Reason
Razum
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I
Just as in all things of this world every new means, new advantage, and every new superiority immediately brings with it its own disadvantages, so too reason, in giving man such a great advantage over animals, brings with it its own disadvantages and opens such paths of temptation as no animal can ever enter. Through these paths, a new kind of motive acquires power over man’s will—motives inaccessible to animals, namely abstract motives: simply thoughts that are far from always drawn from one’s own experience, but are often generated by the words and examples of others, by suggestion and literature. With the possibility of understanding, the possibility of error immediately opens up for man. And every error, sooner or later, will cause harm—all the greater the larger the error was. For a personal error one will sometime have to pay, and often dearly; the same is true, on a large scale, of the errors of entire peoples. Therefore, one cannot be reminded enough that every error must be pursued and uprooted as an enemy of humanity wherever it is encountered, and that there can be no harmless, much less useful, errors. A thinking person must enter into combat with them, even if humanity were to cry out loudly, like a patient whose doctor is lancing an abscess.
For the masses, a kind of training takes the place of real education. It is produced by example, habit, and the firm implanting from early childhood of certain concepts, before enough experience of understanding and power of judgment has accumulated to resist it. In this way thoughts are grafted that afterward sit so firmly and remain so unconquerable to any instruction, as if they were innate—and even philosophers often consider them so. By this means one can with equal success implant in people both the just and the reasonable and the most absurd things: accustom them, for example, to approach this or that idol only with sacred trembling and, at the mention of its name, to prostrate themselves not only in body but with their whole soul; to voluntarily lay down their life and property for words, for names, in defense of the most fantastic trifles; to consider this or that the greatest honor or the greatest shame, arbitrarily, and accordingly to respect or despise a person from the depths of their soul; to abstain from all meat, as in Hindustan, or to eat still-warm, quivering pieces cut from a living animal, as in Abyssinia; to devour human beings, as in New Zealand, or to sacrifice one’s children to Moloch; to castrate themselves, to voluntarily throw themselves on the funeral pyre—in short, one can accustom them to anything. Hence the Crusades, the depravities of fanatical sects, the chiliasts and flagellants, the persecution of heretics, the auto-da-fé and everything that can be found in the long scroll of human errors…
The tragedy of errors and prejudices lies in their practical side; the comedy—in their theoretical: there is no absurdity which, if first instilled in even three people, could not become a universal conviction.
Such are the disadvantageous aspects connected with the presence of reason in us.
—Schopenhauer
II
The errors and disagreements of people in the matter of seeking and recognizing truth arise from nothing other than their distrust of reason; as a result, human life, guided by customs, traditions, fashions, superstitions, prejudices, violence, and anything you like except reason, flows by itself, while reason exists by itself. It often happens, too, that if the organ of reason—thinking—is applied to anything, it is not to the business of seeking and spreading truth, but to justifying and supporting at all costs customs, traditions, fashions, superstitions, and prejudices.
The errors and disagreements of people in recognizing the single truth are not because reason in people is not one or because it cannot show them the single truth, but because they do not believe in it.
If they believed in their reason, they would find a way to compare the testimony of reason in themselves with its testimony in others.
And having found this method of mutual verification, they would become convinced that reason is one, despite the fact that, due to different degrees of strength of the organ of reason—thinking—it shows different things.
With reason it is the same as with sight. Just as the organs of sight—the eyes—reveal to people physical horizons of different radii, not because of the absence of unity in the laws of vision, but due to different degrees of farsightedness or points of view (in the literal sense), so too the organ of reason—thinking—reveals to people different mental and moral horizons, not because of the absence of unity in the laws of thinking, but due to differences either in degrees of mental farsightedness or points of view (in the figurative sense).
And just as in the matter of surveying the physical horizon, the one-sidedness of individual particular points of view is corrected by uniting them into one common, for example highest, point of view (in the literal sense of this word), while the difference in degrees of farsightedness is equalized by optical instruments—spectacles, binoculars, telescopes—so too in the matter of studying the moral and spiritual horizons, the same one-sidedness of individual points of view is corrected by a similar unification into one common, higher point of view; the difference in degrees of mental farsightedness is balanced with the help of enlightenment, the best organ of such equalization being the word issuing from the mouths of the wisest people.
The sage assists the independent birth in people of their own ideas and feelings, placed in them from eternity. His role is fully comparable to that of a telescope, which does not grant sight to the blind but only strengthens the sight of even the poorest eyes. Socrates compared the sage to a midwife, who does not grant a woman a child but only helps her bring forth her own.
But the cause of people’s disagreement in recognizing the single truth lies not only in the difference of points of view and degrees of understanding. The cause of such disagreement also lies in people’s self-love, thanks to which very often a person, having already inwardly recognized the reasonableness of his interlocutor’s arguments, nevertheless continues to defend the opinion he has already expressed.
—Fyodor Strakhov
Translator’s Notes:
- Schopenhauer’s text comes from his philosophical writings on the nature of human reason and its susceptibility to error and manipulation.
- Fyodor Strakhov (not to be confused with the more famous Nikolai Strakhov) was a follower of Tolstoy who lived at Yasnaya Polyana and helped compile several of Tolstoy’s anthologies.
- The reading presents reason both as humanity’s great gift (the basis for truth-seeking) and potential weakness (when misused for indoctrination or self-justification).
- “Chiliasts” refers to millenarian movements; “auto-da-fé” were the public executions during the Inquisition.