Realism

Fear first made gods in the world. (Petronius)

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Let the race of mankind

fear the gods!

For they hold dominion

over them in their eternal hands,

and can demand

what they please of us.

(Goethe)

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When the first objectively tempered savage thought for the first time about himself and the world, it was not a deceptive image which floated in his soul: he had seen the truth through a very thin veil.

He had seen on one side himself and his force, his often victorious, proud, splendid I; - on the other side powers, which intervene with his individual might, powers towards which he sometimes felt completely powerless.

The world-visualization which was built on this correct apercu, was polytheism: the savage truth.

Around these both points, like the two focal points of an ellipse, so around the in his egoism contained I and around the not-I, the sum of all these other individuals of this world, rotated and rotate all religions and all philosophies, all (nature-) religions and great ethical religions, all philosophical systems.

That which separates particular religions and particular philosophical systems from each other, is only the relationship, in which the I is placed to the outside world. Sometimes the greatest power is assigned to the I, sometimes to the outer world, sometimes all power in the I, then in all power to the outer world, which shows itself to every impartial clear eye of a thinker always as the result of many forces, but only by the savage, later on it was made into a hidden, holy, all-powerful unity. And this unity was sometimes placed outside the world while only controlling it, sometimes it was placed inside the world as stimulation of it (world soul).

The correct relation of the individual to the outer world and the correct determination of the being of these limbs build the truth, the sublime light, whose footprint the noble one follows, this bowl of the grail, whose sweet liquid is the only thing every Parsifal can desire, after having voluntarily banished himself, fulfilled with disgust, from the table of life.

And all of them, every one of them, who have searched the truth, the wise, the great founders of religions, prophets and geniuses have seen the light of truth, some have seen it more pure than the others, and few completely pure. And why have they all seen the light of truth? Because it is in essence about something extremely simple: only two limbs, which the stupidest human recognizes, should be contemplatively examined and brought in a relation to each other. The true correct relations demands only a free judgement-power, since nature correctly shows it at every moment. The sphinx of the world-riddle has, from the moment when a human for the first time stood still for her and looked into her eyes, spoken:

In my eyes lies the key to the world-riddle. Stay calm and keep yourself free from confusion, then you will recognize it and thereby solve the riddle!

and she repeated these words to every Parsifal who came to her and she will repeat it until the end of the human race, for everyone who searches her.

That which was recognized in the eyes of the sphinx in this search for the truth since the beginning of culture until our present day will be our topic, and first of all that which is summarized in the concept Realism. We will thereby come to the surprising conclusion, that the Indian pantheism is despite its idealism: pure naked, over-the-top realism which overturned itself.

Before everything we must precisely define the concept Realism.

Since Kant under realism (naïve realism, critique-less realism) is understood every view on nature which is established without being preceded by a precise examination of the human cognition. The world is precisely taken as they eye sees it, the ear hears it, brief, how the senses perceive it. One can therefore also say that realism skips over the perceiving I.

Critical idealism however is every view of nature which sees the world as an image, a mirror in the mind of the I, and emphasizes and establishes the dependency of this mirror-image on the mirror: the cognition. One can therefore also say, that critical idealism makes the perceiving I, its foothold, the main issue.

Naïve realism and critical idealism do not fill up the complete spheres of the concepts realism and idealism, while they rest upon the perceiving I. They are joined by absolute realism and absolute idealism.

We have therefore in regard to the pure perceiving I:

1. naïve realism,

2. critical idealism,

and in regard to the complete I:

1. absolute realism,

2. absolute idealism, which I also call the thing-in-itself-idealism.

Absolute realism skips over the complete, perceiving and willing I.

Absolute idealism raises the perceiving and willing I, the single individual, to the throne of the world.

From these explanations becomes already clear, that the phenomenality of the world can perfectly co-exist with absolute realism. The individual is a dead puppet: his mind and his will, his whole being is phenomenal.

The explanations of above are important to retain.

What was the core of all religions of natural people’s, which lied in the shine of culture’s dawn?

Their core was the extremely loosely with the world connected individual.

The single human ate, drank and begot. He killed animals, reared animals and ordered the field. When a poisonous snake gave him a mortal wound, or when a lion broke an arm, when he battled with fellow humans and lost, then he saw in all this nothing remarkable, nothing astonishing, nothing fearsome, nothing wondrous. The snake, lion and fellow human have exercised a violence, which was limited and completely known. He knew that he, under the right circumstances, could kill the fellow humans, lions and snakes. What would become of them? They were dead and no trace of them could be found anymore.

