Lichtenberg - The Waste Books

In 1764, while still a student in Göttingen, Lichtenberg began the Waste Books for which he was later to become famous. They consist of a series of fifteen notebooks that he kept throughout his life, and in which he notes his trenchant observations on philosophy, literature, the sciences, and nearly every aspect of private and public life. He called them his “waste books” after the name given to notebooks kept by accountants in England for their rough calculations and lists of transactions, which were later transferred to a journal and finally to a formal ledger (E 46). Many of the observations and remarks in the Waste Books are taken up and reworked in essays published during his lifetime, but most were never developed or elaborated upon. While the remarks contained in the Waste Books have since become known as aphorisms, this designation is not one on which he himself placed any emphasis, and it was only later that these writings became associated with the aphoristic tradition. Indeed, the first edition of Lichtenberg's writings, published by his sons between 1800 and 1806, were entitled Vermischte Schriften (Miscellaneous Writings), and the writings drawn from his notebooks were organized according to topic and simply called Bemerkungen vermischten Inhalts (Remarks on Various Subjects).

Lichtenberg's writings and his manner of doing philosophy might in many ways be associated with the style and content of the writings of the French enlightenment philosophes—Helvétius, Rousseau, Alembert, and Buffon—who appear throughout the Waste Books. These thinkers were observers of humanity and nature and brought their critical insights to bear on a wide range of topics from empirical psychology and the natural sciences to art and politics, and they did so in a variety of forms from letters and autobiographical journals to poetry and public discourse. His writings also share similarities with the fragmentary and speculative writings of German romantics such as Novalis and Schlegel, though his own approach is more empirical than speculative. This is in marked distinction from the systematic tradition associated with mid-eighteenth-century German philosophy, such as that of Christian Wolff, and the subsequent development of the immense and scholarly philosophical systems associated with Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and other idealists. In this tradition, philosophy was often the purview of a small academic group whose discussions seemed to bear only a tangential relationship to the matters of ordinary life.

It is in the former sense that the observations and remarks in the Waste Books might be called philosophical. One finds in them no fully developed doctrine or system, but one does find an acute and consistent thinker who considers philosophical problems, responds to the thoughts of his contemporaries, and develops the implications of their views. He discovered these problems not only in reflection on systematic philosophy but also in the practical aspects of scientific experimentation, in poetry, visual art, and theater, and in the conversations, jokes, and activities of everyday people, from the grocer to the soldier. Indeed, for Lichtenberg it seems that there is never a time when one is not doing philosophy, since our common language is embedded with philosophical views and commitments with which we always operate in our daily life. It might be fitting to say of Lichtenberg what he said of another, namely, that “he understood philosophy as the everyday man usually does: he reasoned and formed hypotheses in his housekeeping […]” (B 177). To do philosophy means to uncover, become perplexed about, form hypotheses about, and even at times correct the entrenched philosophical commitments evident in our language and practices. This is also accompanied by reflection on the role of emotions in philosophy and on the obscure idea of philosophy itself (D 167). Through such itinerant investigation and reflection, Lichtenberg writes, “we often scare up game that methodical philosophy can make use of in its well-ordered household” (J 1550). The Waste Books can be understood as a journal of such discoveries and a hint at how they might further be developed. Ultimately, however, they should really provide a spark for one's own thinking and investigation: in this sense, they are not meant merely to be read—Lichtenberg himself often inveighs against reading—but to be considered thoughtfully. If there is a single principle guiding his remarks, it is the Enlightenment dictum: Gnothi Seaton, “know thyself,” where knowing thyself must also mean knowing the world for oneself.

Self-Knowledge

The common wisdom of the rationalism that dominated much of eighteenth-century German philosophy was that the knowledge one could have of oneself was the most secure knowledge possible. The Cartesian idea that I may doubt anything except the fact that I am doubting, and thus that “I think” seemed to many unassailable. Yet Lichtenberg challenges this position throughout the Waste Books. Beginning from the point of view of first-personal conscious experience, Lichtenberg attempts to introspect some self, and finding such an attempt fruitless he famously remarks: “[…] We know only the existence of our sensations, representations, and thoughts. It thinks, we should say, just as one says, it lightnings. To say cogito is already too much if we translate it as I think. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical necessity” (K 76).

