Karl Barth wrote
analytically about 18th century Europe providing context for the place of
theology in social history. Following is a quote from his work on Protestant
Thought. He illuminates the forms of absolute government that evolved in the
era. Today the forms of corporatism, Plutocracy, communism, socialism and
networking globally have arisen to join the pervasive, absolute forms of
governance and beingness comprising in part social self-perceptions within a
contemporary context.
This work of
Barth’s published in 1959 is now in the public domain
..
“The Empire was the
concrete veto on any kind of political absolutism. It represented imperfectly
enough, but still, it did represent, while spanning the oppositions of higher
and lower in the individual political units a third factor, which excluded
encroachments within these orders. That is why it was the Holy Roman Empire. So the end of the Empire necessarily
meant the beginning of absolutism. That was shown both in the separation, in
1648, of the aristocratic republics of Switzerland from the Empire, and in the
German principalities.
The beginning of
absolutism in France also coincides with the practical end of
the Empire in Germany. The old French kingdom had corresponded
exactly to the German Empire, with its supreme authority both respecting and
guaranteeing the existing distances and competences and relationships in a
political world with manifold forms. With the extinction of the imperial ideal
this French
kingdom also came to an end. Only after that was a
monarch like Louis
XIV possible. He was one type of the politically
absolute man.
Politically, absolutism means the determination of law
by that class in
the state which in contrast to the others possesses the effective power.
The first type of
this absolutism was created when the highest class after the effective
elimination of the emperor, namely, that of the princes or the city oligarchs,
used their actual power to identify with their own will the law of the
political unit which had been entrusted to their leadership. When the king,
against the back- ground of this identification, calls himself king c by the
grace of God', no personal religious uprightness or humility which may reside
in this kind of confession regarding the origin of his office can alter the
fact that he is in effect made to be like God. 'By the grace of God' should
mean that he bears the power in common submission with the people before a
power which is superior to them both, and therefore that he also recognizes the
rights of the people. The concrete form of that
MAN IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21
superior power had
been the Empire. With its fall the prince became
absolute and the
people were deprived of their rights, while 'by the
grace of God'
simply masked the prince's resemblance to God. That is
the meaning of
Louis XIV's famous remark ''Vital c'est mol’. It is the
declaration of the
prince, needing no other grounds than those of his
actual power to
assume the status of law, that right in the state, and
the freedom
guaranteed by it, are the right established by me, and the
freedom guaranteed
by me. The first party to suffer from this was the
nobility. It was
against their power, that is, against their ancient good right, that the new
'revolution from above' which now started was first directed. This was the
meaning of the home policy of Richelieu, of Mazarin and of Louis XIV, and in Germany, in a specially classic form, of the Great
Elector of Brandenburg.
Besides this, of
course, princely absolutism struck also at the middle
classes, who had
been steadily rising since the end of the Middle Ages,
and at the
peasants, who in the sixteenth century had demanded their
rights in vain the
first serious sign of the decay of the imperial idea.
But it is
significant in every respect that there could also on occasion be manifested a
certain agreement, a deep community of interests between the absolute prince
and the citizens, the class which nourished the rest of society. It is at any
rate a fact that this age saw not only the rise of the princes but also though
on a different plane, that of economics and education the rise of the citizens
on an unprecedented scale. For reasons of state the princes conceived the idea
of a productive bourgeois class . . . and gradually brought them up.' 1 Why did
the absolute prince need the power of the unitary state for whose sake he had
first to destroy the rights of the nobility? The first answer can only be that
he needed this power because wishing to be an absolute prince, and having in
effect no emperor over him he needed more power. He needed the unitary state,
and in it a relatively prosperous bourgeoisie which could provide a regular
flow of money to him. He needed money because he needed a standing army which
was always
at his disposal.
He needed the army because his power was 'territorial'., as we now say, with
other territories alongside it. The existence of other territories openly
contradicts the idea of an absolute prince, but this state of affairs could be
improved by inheritance, by marriage, by acquisition an( j the ultima ratio by wars
of conquest. And because the other means had their strict limitations, wars of
conquest were the natural method.
War became,
therefore, a latent principle. It is not surprising that
open war again and
again broke out. What is surprising is that it did
i
Propylaen-Weltgeschichte, 6, p. 277.
