Aphorisms from Lichtenberg Philosophical Writings

When we teach men how they should think and not always what they should think, we avoid much misunderstanding. It is a kind of initiation into the mysteries of mankind. Whoever stumbles upon a peculiar proposition in his own thinking will readily depart with it if it is false. A peculiar proposition taught by a respected man, however, may mislead thousands who do not examine it. One cannot be cautious enough in disclosing one's own opinions in matters of life and felicity and not diligent enough in inculcating understanding and doubt. To this belongs Bolingbroke's statement, “Every man's reason is every man's oracle.”
Doubt must be no more than vigilance; otherwise it can become dangerous.

Man has an irresistible instinct to believe he is not seen when he himself sees nothing, like children who shut their eyes in order not to be seen.

A clever child raised with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible that he can become a fool through reason.

In past times, when the soul was still immortal.

All impartiality is artificial. Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial. He belonged to the party of the impartial.

We must not believe if we make a few discoveries here and there that things will go on like this forever. An acrobat may leap higher than a plowboy, and one acrobat may leap higher than another, yet the height over which no human can leap is still very low. Just as we find water when we dig in the earth, sooner or later we discover the incomprehensible everywhere.

To think this causes such confusion in my head, almost as though I tried to think that Poland lies to the west of us.

That men so often make false judgments is certainly not due solely to a lack of insight and ideas but primarily to the fact that they do not put every element of the proposition under the microscope and examine it.

Thousands can see that a proposition is nonsense without possessing the capacity to refute it formally.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I do not deny they are sometimes correct, but are they not just as often incorrect? Is that not what I intended to say? A game of chance.

An ass was obliged to carry an image of Isis, and when the people kneeled to worship the image, he thought they were honoring him.

How perfectible man is and how necessary education can be seen from the fact that he now appropriates in sixty years a culture that the whole race has taken five thousand years to create. A youth of eighteen can contain within himself the wisdom of whole ages. If I learn the proposition, the force that attracts in polished amber is the same as that which thunders in the clouds, I have learned something quite quickly, the discovery of which cost mankind several thousand years.

First there is a time when we believe everything without reasons; then for a short time we believe with discrimination; then we believe nothing at all; and then we believe everything again and indeed give reasons for believing everything.

You have discovered these traits together ten times, but have you also counted the cases in which you have not found them together?

An amusing thought: a scholar weeping because he cannot understand his own writings. […]

When something bites us in the dark, we can usually locate the spot with the point of a needle. What an exact plan the soul must have of its body.

There are few people who are not obliged to believe many things that upon closer examination they would not understand. They do this simply on the authority of others, or they think they lack the additional knowledge necessary to abolish all doubt. In this regard, it is possible for a proposition, whose truth has not yet been verified, to be universally believed.
I have long known, dear sir, that here and everywhere observations must be our primary concern and that a profound theory always allows enough room for two heads of equal size to distance themselves nearly to the point of being pro and contra. Only I assumed we are consistent, and what you have taken to be mere theory was a probable explanation of my numerous errors.

That people who read so astonishingly much are often such bad thinkers may also have its origin in the constitution of our brain. It is certainly not all the same whether I learn a proposition without effort or if I finally arrive at it myself through my own system of thought. In the latter everything has its roots; in the former it is merely superficial.

Let us take Sir Isaac Newton. All discoveries belong to chance, whether they come at the end or the beginning of the process, for otherwise reasonable people could sit down and make discoveries like they write letters. Wit spots a similarity, and reason tests it and finds it to be true: that is discovery.

One rule in reading is to condense the intention and main thoughts of the author into a few words and in this way to make them one's own. Whoever reads in this way is occupied and gains something. When one reads without comparison with one's own inventory of knowledge or without synthesizing it with one's own system of thought, the mind gains nothing and loses much.

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.

What people call a subtle knowledge of human nature is for the most part nothing other than one's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

Whoever knows himself properly can very soon know all other men. It is all reflection.

Men who know well how to observe themselves, and thus secretly know a great deal, often are pleased to discover a weakness in themselves, where such a discovery would normally disappoint. For many, the professor is much more esteemed than the man.

It is certainly quite true that most people who are not capable of love are also worth little in friendship. Still, one often sees the opposite.

It is a fault common to all people of little talent and more erudition than understanding that they discover artificial rather than natural explanations.

It has always been true that most men live more according to fashion than reason.

There is in my opinion a great difference between teaching reasoning and being rational. There may be people who possess anything but common sense and yet who speculate admirably upon the rules it must observe, just as a physiologist can have knowledge of the constitution of the body and yet be quite unhealthy.

What can be the reason for man's terrible aversion to showing himself as he is, whether in his bedroom or in his most private thoughts? In the material world, everything is both what it can be and at the same time very forthright. According to our concepts, things are all that they can possibly be with respect to one another, but man is not. He appears rather to be that which he should not be. The art of concealing ourselves, or our aversion to letting ourselves be seen naked, intellectually or morally, is carried astonishingly far.

Words must occasionally be investigated, for the world can move on while words remain behind. Thus always things not words! For even the words infinite, eternal, and always have lost their meaning.

He was astonished that cats have two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes are.

Through our excessive reading we learn not only to take things for true that are not, but our proofs also acquire a form that is often demanded not so much by the nature of the case as by our unnoticed adherence to fashion. Using familiar examples, we demonstrate things that we could as convincingly support with examples from our own experience; and we even cite as support sentences that prove nothing and propositions that are mere tautologies. It is quite difficult to regard something in a new way and not mediated by fashion or determined by our accepted paradigm. When we should offer reasons and arguments, we instead offer our reputation; where we should teach, we instead threaten; and where humans would have been sufficient, we enlist gods for support.