The self, which is supposed to be nearest to each of us, and which Descartes seemed to have no trouble positing, appears to Lichtenberg to be perhaps the most elusive object of inquiry. It is certainly nothing that can be encountered in introspection as some substance to which the various modifications of consciousness may be ascribed. Nor, it seems, would Lichtenberg accept that this self is a mere bundle of sensations, as Hume had proposed; it is, after all, unclear what makes the various perceptions encountered part of the same bundle if not the ascription to some self. For Lichtenberg, there is nothing that one could become acquainted with in introspection that could provide any grounds for cogito judgments such as “I think” or that would function as the bearer of self-ascriptions.

Lichtenberg was quite familiar with the solution proposed in the “Transcendental Deduction” of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Here Kant argues that it is a necessary condition for unified experience that one be able to ascribe one's thoughts and experiences to a single, unified self that would remain numerically identical throughout the modifications of conscious experience. This requirement, that the “I think” be able to accompany all of one's representations, he calls the “transcendental unity of apperception.” For Kant, we can know a priori that there is such a unity because experience itself would not be possible without it. In the “Paralogisms of Pure Reason,” this claim is also used as the basis of a critique of rationalist psychologists, such as Descartes, who Kant believed had mistaken the necessary unity of apperception for the unity and numerical identity of a simple, immaterial, and immortal soul. Yet it would appear that the Kantian solution of providing a transcendental argument for the necessity of a unified self would be equally as dissatisfying to Lichtenberg as was the initial Cartesian formulation. Beginning from the perspective of first-personal conscious experience as he does, the transcendental self does not seem to be an object of possible experience. Indeed, Kant had conceded as much, suggesting that it is true that the transcendental unity of apperception cannot itself be an object of possible experience but that we are warranted nevertheless in accepting it and in accepting the restricted validity of the cogito judgment.

Lichtenberg proposes that, because we cannot introspect a self, instead of the formulation “I think” we should use the impersonal formulation “it thinks,” as we would say “it lightnings” or “it's lightning.” As in the phrase “it is raining,” “it” is pleonastic; grammatical rules require a noun for the phrase, but it does not refer to an agent. This formulation would capture both the elusiveness of the substantial self in introspection and the elusiveness of the self as the author of one's thoughts, but it may problematically leave Lichtenberg with no way of understanding who the observer of the occurrent thoughts might be. For it does indeed seem that there is someone or something observing the thoughts. If one were to follow him in this line of thinking, one might end up committed to an ontology that includes no selves and would have difficulty accounting for what, if any, motivational force thoughts may have in the absence of any self to whom they are occurring or to whom they might be ascribed. We find a clue as to how he might develop these issues when he suggests that positing the “I” is a mere practical necessity, perhaps nothing more than a necessary fiction. But he says little about what such necessity consists in. Is it required by the grammar of our language, as Nietzsche later proposed in remarks that are doubtless indebted to Lichtenberg? Is it required in order to makes sense of moral action and responsibility, or in order to make sense of reasoning and commitment? This critique of self-knowledge and the questions it raises run counter to the central role given to the self in other philosophy of the period, especially that of Fichte, who placed the self-positing “I” at the center of his system. It is doubtless the most insistent problem Lichtenberg has imparted to the history of philosophy—and it is one for which he provides no solution.

