he has himself become like a truth and sees the essence of his being, of all being, in “constraining and being constrained.” And if anyone should refuse obedience to him he would—as the honest Epictetus has told us—cut off his ears or his nose. He would force him to drink vinegar, and if all this were not enough, he would present him the cup of hemlock which, as we know, finally and once and for all (an eternal truth!) finished Socrates himself. Whatever one might say to him, Aristotle would not renounce his statement, “Necessity does not allow itself to be persuaded.” And he does not rely, I repeat once more, on experience; experience does not give us eternal truths, it gives us only empirical, provisional, temporary truths. The source of his truths is something quite other.
In 399 B.C. the Athenians poisoned Socrates, and Plato his disciple, “constrained by the truth itself,” could not do other than think that Socrates had been poisoned. He speaks of Socrates’ death in the Crito, in the Phaedo and in his other dialogues. But in everything that he writes, there is always apparent this question: is there really in the world a power to which it is given to constrain us finally and forever to admit that Socrates was poisoned in 399? For Aristotle such a question, which in his eyes was obviously absurd, did not exist. He was convinced that the truth “Socrates was poisoned,” quite like the truth “a dog was poisoned,” is beyond all divine or human objections. The hemlock makes no distinction between Socrates and a dog. And we, “constrained to follow the phenomena, constrained by the truth itself,” are obliged in our judgments, whether mediate or immediate, to make no distinction between Socrates and a dog, even between Socrates and a mad dog.
Plato knew this no less than Aristotle. He also, let us recall, wrote: “Not even the gods fight against Necessity.” Nevertheless he himself did struggle against Necessity all his life. From this derives the dualism for which he has always been reproached; from this come his contradictions and paradoxes which so infuriated Aristotle. Plato was not content with the sources of truth that satisfied the curiosity of his great pupil. He knew that it is difficult to find “the Father and Creator of all the universe” and that “if one finds Him, one cannot show Him to everyone.” Nevertheless, he strained all his powers in an attempt to overcome these difficulties as well as this impossibility.
It seems at times that it is only difficulties that attract Plato, that his philosophical genius deploys its full activity only before the impossible. “It is necessary to dare everything,” and it is all the more necessary to dare when there are fewer chances, in the eyes of the average man, of obtaining anything. There is no hope of wresting Socrates from the power of the eternal truth, which is as indifferent to Socrates as to a mad dog and which has swallowed him up forever. Therefore, philosophy and the philosophers must think of nothing other than to deliver Socrates. If one cannot do this otherwise, he must go down to the netherworld, as Orpheus did. He must implore the gods, as Pygmalion once did, whom the inert Necessity which directs the natural course of things would not hear. Pygmalion’s desire to animate the statue that he had made—was this not and is it not still, for logical thought, the height of madness and immorality? But before the tribunal of the gods, who, unlike Necessity, know how and are willing to allow themselves to be persuaded, the impossible and the senseless become possible and sensible. God thinks and speaks quite otherwise than Necessity. “Everything that is bound,” says God in the works of Plato, “may be dissolved; but only the wicked can wish to dissolve that which is well bound and holds together as it should. This is why, in general, you who were created are not protected against dissolution and are not immortal; but you will not be dissolved and you will not experience the fate of mortality because, by my will, you will receive a more lasting strength than that which you had at your birth.”9
Not only Aristotle but no one, not even the most ardent admirers of the Platonic truth, can read these words without irritation or resentment. What is this “my will” which arrogates to itself the right and power to change the natural course of things? We “understand” Necessity, and we “understand” also that “Necessity does not allow itself to be persuaded” (why we understand it and who the “we” are who understand—these questions we do not even wish to raise). But when “by my will” intervenes, the whole spiritual nature of thinking man, his soul (in general the soul does not exist, but for this occasion it will be rehabilitated), is indignant at the daring and impudence of these pretensions. “By my will” is nothing else than the deus ex machina; but we think, with Kant (can we think otherwise?), that “in the determination of the origin and validity of our knowledge, the deus ex machina is the greatest absurdity that one could choose.” Or as the same Kant says elsewhere with still greater force, “to say that a supreme being has wisely introduced into us such ideas and principles a priori is completely to destroy all philosophy.”
Why does Necessity which does not listen and does not allow itself to be persuaded seem to us a reasonable supposition, while the deus ex machina seems to us to open the way to, and protect, all kinds of caprices (jeder Grille . . . Vorschub gibt) and appears to us so absurd? The deus ex machina threatens to destroy the very possibility of knowledge. But Kant’s task was not to defend and glorify knowledge at all costs. He had undertaken the “critique” of pure reason. He should therefore have put, before everything else, this question: are our knowledge and that which people ordinarily call philosophy so precious that we must take up their defense at the cost of any sacrifice, no matter how great? On the contrary, perhaps, since knowledge is so intimately bound to Necessity that it becomes impossible when one admits the deus ex machina (höheres Wesen), would it not be better to renounce knowledge and seek the protection of the “caprice” that so frightened Kant? To show oneself ready to renounce knowledge—is this not the only means (or at least the first step) to free oneself from that so greatly detested Necessity (which as we know, sometimes made Aristotle himself groan), from that Necessity which is not even afraid to offend the gods?
What Kant and all of us after Kant judge to be the most absurd of suppositions allows us to entertain the possibility of freeing mortals and immortals from that implacable power which, by some unknown miracle, has conquered the world and subjugated all living beings. Can it be that the deus ex machina might put an end to the hateful parere (obedience) and return to men the creative jubere (commanding) which the gods themselves had to renounce at some mysterious and terrible moment of the distant past? Can it be that the fall of Necessity would bring about the fall of the other usurpers to whom we feeble slaves, accustomed to the parere, have handed over our destiny? The principle of contradiction and the principle of identity have also been introduced into the world without authorization to act as masters therein. When we affirm that sound is heavy, these principles intervene and immediately oppose their veto: “we do not permit this, therefore it is not so.” But when it is said “Socrates has been poisoned,” these two principles remain passive and even give their blessing to this judgment and confer upon it, as we recall, eternity. But does there not exist somewhere in the depths of being a “reality” wherein the nature of the principles of contradiction and identity undergoes a radical transformation, wherein it is not they but man who commands, wherein they obey man’s commandments, i.e., wherein they do not intervene when sounds become heavy but protest when righteous men are put to death? Then the proposition “sound is heavy” would not seem absurd, while the proposition “Socrates has been poisoned” would become contradictory and, by that very fact, non-existent.
If such things be possible, if it be possible that Necessity which does not allow itself to be persuaded bows down before the caprice (Grille) of man, if the principles of contradiction and identity cease to be principles and become merely executive instruments, if the impossible becomes possible—what is then the value of the “eternal truths” accumulated by thinking humanity? It will be asked: how is one to know if such a reality is possible? That is just it: how is one to know? Once we begin to ask, we shall be told, as we have already been told, that such a reality is impossible; that Necessity, the principle of identity, the principle of contradiction and the other principles have ruled, do rule and will forever rule in our world as well as in all the worlds which have existed and will ever exist; that there never have been and never will be heavy sounds; that people have put