Many people claim philosophical objectivity about certain things because they understand nothing of them.

A great way of attaining common sense is to strive constantly for clear concepts—not merely by relying on the definitions of others, but as far as possible by personal inquiry. We should repeatedly scrutinize things with the intention of discovering something others have not yet observed. For every word, we should at least once give ourselves an explanation and never use any word we do not understand.

It is not easy to think too much, but it is easy to read too much. The more things I think about, the more I endeavor to associate them with my experiences and my own system of thought, the stronger I become. With reading it is the contrary; I extend myself without increasing my strength. When I notice in my thinking gaps I cannot fill or difficulties I cannot overcome, I must consult a book and read. Either this is how one becomes useful, or there is no way.

It would be a blessing if we could shut our ears and other senses like we shut our eyes.

That it is so easy to shut our eyes and so difficult to shut our ears, except by covering them with our hands, shows undeniably that heaven was more concerned with the maintenance of our sensible apparatus than with the pleasure of our soul. Our ears are our most alert sentinels in sleep. What a blessing it would be if we could close and open our ears as easily as our eyes!

The noble simplicity in the works of nature has its origin only too often in the noble shortsightedness of the one who observes it.

There is a great difference between believing something and not being able to believe the contrary. I can often believe things without being able to prove them, just as I disbelieve others without being able to disprove them. The position I take is determined not strictly by logic but by the preponderance of evidence.

Anyone who reflects on the history of philosophy and natural science will find that the greatest discoveries were made by people who regarded as merely probable what others advanced as certain. They might be described as adherents of the New Academy—a school that maintained a balance between the rigorous certainty of the Stoics and the uncertainty and indifference of the Skeptics. Such a philosophy is all the more to be recommended in that we accumulate our ideas and opinions at a time when our understanding is at its weakest.

In all sciences, it can be advantageous to posit cases that as far as we know do not occur in nature, just as mathematicians posit alternative laws of gravity. It is always heuristic and may sometimes provoke insights.

If only I could dishabituate myself from everything, so I could see anew, hear anew, and feel anew. Habit corrupts our philosophy.

We can do good in as many ways as we can sin, in thought, word, and deed.

There are truths that go about so garishly attired that we should take them for lies, but they are pure truths nonetheless.

Premeditated virtue is not worth much; feeling or habit is the thing.

If only children could be educated so that all things unclear were entirely incomprehensible to them.

It is very good to read once again the books others have read already a hundred times, for though the object remains the same, the subject is different.

Shortsighted and farsighted are used incorrectly as metaphors of mental capacity. Here shortsighted means blind; but it is clear that shortsighted people also see things others do not.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

The human tendency to regard little things as significant has produced much that is great.

It is a great trick of rhetoric merely to persuade people when one could have convinced them; they often think themselves convinced when merely persuaded.

With prophecies, the interpreter is often a more important man than the prophet.

Nothing is more agreeable to me than instances where my sympathy or antipathy precedes reason to discover how these are related, in other words, to become aware of what I am in this world and why I am this way.—Our entire philosophy, I believe, consists in becoming distinctly aware of what we already are mechanically.

The mind of man is no less provided for than is the body of an animal; what in the latter is called appetite and instinct is in the former called common sense. Both can suffocate; the only difference being that for an animal the cause must be external, but for man it can also be internal. An animal is for itself always a subject, while man is for himself also an object.

However we imagine representing to ourselves the things outside of us, these representations will and must invariably carry some trace of the subject in them. It seems to me a very unphilosophical idea to regard our soul as merely passive; no, it also contributes something to the objects. Thus there can be no being in the world that recognizes the world as it really is. I would like to call this the affinities of the mental and physical worlds, and I can very well imagine there might be beings for whom the order of the universe would be music to which they dance while heaven plays accompaniment.

Just as the highest law is the greatest injustice, so too is the greatest injustice often the highest law.

What am I? What shall I do? What may I hope and believe? All things in philosophy can be reduced to this.

It is actually evidence for the great limitation of our sensibilities that we do not see the essence of things. We see the color, feel the weight, impenetrability, and density of a magnet; but these properties are not—whether taken separately or together—that by virtue of which the magnet attracts iron, for other objects also possesses all of these properties.

It is necessary to agitate all of our knowledge and then let it settle again in order to see how everything is arranged. […]

To discover between things relationships and similarities that no one else sees. In this way, wit can lead to invention.

Writing is an excellent means of awakening the system sleeping within each of us; anyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something that, though it lay within us, we did not previously clearly recognize.

When he attends church and reads his bible, the ordinary man confuses the means with the end—a very common error.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at his mishap, “if only I had done something delightfully sinful this morning, I would know why I am suffering now!”

That a false hypothesis is at times to be preferred to the correct one can be seen in the doctrine of the freedom of man. Man is certainly not free, but a quite profound study of philosophy is required not to be misled by this idea. Among a thousand people, none has the time and patience for such study, and among the hundred that do, not one has the mind or spirit for it. Freedom is thus really the most convenient way of thinking about the matter for oneself and, since it has appearance on its side, will always remain the most conventional one.

We must have hypotheses and theories in order to organize our knowledge, otherwise everything remains merely detritus—and we already have a great deal of scholars who produce this.

An autopsy cannot uncover those faults that end with death.