22 FROM ROUSSEAU
TO RITSGHL
not happen more
frequently. Absolute politics of this kind are out-
wardly dynastic,
cabinet politics; but by an inward necessity, sooner
or later they lead
to a policy of conquest. This is the way the securing of internal power, that
is, a unitary state by revolution from above, with a view to external power
which was followed by the king of France in the eighteenth century, as well as
by the aristocrats of Berne and the great and petty potentates of Germany,
among whom the emperor was now only one among the rest, later to be called
logically, though absurdly emperor of Austria. Only the clever English perhaps one of
the few nations really gifted politically foresaw in time the folly of this
development, though they were just as penetrated by the spirit of absolutism as
the rest, and introduced checks which spared them the catastrophe to which the
system by its nature must lead.
This political
absolutism from above has, as is known, two variants.
They have in fact
crossed and mingled in many ways; their roots are
one, but they may
be clearly distinguished. The principle 'through
power to power'
had of course also a non-military aspect. This could
consist in the
princely display of splendour and pomp at which Louis
XIV was so
inventive, even creative, setting a baleful example which
was widely
followed. The name of Versailles has thrice had great
historical
significance resulting in grave consequences. The first time
it was as the
prototype and symbol of a princely attitude to life and
form of life,
based on unqualified power. From this life there flowed a
brilliance, like
the glory of a god, into architecture, the gardens and
parks, the
decoration in the houses, into comforts and enjoyments of
every kind, but
above all into the transitory but all the more intoxicating splendour of the
festivities. Far beyond the boundaries of France there arose small and miniature imitations
of Versailles whose princely and noble inhabitants
attempted, with more or less luck and dignity and taste, to emulate Louis XIV.
After his death
the Regent Philip of Orleans, then Louis' grandson,
Louis XV, in Germany Augustus the Strong of Saxony, Eberhard
Ludwig, Karl
Alexander, and Karl Eugen of Wurtemberg, Max
Emanuel and Karl
Theodor of Bavaria, Ludwig IX of Hesse, and
many others, were
absolute princes of this kind. The notorious immor-
ality, even
debauchery, the just as notorious financial transactions, and the scandalous
arbitrariness of justice at all these courts, was perhaps not the necessary,
but as has happened in all similar phenomena in history the practical,
consequence of the representation which one
thought to be
owing and that not without some logic to the
conception of the prince
by divine right.
MAN IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23
The idea
inevitably presupposed great demands upon the economy
of the country,
which were made with an astonishing unconcern not
to speak of the
sons of Hesse and Brunswick who were sold out of hand
to America! And ironically enough the command was in
fact often not
in the hands of
its true possessor, but largely and for all to see in those of a woman
sometimes, admittedly, in those of a woman far from
unfitted for such
an office, but only in a derivative sense can her rule ever have been described
as by the grace of God 9 . But all these things cannot and must not blind us to
the tremendous stimulus imparted to economic and artistic life by the fantastic
burgeoning of absolutism.
Neither must we
forget that the luxury these potentates cultivated,
though so dubious
in many respects, acted in practice as a safety valve
and corrective
against the possibility of a universal state of war, which should really have
been the logical consequence of the general principle 'through power to power 3
and of dynastic cabinet politics.
If it had not been
for the Sun-king's notion of the unfolding of power and the relative enervation
which was involved herein, Louis himself and all the other God-kings might well
with the absolute power they had arrogated have reduced Europe to even greater
disasters than those they did in fact cause. Lastly it should be added that
anyone who failed to sense not only the pathos imparted by lavishness of ideas,
space and materials, but the underlying, unending and truly insatiable yearning
in the midst of sensual delight which emanates from every line and form of the
art of the age would be guilty of badly misunderstanding those artistic and
architectural monuments of that time which still hold a meaning for us. It is
this eternal yearning which is the style's inmost beauty, a beauty peculiarly
moving for all the horror which is sometimes apt to seize the beholder.
