The Doctrine Of The Denial Of The Will To Live

44 This chapter is connected with § 68 of the first volume. Chapter 14 of the second volume of the Parerga should also be compared with it.

Man has his existence and being either with his will, i.e., his consent, or without this; in the latter case an existence so embittered by manifold and insupportable sufferings would be a flagrant injustice. The ancients, especially the Stoics, also the Peripatetics and Academics, strove in vain to prove that virtue sufficed to make life happy. Experience cried out loudly against it. What really lay at the foundation of the efforts of these philosophers, although they were not distinctly conscious of it, was the assumed justice of the thing; whoever was without guilt ought to be free from suffering, thus happy.

But the serious and profound solution of the problem lies in the Christian doctrine that works do not justify. Accordingly a man, even if he has practised all justice and benevolence, consequently the ±≥±∏øΩ, honestum, is yet not, as Cicero imagines, culpa omni carens (Tusc., v. i.); but el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido (the greatest guilt of man is that he was born), as Calderon, illuminated by Christianity, has expressed it with far profounder knowledge than these wise men.

Therefore that man comes into the world already tainted with guilt can appear absurd only to him who regards him as just then having arisen out of nothing and as the work of another. In consequence of this guilt, then, which must therefore have proceeded from his will, man remains [421] rightly exposed to physical and mental suffering, even if he has practised all those virtues, thus is not happy. This follows from the eternal justice of which I have spoken in § 63 of the first volume. That, however, as St. Paul (Rom. iii. 21), Augustine, and Luther teach, works cannot justify, inasmuch as we all are and remain essentially sinners, ultimately rests upon the fact that, because operari sequitur esse, if we acted as we ought, we would necessarily be as we ought.

But then we would require no salvation from our present condition, which not only Christianity but also Brahmanism and Buddhism (under the name which is expressed in English by final emancipation) present as the highest goal, i.e., we would not need to become something quite different from, nay, the very opposite of what we are. Since, however, we are what we ought not to be, we also necessarily do what we ought not to do. Therefore we need a complete transformation of our mind and nature; i.e., the new birth, as the result of which salvation appears.

Although the guilt lies in action, operari, yet the root of the guilt lies in our essentia et existentia, for out of these the operari necessarily proceeds, as I have shown in the prize essay on the freedom of the will. Accordingly our one true sin is really original sin. Now the Christian myth makes original sin first arise after man came into existence, and for this purpose ascribes to him, per impossibile, a free will. It does this, however, simply as myth.

The inmost kernel and spirit of Christianity is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism; they all teach a great guilt of the human race through its existence itself, only that Christianity does not proceed directly and frankly like these more ancient religions: thus does not make the guilt simply the result of existence itself, but makes it arise through the act of the first human pair. This was only possible under the fiction of a liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ, and only necessary on account of the Jewish fundamental dogma, in which that doctrine had[422] here to be implanted. Because, according to the truth, the coming into existence of man himself is the act of his free will, and accordingly one with the fall, and therefore the original sin, of which all other sins are the result, appeared already with the essentia and existentia of man; but the fundamental dogma of Judaism did not admit of such an explanation. Thus Augustine taught, in his books De libero arbitrio, that only as Adam before the fall was man guiltless and possessed of a free will, but forever after is involved in the necessity of sin. The law, A Ωøºø¬, in the Biblical sense, always demands that we shall change our doing, while our being remains unchanged.