An excellent motto: “Opinions are continually varying, where we cannot have mathematical evidence of the nature of things; and they must vary. Nor is that variation without its use, since it occasions a more thorough discussion, whereby error is often dissipated true knowledge is encreased and its principles become better understood and more firmly established” (Franklin's Letters on Philosophical Subjects, Letter 38)

Those who think a great deal for themselves will find much wisdom recorded in language. We probably do not add it all ourselves

Just as the followers of Herr Kant always accuse their opponents of not understanding him, I suspect there are many who believe he is correct simply because they understand him. His way of representing things is novel and differs considerably from the usual, and once we finally gain some insight into it, we are inclined to regard it as true, especially since it has so many zealous adherents. We should always remember, however, that understanding something is no reason for believing that it is true. I believe the satisfaction in having understood an extremely abstract and obscure system leads many to believe that its truth has thereby been demonstrated.

Nothing is more common than for people to consider themselves convinced of the truth of something as soon as they have understood the opinion a great man has held about the matter. These are, however, very different things. It has often happened to me. I believe that many people, once they have labored their way through the difficulties of the Tychonian system and all its epicycles, have thought: “Praise the Lord, I have finally figured it all out."

He learned to play a few pieces on the metaphysic.

Anyone who plunders the ideas of an ancient writer could defend himself by appealing to metempsychosis and say: “Prove I was not also that writer.”

We cannot really know whether we are not at this moment sitting in a madhouse.

Most teachers of faith defend their propositions, not because they are convinced of their truth, but because they once claimed they were true.

Nothing more clearly proves to me how matters stand in the world of learning than the fact that Spinoza was for so long regarded as an evil, disreputable man and his opinions as dangerous; the reputations of so many others have suffered a similar fate.

A character: everyone forms an incorrect idea of him and hates and persecutes him according to this image.

It is astonishing how often the word infinite is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, and so on. There must be something agreeable about the concept, or its misuse could not have become so widespread. What have the ancients to gain from this?

In order to find something, many, if not most, people must first know that it is there.

I believe that in comparison with the English, the German suppresses more with reason, which really should never happen. On many occasions, for instance, on which it would never occur to the Englishman to laugh, a German does not laugh because he knows it would be improper.

He was no “slave to his word,” as they say; on the contrary, he exercised such despotism over his promises that he could do with them whatever he wished.

In this world, you can live well from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.

One of the strangest delusions man would be capable of is to believe he is insane and sitting in a madhouse but actually be acting completely rational. If someone once became convinced of this, I really do not see how one could convince him otherwise.

A golden rule: we must judge people, not by their opinions, but by what these opinions make of them.

Certainly happiness cannot be the first principle of morality, for it shows me only the direction but not the way. Furthermore, happiness must be subordinated to reason, for otherwise, as Pütter once demonstrated quite well in collegio, perfice te could lead to the devil.*
*This ethical principle is attributed to the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762): Perfice te ut finem, perfice te ut medium (“Perfect yourself as an ends, perfect yourself as a means”). Kant discusses this principle in section 4 of the Metaphysik der Sitten (Metaphysics of Morals) (1797) regarding the duties owed by persons to themselves. The translation is from Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals

If a war has lasted twenty years, it may well last for a hundred. For war has now become a status. Polemocracy. People who have tasted peace die out.

To doubt things that are now believed without any investigation, that is everywhere the essential thing.

Why do I believe this? Is it actually this way?

It really deserves sincerely to be investigated, for my own housekeeping, why most discoveries happen by chance. The principle reason is really that people learn to regard things as their teachers and acquaintances do. That is why it would be quite useful for once to give instructions on how one can deviate from the rule according to certain laws.

Whenever I arrive at a new thought or theory, always to ask: Is this really as new as you believe it to be? This is also in general the best reminder never to be amazed at anything in the world (nil admirari).

My body is that particular part of the world that my thoughts are able to alter. Even imaginary illnesses may become real ones. In the rest of the world, my hypotheses cannot disturb the order of things.

To ask in everything the question: is this true? and then to seek reasons for why one believes it is not true.

It is strange that only extraordinary people make the discoveries that afterward seem so easy and simple; this presupposes that to perceive the most simple but true conditions of things requires very profound knowledge.

How do we arrive at the concept outside us? Why do we not believe that everything is within us and occurs within us? How is it that we arrive at the concept of distance at all? This seems quite difficult to resolve. We go as far as to locate that which is in us and occurs within us, namely, the changes of the images on our retina, outside ourselves, and yet when we are pricked or feel a pain in the eye, we immediately locate it in the eye itself.

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as even existing. Away with it!

Outside us. It is certainly difficult to say how we arrived at this concept, for we actually merely sense things within us. To sense something outside oneself is a contradiction; we sense things only within ourselves, and what we sense is a mere modification of our self and thus within us. Because these alterations are not dependent upon us, we ascribe them to other things that are outside us and say that there are things we should call “praeter nos”; but for praeter we substitute the preposition extra, which is something entirely different. That we think of these things as being in a space outside us is clearly not a matter of sensation; it seems to be something that is most intimately interwoven with the nature of our sensible faculty of cognition; it is the form in which the representation of something praeter nos is given to us. The form of sensibility.

Man is a creature who searches for causes; in a hierarchy of minds, he could be called a “cause-seeker.” Other minds perhaps conceive of things according to different relations that to us are incomprehensible.

To invent an inventor for all things.

Is this really the only way of explaining this?

Seeing black is not the same as seeing nothing. Someone who has no eyes does not see everything around himself as black but does not see at all. We do not see black with our ears but do not see at all. Black then is seen or sensed to a certain degree; it is the feeling of tranquility for a sense engaged by light.

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how the rest would behave: for example, if the world were without iron, where would we be? This is an old example.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Philosophical Writings
Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by
Steven Tester

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

Selection from Lichtenberg - Philosophical Writings

 

When one believes—as metaphysicians often do—that one understands something one really does not, it could be called affirmative nescire.

