Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  Before all things, however, I beg the reader, in the following inquiries, to keep continually in view that the above-stated sources of error (pp. 7–9) in the estimate of life constantly tend to preoccupy and mislead his judgment in favour of an over-estimate of pleasure and under-estimate of displeasure, and that the views and opinions on life which he brings with him to this philosophical inquiry are already themselves results that are thoroughly saturated by the influence of the sources of error named, and thus, as imported prejudices, oppose the unprejudiced consideration of the actual facts.

  FIRST STAGE OF THE ILLUSION.

  Happiness is considered as having been actually attained at the present stage of the world’s development, accordingly attainable by the individual of to-day in his earthly life.

  1. Criticism of Schopenhauer’s Theory of the Negative Character of Pleasure .—I must in this inquiry presuppose an acquaintance with the so-called Pessimism of Schopenhauer (see “World as Will and Idea,” vol. i. §§ 56–59, vol. ii. chap. xlvi.; “Parerga,” 2d ed., vol. i. pp. 430–439, and vol. ii. chaps, xi. and xii.), and entreat the perusal of the sections indicated in the above order,—a request for which the reader hitherto unacquainted with Schopenhauer’s piquant style will certainly be obliged to me. How far I differ from the views there expounded will be sufficiently evident from what has been previously said. The attempted proof (“Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” 3 Aufl. Bd. ii. S. 667–688) that this world is the worst of all possible ones is a manifest sophism; everywhere else Schopenhauer himself tries to maintain and prove nothing further than that the existence of this world is worse than its non-existence, and this assertion I hold to be correct. The word Pessimism is thus an inappropriate imitation of the word Optimism.—Further, futile as I must regard the attempts of Leibniz to demonstrate out of existence the misery of the world in order to save the Supreme Wisdom and the best of all possible worlds, as little can I approve that Schopenhauer overlooks so much the wisdom of the world’s arrangements in dwelling on its misery, and, although he cannot quite deny it, that he leaves it as far as possible unnoticed and makes light of it.—Then I keep clear of the notion of guilt which Schopenhauer imports into the creation. I have frequently expressed myself against a transcendent use of ethical conceptions, because these have a meaning only for conscious individuals in their intercourse with one another. Only this can I conclude with Schopenhauer from the misery of existence, that the creation owes its first origin to an irrational act, i.e., to such an one in which reason has had no part, therefore to the mere groundless will.—Lastly, however, I have still to signalise Schopenhauer’s wrong use of the concept of Negation. As Leibniz endeavours to attribute to pain an exclusively negative character, so Schopenhauer to pleasure; not, indeed, altogether in the privative sense of Leibniz, but in such a way that pain alone is said to arise directly, but pleasure only to become possible indirectly, through abolition or diminution of pain. Now I do not in the least intend to dispute that every removal or diminution of a pain is a pleasure, but not every pleasure is a removal or diminution of pain, and, conversely, it just as much holds good that the removal or diminution of pleasure is a displeasure.

  Undoubtedly a reservation must be made which tells in favour of pain—to wit, both pleasure and pain attack the nervous system, and thereby produce a kind of fatigue, which, with the highest degree of pleasure, may become fatal atony. Hence results a need increasing with the duration and the degree of feeling, i.e., a conscious or unconscious will, to cause the cessation or remission of feeling to occur. With displeasure this need, springing from the attack on the nerves, co-operates with the direct aversion to the endurance of a pain; with pleasure, on the contrary, it opposes the direct desire for the retention of pleasure, and always diminishes the same; nay, it can finally overcome it. (Think of exhaustion in sexual gratification.) Pain is (apart from complete blunting of the nerves by great pain) the more painful, pleasure the more indifferent and cloying, the longer it lasts.