Besides this kind
of political absolutism there was another, going by
the name of
enlightened absolutism. It is possible for the 'through
power to power'
principle to manifest itself in depth rather than in
extent, rationally
rather than aesthetically. In that case it takes the
form of
experiments in social reform in the technical advance of
civilization, in
agriculture, industry and in the economic sphere in
general, in health
measures and policies designed to benefit the population as a whole. There are
attempts to improve the state of the law,
but also to
advance the arts and sciences, to raise the general standard of education in
short all sorts of measures tending to the so-called 'welfare' of the subjects
of the state. In chastising a Jew, Frederick William I says: 'You should love
me rather than fear me, love me, I say! ‘ As Frederick the Great's famous remark shows, the
absolute
524 FROM ROUSSEAU
TO RITSGHL
monarch can also
cherish the wish to be e the first servant of the state*.
*It is our duty to
sacrifice ourselves for the public good' this was a mot of Louis XIV already,
and as proof that it was not just a bon mot one might point to the extensive
official activities in the cultural field of his minister Jean Baptiste
Colbert, who is too easily overlooked beside the more eye-catching figures of a
Louvois or of the various great ladies of Louis' court. Circumstances
permitting the absolute monarch might then, in startling contrast to his
princely contemporaries, assume the rough aspect of a king of ancient Rome or
Sparta, as did Frederick William I of Prussia, or like Joseph II epitomize
affability at all costs and an idealism verging upon folly; or, as in Joseph
Emmerich, elector of Mayence, he might take the astonishing form of a wise
prince of an ecclesiastical state, at once open-minded enough to accept
progress in every form; or, finally, as with Frederick the Great he might be
that almost legendary figure, the 'Sage of Sans Souci' seeming to have his
whole existence centred around a philosophy stripped of illusion yet rigid upon
certain moral points, its purpose being to enable him to be all the more
detached in attending to the business of providing, maintaining and furthering
law, order and progress among the people he happened to be governing. Sarastro,
Mozart's strange character in The Magic Flute, combines elements from all these
figures.
And we need only
be reminded of Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the sovereign who was
served by Goethe, to see how sometimes the entire zest for life of the one kind
of prince could be reconciled with the earnest zeal of the second. It is
needless to state that this second interpretation of the art of kingship at
this time and the achievements which sprang from it command great respect. But
let us not forget that although there may be absolutists in the performing of
good they are absolutists for all that. It is thus with the 'enlightened'
absolutism of which we have been speaking.
We must appreciate
this particularly in the classic case of Frederick
the Great. In the
preface to his Histoire de mon temps he wrote in re-
flective mood: 'I
trust that posterity will do me justice and understand how to distinguish the
king in me from the philosopher, the decent from the political man.' Indeed: as
king he is no less a 'soldier king' than his father, and no less a dynastic
cabinet politician than Louis XIV, although and in that he wants to be king and
philosopher and a decent man simultaneously.
Temper as one may
Lessing's harsh judgment that the Prussia of Frederick the Great was 'the most
slavish country in Europe' and that 'Berlin freedom* consisted solely in the right c
to hawk as many anti-religious imbecilities as one wishes', there
MAN IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 25
is still no
escaping the fact that the enlightenment which Frederick
desired had
absolutely nothing to do with freedom as freedom of the
press, for
example, it was a hollow pretence, and it was a foregone conclusion that
freedom was not applied to the army or anything con-
nected with the
army, e.g. the administration of justice in the army.
There is no
blinking the fact, either, that Frederick's state had to be a welfare state a
Frederick naturally sees farther than the usual run of despots in order to be
precisely as welfare state a state worshipping power, an absolute state. The
fact remains that the measure of wisdom and rectitude with which the king
happened to be endowed, together with the limitations imposed upon these
qualities by his highly individual character, his taste and his whims
limitations common to every mortal had the significance of destiny for his
people, his country and for every individual within his realms a destiny which
like God could bless or punish, might cherish or destroy, and could do so
without let of appeal to any higher law.
Lessing certainly
had nothing to thank King Frederick for, nor did his loyal subject Immanuel
Kant, nor did Leonhard Euler, and they were all misjudged for reasons which
they and all the people they lived among had to accept as if these reasons
represented the impenetrable will of God. The things he found uninteresting
just didn't interest him, and the things he didn't like he just didn't like.
The remark about e the first servant of the state 5 is good, but what practical
significance has it if this very first servant is alone from first to last in
decreeing every policy of state, if every counsellor, be wise as he may, must
ever fear him like a slave? The same might equally be said of Joseph II and his
entirely well-intentioned and frequently beneficial innovations. He did much
for his people and had in mind to do much more. But once again the highly
personal limits of his circumspection and temperament were, like those of fate,
the limits of the goodness and usefulness of the things his radicalism had
created.