The discovery of the most significant truths depends upon a subtle abstraction, yet our everyday life, with its competencies, habits, and routines, constantly endeavors to make us incapable of this. It is the work of philosophers to unlearn these trivial mindless abilities, which we have acquired through observation since childhood. Thus even as a child, a philosopher should already be educated differently.

To match versification to the thought is a very difficult art, the neglect of which is responsible for much ridiculous verse. Versification and thought are related to one another as in everyday life savoir-vivre is to occupation.

If we wish to create a philosophy of use to us in life or wish to give general principles for a perpetually contented life, we must certainly abstract from what introduces too much diversity in our observations—much as in mechanics we ignore friction or other similar particular properties of bodies, so our calculations are not so cumbersome, or we at least replace them with a single letter. Insignificant mishaps undeniably introduce much uncertainty into our practical principles, so we must dismiss them and attend to overcoming the significant ones. This is undoubtedly the true meaning of certain propositions in the Stoic philosophy.

Habit might be called a moral friction: something that does not allow the mind to glide easily over things but joins it to them so it cannot easily free itself.

Prejudices are, so to speak, the acquired instincts of human beings: through prejudice we can accomplish many things we would find too difficult to think through to the point of decision.

Whenever we read a good thought, we should see if something similar might be thought and said about another matter, assuming here that it has some affinity with the former. This is a kind of analysis of thought that perhaps some scholars adopt without saying.

Understanding the meaning of a word in our mother tongue often takes us many years. I also have in mind understanding the meaning tone can lend to a word. The meaning of a word is, if I may express myself mathematically, given by a formula in which the tone is the variable and the word is the constant quantity. This opens the possibility of infinitely enriching language without increasing the number of words. I have found that the phrase “It is good” is pronounced in five different ways, each time with another meaning, which is often determined by yet a third variable, namely, the facial expression.

Minds or spirits without an external world must be strange indeed; since the ground of every thought lies within it, even the most fantastic combinations of ideas would always be correct. We call people insane when the order of their concepts no longer corresponds to the sequence of events in our orderly world; thus a careful observation of nature, or even mathematics, is certainly the most effective preventative of insanity; nature is, so to speak, the guide rope by which our thoughts are lead, so they do not stray.

The conflict over meaning and being, which has done so much harm in religion, might have done more good had it been fought on other fields, for it is a common source of our misfortune that we believe things actually to be what they really only mean.

When Plato says passions and natural desires are the wings of the soul, his expression is enlightening; such comparisons illuminate the matter and are, as it were, translations of the difficult concepts of one man into a language understood by all—true definitions.

The world is a body common to all people; changes in it bring about changes in the souls of all people who are facing only a part.

Not to exist means to natural scientists, at least a certain class of them, the same as not to be perceived.

It never occurs to the peasant who believes the moon is no bigger than a plough wheel that at a distance of a few miles an entire church appears no larger than a white speck, while the moon always appears the same size. Since he possesses these ideas separately, what prevents him from connecting them? In his everyday life, he does connect ideas, perhaps in more elaborate ways than these. This reflection should grab the attention of philosophers, for in certain connections of thought they are perhaps still peasants. We think early enough in life, but we do not know that we are thinking any more than we know we are growing or digesting; among ordinary people, few ever realize this. A close observation of things outside us leads quickly back to the point of observation, that is, ourselves; conversely, anyone who once becomes fully aware of himself is readily led to the observation of the world around him. Be attentive, experience nothing in vain, measure and compare—this is the entire law of philosophy.

Whatever one sees, does, or reads, it should always be brought to such a degree of clarity that one can at least answer the most general objections against it and then it can become part of the structure of our science. To this structure nothing disputable should be added. If something generally assumed cannot be united with our system, then perhaps we are still missing foundational ideas, and discovering this is a great achievement.

Growing wiser means becoming increasingly acquainted with the errors to which our instrument of feeling and judging may be subject. Today, cautiousness in judgment is to be recommended to each and every one. If we reap but one incontestable truth every ten years from each philosopher, our harvest would be rich enough.

Rain, snow, and wind follow one another in such a way that we discern no certain law in their order. But we conceive of laws only in order to simplify our conceptions of things, just as we create races.

The Stoics deny degrees of morality; according to them, all crimes are equal when one abstracts from their damage.

Some scholars have understood truly higher or abstract reason is for man an unnatural thing, and erudition, an illness.

Things most often forgotten, places overlooked, and things accepted without question deserve most often to be investigated.

A single word might be replaced with six; we express too much with one and the same word.

To investigate what is mutable and what eternal in a matter, and at least to indicate where certainty ceases.

We know for certain how to designate the limits of error, and where doubt remains, precise inaccuracy begins.

What am I overlooking here as a result of my limited understanding?

Whenever he had to reason, he felt like someone who had always used his right hand but was now forced to do something with his left.

In recalling our past pleasures, we depart from our present physical body, transporting ourselves entirely in abstracto back to a previous time as an Arcadian being without debts, cares, or needy relatives, for we are not able to imagine for ourselves the unified effect of different impressions as easily as we can that of a single one.

We infer, perhaps too quickly, from the intelligent constitution of the instincts of animals, the existence of a supremely intelligent being; it need only be more intelligent than we are.

There are very few things we can conceive of through all five senses.

We see absolutely nothing of the soul unless it is manifested in the face. The faces of a large assembly of people might be called a history of the human soul, written in a kind of Chinese ideogram. Just as a magnet arranges iron filings, the soul arranges around itself the features of the face, and differences in the arrangement of these parts indicate differences in that which gave rise to them. The longer one observes faces, the more one will notice in so-called unremarkable faces traits that make them individual.

