《救赎之星》读后感摘抄

《救赎之星》是一本由罗森茨威格著作，山东大学出版社出版的平装图书，本书定价：50元，页数：387，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《救赎之星》读后感(一)：比沉默更可怕的，是剥夺者的正义凌然

罗生茨威格和列维纳斯都是犹太哲学家，也是幸存者。

活着并不代表他们幸运，该如何接受残酷现实的无限轮回。哪里才是自己的位置？

如果不能在思想上战胜战争的伪善，那活下去有什么意义？

对待战争，他们没有幻想。活下来的人必须抵抗虚无，重新找到存在。思想无以为继，是最可怕的。

罗生茨威格终身对基督教抱有同情，他试图将肉生的存在以一种合理性纳入犹太教的存粹理性存在。可以说，他至死都没有达到“一”。不过，年老的疾病让他平和的接受了这一点。他的方法是，建立一个体系全面考察了人类历史上各种试图摆脱死亡的思想体系，由此指出了我们“远未抵达”。然后他回归到塔木德的存粹理性概念中强调我们并不需要那么多“生命崇拜”。最终他认为一切都会皈依到犹太教和基督教。宗教信仰始终认为已经解决的问题更沉重。

他是一个等待救赎的人。他的思想进路和医学的伦理体系很接近。上帝剥夺了他健康的权力。疾病也是上帝让你接受，是让你忘记人的“单一性”。他试图不断接近上帝。

善良的人大多会选择绕道而行。只有思想家才有勇气去戳破黑夜的恐怖，把哲学的富有同情心的欺骗宣判为残酷的谎言。

同情能杀人。即便你同情的是基督教教义。“创造是基础，创造需要启示，启示是关键。同时创造和启示又需要救赎，救赎是目的”。这是他未曾明确的伦理学逻辑。伦理是被需要而产生的一种被动行为。罗生茨威格最终还是塑造了一个受害者形象。一个持续战斗的受害者。btw，无论对错，勇气是重压之下依然保持风度。

联想到安娜卡列尼娜。输了之后，人格和本质都变了。只有单一的东西会死，并且一切有死的事物都是孤立的。但是，人是否真的有选择？

从罗生茨威格的宏篇巨著中一再呈现出人的本质的面具：如果符号和所表达的东西从其全部的逻辑内容方面看并非是同一的，那么就必定存在着某种比逻辑还要根本的东西。

这是罗生茨威格留给我们的功课。也是财富，关于本质。

我们对精神状况的思考，在两个对立面之间运动，这两个对立面并非在同一个层面互相对照。也许最终，我们并不知道所是者，而只是试图知道所能是者。

努力找到自己的位置，拼尽全力，没找到也没有什么关系。如果找到了，本质才能成为永恒。

《救赎之星》读后感(二)：【转】高山奎：罗森茨威格的“新思”与古今中西之争

【作者简介】高山奎，男，1979年4月生，黑龙江汤原人。2011年毕业于黑龙江大学哲学学院外国哲学专业，获哲学博士学位；2013年9月—2014年9月美国斯坦福大学哲学系、访问学者。江苏师范大学副教授、硕士研究生导师，江苏师大哲学范式研究中心研究人员。著有《思绪时代》（中国社会科学出版社，2017）；翻译：谢帕德《施特劳斯与流亡政治学 : 一个政治哲人的锻成》（华夏出版社，2013）。

《救赎之星》读后感(三)：Rosenzweig《救赎之星（1919/1953）》小摘要

【最近读过几部犹太人作品：迈蒙尼德、布伯和罗森茨维格，发现一个很大的不同：12世纪的迈蒙尼德宁静深沉，犹如上主的孩子在伊甸园散步中遐思着神奇造化；而布伯和罗森茨维格则有一种极热烈紧张的激情，那种突开天眼中看见美好之物却又倏忽即逝的感觉。20世纪的经验自然与上主恩典本身的裂隙和张力是那么大，这使得20世纪的哲人一个个都神经质。