His achievements
stood with him. It was inevitable that with him they
should also fall
to make way for the will of his equally absolutist
successor, which
chanced to have different objects. In short 'en-
lightened'
absolutism also consisted essentially in 'revolution from
above 9 , and
could provide no substitute for what the imperial idea had once stood for, or
had been intended to stand for: the policy, which not only exercises dominion,
but bestows freedom, which not only dispenses favours, but establishes justice,
and establishes it by means of justice, a policy whereby the best possible is
done for the people with the people, and therefore as a matter of principle
just as much through the people as through the king; a policy therefore in
whose eyes as a
26 FROM ROUSSEAU
TO RITSCHL
matter of
principle no person is merely an object; again, a policy subject not only to an
abstract responsibility, but to a concrete one a policy therefore which might
well deserve the title, 'by the grace of God'. Those who do not happen to be in
power, who are subjected to an absolute monarch, whether he be enlightened or
unenlightened, are bound to look upon him with that rather distant and nervous
awe exemplified in the form of the great prayer of the Church at Basle to be
found in the liturgy of 1752, a prayer to be offered for 'the wise and
worshipful first citizens, counsellors, judges and officials of our Christian
town and district of Basle 3 : 'Guide them, O Lord, with the spirit of wisdom
and understanding, with good counsel and courage, with the knowledge and fear
of thy holy name, that in their care we may lead a peaceful and quiet life in
all honour and righteousness.
It is of course possible to question whether
that other policy, pursued in the Middle Ages in the name of the imperial
ideal, ever became a reality anywhere. But there was at least a chance that it
might be realized while it was still at least an active point of reference
(question-able in itself but at least fairly well-defined) within the framework
of the imperial ideal. It was when this fell away that the realization of such
a policy became impossible. For when the prince's power was made absolute, a
step which brought with it the death of the imperial ideal, the prerequisite of
such a policy, the very notion of a concrete responsibility, of a higher
authority, was removed also, and in its place there arose the state without a
master, or alternatively the state governed by an arbitrary master, beneath
whose sway, even if he were the best of all possible monarchs, justice was a
matter of pure chance.
We have taken the
one kind of political absolutist, the absolute
prince, as the
first for discussion. The second kind, his perfectly legitimate brother, his
alter ego, following in his footsteps as inevitably as the darkness following
the light, as the thunder following the lightning, is the absolute
revolutionary or perhaps it would be better to say, since his predecessor was
already a revolutionary the revolutionary from below, the representative of the
lower class, who conceiving those above him to have injured him in his rights,
and even to have deprived him of them, takes steps to defend himself by
snatching the power lying in the hands of the governing princes in order that
he might now determine without let of appeal what is right and just, because he
in his turn has the power in his hands. The rSles are reversed. Whereas before
it had been the prince who had declared himself to be identical with the state,
it was now the people, the 'nation', as it at this time began to be called, who
assumed the title by means of a simple inversion of
MAN IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 27
Louis XIV's
dictum. This happened true to type in Paris on the 17th
June, 1789. The
representatives of the so-called third estate, who were,
be it remembered,
the delegates of that section of the population of
France which was in the overwhelming majority,
formed themselves
into a 'National
Assembly 9 and three days later declared with a collective oath, that they were
determined in the teeth of all opposition
never to disband
until they had given the state a new constitution.
Everything that
happened afterwards, up to the execution of Louis
XVI and beyond,
was a direct result of this event. Its inner logic is,
however, as
follows. (We shall restrict ourselves in the following to the two classic
revolutionary documents, the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America of June 1776 and the Statement of Human
and Civil Rights ratified by the French National Assembly in August 1789).
According to the revolutionary doctrine there exists a self-evident truth which
can and must be recognized and announced en presence et sous les auspices de verre
supreme:
1. All men are
equal, i.e. created with equal rights (Am.), or
alternatively (as
in the Fr.), born with equal rights.
2. These equal
rights are of nature, inalienable, sacred (Fr.), endowed by their creator
(Am.).