Human calmly dealt with his issues and didn’t ponder. He relied upon his own proud I which, as long as he could exercise its power, could completely satisfy him. He rested upon himself, on his firm individual living ground, which he recognized as small, limited by other individuals, his equals, but nevertheless a firm, solid, powerful ground. But in case a plague broke out among his herd, if heaven didn’t fertilize his seeds or if the glowing sun sucked away all force from the crops and dried them up like freshly mown grass, if the firmament became black and under frightening thunders heavenly fire fell upon his wife and children, if the earth quacked and swallowed his hut without trace, all his possessions, if sickness made him weak and powerless and let him with horror look in the cold night of death – then he fell down on earth in desperation, his body was shaking and his individual proud living ground was wavering, there he lost his individual might and importance completely in his consciousness, there he contritely prayed to the invisible violence which presented itself through the earthquake, plague, the heavenly fire, the scorching heat of the sun, his sickness, in all its almightiness, he gave it everything, also his own force, and in his anxiety he felt as he were a pure nothing.

The snake, lion and fellow humans he could kill, but not the heavenly fire, the sun, the earthquake,- these were powers which were totally independent of him, since he was totally dependent on them.

But when the thunder went away, the earthquake stopped, brief, when nature was back in its normal activity – then he relied on his proud I again, then he rested again on himself, on his firm individual living ground.

The polytheism of nature people’s shows the great truth, an important one-sidedness and a very remarkable unclarity.

The great truth is:

1. that the individual stands on equal footing next the remaining world, is a force like them,

2. that this remaining world is composed of individuals, is a collective-unity, not a basic unity.

The important one-sidedness is:

that one moment the individual gave himself full might, then the remaining world.

The remarkable unclarity is:

that the individual indeed very correctly recognized the might of the remaining world as activities of single individuals, but didn’t build it further to the knowledge, that these single activities are connected and interrelated and indeed so intimately, as if they deflocculate from a basic unity.

This is why above I also called polytheism the savage truth.

This savage truth was seized only by a few brilliant minds, which were due social arrangement in the favorable position, to make it their life task, to look in the eyes of the sphinx: by privilege they were relieved from the harsh struggle for daily bread.

Those geniuses, “whose names God only knows”, started to pull, while staying in polytheism, the weak bond between individual and world more tightly. They extended the activity of the gods into the human heart too. In the original completely savage polytheism no god, no fetish, no demon had power over the human heart. Their force reached only to the skin of the individual. The possessions and lives of humans depended upon supernatural powers, its deeds in life however flew from his self-delighting heart alone.

This relationship was changed by the reformers of the savage polytheism with firm hand and by this they entered he road, which necessarily leads to absolute realism at its end; for, as I said above, the great truth of savage polytheism is that:

that the individual stands on equal footing next the remaining world, is a force like them.

The reformers now delivered one part of the individual’s heart, not the complete heart, to the supernatural powers, when they taught, that certain good or bad deeds don’t immediately flow from the will of the individual, but only mediately due strange demonical or divine stimulation, i.e. they extended the power-sum of the outside of the individual remaining cosmos at the price of the individual’s might.

This change was certainly an improvement of the savage polytheism, but also a dangerous one. It was an improvement, because it expressed the great truth,

that an individual cannot act without an outer motive which is totally independent from him;

but it was also a dangerous improvement, because it was made without philosophical clarity and the correct principle relation of individual to the world was moved. It placed the single human one step lower on the fatal ladder, on which he ends as a dead puppet, where he lies completely in the power of a basic unity.

In the further course of the reformation of polytheism, a new, equally dangerous improvement appeared. Here for the first time we encounter out of the darkness of the ancient times an immortal name: Zarathustra (Zoroaster).

When he recognized that the sun, the air, fire, water and the earth sometimes are active in a destructive and sometimes in a beneficial way, and indeed work individually, but that nevertheless an invisible interrelation exists between these single things and that their activity exists, he taught the great truth

about the dynamical interrelation of the things,

but at the price of the fundamental-truth specified above

that the remaining world is composed of individuals.

He did not separate these both truths, because he was not able to. Philosophy must, like everything on earth, go through a course of development. In that time the human mind wasn’t clear and powerful enough, to accomplish this extraordinarily important separation of the world composed of individuals only and the invisible dynamical interrelation which contains them.

