Maverick Philosopher

On the Eternal in Man

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (tr. Alexander Dru, Pantheon Books, 1950, p. 67, #263, written 1940):

The man who explicitly does not believe and does not will to believe (for the will to believe belongs to believing) in an eternal life, that is to say in a personal life after death, will become an animal, an animal being which among other things, man is. Man is 'planned as spirit,' as Kierkegaard puts it, but that includes the immortality of the soul. Whoever relinquishes that also gives up the spirit of man.

Man alone among the animals raises the question whether he is more than an animal.  His raising of this question does not prove  that he is more than an animal; perhaps it proves only that he is the most pretentious of all animals, a crazy animal, an evolutionary fluke who merely fancies himself more than  an animal. Such a fanciful conceit might even be accorded survival value within a naturalist scheme. Thinking himself the crown of creation, a child of God, with divine sanction to lord it over, but also cherish and protect the critters beneath him, this lofty self-conception, even if false, might enhance his chances of survival. It could be like that, or at least I cannot see a way definitively to exclude this epistemic possibility.

Or it could be like this:  Man's having a world (Welt) and not merely an environment (Umwelt) like the animals points to a higher origin, a spiritual origin,  and a higher destiny.  Elsewhere I catalog twelve meanings of 'world'; here I am using the term in my twelfth sense, the transcendental-phenomenological sense.  It remains an open question whether the world in this sense has an ontic anchor in God, whether the light of the transcendental-phenomenological Lichtung (clearing) has an onto-theological Source. We cannot know it to be the case, but we can reasonably believe it to be the case. That is as good as it gets here below.  And so I am brought around, once again, to the fact that, in the end, one must decide what to believe and how to live.

Haecker is right to point out that "the will to believe belongs to believing." Not all belief is voluntary, but religious and anti-religious belief is.  The will comes into it, as it does not in the case of some such mundane belief as that the Sun has risen. You are free to believe that you are a complex physical system slated for utter annihilation in a few years, months, days, minutes, and you are free to believe that you are "planned as spirit."  Either way reasons can be adduced, reasons that are not obviously bad reasons.

The Worst Thing about Poverty

Substack latest. A quotation from Theodor Haecker with a bit of commentary.

Theodor Haecker on the Teaching of Latin and Greek

Substack latest.

The Truly Philosophical Spirit

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (tr. Alexander Dru, Pantheon Books, 1950, p. 36, #146):

The truly philosophical spirit is a contemplative spirit. It is not captivated by the things that one can change, but but by those, precisely, which cannot be changed.

 

Nietzsche to his Friend Overbeck

"I am grieved by the transitoriness of things." So he preached the Eternal Recurrence of the Same,  letting an ersatz Absolute in through the back door. Becoming became enshrined as Being. Thus was an attempt made to fix the flux and assuage the metaphysical need. 

Addendum

After penning the above observation, I stumbled upon the following entry in Theodor Haecker's Journal in the Night (tr. Alexander Dru, Pantheon Books, 1950, p. 31, #127):

The most radical denial of need of redemption in this world seems to me to lie in the phrase, 'the eternal recurrence of the same' (Nietzsche). Logically it represents a fantastic confusion  thought, since quite evidently everything points in the very opposite direction. Theologically, it is at an infinite distance from God, and it turns everything upside down. At this point discussion is no longer possible.

Haecker is on the right track, The eternity of Recurrence is a paltry substitute for true eternity and in the end no true redemption.

The Decisive Difference between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), #689, p. 212, written in 1944:

The endless chatter about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard is quite hopeless. Outward similarities set up a superficial sphere of comparison that is utterly meaningless, for they are localised and limited by a decisive difference at a deeper level; the one prayed, the other did not. 

 

Error Invincibilis

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), #691:

Spiritual blindness differs from physical blindness in this, that it is not conscious. That is the essence of error invincibilis.

Compare Blaise Pascal, Pensees #98 (Krailsheimer tr., p. 55):

How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping.

Please forgive the following reformulation. Point out to a man that he is crippled, and he won't contradict you, though he might take umbrage at your churlishness. But point out to a man that his thinking is crippled and he is sure to reply, "No! It is your thinking that is crippled."

How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping.

Please forgive the following reformulation. Point out to a man that he is crippled, and he won't contradict you, though he might take umbrage at your churlishness. But point out to a man that his thinking is crippled and he is sure to reply, "No! It is your thinking that is crippled."

The Worst Thing About Poverty

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), p. 38, written in 1940:

155. The worst of poverty — today at any rate — the most galling and the most difficult thing to bear, is that it makes it almost impossible to be alone. Neither at work, nor at rest, neither abroad nor at home, neither waking nor sleeping, neither in health, nor — what a torture — in sickness.

Money cannot buy happiness but in many circumstances it can buy the absence of misery.  Due diligence in its acquisition and preservation is therefore well recommended.  The purpose of money is not to enable indulgence but to make  possible a life worth living.  Otium liberale in poverty is a hard row to hoe; a modicum of the lean green helps immeasurably.

Boethius wrote philosophy in prison, but you are no Boethius.