3. Their names are
freedom, property, security and the right to
protect oneself
from violence (Fr.) or: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Am.). The
French statement goes on to make a special point of saying that freedom
consists in being able to do anything which does not harm anybody and is not as
such forbidden by law. And it also considers the right to property important
enough to describe it in a special last article as inviolable et sacral
4. It is in order
to protect these rights that governments are instituted among men (Am.). Le but
de toute association publique est la conservation des droits . . . de I'homme
(Fr.).
5. Governments
derive their just authority from the consent of the
governed. Le
principe de toute souverainite' reside essentiellement dans la nation. All
authority exercised by individuals or corporate bodies stems expressly from the
people (en imane expresstmenf).
6. The law is V
expression de la volonte finale so all must have a part in making it, all are
equal in its eyes and every office and honour for which it provides are as a
matter of principle open to all.
7. Whenever a form
of government becomes injurious to the aims
of the state, i.e.
to the upholding of the rights aforementioned it is the people's right to
remove it and replace it by a government more conducive to their safety and
happiness. It will be advisable not to proceed too
28 FROM ROUSSEAU
TO RITSCHL
hastily in such an
event, but once it has become plain that a government is seeking to establish
absolute despotism it is not only the citizen's right but his duty to free
himself of its yoke.
The subtle
differences of emphasis revealed by a comparison of these
two documents are
of considerable interest: the French version is
clearly
distinctive by virtue of the fact that, apart from the mention
of the Stre
supreme in the preamble, the theological note has entirely
disappeared,
together with the implicit notion still to be found in the
American document
that at least in the beginning there could have
been a 'government
among men' that was not created by the will of
the people* a
notion that the revolution itself was not only the exercising of a right, but
something like the fulfilment of a duty; that this right and duty was of a
transitory nature, and that while the authority of a government might rest upon
the consent of a people, this was not quite the same thing as the people's
will. In contrast to this the French statement is explicit in taking the state
to be an association, its sovereignty to be the sovereignty of the nation as a
whole, and the authority of its laws to be contained in the will of all, i.e.
in the generality of the individual possessors of the human rights. The
Calvinism gone to seed of the American document still distinguishes itself
favourably from the Catholicism gone to seed of the French one. But these fine
variations of meaning only reveal the sources and aims common to both versions.
They both think of
the state in terms of the individual, or the sum of
the individuals
forming a nation. Both of them show that those who
drew them up
imagine that they were standing before an ultimate
reality, and
indeed before a reality beyond which no man would ever
see. Face to face
with the supreme Being, or self-evidently, man knows
according to both
documents that he has a right to life, liberty, property and so on. For the
sake of these universal rights it is necessary to have a state, and this state
comes into being and subsists by virtue of general recognition of these
universal rights, and in case of need, should it be found that this right is in
effect being suppressed, by the strength of the majority it is actively called
into being. It is this which forms the revolution. Such was the line of thought
upon which the third estate in 1789 based its declaration that it was identical
with the 'nation ‘, and resolved come what might to undertake the
transformation of the state.
This then is the
essentially unanimous confession of faith of the
second kind of
absolutist in politics, diametrically opposed to the first kind, the
enlightened or unenlightened princely absolutist. Diametrically opposed? Indeed
he is, and yet he is himself confined within
MAN IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
the same vicious
circle. The Declaration des droits de L’homme in the form in which it was first
printed and sold in Paris in 1789, bears over its title a picture of the
radiant eye of God, enclosed within the usual triangle, which even here calls
to mind the Trinity. At the foot of the page, admittedly, there are to be found
the words, Uozil supreme de la raison qui vient de dissiper Us nuages qui V
obscurcissaient. But beneath the title there is the ingenious symbol of a snake
biting its own tail. The snake, unfortunately, is not explained: but it can
hardly have any other meaning but that the time was ripe for doing the same as
the princely absolutist had done though in reverse: Uetat c'est moi! That
section of society which holds the power (or that which at the moment is
striving to acquire it) determines according to its own particular standards
what is right for society as a whole. He knows what is right! Why shouldn't he?