Rosenzweig(1886-1929)是一度几乎皈依基督教的犹太人，他表现出深刻而碎片状的原创性，同时又常常无力驾驭而扭曲事实。在构建自己的哲学体系时，罗森茨维格对伊斯兰教尤其不公正，而在赞美犹太教的至高无上时又实际上把道成肉身的基督教观念接入犹太教。全书的主旨是将尼采的对形而上学的颠覆的生命概念对接入犹太-基督教的启示世界中，建构了一个黑格尔式的哲学-信仰体系：从创造到启示到救赎，从亚洲的低级宗教到神话、经过伊斯兰教到基督教-犹太教，犹太教居于最高峰。其中的比较宗教观念虽然在科学上幼稚，却理智上极为动人。几个闪光点：祁克果-尼采的生命概念对传统形而上学的颠覆；逻辑是世界的本质成分，则世界是超逻辑的；对犹太教的节日的描述满溢着难得的现场感；罗森茨维格是少有的赞美基督教的犹太思想家，同时又给出了基督徒仇恨犹太人的基本原因：在路上者对永恒者的怨恨。】

第一部：the elements or the everlasting primordial world(元素或永恒的原型世界)

在导论一开始，罗森茨维格说“认识皆源于死，源于对死的恐惧。”【罗森茨维格：《救赎之星》，孙增霖 傅有德译，山东大学出版社2013年版，页3，下同】而“哲学靠编织它的关于尘世的全（all）的观念的蓝色迷雾…欺骗他。”【4】在全的哲学中，死变成了无。改变从祁克果就开始了，他有对自己的罪和救赎的特殊的意识；叔本华那儿，“站在体系的开始的是人。”【8】而尼采则“像诗人一样知晓自己的生命和灵魂，并且像圣徒一样听从它们的声音。”【9】

“这样人成了一个超越哲学之上的力量，…一个超越他自己的哲学的非常特殊的人。…人，在他的个体性（individuality）的绝对单一性中，在他的被其历史所决定的存在中，走出了只承认其自身的世界，走出了哲学的全。”【9-10】与人对应的是元伦理学，“人们倾向于把人生观问题设定为真正的超伦理学问题。”【11】世界被理解为一个自我包含的统一体，这里关键论点是：“逻辑是世界的一种本质成分。”【13】因而世界是超逻辑的（meta-logical）。最后，由于“我们要求世界的受造性（creatureliness），这从而也允许上帝从世界中退出。”【16】“上帝必须有先于一切存在和思维的统一的生存。”【17】上帝是超形而上学的。最后罗森茨维格引入了微分的观念，“微分在自身之内结合了‘无’和‘是’的特性。”【20，这个洞见太好了，在读莱布尼茨时就意识到，可是黑格尔的辩证法是缺乏这种微分精确意识的，不想在这儿碰到；导论重要的两点：世界的超逻辑性和微分观念】

“我们对上帝一无所知。…对我们来说，上帝最初是一个‘无’。”【22-3】类似于海德格尔解释的谢林，罗森茨维格用Y=X的公式来陈述上帝，“y在语法上是主词，而x是谓词。…在这里，我们面对的是起源。”【26】在类似于黑格尔的一段对神的分析后，罗森茨维格进入了非科学的比较宗教：希腊是神话世界，“一个没有神的世界，是一个仅仅靠自己生活的神的世界。”【33】而亚洲则处在更低的形式，“中国的神在从无到无所不包的力量的过程中耗尽了自己；印度的神…在从无到纯粹的、无所不在的沉默的本质，即神的本性的路途中耗尽了自己。”【34】

世界是丰富的，“超逻辑的世界是整个实现了的、建构的世界。”【49】但亚洲又处在较低阶段。中国，唯一真实的东西是世界的丰富性，所有的精神都是特殊的、物质的。“儒家体系，一切国家伦理体系中最贫乏的形而上学，直到今天一直在塑造和涂染着人民的生活。”【55】印度和中国一个闭着眼一个睁着眼做梦。【57】

“人是无常的（ephemeral），他的本质是无常的，像不朽和无条件是上帝的本质，普遍和必然是世界的本质一样。”【60-1】人的自由打开自身。亚洲是非悲剧的人，从未达到对立统一，印度的禁欲主义，中国的“真是没有性格的人，一般的人。”【71】最早的悲剧英雄Gilgamesh，雅典的悲剧。