The thing of whose eyes and ears we see nothing and of whose nose and head we see very little—in short, our body.

He used his little stick to measure all kinds of things, physical as well as moral, and would often say, “I am not so concerned with it,” indicating on the stick with his thumb nail his degree of concern.

Who is there? Only I. This is already saying too much.

In our premature and often all too extensive reading, by which we acquire numerous materials without constructing anything from them and which accustoms our memory to keep house for sensibility and taste, a profound philosophy is often required to restore to our feelings their initial state of innocence: to extricate one's self from the detritus of alien ideas, to begin to feel for oneself, to speak for oneself, and, I might almost say, to exist for oneself.

The hypotheses of some newcomers do not yet contradict the evidence, but I fear the evidence will soon contradict them.

One can really make oneself morally heavy, just as children believe they can make their bodies heavier—one can intentionally suppress a fond desire and do what is right.

It is an open question whether it is more difficult to think or not to think. The human is compelled to think, and we all know how hard it is to suppress such a compulsion. Surely then, the small-minded really do not deserve the contempt with which they are treated in every country these days.

We could have continued to think and live without ever concerning ourselves with why or how thought occurs; indeed philosophy first investigated things outside of us before finally turning the microscope inward. A curious and observant mind asked, “How does it come about that we think?”—few, indeed not one in a million, even among professors who have explained psychology, would have posed such a question. And yet how many now ask why objects fall toward the earth? (...)

The question: should I philosophize for myself? must, I think, be answered in the same way as the question: should I shave myself? If someone were to ask me this, I would answer: if you can do it properly, it is an excellent thing. I always think that though we try to teach ourselves the latter, we do not make our first attempt on the throat. Act as the wisest before you have acted, and do not begin your philosophical exercises where an error can deliver you into the hands of the executioner.

In grasping their meaning, it was impossible for him not to disturb the words.

It is well known to any observer of man how difficult it is to explain experiences without the interference of judgment.

Is there then no difference between justice and oppression?

In perceiving something, we cannot withhold our judgment; that we do this also with people is the foundation upon which someone has built physiognomy.

Because of the plurality of our senses, we need not be so attentive with individual senses to the many features of an object. It is easier to recognize something by its appearance or smell than its color or structure.

Do you perhaps believe that your convictions owe their strength to arguments? Then you are undoubtedly mistaken, for if it were true everyone who heard them would have to be as convinced as you are. The theologians call Voltaire delusional, and he in turn calls them delusional; but since they cannot prove with certainty that they are more reasonable than he, and since he is more sophisticated and a better philosopher, the advantage is his. One can be deluded in favor of a proposition as well as against it. Reasons are often, and for the most part, only explanations of entitlements, by which we give a coloring of legitimacy and rationality to something we would have done in any case. Nature, it appears, did not wish to make such an important thing as human conviction depend on logical deductions alone, as these may easily deceive. The impulse to act, thank heavens, often takes us by surprise, before we are half finished proving its necessity and utility.

Most people merely adopt the same opinions as others. Germans go unbelievably far in this. In England, nearly everyone has his own opinion, which is not to say that each has a different one.

I too am awakened, friend, and have attained that degree of philosophical sobriety at which the love of truth is my only guide, and with the light granted me meet all I regard as error without exclaiming I regard that as error and even less that is error.

To undertake a comparison between what we think and what we say. We may say without fear of flogging that half the population would be flogged if they said openly what they think—and yet man is that which thinks, not that which speaks. Two people complementing one another would clash immediately if each knew what the other thought of him.

The inhabitants of Otaheite eat alone and cannot understand how one could eat in company, especially with women. Surprised by this, Banks asked why they eat alone: they do it because it is the right thing to do, but why it is right they would not and could not say.

What are the thoughts and ideas we have while awake if not dreams? If while awake I think of friends who are dead, the story unfolds without it occurring to me that they are dead—just as in a dream. Or I imagine that I have won a grand lottery, and in that moment I really have won it; the thought that I have not won it, I encounter only subsequently as proof to the contrary. The actual possession of something sometimes gives us no greater pleasure than merely imagining we possess it. Our dreams are made benign if we avoid eating meat in the evening, but what about these other thoughts?

Like a great philosophical chatterer, he is concerned not so much with the truth as with the sound of his prose.

In giving incomprehensible, nonsensical things a reasonable interpretation, one arrives often at excellent thoughts; thus Jacob Böhme's book might be as useful to some as the book of nature.

One could create a dietetics for the health of the understanding.

Every person has their own sphere of knowledge in which they can orient themselves better than most of our philosophers can in theirs. Within it, a person notices in a glance what is ridiculous, subtle, stupid, or superfluous. When I understand the purpose of something and have acquired familiarity with the established methods, it should be easy for me to recognize error in any new method—and how could it be otherwise? If I wished to describe to a kitchen girl a new dish and were to tell her that it is an interesting meal with an exceptional flavor and that some grain should be sprinkled on the edge of the dish, she would certainly mock me. Many authors approach their subject in this way without noticing its absurdity. If we wish to make something comprehensible to other people, we must use examples drawn from their own circle, and from this experience we may also learn what we must do to make a certain science a part our own circle.

According to Alembert, the most excellent logical systems are of use only to those who can dispense with them. With a telescope the blind see nothing.

I imagine that when we reach the limits of things set for us, or even as we only approach these limits, we gaze into the infinite, just as from the surface of the earth we gaze out into immeasurable space.

One can repeat something in a way that it has already been said, remove it from human understanding, or draw it closer. The shallow mind does the first; the enthusiast, the second; and the true philosopher, the third.