Self-knowledge seems then to be more of a guiding principle, a desideratum, in Lichtenberg's thought than anything admitting of the kind of epistemic certainty accorded it by Descartes or perhaps Kant. Where self-knowledge is not understood as the task of cognizing a self, it is understood as the task of authentic thinking in general. This aspect of self-knowledge involves a thorough investigation of thought and a critique of how we acquire knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. In the spirit of Enlightenment autonomy, he often criticizes our tendency to accept without examination or scrutiny the claims and opinions of others, whether such claims and opinions are derived from books or erudite discourse on matters of science or religion (B 264). Against this—the posturing of intellectuals, the arguments of theologians, and particularly the false emotionality and mannerisms of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) poets, especially those of the Göttinger Hain—Lichtenberg entreats us to allow our own reason and thinking to be a guide and to be authentic in our self-expression (A 76). This authentic pursuit of self-knowledge involves not only attentive reflection but also wit and creative thinking and the construction of a coherent narrative regarding who one is and the life one leads. This does not just concern only our waking, rational life but must also include attention to and interpretation of our dreams, of the history of our sleeping life, and the unknown source of our thoughts and motivations (K 86). In this understanding of self-knowledge, he anticipates later philosophical conceptions found in Lebensphilosophie, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and existentialism, all of which place a high value on self-discovery.

In what he calls his “doctrine of Seelenwanderung,” “metempsychosis,” or the “transmigration of souls,” Lichtenberg also considers whether we can have knowledge of our own existence before birth and what our death might consist in (B 33). In many ways, these reflections can be seen as exploring some of the problems of personal identity involved in his emphasis on first-personal conscious experience (J 511). John Locke (1632–1704), in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), raised similar questions regarding the identity of the self across time, and Lichtenberg was quite familiar with this work and the discussions surrounding personal identity. Locke argues that the identity of a person consists not in the persistence of a body or the persistence of a substantial self that might be encountered in inner sense but in the fact that our various experiences seem to be tied together into a kind of continuity of conscious experience. Often it seems that Lichtenberg might adhere to such a criterion of personal identity, but it is also unclear how he might make sense of such continuity given his notion of impersonal thoughts. For he seems to offer no understanding of what might unite two conscious experiences or how they might be continuous with one another. In other remarks, he considers materialist conceptions of personal identity, in which the identity of a person consists in the identity of a physical body, arguing that identity of a body might be maintained despite a gradual replacement of its parts (A 56).

Given the importance accorded to introspection and the restrictions placed on our knowledge, Lichtenberg is also interested in the problem of other minds and the very existence of other selves.1 He suggests that the knowledge we seem to have of others is mere projection on our part. Just as in a dream, when we think that someone else is talking to us, we are merely generating this dialogue internally, so too it is possible that what we take to be other people and their opinions could be generated within us (K 85). This tendency to impart minds to others extends also to our relationship with inanimate nature. We find ourselves imbuing nature with a kind of soul, even to the point that we would empathize with a broken clock (K 83). Indeed, this tendency may also explain how we arrive at pronouns regarding “the other” at all. Here the dangers of the pursuit of self-knowledge become evident, for in turning inward in self-observation we may become hypochondriacal, self-obsessed, disconnected, and alienated from the world around us and fail to recognize that we are in many ways dependent upon others and that the pursuit of self-knowledge is an endeavor that may even presuppose the existence of others (B 262).

Mind and Body

Given Lichtenberg's interest in self-knowledge, metempsychosis, and personal identity, it is not surprising that he often reflects on the mysteries of mind-body dualism (J 1306). In the Waste Books, he primarily considers two of the dominant views of the period: psychophysical parallelism and physical influx. Through the legacy of Leibniz and the continuation of Leibnizian philosophy in the work of the preeminent German rationalist Christian Wolff (1679–1754), the thesis of psychophysical parallelism came to dominate much of the discussion of dualism in Germany. According to this thesis, there is no causal physical interaction between mind and body; instead, they mirror one another in a preestablished harmony. Physical influx, on the other hand, held that there was some direct causal link between mental and physical phenomena. Lichtenberg finds ample occasion to parody both views and dualism in general. He suggests for example that the soul must have a very detailed map of the body to which it is purportedly related or that one might create a fairytale to describe their interaction. He also questions how a simple soul could be related to a complex physical body or brain and why only a single soul should be related to a single body (F 349, F 189). He even jokingly imagines a machine that would model the behavior of the competing views—perhaps only then would we have grounds for deciding which is best. Because of such problems with dualism, he also considers various alternatives throughout the Waste Books.