期望着主的宇宙日。

第二部：the path or the ever renewed world(道路或时刻更新的宇宙)

导论：信仰的奇迹，挑战哲学。

创造或事物的不朽基础是“上帝说话了。”【107】这里罗森茨维格说伊斯兰教只是一个理性的宗教，“伊斯兰教只有启示，没有预言。”【111】它也是一个必然性的宗教，“本质上是静止的。”【117】

就爱的启示而言，伊斯兰教只是一个人类的宗教，缺乏特选的概念，“安拉的本质就是那个‘全爱’，…行仁慈是它的属性，普照着所有的人和所有的民族。《古兰经》从上帝的概念出发，拒绝承认对某个民族的特选。”【159】穆罕迈德的优越仅在个人品质，爱“一劳永逸地给予了世界，再也不会增长。”【160】伊斯兰还只是事功的宗教。

就救赎而言，“所有来自于原初的‘爱我’戒律最终都融入了涵盖一切的‘爱你的邻人！’”【198】这里伊斯兰教又被贬斥为责任的宗教，“行安拉之路则意味着，在其最严格的意义上，通过圣战的方式扩展伊斯兰的势力。”【208】伊斯兰还是一种进步的宗教：“即在上帝之国成长的基础上，把上帝在历史中的出现变成对人类而言显而易见的事实。”【217，个人感觉，罗森茨维格的哲学对伊斯兰教的扭曲太厉害了，伊斯兰的乐园、安拉都给抹掉了。这种哲学不靠谱】

第三部：构型或永恒的超宇宙（the configuration or the eternal supra-world）

导论中说通过祈祷升入天国。由歌德、到耶稣的效法者，再到循犹太教的节期的正确祈祷。接下来两卷分别论述也犹太教和基督教

卷1: 火或永恒的生命（the fire or eternal life）

犹太人是永恒的民族，这是血缘来获取的，血缘连续了现在和将来；圣地非大地，“对于一个永恒的民族，…这个民族只是其土地上的陌生人和寄居者。”【286】神圣的语言和神圣的律法，“以时间性的生命为代价购买其永恒性的。”【289】是选民。是the one people。

在罗森茨维格对犹太人的描画中，天国和大地似乎在同一个维度上了。三个朝圣节日：逾越节（解放）、律法节（现时的启示）、住棚节（流浪于世界的荒野）。而最大的则是赎罪日，“他们看到了上帝的切近，而被提升到了超越当今之俗世的境界。…在这些日子，个人以其赤裸裸的个体性，带着人的罪行，直接站立在上帝面前。”【307】

犹太人是一个放弃成长的民族，它放弃了战争，“它超越了个别性与历史性，家园与信仰、天与地的对立，所以亦不知道战争。”【311】只有信仰之战。“只有他们才是真正的和平主义者。”【313】国家处在时间中，而“在上帝之民中，永恒的东西已经存在了，而且就在时间中。”【313】

卷2：光或永恒的道路（the rays or the eternal ways）

相对于犹太人，基督教则走在时间的永恒之路上。基督徒始终在路上。“基督教的世界时间是单一的时刻，单个的一天，它处在过去和未来之间。”【321】在路上，Christ是其中一员。【325】在这里罗森茨维格提及face,“人们是有面容的，而且互相看得见，教会就是所有互相看得见的人的共同体。”【326】基督教的危险在于“使世界具有神性，或者将上帝世俗化。…将世界神化而造成的使上帝世俗化。”【367】

而“犹太教这里，危险则在于对世界的否定、对世界的轻蔑和对世界的羞辱。”【371】但这个危险无害，恰恰彰显了犹太教的优越。“基督徒天生或者至少说生下来是一个异教徒，而犹太人就是犹太人。”【372】这里罗森茨维格提出一个Shekhina的教义，酷似基督教的道成肉身，“舍金纳，即降临于人间并逗留于人们之间的上帝，被描述成上帝自身内发生的分裂。上帝自身从自身分离，把自己献给他的子民，分担他们的痛苦，和他们一起经历流放的痛苦，和他们一起流浪。”【373】这一舍金纳之流浪就是就是救赎之星。【374】