I doubt it will ever be possible to prove we are the work of a supreme being and not rather fabricated for its own amusement by a very imperfect one.

You must never think: this proposition is too difficult for me; it is only for great scholars; I will concentrate on this other one instead. This is a weakness that will degenerate easily into complete inactivity. You must not think yourself too humble for anything.

He had constructed for himself a certain system, which thereafter exercised such an influence upon his manner of thinking that onlookers always saw his judgment walking a few steps in front of his perceptions, though he himself believed it followed.

If one is to read judiciously, one must keep two aims constantly in mind: first to remember what is said and unite it with one's own system of thought, and second to appropriate for oneself how others have previously understood the matter. Everyone should thus be warned against reading books by dilettantes, particularly when they have included their own arguments and demonstrations. One can indeed learn from their compilations, but they cannot teach what for the philosopher is equally if not more important, namely, how to bring appropriate form to one's own manner of thinking.

Many know things in the way one knows the solution to a riddle after reading it or being told of it. It is an impoverished kind of knowledge and the kind least to be cultivated. One should rather cultivate the kind of knowledge that enables one to discover for oneself, when needed, what others must read or be told in order to know. Many simplicia. Here again we arrive at a thought that has been thought before.

To do exactly the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely, an imitation of its opposite.

Nobody has bad taste, but many have none at all. Most people have no ideas, says Dr. Price; they speak about things, but they do not think. I have often called this “having an opinion.”

Helvétius' Discours I. Judgment is sensation. Differences in judgment depend upon passion and ignorance; the side we see, we take to be the only one, or we do not retain in memory those things we must know in order to judge something properly. The misuse of words has led also the greatest men into error. En effet s'il faut tirer tout le parti possible de l'observation, il faut ne marcher qu'avec elle, s'arreter au moment qu'elle nous abondonne et avoir le courage d'ignorer ce qu'on ne peut encore savoir. [“Indeed (let me be allowed this reflection) if we are to avail ourselves as much as possible from observation, we must walk only by its side, stop at the very instant when it leaves us, and nobly dare to be ignorant of what is not yet to be known.” See Helvétius, De L'esprit, Or Essays on the Mind and Its Several Faculties]

Something might have been made from his ideas, had an angel arranged them for him.

In all intelligent people, one finds the inclination to express oneself succinctly, to say expeditiously what needs to be said. Languages thus give no weak indication of the character of a nation. How difficult it is to translate Tacitus into German. The English, at least their talented authors, are already more concise than we are. It is to their great advantage, in this respect, that they possess particular words for a species while we are more oblique, using the genus with a qualification. It could do no harm to count the words in every phrase and endeavor always to express it with the fewest.

Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in German I believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell, messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, where everything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledger, in double entry after the Italian manner of bookkeeping, where one settles accounts with each man, once as debtor and then as creditor. This deserves to be imitated by scholars. First it should be entered in a book in which I record everything as I see it or as it is given to me in my thoughts; then it may be entered in another book in which the material is more separated and ordered, and the ledger might then contain, in an ordered expression, the connections and explanations of the material that flow from it.

There is a great difference between still believing something and believing it again. Still believing that the moon influences plants reveals stupidity and superstition, but believing it again indicates philosophy and reflection.

If it were true, what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this of such great advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would not be able to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

What? One should understand the matter if one wishes to debate it? I say it is essential to a debate that at least one party not understand the issue under discussion and that in so-called current debates, in their most perfect form, neither party understands the issue—indeed, they need not even understand what they themselves are saying. […]

I have no idea what the man means. He has got it into his head that certain words have certain meanings that they must always retain. Is this a royal decree? Who will prevent me from taking here a word and there a meaning and combining them? Obviously this is a lack of contact with the wider world, which is the only world there is.

Once people have gotten such ideas into their heads, they are not so easily removed. The best thing they can do is take a sound system of logic and go through their entire system of beliefs piece by piece until they have cleaned it up.

One of the most fruitful means of discovery, rivaled not even by the questions quid, quis, ubi, is when upon hearing something one asks, is this true? and searches for reasons for one's answer. The dictum that one should never speak or write before thinking reveals the good will of its author but no genuine reflection; to express myself provincially but forcefully, the good man did not consider that you cannot obey this law without breaking it. Indeed, many would not be able to speak at all; thus I believe exactly the opposite. Many people have said something brilliant out of desperation, having to defend something without previous consideration, and to venture claims is to do philosophy.

Truth must overcome a thousand obstacles to safely reach the page and a thousand more to travel back from the page to the mind. Liars are its most feeble enemies. The enthusiastic writer who speaks of everything and views everything as other honest people do who have had one drink too many; the sophisticated, pretentious student of human nature, who sees and intends to see his whole life reflected in every human action like angels in a monad; the worthy, pious man who believes everything out of respect, examines nothing he learned before the age of fifteen, and builds the little that he has examined upon unexamined ground—these are the enemies of truth.

A shot of reason.

If mankind suddenly became virtuous, thousands would starve.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it, an apostle is unlikely to look out. We have no words for speaking about wisdom to idiots. Whoever understands the wise is wise already.

There is no art in saying something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say. When one has nothing to say, however, and yet writes a book and makes truth, with its ex nihilo nihil fit, into a liar—that I call an accomplishment.

The man who believes a compendium is a book or to record facts is to write history.

That it is true does not matter, as long as the people believe it—that is the devil.

He cannot even distinguish between active and passive reading.