And why, if he knows, shouldn't he determine for the whole? He needs only to
overcome his diffidence to place his conception of freedom, life, property,
etc., on the absolute plane with the greatest of ease: and what is there then
left to him but to place his will also on a level with them? All this the
ancien regime had also done, the only difference being that it employed the
phrase 'by the grace of God 9,
whereas the
revolutionary spoke rather more badly of the Creator, or
simply maintained
that everything relating to the subject was natural,
inviolable, sacred
and self-evident. Thus on both sides the same thing
happens : the same
usurpation and entry into the same vicious circle.
There are as we
saw fine distinctions of attitude also within this new
kind of
absolutism; it is possible within the revolution from below to
adhere more to the
conservative or more to the radical side. It is possible to place the
individual as such, who forms the state, more in the centre of things, or the
nation which unites within itself all individuals: this means that there will
now be a liberal movement with a nationalist movement as its antagonist, and a
liberal-nationalist movement at any point between the two. In short, the
nineteenth century can now begin.
Occasionally, as
in the time of the restoration, and as was perhaps
inevitable in any
monarchy it has also been known to happen in a
modern republic a
feeling of repugnance against the whole state of
things created by
the French Revolution, a romantic nostalgia for
monarchical
absolutism and for the glorious days before 1789 might
spring to life and
begin to take effect over against both liberalism and nationalism, and in their
efforts to combat this reactionary tendency both the liberals and the
nationalists would find themselves compelled to invoke ever more and anew the
exalted spirit of 1776 and 1789, and oppose reaction by being themselves
reactionary. And so one way or
3O FROM ROUSSEAU
TO RITSGHL
the other, whether
people prefer the 'Marseillaise' or the 'March of
Hohenfriedberg',
or even if they wish to combine both in one anthem,
the snake is for
ever biting its own tail. One way or another, either as individuals or, taken
collectively, as a nation, the men who assume
that they have
'rights' and experience the desire to assert them by
violence stand,
almost like God, very much alone, thrown upon them-
selves in a way
for which, with due regard for the imperfections of the
human state, there
was never any true necessity. The empire, it is true,
was a concrete
political authority, but its authority was higher than
the state, and
therefore had once made the absolute state impossible in
any form; again,
it had once in spite of all its political ambiguity not been completely without
eschatological significance, drawing attention to the existence of a law that
neither princes nor peoples could give themselves, and that therefore they
could not play off one 1 against the other; all this, however, is completely foreign
to the political world of the eighteenth century. Has man, either as a prince
or as man generally, really such a right as the political absolutist thinks he
is justified in assuming, whether he tends to the left or the right? Is it
really 'right* which they seize in each particular case? Does not right cease
to be right whenever it is seized ? Is not right possible only in a relationship
which presupposes peace and excludes the thought of revolution because its
basis is a commandment? Is it not this relationship which alone forms the basis
for distinguishing the bearer of office just as it alone forms the basis for
the equality of all men? It is of course a relationship which, when destroyed,
makes revolution and counterrevolution an absolute necessity, because when it
is destroyed everything is bound to become absolute and abstract, and all
things fall
together like a
pile of skittles. It was in fact the destruction of this relationship in the
eighteenth century which made inevitable the
appearance of the
two kinds of political absolutism, the appearance,
that is, of the
possibility of taking the law into one's own hand and
making the state
omnipotent. The first kind and the last! And what is
more the
consternation and the lamentings of the legitimists were
very much
misplaced the second kind was brought about by the first.
For political man
as he appeared upon the scene in 1789 had been the
same man for a
long time before, albeit in a different guise. The whole
century in fact
thought as he did; and so did even the circles which were to fall victim to the
revolution. The tyrant will secretly always be a conspirator against himself.
If this is not realized the lightning outbreak of this upheaval and its
tremendous repercussions throughout Europe
will never be understood. By virtue of the same fiction of the contract
MAN IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 31
which constitutes
the state whereby the kings of Europe had justified
their rule, they
now found that rule had been snatched from them
again. They
themselves, as we saw, had encouraged the growth of
the bourgeois, not
because they loved him, but because they needed
him. And now he
was there, just as they had wanted him and shaped
him to be, except
that at this point he suddenly found that he could
do with a little
more of the liberte, propritte, happiness, etc., which the others accorded
themselves in such generous measure more than the
others were in
fact ready to grant him and except for the fact that
the bourgeois now
suddenly discovered that he was in the majority, and
that he had only
to reach out and seize the power to achieve what he
wanted forthwith.