On a trip to England between 1774 and 1775, Lichtenberg became familiar with materialist theories such as those of David Hartley (1705–1757) and the associationist psychologist Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). In his Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations (1749), Hartley argued that all psychological events, perceptions, sensations, and emotions could be explained by material, physical processes, and Priestley furthered these claims in Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas (1775). Inspired by these ideas, Lichtenberg often offers causal explanations of psychological phenomena in terms of how sensations of external objects are transmitted to the retina through nerve fluids in the eye (F 349, F 1084). He also finds inspiration for his own view in the work of the French materialists, Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771), whose De l'Esprit (On Mind) (1758) argues for a materialist and determinist view of man, and Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751), whose L'Homme Machine (Machine Man) (1748) famously rejected Cartesian mind-body dualism. At one point, he predicts that psychology itself will eventually arrive at a subtle materialism, but he also considers some potential arguments against materialism (F 425). He is also acutely aware of what he calls the “tremendous parallax” between our conception of ourselves in terms of materialism and the conception of ourselves gained through introspection. Beginning from introspection, we cannot seem to get at the physical processes that might underlie our thinking, and beginning from the point of view of a physical world, it seems difficult to account for the variety of our thoughts. Moreover, he finds materialism problematic because it implies that human actions are determined by physical processes and that free will is merely an illusion (J 668, E 30). In the philosophy of Spinoza, Lichtenberg discovers another possible alternative to dualism and often proposes that mind and body may in fact be aspects of a single substance or substrate, whether God or nature.

Lichtenberg also raises the question of the relationship between mind and body in his writings on physiognomy. Eighteenth-century physiognomists claimed that the character or soul of a person was mirrored in their physical features, particularly the face, so that intelligence, for example, could be inferred from features such as the distance between a person's eyes or the shape of her head. Physiognomy was taken very seriously by its scholarly adherents; but it also became a wildly popular theory, and in parlors throughout Germany people traced silhouettes of one another in hopes of discerning the deeper characteristics of their souls. In his essay “Über Physiognomik wider die Physiognomen” (“On Physiognomy, against the Physiognomists”) (1777), Lichtenberg attacks this view and its foremost proponent, Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801). And in a later essay, “Fragment von Schwänzen” (“Fragment on Tails”) (1783), he lampoons Lavater by analyzing the silhouettes of various animal and wig tails in order to draw ridiculous conclusions about the soul of the individuals. Similar remarks are found throughout the Waste Books. Against the physiognomists, Lichtenberg argues that we may infer things about the character of a person only on the basis of her acquired features. Thus someone who smiles frequently might have wrinkles around the mouth, and someone who furrows her brow might have distinct wrinkles on the forehead. From this it might legitimately be concluded that the former is often happy and the latter often troubled. Contrary to what the physiognomists had claimed, there is, however, no intrinsic or innate relationship between characteristics such as intelligence and physical features. It is clear also that Lichtenberg would have rejected on this basis the burgeoning anthropological studies that sought to infer the mental characteristics of a race from the physical features of its members. Not only did he find physiognomy epistemically suspect, but he thought it may also lead to a dangerous “physiognomical auto de fe,” a trial by fire in which people would be judged according to physical features for crimes they have not yet committed (F 521).

What sets Lichtenberg's thinking apart on these issues of mind and body is, however, the way he often entertains various points of view, seeking to understand the origin and implications of the philosophical problems. He diagnoses dualism, for example, as a carryover from our unreflective youth, suggesting that we often employ terms such as soul, and perhaps even matter, without a clear understanding of their meaning (J 668, E 30). Or he suggests that we employ such terms in philosophical discussions as the algebraist might insert a variable into an equation as a stand-in for some unknown quantity. The unreflective or vague use of these terms often leads us into philosophical discussions without any clear understanding of what these discussions are about. In such situations, Lichtenberg proposes that we attend to our use of such terms, the hidden theoretical commitments embedded in them, and the consequences these hypotheses or “pictures” of the world have for our actions and will have for further investigations (J 568).