基督徒恨犹太人。“犹太人的存在常常把基督教归于这样的观念：它不是在实现目标和真理，而是永远在路上。这是基督教之所以恨犹太人的最深刻的原因。…如果没有犹太人的支持，基督徒无论走到哪里都会迷路。…我们的存在是他们的真理的暴政。”【376-8】但在上帝面前，犹太人和基督徒从事的是同一工作，彼此都只有部分真理。

“那永恒者已经在真理中变成了形象。真理就是此形象的face.…在‘救赎之星’中，我们看到的神性真理变成了形象，那里闪耀的不过是上帝闪耀着转向我们的面容。”【380，道成肉身的基督或舍金纳】最后提到的人的面容却惯例地很生物论。【385，如同前面的血统论，这里也是鼻子、眼睛和嘴巴。】

江绪林 2014年5月15日星期四

《救赎之星》读后感(四)：中文译本未翻译部分

The Eternity of Truth

God is truth. Truth is his signet. By it he is known. And will be even when one day all has come to an end by which he used to make his eternity known within Time-all eternal life, all eternal way-there where even eternal comes to an end: in eternity. For not the way alone ends here, but life too. Eternal life, after all, endures only so long as life in general. There is eternal life only in contrast to the life of those who pave the eternal way, which is always exclusively temporal. The desire for eternity sighs forth out of the well-pits of this temporality; if it assumes the form of a longing for eternal life, that is only because it itself is temporal life. Of a truth, in truth, life too disappears. The way became vanity as the ocean of light engulfed it in its billows; life, though it does not thus become vanity, dissolves in the light. It is transformed, and having been transformed, is no more. Life has gone up in light. The mute darkness of the protocosmos had found speech in death. And something stronger, love, had overpowered death. So now life rallies in the silence of the hyper-cosmos and is transformed into light. God is not life: God is light. He or the other of him, with the old [philosopher] that “God has life,” or with the new one that “God is dead,” reveals the identical pagan bias. The only thing which does not resist verbal designation is that neither/nor of dead and alive, that tender point where life and death touch and blend. God neither lives nor is he dead; rather he quickens the dead-he loves. He is the God of the quick and the dead, precisely because he himself is neither quick nor dead. We experience his existence directly only by virtue of the fact that he loves us and awakens our dead Self to beloved and requiting soul. The revelation of divine love is the heart of the All.

God (Theology)

THE MANIFEST ONE

We learn that God loves but not that he is love. He draws too nigh to us in love for us to be yet able to say: he is this or that. In this love we learn only that he is God, not what he is. The what, the essence, remains concealed. It is concealed precisely by being revealed. A god who did not reveal himself would not permanently hide his essence from us, for nothing remains concealed from man’s far-reaching learning, his capacity for conceptualization, his inquisitive intellect. But God pours forth over us in revelation; with us he turns from stationary to active God. Precisely thereby he forges the fetters of love around our free intellect, which is irresistible for everything stationary. Bound by such bonds, summoned thus by name, we move in orbit in which we found ourselves, and along the route on which we are placed. We no longer reach beyond this except with the powerless grasp of empty concepts.

THE CONCEALED ONE

If then the Manifest God dissolves in us, his concealed aspect remains with him all the more. True, we now recognize him in the dead and the living: he is the agent who creates the dead and re-creates it, transforms it until it comes to him and lets him quicken it; he is the agent who releases from himself the living, which had heard him summon it for life, and redeems it. But Creator and Redeemer we recognize in this way only after their connection in revelation. We catch sight of Creator and Redeemer only from the vantage point of the God of love. We can see what has been and what is to be only to the extent that the flicker of that moment of divine love shines. The purely Prior, the protocosmos created from of yore, is too dark of us to be able to recognize the Creator’s hand in it. And the purely Posterior, the redeemed hypercosmos, is too bright for us to be yet able to see the Redeemer’s countenance in it; he thrones above the annually recurring hymns of the redeemed. Only in the immediate vicinity of that heart and center of the All, of the revelation of divine love, is the Creator and Redeemer too manifested to us, to the extent that such manifestation is vouchsafed at all. Revelation teaches us to trust in the Creator, to wait hopefully for the Redeemer. Thus it allows us to recognize Creator and Redeemer too only as him who loves.