Do not deride our metaphors; after the strong fabric of a language begins to fade, they are the only way to revive it and to lend the whole life and warmth. It is incredible how much our best words have lost: the word reasonable has almost entirely lost its impressiveness; we understand its meaning but no longer feel it because so many men have been called reasonable. Unreasonable is in its own way more impressive. A reasonable child is a dopey, pious, good for nothing tattler; an unreasonable child is much better. The sound of Liberty.

Fools would be better than our finest philosophers because they still believe what they see and sense, while certain English philosophers, turning their backs on nature, believe what they do not sense or perceive. Yet I am far from ridiculing this; I believe denying one's senses is a daring flight of reason, while speech, suicide, and insanity are merely the hops of a flea. This I call freedom; indeed, such enterprising souls need not return to the barracks of the earth in order to eat and drink; they have deserted the love of God entirely and live like the devil apart.

There are people who believe everything done with a solemn face is reasonable.

A good expression is as valuable as a good idea because it is nearly impossible to express oneself well without casting a favorable light on what is expressed.

I was acquainted with a few astronomers in England who altered their findings, and they were right in doing so. Should one not lend nature a hand sometimes? I do not see why not. If in wishing to connect two uncooperative propositions, I push one of them a little, what is wrong with this? People who reason this way have always the truth in view. Is a system of no importance then? The truth is not impoverished when I make of a 3 a 2, but my entire system may collapse. This is why I always enjoy it when I read from our best writers in physics the brave philosophical statement that the experiment they employed for proving some proposition was successful beyond expectation. There is something here that is more easily felt than expressed. I cannot comprehend how people could ridicule this. It brings tears of joy to my eyes.

Once we thoroughly understand nature, even a child will see that an experiment is nothing more than a compliment we pay her. It is merely a ceremony. We know in advance what her answer will be. We ask nature for her consent as great rulers ask their provincial representatives.

I am really not joking, my dear countrymen, when I confess Germans have no esprit, for the little bit of atheism found among us cannot be called esprit. A French atheist with esprit is expected to be converted only when he is severely ill and on his deathbed, while ours are usually converted every time there is a thunderstorm.

Overly subtle men are rarely great men, and their investigations are often as useless as they are precise. They distance themselves further and further from practical life when they should come closer to it. Just as the dancing or fencing instructor does not begin with the anatomy of the legs and hands, so a sound and useful philosophy can begin much higher than with such subtle musings. The foot must be positioned in this way, or you will fall down; you must believe this, for it would be absurd not to—these are very good foundations. People who wish to go further may do so, but they must not think that they are thereby doing something great, for when they are successful they discover only what the reasonable man has long known. Someone who once again proves Euclid's twelfth axiom deserves at most to be called an ingenious man, but he will make no contribution to the expansion of the limits of science that he could not have made without this discovery. And the skeptic? You will never succeed in refuting the skeptic. For what possible argument could be given to convince someone who would believe absurdities? And indeed does everyone who wishes to be refuted really deserve to be? Even the greatest fighters do not fight everyone who challenges them. These are the reasons Beattie's philosophy deserves respect; it is not an entirely new philosophy, but it begins at a higher level. It is the philosophy not of the professor, but of man.

Our philosophers listen too seldom to the voice of feeling; or rather, they rarely possess sufficient sensitivity, so that to every event in the world they respond by expressing more what they know than what they feel, which is useless. It brings us not one step nearer to true philosophy. Is what a man can know necessarily what he should know?

The enthusiasts whom I have known all had the appalling fault that when the smallest spark fell upon them they burst into flames like long primed fireworks, always in the same pattern and with the same clamor; but in the reasonable man, feeling and sensation are always proportionate to the impression. The foolish man argues coldly from the first impression, while the sensible man occasionally turns around to hear what instinct has to say.

We should follow our feelings and express in words the first impression a thing makes upon us. I say this not because I wish to save the truth in this manner but because it is the unadulterated voice of our experience, the result of our best observations, and because we too easily fall into compulsory chatter if we first reflect. In this respect, I advise one read Beattie's philosophy.

People who have read a great deal seldom make great discoveries. I do not say this to excuse laziness, for discovery requires extensive introspection and observation of things. One must see for oneself more than let oneself be told.

If people recounted their dreams honestly, their character might be read more easily from these than from the face.

The utility of systems consists not only in allowing us to think about matters in an ordered way in accordance with a particular scheme but also in allowing us to think about the matter at all; the latter utility is incontestably greater than the former.

It is an admirable observation by Herr Hartley that false judgments are corrected through differences between languages. For we think in words. It deserves to be considered to what extent the acquisition of foreign languages clarifies the concepts in our own language—an excellent question.

What effect must it have upon a people if it learns no foreign languages? Presumably an effect similar to what a complete withdrawal from all society has on an individual.

A on his lips and not-A in his heart.

The expression “I will not forget this for all eternity” is false.

In most cases, it is more difficult to make clever people believe you are what you are not than really to become what you wish to appear to be.

The welfare of many nations is decided according to the majority of votes, though everyone admits there are more evil men than good.

Experience, not reading or hearing, is important. It is not all the same whether an idea enters the soul through the eye or through the ear.

Leibniz defended the Christian religion, but to conclude straightaway from this that he was a good Christian, as the theologians do, shows very little knowledge of the world. Vanity and the desire to say things better than the professionals are, in the case of such a man as Leibniz, who held firmly to few principles, much more likely motivations for doing such a thing than religion would be. If we search more deeply into our own heart, we will discover how little we can assert of others. I would even dare say that I could demonstrate that often we believe we believe something and yet we do not believe it. Nothing is more unfathomable than the system of motivations behind our actions.