Religion and Ethics

Frederick Beiser has argued that with the growing attention to epistemology in the eighteenth century, many philosophers sharpened their critiques of religious doctrine, particularly what were thought to be its epistemically unfounded and rationally dubious elements. These critiques of religion on the basis of reason, however, led still other philosophers to claim that reason itself was inherently skeptical, that it undermined faith and would inevitably led to atheism. With this general wariness about reason itself, many also raised questions regarding its universality and impartiality, two elements that seemed to be foundational for the Kantian philosophy and especially Kantian ethics that dominated much of the discussion of the relationship between rationality and religion in the period.2 Throughout the Waste Books, Lichtenberg responds to these discussions in his critiques of religion and its institutions, beliefs, and practices; in his reflections on Spinozism and nature; in his remarks on the relationship between reason and emotions; and in his observations on the apparent failure of aspects of Kantian ethics.

Lichtenberg often scathingly attacks religion, Christianity in particular, for its dogmatism, false piety, and adherence to superstitious beliefs (J 733). The most frequent aim of his attack, however, is not the content of religious belief but the theologians who proffer such beliefs and those who blindly follow them. Theologians cloak their pronouncements in the garb of truth only to manipulate their followers; they tell the story of human nature as one of gradual decline and moral corruption (J 974); and they seek to trick us with incomprehensible and sophistic arguments and dictates into believing we are morally ill, and all the more ill if we do not understand them (K 288). Having expunged all common sense and rationality from the Bible, they promote solemn adherence to ritual and blind acceptance of the doctrines of Christianity. All of this is anathema to the spirit of authentic reflection and critique at the center of much of Lichtenberg's thought. His genealogy of the belief in miracles and other superstitions suggests that they instituted themselves in a time when men were ignorant and incapable of reason. And in a remark that parallels the later thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Lichtenberg suggests that the Christian morality propounded by the theologians may have arisen from a certain weakness and that its dictum of universal tolerance is an unattainable fantasy (G 59). If there is a true Christian religion expressed in the Bible, Lichtenberg writes, it is certainly not that practiced by the Catholics of his time (J 269, GH 33).

As clear as Lichtenberg's feelings about the institutions of religion are, there remains nevertheless an ambivalent attitude toward the idea and existence of God. On the one hand, he radicalizes Kant's demotion of God to an unknowable yet necessary practical requirement in ethics, writing that the statement God exists says nothing more than that we feel obliged to do what is right (L 275). As such, God is perhaps merely a useful fiction that in the end will be rejected just as the belief in ghosts has been (D 329). He also attempts to wrest the notion of God from the hands of the theologians, arguing that God himself must also be rational and is best served not by blind subservience but by conducting oneself according to the dictates of reason. Thus there may be reasons for the belief in God, though ultimately these may be rejected. On the other hand, he suggests that our heart may recognize a God, though any understanding of this is beyond the capacity of reason and can only be made comprehensible through revelation. And in this sense Lichtenberg is much closer to those who would defend faith in God against its demotion by reason.

It is also evident in his thoughts on Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza (1632–1677) that Lichtenberg did not summarily reject the notion of God but accorded an important place to an understanding of ourselves as parts of a single monistic substance, as aspects of God or nature. “Amintor's Morning-Prayer” is a meditation on this monistic substance thought as nature, and similar reflections on Spinoza's Ethics (1677), monism and nature can be found throughout the Waste Books. Yet this flirtation with Spinozism does not fit so comfortably with European monotheism, and it would likely have been considered by many of his contemporaries to be tantamount to a confession of atheism. In 1780, the famous German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) confided to the philosopher Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) that he found Spinozism to be the only true philosophy. Jacobi subsequently argued in his Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn (Letters on the Teachings of Spinoza) (1785) that Spinozism was a pantheistic doctrine and thus really no different from atheism. This led to a furious debate known as the Pantheismusstreit (Pantheism Controversy) that eventually involved other Enlightenment figures including Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786). In his David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (David Hume on Belief, or Idealism and Realism) (1787), Jacobi further argued that Enlightenment rationalism would lead to such atheism and that philosophers should instead return to faith or belief. Though Lichtenberg does not clearly argue for any position on this issue, he was certainly aware of its many implications, and we might understand many of his remarks as his own attempt to work through these debates.