Upon which, of course, it became immediately
apparent that he
who invokes death to tyrants is also always some-
thing of a tyrant
himself and will reveal himself to be one soon enough.
To show not only
the connexion, but the essential unity of the things
we have been
discussing it will be significant if in conclusion we cast a glance at the
political philosophy which first of all nourished the
princely
absolutist and then provided an equal delight to the palate of
the bourgeois. It
was truly not without good cause that their tastes were similar. It is the
political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, which stems, it is true, from well back
in the seventeenth, but is in effect standard for the whole of the eighteenth
century. According to his teaching in de cive part of Leviathan the
significance of the state is as follows: the ultimate reality to be reckoned
with in man is his instinct to preserve himself and enjoy his life accordingly.
He follows this instinct in everything he does, and he is perfectly right to do
so. Nature has in actual fact given to all men the same claim to all things,
the only restraining factor being that to bring this instinct into play
indiscriminately would benefit no one, as its necessary consequence would be
universal war. Reason, therefore, backed by the fear of death and the desire
for rest, will counsel man to adopt self-imposed restrictions. Thus subjective
right in itself seeks an objective kind of right, which is created by way of a
transference of law (translatio iuris). Agreement is reached and each one of
the parties transfers a part of his rights to the state.
The state,
however, is a persona civilis, representing the unity of the
general will and
possessing power over all: persona una, unius voluntas ex pactis plurium
hominum pro voluntate habenda est ipsorum omnium. In return this single person
affords all men protection, and with it promises to each his own: Suum cuique!
and in so doing provides the first possibility for all to live a truly human
life. Who is this single person? According to Hobbes he can just as easily be
represented by monarchy as by an
32 FROM ROUSSEAU
TO RITSCHL
aristocracy or a
democracy. (His personal choice was for a monarchy.)
The only essential
thing is that he should be understood as being one
person, whose will
is law subject to no condition, and who is alone in
determining and
sanctioning what is good and what is bad. There
exists nothing
either good or bad in itself apart from the state, but the public law is the
citizen's conscience, just as originally it emerged thence. Free thought exists
only in respect to the Church, i.e. in respect to the question that remains of
the inevitable fear of the unseen powers. But, while the subject is permitted
to adopt what attitude he pleases to the Church, there is a fear of invisible
powers which is officially sanctioned by the state, and from which, as from the
faith which is right in all circumstances, it is superstitious to deviate from
which to deviate would not only mean superstition, but revolution, and which
therefore cannot be tolerated. Thus speaks Hobbes.
It is usual in
this context to make mention of John Locke's Two
Treatises on Civil
Government (1690). But his political philosophy would seem to be of less
significance than Hobbes', because in it the
philosophy of
revolution from below, the doctrine that force has its
source in the
people, already preponderates and makes his work one-
sided. Hobbes'
political philosophy is great by virtue of the fact that it rises above this
antithesis and is therefore capable of presenting a comprehensive view of the
ideology of politics obtaining in his time.
Hobbes' train of
thought leads like a corridor to princely or to
bourgeois
absolutism, to the arrogation of God-like powers in politics
by the individual
or by the community, as Hobbes himself says: to the
omnipotent
monarchy or to the omnipotent republic. Either way it is
essentially the
same process. In actual fact the eighteenth century
took both courses,
and it is this which is characteristic for the political experience it
gathered.
We have considered
the political problem presented by the eighteenth century in particular detail
because it is from the political angle that the eighteenth century can be seen
most clearly as a whole. Let us now proceed to the attempt to comprehend it
under two other aspects which present a less definite picture the inner and outer
forms imparted to life by man as he lived at that time.