THE FIRST ONE

Thus it is the Loving God whom alone we see directly. As such a one, however, God is not the Lord. As such he is active. He is not the Lord is God beyond that of which he is the Lord: the Lord of life and death is himself beyond life and death. It is beyond conceiving what he may be as Lord of death, his essence before creation. Revelation extends only as far back as the Creator. Its first word is “in the beginning,” its second “there created.” Before the beginning there may have been that inner vitality of God which grew out of divine self-creation, self-revelation, self-redemption; we could only depict it analogically, by analogy, that is, to the authentic creation, revelation, redemption, by allowing God to experience within himself what emanates from him. The heathens knew of a God who had come to be in this fashion, and this perhaps gave us a hint that we were dealing with more than a mere analogy. But no word, no term derived from this hint. That vitality concealed within itself concealed this God from us too. The God-become became the God-concealed. To answer honestly what he might be, we would have had to say: Nought. For vitality in the Uncreated, in the realm of the dead, is nought. The heathen God is not dead, but he is Lord of the dead and only of the dead at that, only of Nought. This company of gods wields power only in the realm of dead. Elsewhere they do not rule, they only live. But as Lords of the Nought they themselves become-Noughts. ‘The gods of the heathen are noughts,’ exclaims the Psalmist. They are not dead, far from it; the faith of their devotees testifies to that. Gods in whom a living world believes cannot be less alive than this world itself. But in all their vitality they are just as unsteady, just as ephemeral, just as subordinate to the almighty Perhaps as is this world, as are these devotees. They lack the framework of reality, the unambiguous orientation, the fixed position, the knowledge of right and left, above and below, which enters the world only with revelation. For all their vitality, they are thus “Noughts” and “those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them.” They are created, they live concealed in the shelter of their celestial fortress; and this the Psalmist counters with that which distinguishes his God from these Noughts: he has‘made the heavens.’

THE LAST ONE

What God, the true God, may have been before creation thus defies the imagination. Not so that which he would be after redemption. True here too our living knowledge tells us nothing about God’s essence beyond the Redeemer. That he is the Redeemer is the last thing that we learn by our own experience: we ‘know that he lives’ and that our ‘eyes will behold him.’ But God’s redemptive function assumed a special importance even within this knowledge that is manifest to us. His creative power and his revelatory wealth both befell something else, something objective, juxtaposed to them. His redemptive function, on the other hand, has only an indirect effect on anything else, redeeming man by means of the world, the world by means of man. Its direct effect is confined to the redemption of God himself. For God himself, redemption is the eternal deed in which he frees himself from having anything confront him that is not he frees himself from having anything confront him that is not he himself. Redemption frees God from the work of creation as well as from his loving concern for the soul. Redemption is his day of rest, his great Sabbath, the day which is but adumbrated in the Sabbath of creation. It is the day when, free from all that is outside himself, from all that is ever and again compared to him, incomparable though he is, he ‘will be one and his name: One.’ Redemption redeems God by releasing him from his revealed name. In the name and its revelation there is consummated that delivery of revelation which had commenced with creation. Whatever happens thereafter, happens “in the name” Sanctification pf the name or desecration of the name-since revelation there is no deed which does not bring about one or the other. The process of redemption in the world takes place in the name and for the sake of the name. The end, however, is nameless; it is above any name. The very sanctification of the name occurs only so that the name might one day be muted. Beyond the word-and what is name but the collective word-beyond the word there shines silence. There where no other names any longer confront the one name, where the one name is al(l)-one and all that is created knows and acknowledges him and him alone, there the act of sanctification has come to rest. For sanctity is meaningful only where there is still profanity. Where everything is sacrosanct, there the Sacred itself is no longer sacred, there it simply exists. This simple existence of the Highest, such unimpaired reality, omnipotent and solely potent, beyond any desire for or joy in realization, this is truth. For truth is not to be recognized through error, as the masters of the school think. Truth attests itself; it is one with everything real; it does not part in it.