But because this is impossible, Paul says that no man is justified by the law; only the new birth in Jesus Christ, in consequence of the work of grace, on account of which a new man arises and the old man is abolished (i.e., a fundamental change of mind or conversion), can transfer us from the state of sinfulness into that of freedom and salvation. This is the Christian myth with reference to ethics. But certainly the Jewish theism, upon which it was grafted, must have received wonderful additions to adapt itself to that myth. In it the fable of the fall presented the only place for the graft of the old Indian stem. It is to be attributed just to that forcibly surmounted difficulty that the Christian mysteries have received such an extraordinary appearance, conflicting with the ordinary understanding, which makes proselytising more difficult, and on account of which, from incapacity to comprehend their profound meaning, Pelagianism, or at the present day Rationalism, ris- es against them, and seeks to explain them away, but thereby reduces Christianity to Judaism. But to speak without myth: so long as our will is the same, our world can be no other than it is. It is true all wish to be delivered from the state of suffering and death; they would like, as it is expressed, to attain to eternal blessedness, to enter the kingdom of heaven, only not upon their own feet; they [423] would like to be carried there by the course of nature. That, however, is impossible. Therefore nature will never let us fall and become nothing; but yet it can lead us nowhere but always again into nature. Yet how questionable a thing it is to exist as a part of nature every one experiences in his own life and death.

Accordingly existence is certainly to be regarded as an erring, to return from which is salvation: it also bears this character throughout. It is therefore conceived in this manner by the ancient Samana religions, and also, although indirectly, by real and original Christianity. Even Judaism itself contains at least in the fall (this its redeeming feature) the germ of such a view. Only Greek paganism and Islamism are entirely optimistic: therefore in the former the opposite tendency had to find expression at least in tragedy; but in Islamism, which is the worst, as it is the most modern, of all religions, it appeared as Sufism, that very beautiful phenomenon, which is completely of Indian spirit and origin, and has now continued for upwards of a thousand years. Nothing can, in fact, be given as the end of our existence but the knowledge that we had better not be. This, however, is the most important of all truths, which must therefore be expressed, however great the contrast in which it stands with the European manner of thought of the present day. On the other hand, in the whole of non-Mohammedan Asia it is the most universally recognised fundamental truth, to-day as much as three thousand years ago.

If now we consider the will to live as a whole and objectively, we have, in accordance with what has been said, to think of it as involved in an illusion, to escape from which, thus to deny its whole existing endeavour, is what all religions denote by self-renunciation, abnegatio sui ipsius; for the true self is the will to live. The moral virtues, thus justice and benevolence, since if they are pure they spring, as I have shown, from the fact that the will to live, seeing through the principium individuationis,[424] recognises itself in all its manifestations, are accordingly primar- ily a sign, a symptom, that the self-manifesting will is no longer firmly held in that illusion, but the disillusion already begins to take place; so that one might metaphorically say it already flaps its wings to fly away from it. Conversely, injustice, wickedness, cruelty are signs of the opposite, thus of the deep entanglement in that illusion.

Secondly, however, these virtues are a means of advancing self-renunciation, and accordingly the denial of the will to live. For true integrity, inviolable justice, this first and most important of cardinal virtues, is so hard a task that whoever professes it unconditionally and from the bottom of his heart has to make sacrifices that soon deprive life of the sweetness which is demanded to make it enjoyable, and thereby turn away the will from it, thus lead to resignation. Yet just what makes integrity honourable is the sacrifices which it costs; in trifles it is not admired. Its nature really consists in this, that the just man does not throw upon others, by craft or force, the burdens and sorrows which life brings with it, as the unjust man does, but bears himself what falls to his lot; and thus he has to bear the full burden of the evil imposed upon human life, undiminished. Justice thereby becomes a means of advancing the denial of the will to live, for want and suffering, those true conditions of human life, are its consequence, and these lead to resignation. Still more quickly does the virtue of benevolence, caritas, which goes further, lead to the same result; for on account of it one takes over even the sufferings which originally fell to the lot of others, therefore appropriates to oneself a larger share of these than in the course of things would come to the particular individual. He who is inspired with this virtue has recognised his own being in all others. And thereby he identifies his own lot with that of humanity in general; but this is a hard lot, that of care, suffering, and death. Whoever, then, by renouncing every accidental advantage, desires for himself no other lot than that of humanity in general cannot desire even this long.