Things being as they are, a life worth living for many of us is more a matter of freedom from than freedom for.  Money buys freedom from all sorts of negatives.  Money allows one to avoid places destroyed by the criminal element and their liberal enablers, to take but one example. And chiming in with Haecker's main point, money buys freedom from oppressive others so that one can enjoy happy solitude, the sole beatitude.

O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo!

Theodor Haecker

I've been re-reading Haecker's penetrating and prescient  Journal in the Night.  Here is a recent article on the man and his work.  My Haecker posts are here.

A Reason Why Germany Had to Lose the War

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night, tr. A. Dru, Pantheon, 1950, p. 172, entry #579 of 10 September 1941:

A year ago today the official propagandist, Fritsche, talking on the wireless, said of the bombing of London: 'Once upon a time fire rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrha, and there only remained seventy-seven just men; it is very doubtful whether there are seventy-seven just people in London today.'  I already know many reasons why Germany will not win the war.  Fritsche's speech is one.

See the eponymous category for more from his pen.

Concluding punctilious postscript:  I added a hyperlink to (Dru's translation of) Haecker's text.  That bit of contextualization enriches and thus modifies the sense of his text.  Worth noting if not worth worrying about.

Theodor Haecker on the Teaching of Latin and Greek

The following is from Theodor Haecker's Tag-und Nachtbücher 1939-1945, translated into English by Alexander Dru as Journal in the Night (Pantheon Books, 1950), pp. 114-115.) I have made a couple of corrections in the translation. The following entry was written in 1940 in Hitler's Germany. The National Socialists seized power in 1933 and their 'one thousand year Reich' collapsed under the Allied assault in 1945. Haecker, a Christian, was bitterly opposed to the Nazi regime. Haecker's Journal provides keen insight into a dark time when an entire society went off the rails.

Theodor Haecker on Literary Style and a Comparison with Karl Kraus

Theodor Haecker, Tag- und Nachtbücher, 1939-1945, hrsg. Hinrich Siefken, Innsbruck: Haymon-Verlag, 1989, S. 212:

Der persönliche und gute Stil eines Schriftstellers ist die — oft durch große Kunst erreichte — natürliche Einheit zweier Naturen — der Natur des Schriftstellers und der Natur der jeweiligen Sprache, in der er schreibt, denn diese beiden Naturen sind nicht identisch, und die Einheit ist meist nur durch gegenseitige Kompromisse zu erreichen. Es kann einer einen reizvollen persönlichen Stil schreiben, der nur sprachlich gesehen, schlecht ist, weil er die Natur der Sprache im allgemeinen und im besonderen vergewaltigt, und ein braver Schüler kann einen guten Stil schreiben, ohne etwas Persönliches zu verrraten. Der große Schriftsteller ist aber der, in dessen Stil beide Naturen eins geworden sind, die wieder auseinanderzulegen keinem mehr möglich ist.

Advice for Those in Despair

Theodor Haecker, Tag- und Nachtbuecher 1939-1945 (Haymon Verlag, 1989), p. 115, entry of 4 October 1940:

Ich habe einmal einem Verzweifelnden den Rat gegeben, zu tun, was ich selber in aehnlichen Zustaenden getan habe, in kurzen Fristen zu leben. Komm, sagte ich mir damals, eine Viertelstunde wirst du es ja noch aushalten koennen!

I once advised a person in despair to do what I myself have done in similar circumstances, namely, to live in short periods. I told myself at the time: surely you can hold out for another quarter of an hour! (tr. BV)

Long before I read this Haecker passage, I had a similar thought which I expressed in the following aphorism:

Can you get through the next hour? The present can always be borne – if sliced thinly enough – and it is only the present that must be borne.

The End of Moderation

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), p. 29:

Many a man thinks to satisfy the great virtue of moderation by using all his shrewdness and bringing all his experience to bear upon limiting his pleasure to his capacity for pleasure. But simply by the fact of setting enjoyment as the end, he has radically violated the virtue.

A penetrating observation.  What is the end or goal of moderation? Haecker is rejecting the notion that the purpose of moderation, conceived as a virtue, is to maximize the intensity and duration of pleasure. Of course, moderation can be used for that end -- but then it ceases to be a virtue. For example, if I am immoderate in my use of alcohol and drugs, I will destroy my body, and with it my capacity for pleasure. So I must limit my pleasure to my capacity for pleasure. And the same holds for immoderation in eating and sexual indulgence. The sex monkey can kill you if you let him run loose. And even if one's immoderation does not lead to an early death, it can eventuate in a jadedness at odds with enjoyment. So moderation can be recommended merely on hedonistic grounds. The true hedonist must of necessity be a man of moderation. If so, then the ill-starred John Belushi, who took the 'speedball' (heroin + cocaine) express to Kingdom Come, did not even succeed at being a very good hedonist.

But if enjoyment is the end of moderation, then moderation as a virtue is at an end. Haecker, however, does not tell us what the end of moderation as a virtue is. He would presumably not disagree with the claim that the goal of moderation as a virtue is a freedom from pleasure and pain that allows one to pursue higher goods. He who is enslaved to his lusts his simply not free to pursue a truer and higher life.