Lichtenberg often discusses other topics that were pervasive in Enlightenment discussions of religion, particularly deism and theodicy. Deists held that reason can show us that the world is created by a supreme being. This supreme being, however, created the world according to a design, much like a clock, set it in motion, and allowed it to operate without intervention. This allows for a materialistic world governed by laws discoverable by reason and is also compatible with Lichtenberg's Spinozistic monism and the determinism of Priestley and Lamettrie (J 280, 282). Theodicy, which attempted to reconcile God with the existence of evil, was also a central concern of the Enlightenment period and one that he often mentions. In his Essais de Théodicéé sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Theodicy) (1710), Leibniz coined the term theodicy, arguing that the evil in the world was not in conflict with the goodness of God. Lichtenberg often entertains a view that was rejected by Leibniz, namely, that the existence of evil in the world may show that the world was created by an inferior being. He also proposes that Leibniz's defense of Christianity does not show him to be a Christian, and instead may have been motivated by a less noble aim such as vanity (F 348), an issue that returns in his remarks on the deeper and often unfathomable motivations for moral action.

Regarding ethics, Lichtenberg has little to offer in the way of guiding principles or arguments, suggesting instead a critique of prevailing moral pronouncements and the moral principles that underlie everyday interactions. At one point, he considers four principles of morality proposed by one of his contemporaries—philosophical, religious, human, and political—suggesting that these may all be aspects of a single moral principle, expressed in different ways in order to be made comprehensible to different people. Unfortunately, he does not indicate what this single moral principle might be; but the crucial point made here and elsewhere is that moral principles should be explainable to ordinary people in their own language and that we operate in our everyday lives with such principles (B 195). It is the investigation of these principles and how they underpin ordinary interactions that Lichtenberg is primarily interested in and that perhaps has the most promise in developing a theory of ethics. But because Lichtenberg believes ethics to be so localized, there may be some reluctance on his part to believe that moral principles discovered in one area will or should be universally applicable in others. This kind of relativism stands in stark contrast to Kant's moral philosophy.

In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Kant argues, among other things, that one always acts according to a maxim and that such a maxim should be universalizable. This means that in choosing an action we must choose one whose maxim is such that we can will that all people act according to it. Moreover, he argues that the motivation for an action takes precedence over its consequences in evaluating the moral worth of a person, which means that an act done in order to increase one's own pleasure makes one morally less worthy than an act done out of pure duty or obligation. These central tenets of Kant's deontological moral philosophy are often the target of Lichtenberg's critiques, and he also finds similar views at work in Stoic ethics (A 28, KA 166, G 65). He sarcastically suggests that the ability to adopt principles that do not take one's own pleasure into account may simply be the result of old age. The old do not take account of the sensual side of human nature simply because they no longer possess such a sensual side (L 910). He also suggests that in reflecting on Kant's highest moral principle we should also consider that God enticed humans to propagate by making sex pleasurable (J 1071). Indeed, he finds it unlikely that we could ever act solely according to duty without always having our own interest and pleasure in mind; thus, the very notion of acting from duty alone is incomprehensible and contrary to the empirical evidence and our nature. Perhaps leaning toward a consequentialist ethics, he considers his colleague Feder's suggestion that the only means of evaluating an action is according to its consequences or according to mere authority (E 487). For Lichtenberg, reason and the universalizability of maxims must play a role in deciding upon actions, as Kant had suggested, but reason cannot be the sole guide. Our sensual nature should also be taken into account, just as the consequences of an action must be taken into account (J 710).

From:

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Philosophical Writings

Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by

Steven Tester