him, for so ideal is my Faust that he is not one of these scholarly doubters who doubt for one hour per semester while occupying a professorial chair but otherwise are able to do everything else—as well as this—without the assistance of spirit or by virtue of spirit. He is a doubter, and the doubter is just as hungry for the daily bread of happiness as for spiritual sustenance. Nonetheless, he remains true to his decision and remains silent; he speaks to no one of his doubt, nor to Margaret of his love.
It’s obvious that Faust is too ideal a figure to permit himself to be satisfied with the nonsense that if he were to speak, he would bring about a general discussion, or that the whole matter would pass off without consequences, or perhaps, or perhaps. (Here, as every poet can easily see, there is a comic element dormant in the plot: by bringing Faust into an ironic relation to these low-comic fools who in our times go chasing after doubt; who present an external argument, e.g., a doctoral diploma, as proof of their having truly doubted; or they swear that they have doubted everything; or they prove it from the fact that in the course of their travels they met a doubter: these special couriers and sprinters in the world of spirit who in the greatest haste get a bit of news about doubt from one person and about faith from another, and now wirtschafte [do business] in the best manner, all according to whether the congregation prefers fine sand or coarse sand. 98 ) Faust is too ideal a figure to go about in slippers. A person who does not have an infinite passion #[199]# is not ideal, and the person who does have an infinite passion has long since saved his soul from such rubbish. He remains silent in order to sacrifice himself—or he speaks, conscious that he will confuse everything.
If he remains silent, then he will be condemned by ethics, for it says: “You must acknowledge the universal, and you acknowledge it precisely by speaking, and you dare not take pity on the universal.” One should not forget this observation when one sometimes passes harsh judgment on a doubter because he speaks. I am not inclined to judge such conduct leniently; but here, as everywhere, it is important that the movements take place in proper, normal fashion. If worse comes to worst, a doubter, even if his words caused the world every possible misfortune, is much to be preferred over these wretched sweet tooths who taste a bit of everything and want to cure doubt without knowing what it is and who therefore are usually the immediate cause when doubt bursts forth in wild and uncontrollable fashion. — If he speaks, then he confuses everything, for even if that does not happen, he only gets to know that afterward, and a person cannot be helped by the outcome, either at the moment at which a person acts or with respect to his responsibility.
If he remains silent on his own responsibility, he may well be acting magnanimously, but to his other pains he will add a little spiritual trial, for the universal constantly torments him, saying: “You should have spoken—how can you be certain that your decision was not in fact the result of covert pride.”
Søren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling, Problema III, paragraphs 32-36.