  Here lurks already the first reason why, with a perfectly fair balance for the measurement of direct pleasure and displeasure in the world, the scale would turn in favour of pain through the additional nervous affection. But further, while through this additional need of remission in respect of every enduring feeling, the indirect pleasure, i.e., that arising through cessation of a pleasure, relatively diminishes, it appears even a priori that a proportionately much larger part of pleasure than of pain in the world points to an indirect origin from the remission of its contrary. But now, since, as will appear from this whole inquiry, it is true that, on the whole, there is far more pain than pleasure in the world, it is no wonder that, in point of fact, through the remission of this pain, by far the largest part of all the pleasure which one meets with in the world finds it sufficient explanation, and but little pleasure remains whose origin is immediate.

  Accordingly for practical purposes it comes pretty much to what Schopenhauer asserts, namely, that pleasure has an indirect origin, and pain a direct. This can, however, not affect the principle of the matter, for it is and remains indisputable that there is also pleasure which does not arise through remission of a pain, but is positively raised above the indifference-point of sensation. Let any one think of the enjoyments of agreeable taste and of those of art and science, which latter, since they did not fit into his theory of the negative character of pleasure, Schopenhauer prudently rejected and treated as painless delight of the intellect liberated from the will, as if the intellect liberated from the will could still enjoy, or as if there could be a pleasurable sensation without a will in whose satisfaction it consists! If we cannot avoid claiming relish, the sexual pleasures taken as purely physical and apart from their metaphysical relations, and the enjoyments of art and science as pleasurable sensations; if we must grant that these, without a previous pain, without previously sinking below the indifference-point or zero-point of sensation, could positively rise above it; lastly, if we keep firm hold of our principle that pleasure only consists in the satisfaction of a desire. Schopenhauer’s assertion must necessarily be false that pleasure is only a remission or cessation of pain.

  But now he says, in proof of his theory, the will is, as long as it exists, unsatisfied, for otherwise it would exist no longer; the unsatisfied will, however, is want, need, displeasure. If now it is satisfied, this displeasure is abolished, and therein consists the satisfaction or pleasure; another there is not. This argument appears irrefutable, and yet its consequence is, as shown, in contradiction with experience. The conciliation easily results when one more closely regards the enjoyment of agreeable taste or an art-pleasure, and asks oneself where then the will lurks that, as long as it is unsatisfied, is displeasure. There is neither a displeasure nor an unsatisfied existing will to be found. There remains nothing for it then but to assume that the will is only evoked at the same moment at which it is also satisfied, so that there exists no time for its unsatisfied existence. It is in accordance with this that it is indeed one and the same thing what influences (excites) the will and what satisfies it, as one may directly convince oneself when one comes upon a disagreeable morsel among pleasant tastes, or when faulty dissonances occur in a piece of music; then, namely, the will is indeed set in motion (stimulated), but it is not satisfied, and now at once the displeasure is there. Here, in the case of the will, which, on arising, immediately meets with the satisfaction again annihilating it, it is clear that the pleasure of satisfaction is certainly something positive, not issuing directly and alone from the lessening of pain, that rather even the indirect pleasure, presenting itself on the diminution of the pain, must be understood as direct satisfaction of the will to get rid of the pain. Had Schopenhauer not brought with him to this inquiry the preconceived opinion of the enjoyment of the intellect independently of will, he would doubtless have perceived these relations, and would not have stopped at his conception of the negative character of pleasure.

  All that, however, would perhaps not have suffic
ed to establish this conviction in him, if there had not been one thing more in his excuse. We have seen (Sect. C. Chap. iii. vol. ii. pp. 94–96) that the non-satisfaction of the will must indeed by its nature always be conscious; satisfaction, however, by no means directly, but only then, when the conscious understanding attains consciousness by the comparison of opposite experiences; that satisfaction also is dependent on external circumstances, and is anything but a direct and infallible consequence of the will. I beg that the examples there quoted may be read through once more in order to save repetition at this place.