Thinking for oneself is often recommended while studying only for the purpose of distinguishing between truth and the errors of others. It is useful, but is that all? Is reading then studying? We could spare ourselves much unnecessary reading. It has been said with great truth that while printing certainly propagated learning, it also reduced its content. Much reading is harmful to thinking. Among all the scholars I have known, the greatest thinkers I have known are those who had read the least. Is enjoyment of the senses nothing at all then?

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Philosophical Writings

Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by

Steven Tester

Europe does not know what it really means to despair

 

The Trial describes what happens to a man when he starts to think: sooner or later he condemns himself as unjustified, and then despair begins (K.’s execution, the execution of hope, is the beginning of despair—henceforth he is a dead man, like Connolly and Camus and so many other intelligent Europeans, and do what he may he can never quite forget it). It is only at this point that the Buddha’s Teaching begins to be intelligible. But it must be remembered that for Connolly and the others*, death at the end of this life is the final death, and the hell of despair in which they live will come to an end in a few years’ time—why, then, should they give up their distractions, when, if things get too bad, a bullet through their brain is enough? It is only when one understands that death at the end of this life is not the final end, that to follow the Buddha’s Teaching is seen to be not a mere matter of choice but a matter of necessity . Europe does not know what it really means to despair.

Nanavira Thera →

* Lichtenberg: To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife.
***

He stayed late on deck, after dinner, but that did not help him, for when he went below, he could not sleep. This surcease from life had failed him. It was too much. He turned on the electric light and tried to read. One of the volumes was a Swinburne. He lay in bed, glancing through its pages, until suddenly he became aware that he was reading with interest. He finished the stanza, attempted to read on, then came back to it. He rested the book face downward on his breast and fell to thinking. That was it. The very thing. Strange that it had never come to him before. That was the meaning of it all; he had been drifting that way all the time, and now Swinburne showed him that it was the happy way out. He wanted rest, and here was rest awaiting him. He glanced at the open port–hole. Yes, it was large enough. For the first time in weeks he felt happy. At last he had discovered the cure of his ill. He picked up the book and read the stanza slowly aloud:-

'From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives forever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.'

He looked again at the open port. Swinburne had furnished the key. Life was ill, or, rather, it had become ill—an unbearable thing. "That dead men rise up never!" That line stirred him with a profound feeling of gratitude. It was the one beneficent thing in the universe. When life became an aching weariness, death was ready to soothe away to everlasting sleep. But what was he waiting for? It was time to go.

He arose and thrust his head out the port–hole, looking down into the milky wash. The Mariposa was deeply loaded, and, hanging by his hands, his feet would be in the water. He could slip in noiselessly. No one would hear. A smother of spray dashed up, wetting his face. It tasted salt on his lips, and the taste was good. He wondered if he ought to write a swan–song, but laughed the thought away. There was no time. He was too impatient to be gone.

Turning off the light in his room so that it might not betray him, he went out the port–hole feet first. His shoulders stuck, and he forced himself back so as to try it with one arm down by his side. A roll of the steamer aided him, and he was through, hanging by his hands. When his feet touched the sea, he let go. He was in a milky froth of water. The side of the Mariposa rushed past him like a dark wall, broken here and there by lighted ports. She was certainly making time. Almost before he knew it, he was astern, swimming gently on the foam–crackling surface.

A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud. It had taken a piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was there. In the work to do he had forgotten the purpose of it. The lights of the Mariposa were growing dim in the distance, and there he was, swimming confidently, as though it were his intention to make for the nearest land a thousand miles or so away.

It was the automatic instinct to live. He ceased swimming, but the moment he felt the water rising above his mouth the hands struck out sharply with a lifting movement. The will to live, was his thought, and the thought was accompanied by a sneer. Well, he had will,—ay, will strong enough that with one last exertion it could destroy itself and cease to be.

He changed his position to a vertical one. He glanced up at the quiet stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air. With swift, vigorous propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest out of water. This was to gain impetus for the descent. Then he let himself go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea. He breathed in the water deeply, deliberately, after the manner of a man taking an anaesthetic. When he strangled, quite involuntarily his arms and legs clawed the water and drove him up to the surface and into the clear sight of the stars.

The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not to breathe the air into his bursting lungs. Well, he would have to try a new way. He filled his lungs with air, filled them full. This supply would take him far down. He turned over and went down head first, swimming with all his strength and all his will. Deeper and deeper he went. His eyes were open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent trails of the darting bonita. As he swam, he hoped that they would not strike at him, for it might snap the tension of his will. But they did not strike, and he found time to be grateful for this last kindness of life.

Down, down, he swam till his arms and leg grew tired and hardly moved. He knew that he was deep. The pressure on his ear–drums was a pain, and there was a buzzing in his head. His endurance was faltering, but he compelled his arms and legs to drive him deeper until his will snapped and the air drove from his lungs in a great explosive rush. The bubbles rubbed and bounded like tiny balloons against his cheeks and eyes as they took their upward flight. Then came pain and strangulation. This hurt was not death, was the thought that oscillated through his reeling consciousness. Death did not hurt. It was life, the pangs of life, this awful, suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.

His wilful hands and feet began to beat and churn about, spasmodically and feebly. But he had fooled them and the will to live that made them beat and churn. He was too deep down. They could never bring him to the surface. He seemed floating languidly in a sea of dreamy vision. Colors and radiances surrounded him and bathed him and pervaded him. What was that? It seemed a lighthouse; but it was inside his brain—a flashing, bright white light. It flashed swifter and swifter. There was a long rumble of sound, and it seemed to him that he was falling down a vast and interminable stairway. And somewhere at the bottom he fell into darkness. That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.

From Jack London

Martin Eden