THE ONE

And such is the truth which, as God’s signet, announces that he is One at the time when even the eternal people of the one God sank and disappeared. The One-this one name-outlives the people that acknowledges it. It outlives even the revealed name by which this outliving and more-than-living name become known to the future. For the sake of this outliving which will be the lot of the One in the future, the revealed name must already be silent for the present and for every present. Precisely we Jews, we who know the name, who are called by it, and on whom the name is called, who know it and acknowledge it-we are not allowed to pronounce it. For the sake of our eternity, we must anticipate the silence in which it and we together will one day sink. We must substitute for the name itself that which God is as long as he is still called upon as one name among other names, as Creator of a world of being, as Revealer of a language of souls: The Lord, We call him the Lord in place of a name. The name itself falls silent on our lips and even beneath the silently reading eyes, just as it will fall silent one day when he is al(l)-one in all the world, when he is One.

THE LORD

It is the ultimate silence which keeps silent in us there. This is the true depth of the deity. God himself is there redeemed from his own word. He is silent. Though the God of the protocosmos had not himself been dead, he was, as Lord of dead matter, himself like this a Nought. From creation we learn that the meaning of the protocosmos is death. Just so we learn, from redemption, that the meaning of the hypercosmos is life. The Lord of the hypercosmos is the Lord of life. As such he is not alive, far from it. But just as the Lord of dead matter, though not himself dead, was like the dead and thus nought, or more exactly a Nought, one of many Noughts, so too the Lord of the hypercosmos, though not himself alive, is like the living. That simile of the Psalm applies to him too: like him are those who trust in him. Since that which believes in him is what lives, therefore he must resemble that which lives. But what then is the nature of this living matter？ What word can capture its essence？ For we are aware that we have here made the leap beyond the world of words, just as we were still standing before its portals in the protocosmos. The realms of the dead lay before that portal, and we had recognized its Lord as a Nought there. For what could be the essence of an Aught prior to the world other than the Nought？ And the Lord of dead matter, though he is not part of that matter, is in essence akin to it and thus a Nought like it. What then might be the essence of living matter, lying beyond the world of words on that side just as dead matter lay before it on this？ The place of the Nought would already be occupied; it is located before words. With what word, then, are we to designate that which would lie beyond words？ It would have to be just as little at home among words as the Nought. The Aught is at home in the world of words. But above this world, as little a part of it as the Nought, there rests the All, to be precise the true All, the All which does not burst into pieces as in the world of the Nought, but rather the one All, the one-and-all.

This is the essence of living matter. Like death in creation, it is the last word in redemption. As such it points beyond words, like death. It designates redeemed matter as death designates uncreated matter. And as the Lord of life, God would be equal in essence to this essence. He would be the Lord of the one-and-all. And just this, this lordliness over the one-and-all, is meant by the sentence: God is truth.

Truth (Cosmology)

GOD AND THE TRUTH

Only Noughts can reign over the multipartite Nought, over the one All only a one who still has room beside and above it. But what else still has room beside the one All as the consummate reality except-truth？ For truth is the only thing which is wholly one with reality and, while no longer separating in it, nevertheless is still distinguished from it as a whole. Truth is enthroned above reality. And is then truth-God？

No. Here we ascend the pinnacle seen from which the entire traversed path lies at our feet. Truth is not God. God is truth. To go on from the latter proposition first: it is not truth itself that sits enthroned above reality, but God, because he is truth. Because truth is his signet, he can be one above the one-and-all of reality. Truth is the scepter of his dominion. Life is consummated in the one-and-all; it becomes wholly alive. Truth is the essence of this wholly alive reality to the extent that it is one with it; to the extent that it can nevertheless separate itself from this reality-without in the least suspending the connection-truth is the essence of God.