  It deserves particular notice that in the whole vegetable kingdom and the lower stages of the animal kingdom we cannot suppose the degree of consciousness requisite for the comparison of experiences and recognition of their dependence on external causes, that accordingly we must not deem these organisms capable of any apperception of will-satisfaction, thus of any sensation of pleasure, whilst pain and displeasure thrust themselves even on the dullest consciousness with pitiless necessity. But even higher animals must in general be capable of far fewer satisfactions of will than one is usually inclined to assume according to the analogy of man. As concerns man himself, even in him, since of course not every man at every moment of a petty satisfaction of will is compelled to draw comparisons with opposite experiences, in general only such satisfactions of will become conscious, i.e., felt as pleasure, whose accompanying circumstances direct the man, without his assistance, to the contrast of opposite experiences, e.g., unusual, rare satisfactions, either in kind or degree, or such as, through the association of ideas, recall opposite experiences, whether of others or of one’s self.

  All satisfactions of will that have become habit and rule become ever less felt as such, i.e., as pleasure, the less they permit the memory of opposite experiences to arise. It is clear that by far the larger part (not intensively but numerically) of the satisfactions of the will is thereby lost to consciousness, whilst the non-satisfactions are felt uncurtailed. Wherefore Schopenhauer says, quite correctly (“Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” 3 Aufl. Bd. ii. S. 657): “We feel the wish as we feel hunger and thirst; as soon, however, as it is fulfilled, it is with it as with the enjoyed morsel, that ceases to be for our feeling at the moment that it is swallowed. Pleasures and joys we miss painfully as soon as they cease; but pains, even when they disappear after long presence, are not immediately missed, but their absence has to be brought home to us by means of reflection. In the degree in which enjoyments increase, the receptivity for them diminishes; the accustomed is no longer felt as enjoyment. For that reason, however, the receptivity for suffering increases; for the omission of the customary is painfully felt.”—(Parerga, 2 Aufl. Bd. ii. S. 312): “As we do not feel the health of our whole body, but only the little part where the shoe pinches us, so also we do not think of all our perfectly satisfactory affairs, but of some insignificant trifle that vexes us.” Untrue, however, is it when he adds: “On this depends the negative character, often emphasised by me, of well-being and happiness, in contrast to the positive character of pain.” Undoubtedly there exists in the apperception of pleasure and pain a certain justification of these conceptions, so far as pain becomes conscious by itself alone, but pleasure only in contrast to the idea of pain. Undoubtedly the effects are frequently the same as if the theory of Schopenhauer of the negative character of pleasure were correct, but yet there is between both a world-wide difference, and the principle remains untouched that pleasure and pain are in general distinguished as the mathematical positive and negative, i.e., that it is indifferent which sign one gives to the one, which to the other.

  It has, again, been very clearly shown how infinitely more fruitful than mere criticism is reflection on the reasons by which great men have been led to frame false hypotheses. While, namely, we found the hypothesis of the negative character of pleasure just as incorrect as that of Leibniz on the negativity of evil, we have at the same time apprehended three moments, each of which falls into one scale in favour of pain, and which in combination practically yield almost the same result as the theory of Schopenhauer. They are—(1.) the stimulation and fatigue of the nerves, and the need thence arising of the cessation of enjoyment, as of pain; (2.) the necessity of regarding all pleasure as indirect which only arises through cessation or remission of a displeasure, but not through instantaneous satisfaction of a will at the moment of the excitation of the same; (3.) the difficulties which oppose the apperception of the satisfaction of will, whilst displeasure eo ipso produces consciousness;—we may add: (4) the brief duration of the satisfaction, which is little more than a passing moment, whilst the non-satisfaction lasts as long as the actual will, thus, as there is hardly an instant when an actual will was not present, is, so to speak, eternal, and only always limited by the satisfaction which hope affords.