By that external
form, which life has in any age I mean that particular element in its cultural
aims and achievements which is evinced
fairly
consistently throughout its various expressions. Consequently it
is possible to
identify, with some precision, from the documents of any
one of the
expressions of this element, the tendency, nature and spirit
MAN IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33
of its other
expressions, and so of the culture of the time as a whole. If there is such an
external cast for the eighteenth century, and one that we can identify, it is
perhaps most allowable to comprehend it in terms of a striving to reduce
everything to an absolute form. Inanimate nature especially, in all its realms,
but man's somatic existence too, the sound that could be spontaneously called
forth, with all the possibilities for coloration and different rhythmic
patterns which it presented, human language in all its adaptability as a means
of expression, social intercourse, individual development and the individual in
relation to society all this abundance of things provided is in the eyes of
eighteenth-century man a mass of raw material, of which he believes himself to
be the master. This material he confronts as he who has all the knowledge:
knowledge of the form, the intrinsically right, fitting, worthy, beautiful form
for which all the things provided are clearly intended to be the material, for
which they are obviously crying out, and into which, as is plain, they must be
brought with all the speed, artistry and energy man has at his command. It is
easy to become ironical about this, but we must fight against the temptation if
we wish to understand the true irony contained in such an attitude.
Eighteenth-century
man, at least at the higher levels of society, had
very close ties
with nature, and they were far from being simply of the
kind which lead
man to study nature scientifically and exploit it for
gain; they could
also be felt and enjoyed aesthetically. It is however
let it not be said
too quickly a rationalized, but rather a humanized
nature, a nature
which has been put to rights and formed in accordance
with man's
sensibility and enjoyment, an idealized, and most preferably
a visibly idealized
nature, which is meant : the stream as a fountain, the lake as a clean and tidy
pond, the wood as a park reduced to visible order, the field and the bushes and
flowers as a garden, the tree shaped with the garden-shears, all these things
reduced to harmony, which inevitably means to geometry, more or less; the
tamed, groomed and trained animals, shepherds and shepherdesses whose nice
prettiness and grace really left them no alternative but to turn eventually
into those little porcelain figures; a nature which even after the grooming it
has had to endure is really beautiful only when there is a Greek temple, a
statue or a bust somewhere about which quite unequivocally serves as a reminder
of the lords of creation. It was the time of Goethe which brought about a
decisive inner change here but the external change took much longer and was
slower in asserting itself: it would seem, as we can see from the Elective
Affinities, for instance, that the game of 'creating 9 nature in the
eighteenth-century sense was indulged
34 FROM ROUSSEAU TO RITSGHL
in for a long time and on a grand scale in Weimar
too. The man who expresses an attitude to nature such as this must be unusually
conscious and certain that he knows how he feels and that his feeling is valid
in the sense that it is the true feeling.
The same determined and absolute will for form is conveyed
by the architecture of the time. The domineering way in which building materials
were handled is evidenced in works like the stairway of Briihl castle. Stone
may no longer be stone, nor iron, iron, nor wood, wood.
Every material must be transposed (hence the particular
fondness that
arose at this time for plaster, so obedient to the forming
hand !) according to the imaginative though lucid and logical form, which man
felt he ought to impose upon space. This form was that of the perception which
he held significant and valuable enough to justify its projection into the
materials, regardless of everything in them contrary to its own nature. Think
too of the way they dared to build whole cities in those days not with the help
of a natural rise in the ground or following the course of a river, as the
builder of the older towns had built them, but as in Karlsruhe, Mannheim and
Ludwigsburg, with a fully deliberate use of the ruler and compasses and with a
mathematical and to that extent harmonious form in mind, absolute enough to be
capable of taking shape not only in one building or group of buildings, but on
occasion in complete towns. And in this there is as little true contrast in the
attitude to life between the relative immoderacy of the so-called Baroque
style, with its almost wildly sweeping and intersecting lines, its exuberant
ornamentation, and its human and angel statuary imbued with the whole gamut of
the human passions, and the Rococo moderation which tended to revert to a kind
of tranquil cheerfulness or cheerful tranquillity, as there is contrast in the
attitude to life of the ordinary absolutist and his enlightened counterpart, as
there is for that matter between pietism and rationalism. The buildings which
are most characteristic of that time are precisely those which represent the
transitional period between the two styles, and it is only from there that either
can begin to be understood. It is just as irrelevant to condemn the one on the
grounds that it is bombastic and overladen as to condemn the other for being
stiff and affected, unless we have first appreciated in both the boldness of
feeling behind them feeling which took itself entirely seriously and whose
entire striving was therefore for an adequate means of expression. What other
age has dared to make architecture of its inmost heart to the extent that this
one did? But this was an age which simply had to, for its inmost heart was precisely
this idea of man as one taking hold of everything about him and subjecting