TRUTH AND REALITY

If then God is truth, reality is nonetheless also truth. Even its ultimate essence is truth. The proposition “reality is truth” claims equal status with the other one, “God is truth.” Thus truth is the essence of reality as well as of God. We recognized it as such in the all-embracing concept at the end of the course of reality. Already for this reason it would be impossible to reverse the proposition. One cannot say that truth is God, because it would then equally well have to be reality. In that case God would be reality, hypercosmos one with the world, and everything would be fused in one mist. Thus God has to be “more” than the truth, just as every subject is more than its predicate, every thing more than the conception of it. And even if truth is really the lasr and the only thing one can still declare of God and his essence, still there remains to God a surplus beyond his essence. How then does he compare to his essence？ After all, the proposition “God is truth” differs from other propositions of the same kind, even from the proposition that reality is truth, since its predicate is not the general concept under which the subject is subsumed. But in that case what could the truth be？ What is truth？

QUESTIONING THE TRUTH OF TRUTH

Truth is supposed to be the only thing that cannot be gainsaid, cannot be doubted. Or so philosophy teaches. It is a fundamental notion of Idealism that truth authenticates itself. Every doubt about it is supposed to presuppose its indubitability. The proposition “There is truth” is supposed to be the sole indubitable proposition. If that were true, then obviously a proposition such as “God is truth” would be inadmissible, since it would tie truth to something else here when in fact it is only supposed to bind itself. Truth could only form the subject of a sentence, not its predicate. The very question “What is truth？” would constitute lese majeste. Rather the proposition which we rejected above would be valid: that truth is God. What is then really the situation with regard to this self-authentication of truth？

IN FACT OF TRUTH

To begin with we must concede the fact that the validity of truth is in dubitable. It would really not do to say that there is no truth, for then it would have to be true, at a minimum-that there is no truth. This will not do, in fact. But what have we admitted herewith except-a fact？ And what is the basis for the respect which this fact enjoys？ The respect is undeniable, so much so that philosophy does not hesitate to establish the certainty of this factuality then even more deserving of respect than-the truth？ Woe to “Idealism” if that be so! For Idealism set out to put the truth on its own two feet, and is it now to end by anchoring it to a-belief in a matter of fact？

THE TRUST IN TRUTH

But what else is actually to be expected？ Can anything stand without having something to stand on？ And if it were to stand on itself. Would not then “itself” be the ground on which it stood？ For then it would, after all, not be standing on its own standing, but on “itself.” Only if it stood on its own standing then it would indeed be with out a where-upon. But the fact of the undeniable validity of truth is no such standing on its own standing at all. For one does not trust this fact of undeniability after the manner of matters of fact in general. If that were the case, then indeed the fact of the truth would stand on its own standing. But it is not the case. For otherwise why should one trust just in this fact？Just in this and one other. No one denies, after all, that there is error. Error is just as undeniable as truth. By admitting the fact that that the existence of truth is undeniable, one also admits that there is untruth. As facts, the undeniability of truth and the undenuability of untruth are inseparable. Why then does one trust just the former undeniablility while the undeiability of untruth is depressed to a fact of second rank？ Because that undeniablility of truth appears to us as a-true fact, and the undeniability of error is an-untrue one. The criterion of truth is directly connected with this fact, so directly that it appears to us as itself a fact. The undeniability of truth is a true fact, but a fact.

Thus it is not the fact in which we trust, but its trustworthiness. The fact as such, thuth’s standing upon itself, would mean little to us if it were only a standing on its own standing. It is, however, really a case of standing on itself: the undeniability of truth is itself true. It is not the fact of undeniability which already commands belief, but only the truth of this fact.

All trust in the truth thus rests upon an ultimate trust that the ground on which truth places itself with its own two feet is capable of supporting it. Truth is itself the ultimate presupposition of truth, not as truth which stands on its own feet, but as fact in which on trusts. Truth itself is a fact even before the fact of its undeniability. The fact of its undeniability would in and of itself still be a mere fact. But by virtue of the factuality of the truth which precedes it, sealed by the trusting Truly of belief, the fact of the undeniability of truth stands really established. The self-confidence of the intellect, which is customary with the masters of philosophy, is quite justified. But it is justified only because it rests on the confidence of the whole man, of whom intellect is but a part. And this confidence is no self-confidence.