  The first point depends on the nature of organic life, in particular of the nervous functions, as foundation of consciousness; the last three points follow immediately from the nature of the will itself. The latter undoubtedly hold good, therefore, not merely for our world, but for every world that is at all possible as objective form of the will. But the first point will also hold good wherever there is question of a balance between pleasure and displeasure; for since pleasure can only be obtained through the contrast with displeasure in a consciousness already highly developed, but a consciousness again presupposes individuation with the help of matter or its analogue, so also in every other world conceivable as objectified will the law of fatigue and the hebetation of pleasure thence arising will hold good in this analogue of matter. We may accordingly regard all four points as necessary consequences of the nature of the will in respect to pleasure and pain, and have to see in them the eternal barriers which the Unconscious must encounter in every attempt at creation, and which render it a priori impossible to fashion a world in which pain should be outweighed by pleasure. But these four points have also the further value of being able to serve in the progress of our a posteriori inquiries in every special subject of consideration as an objective corrective of instinctive prejudice, just as the former statement of the most important subjective sources of error (pp. 7–8) serves as a subjective corrective. I beg the reader, therefore, to keep the one as the other constantly in view.

  We must still pay some attention to the second of the four points. If we look for examples of such pleasure-sensations as only consist in a cessation or remission of pain, we must carefully beware lest we do not introduce at the same time cases in which pleasure is enhanced by an additional satisfaction of will, as, e.g., the relish of food and the cooling refreshment of drink add to the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, the physical sexual enjoyment to the stilling of the longings of love. Pure examples in the sensuous sphere are a subsiding toothache; in the intellectual, the recovery of a friend from a dangerous illness. When we consider such pure examples, no one will any longer doubt that the pleasure arising through cessation of pain is very much less than was that pain, just as conversely pain arising through the cessation of a pleasure is far less than that pleasure.

  This phenomenon might at the first blush surprise us, since we regard the intensity of feeling as dependent only on the degree of change, but not on the relation of the beginning or end of the change to the indifference-point of the sensation. However, in my opinion, it is explained in the case of the ceasing displeasure by the subsequent vexation, detracting from the pleasure, that one has had so long to endure the pain; one feels less bound to return thanks, as it were, to one’s fate for the liberation from the pain than entitled to grumble and demand satisfaction for the infliction of the pain, because the whole movement took place below the point of indifference, whereas in the ceasing pleasure the blunting effect of fatigue, renders more indifferent to the termination of the enjoyment. According to this explanation, that lessening of the pleasure in proportion to the pain, in whose cessation it consists, only occurs if the circumstance that the whole movement has taken place below the zero of sensa
tion also actually falls into consciousness. The less the consciousness of the interested person places the movement below the zero-point of sensation, the more as a matter of fact does the pleasure become equal in degree to the displeasure in the cessation of which it consists. This is least possible with sensuous pain; hence nobody would consent to be stretched on the rack in order to enjoy the pleasure of the cessation of the pain. In the intellectual sphere, however, the contest with distress and the rejoicing over every attained victory securing the immediate future is the proof of it. As soon as mankind makes clear to itself that this delight is similarly related to the preceding uneasiness as the remission of pains to the tortures of the rack, and that this movement, equally with that, falls wholly below the zero-point of sensation, so soon will it too enjoy those victories over want as little as the racked enjoy the relaxation of the cords.

  What now-a-days is called the spectre of the poverty of the masses is nothing but this dawning consciousness that the struggle with want, care and its alleviation lies entirely on the negative (pain) side of the zero-point of sensation, whilst formerly, when the poverty of the masses was ten times greater, this consciousness was wanting, and the people endured their poverty as sent from God. Another proof how progressive intelligence makes man unhappy. This contest of man with want is, however, only one example; if we look round at the possible joys of the world, we shall very soon become aware that, with the exception of the physically sensuous, the æsthetic and the scientific enjoyments, there is hardly a happiness to be perceived which did not depend on the liberation from a preceding displeasure. Quite specially, however, does this hold for great and vivid joys. Voltaire says, “Il n’est de vrais plaisirs qu’avec de vrais besoins.”