What Kant and all of us after Kant judge to be the most absurd of suppositions allows us to entertain the possibility of freeing mortals and immortals from that implacable power which, by some unknown miracle, has conquered the world and subjugated all living beings. Can it be that the deus ex machina might put an end to the hateful parere (obedience) and return to men the creative jubere (commanding) which the gods themselves had to renounce at some mysterious and terrible moment of the distant past? Can it be that the fall of Necessity would bring about the fall of the other usurpers to whom we feeble slaves, accustomed to the parere, have handed over our destiny? The principle of contradiction and the principle of identity have also been introduced into the world without authorization to act as masters therein. When we affirm that sound is heavy, these principles intervene and immediately oppose their veto: “we do not permit this, therefore it is not so.” But when it is said “Socrates has been poisoned,” these two principles remain passive and even give their blessing to this judgment and confer upon it, as we recall, eternity. But does there not exist somewhere in the depths of being a “reality” wherein the nature of the principles of contradiction and identity undergoes a radical transformation, wherein it is not they but man who commands, wherein they obey man’s commandments, i.e., wherein they do not intervene when sounds become heavy but protest when righteous men are put to death? Then the proposition “sound is heavy” would not seem absurd, while the proposition “Socrates has been poisoned” would become contradictory and, by that very fact, non-existent.
If such things be possible, if it be possible that Necessity which does not allow itself to be persuaded bows down before the caprice (Grille) of man, if the principles of contradiction and identity cease to be principles and become merely executive instruments, if the impossible becomes possible—what is then the value of the “eternal truths” accumulated by thinking humanity? It will be asked: how is one to know if such a reality is possible? That is just it: how is one to know? Once we begin to ask, we shall be told, as we have already been told, that such a reality is impossible; that Necessity, the principle of identity, the principle of contradiction and the other principles have ruled, do rule and will forever rule in our world as well as in all the worlds which have existed and will ever exist; that there never have been and never will be heavy sounds; that people have put to death and will continue to put to death wise men; and that the power of the gods themselves has limits that cannot be transcended.
But what if we do not ask anything of anyone? Are we capable of such daring and of so realizing the free will with which the philosophers entice us? Or better still, do we desire such freedom—a freedom such that the principles of contradiction and of identity and Necessity itself should be under our command? It seems that we have no great desire for it and that we should be afraid to grant such freedom to God Himself.
V
Aristotle and Epictetus submitted to Necessity and reconciled themselves to it. Plato did not reconcile himself to Necessity, even though he understood, quite as well as Aristotle and Epictetus, what dangers threaten the man who refuses to submit to this power. Plato saw quite well, just as all of us see, that in the year 399 Socrates was poisoned. And nevertheless, or rather precisely because he had seen it, because he had been “constrained” to see it with his own eyes, he suddenly had for the first time that deep, indestructible suspicion which is so incomprehensible to men: are our own eyes, then, really the source of the final metaphysical truths? In the Symposium he writes: “The spiritual eye becomes keen when the corporeal eyes begin to lose their sharpness” (219A).
It may be assumed that when this idea came to his mind for the first time Plato himself was frightened by it and, before deciding to express it aloud, had more than once to give himself courage by remembering “it is necessary to dare everything.” And indeed, if there are two kinds of eyes, who will say with which eyes we see truth and with which error? With all the good will in the world we should never be able to answer this question. Is it the corporeal eye that discovers the truth or is it the spiritual eye? The one supposition is as admissible as the other. The physical eyes can distinguish truth from error. Epictetus could force a man to distinguish vinegar from wine, shaving from cutting, etc., but Epictetus, quite like Aristotle, had no power over the spiritual eyes. For both of them relied on Necessity, both of them were “constrained by the truth itself,” and they wished and were able also “to constrain” others. But this was possible only so long as those to whom they addressed themselves were beings equipped with corporeal eyes. These one can constrain by threats. Necessity has power over them. But he who has lost his corporeal eyes, who, instead of corporeal vision, possesses “spiritual vision”—does Necessity have any power over him? Is it not in this that that miracle of transfiguration which was mentioned above consists? Parmenides is no longer constrained but rather constrains; the principle of contradiction does not command but obeys; the vinegar becomes wine, the razor does not cut, etc. And the whole arsenal of Aristotle’s and Epictetus’ threats loses, like salt which ceases to be salty, all sense and meaning.
I think that there cannot be two opinions on this matter: Plato’s “spiritual vision” is nothing other than a desperate attempt to tear himself away from the power of Necessity which has been throughout all time the foundation of human thought. The best commentary on the passage of the Symposium that we have quoted is found in the words of Plotinus: “Thought was granted to the divine, but not to the best beings, as an eye intended to correct their natural blindness. But what would it serve for the eye to see what is, if it were itself the light? And so if someone has need of eyes, it is that, being himself blind, he seeks the light.”10 “Spiritual vision” is no longer vision in the proper sense; that is, the passive consideration and acceptance of truth prepared in advance, imposed by an external constraint—as truth, according to Aristotle or Epictetus, is imposed. What appears to the latter as the essential moment of truth, the power of constraining all men, is found to be a mere accident. Circumstances change and this constraint becomes at first useless, inconvenient, intolerable, then finally a distortion of the very nature of truth—at least of the metaphysical truth concerning which we are here speaking. The truth of the corporeal eye maintains itself by force, by threats. Sometimes it also employs allurements. It forces the disobedient to drink vinegar; it cuts off their noses, their ears, etc. . . . It does not know any other means of bringing it about that men should agree to recognize it. If you deprive such a truth of the means of coercion that it has at its disposal, who would then be willing to follow it? Who would recognize of his own free will that Socrates has been poisoned? Who would delight in seeing the phenomena lead the great Parmenides, as if he were not Parmenides but a horse or a mule? All that is human in the living being imperiously demands that no one should be permitted to touch Socrates, and that the phenomena should not lead the great Parmenides as they wish but rather docilely and trustingly follow Parmenides.
Spinoza’s stone endowed with consciousness would have approved, one may believe, the order of existing things or, rather, the ordo et connexio rerum visible to the corporeal eye. But the living person will never accept this order. And if, nevertheless, many have sincerely sought to secure such a state of affairs in saecula saeculorum, it is not at all necessary to deduce therefrom what people ordinarily deduce: namely, that one can see the final truths with the corporeal eye and that Necessity has at its disposal a miraculous power, a supernatural force, to transform the temporal into the eternal. It is necessary to draw therefrom a conclusion which will perhaps seem at first sight paradoxical and consequently completely inadmissible for our ignava ratio (lazy reason) but which, it is to be believed, is the only truth: “Not all are created under the same conditions but to some eternal life is preordained, to others eternal damnation.” Or, if you do not care for theology and Calvin, the same thought may be formulated using Spinoza’s words: most men only resemble men, in reality they are not men but stones endowed with consciousness. And what we customarily call “the laws of thought” are only the laws of the thought of stones endowed with consciousness. Or again: it seems that, in the course of man’s brief existence, each of us often has occasion to see himself transformed into a stone endowed with consciousness—and this precisely when he turns backward, inquires, and begins to reflect. Plato sadly felt this and sought with all the powers of his soul to escape the petrification that threatened