This improvement was also dangerous insofar it placed the individual again one step lower, giving him the deep imprint of a powerless creature, a puppet. Zarathustra didn’t already make him a complete puppet. He also stayed within the boundaries of polytheism, by bringing it to its most simple expression, dualism. The Light god (Ormuzd), supported by a legion of good angles battles with the God of darkness (Ahriman, Satan, devil), supported by a legion of loyal demons. They battle as it were in the air and the reflection of this battle in the human breast is the impulse to good and bad deeds, whose execution still depends on the individual wills. As said already, the individual is also in the teaching of the genius Persian not a pure puppet, but still has self-delighting power. The footing however, where he can exercise it, is very small.

Now only one step remained and the human mind had to make it. When it was made, the complete road of realism was covered. It was then exactly like in the song of Erlkönig:

In his arms, the child was dead, (Goethe)

i.e. the dead individual, a lifeless puppet lies in the arms of absolute realism, galvanized by an almighty unitary being.

What has first of all happened in Jewish monotheism and Indian pantheism?

Before everything the high truth

about the dynamical interrelation of the things

was recorded with unsurpassable clarity. The dualism of Zarathustra was pressed away with bold hand and its place was taken by the strictest monism. The course of the world was no longer determined by two mighty deities, who continuously battled with each other, instead it was the outflow of a single God, next to which there are no other gods. Instead of an erratic world development, the whimsical play of good and bad spirits, a necessary progress according unchangeable laws came forward, according to a wise world-plan.

How this unity was imagined, is a total side-issue. If it wasn’t imagined at all, or as a spirit, a materialness infinite force, or if one thought of a humanlike being with nice eyes and a long white beard, all of this is of accessory meaning. The main issue remains the recognition of a dynamical interrelation of the world, a unitary management of it and a world course, which bears the imprint of necessity.

But this truth was bought dearly, disastrously dearly at the price of other truths.

The great truth of polytheism,

1. that the individual stands on equal footing next the remaining world, is a force like them,

2. that this remaining world is composed of individuals, is a collective-unity, not a basic unity,

received a mortal wound. The principle relation of the individual to the world, which nature always expresses truthfully, never lying, for all attentive and reasonable ones, was completely confused and made unnatural. All might was taken away of the individual and given to the unity. The individual possessed no might anymore, was a pure zero, a dead puppet; God however possessed all might, was the inexhaustible wealth, the primordial source of all life.

What separates monotheism from pantheism, the ramifications of both these great religious systems in general, whose profundity fulfills the observer always and always again with admiration, all of this has no worth for our research. For us the main issue is that, which they have in common. They have one common root: the absolute realism and both have exactly the same crown: the dead individual which lies in the hands of an almighty God.

But how is it possible, will be asked, that the truth can battle with the truth? How is it possible, that in the course of development of the human mind the truth was recognized only at the price of the truth?

These questions ask the world riddle in the point, where it must drop all veils and must show itself.

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TN: This is followed by a large section about ancient Judaism, with many Biblical quotes. (…)

David and the ancient Jews in general, were pure realists in the strictest sense, according to which the nature of the outer world is identical with the image of it in our mind (naïve realism). Just this characteristic, which relied on a sharp understanding only, protected them from the absolute realism, which as I defined, skips over the whole individual, its perceiving and willing part. With the lips they certainly drew the consequences of absolute realism: almighty God and dead creature, bit their sharp penetrating mind did not let loose in their heart: the real individual, the fact of inner and outer experience, as little as they could believe in an immortality of the soul or punishment for unmoral or reward for moral deeds in another life than the earthly life. Also from this regard their sober mind stayed with the statement of nature, which leaves about the essence of death no unclarity.

He completely trusted his senses and his cognition: no trace of critical idealism to be found in the Old or New Testament. If an Indian would have said to David: Jerusalem exists only such, as you see it, in your imagination; without your eyes it would be something completely different; if he had said to him: your body is an appearance, which falls and stands with the mirror in yourself, - then he would be met with overwhelming ridicule, thrown out of the guest house and considered to be a jester.

Paradoxical as it may sound, so true it is: the realism of the Jews has protected them from the poison of realism; for one has to distinguish very well cognition–realism (naïve realism) from absolute realism, as I have shown at the beginning.