“Happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.”

—Spinoza, Ethics, V, 42

“Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.”

—Genesis 3:5

To Socrates belongs the merit of having created what was later called “autonomous ethics.” But it was also Socrates who laid the foundations of scientific knowledge. He was the first to distinguish the “morally good” from the “pleasant,” the “morally evil” from the “bad.” At the same time he taught that virtue is knowledge, that the man who knows cannot but be virtuous. But since Socrates there was introduced into philosophy the enigmatic “passing over into another realm” that the opposition of “good” and “evil” (in the moral sense) to “pleasant” and “bad” makes possible. When one begins to speak of the bad, one generally glides—without effort, without wishing it, without even realizing it—into the morally evil, just as one airily substitutes, as if the thing happened of itself, the morally good for the pleasant or vice versa . . .

Hegel’s words that I have just quoted, as well as Spinoza’s declaration, contain a problem that is worth studying closely. Whatever philosophic question is presented to us, we discover in it obvious traces of the confusion that Socrates openly admitted when one identifies knowledge with virtue; and even those philosophers who in no way shared the fundamental postulate of Socratic thought could not, or perhaps did not wish to, avoid this identification. It might be said that this confusion constitutes the “point on which philosophy stands or falls,” that philosophy would lose its raison d’être if it renounced this mistaken substitution or (what is perhaps still more terrible) if it admitted that it lives only thanks to this substitution. Yet no one today would identify knowledge with virtue. The most limited mind realizes that one can know and at the same time be full of vice just as one can be ignorant and at the same time a saint. How is it, then, that Socrates did not see what common sense today clearly perceives? No one dreams of raising this question. Still less does one dream of asking himself: can philosophy exist if common sense is right, if the wisest among men was grossly deceived when he proclaimed that virtue and knowledge are one and the same thing?

It is generally assumed that German idealism—in the person of Kant and of his successors, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel—finally and definitively overcame Spinozism. This judgment of history is correct only in the sense that toward the end of their careers the German idealists, those even who like Fichte and Schelling could call Spinoza their first philosophic love, tried by every means to draw a sharp line of demarcation between themselves and Spinoza. People esteemed Spinoza but they feared him and moved far away from him. Leibniz argued with Locke in a respectful and friendly tone, while in his polemic against Spinoza an icy hostility breaks through: he did not wish to be confused with the author of the Ethics. This hostility is also to be discerned in Kant when he speaks of Spinoza. As for Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, one might believe from their attitude toward Spinoza that they had left him far behind and had completely rid themselves of him. But the development of German philosophy testifies to the contrary. Kant was indeed further removed from Spinoza than his successors. What separated Kant from Spinoza was submitted in the post-Kantian philosophy to the sharpest criticism.

As German idealism developed it drew ever nearer to Spinozism, and we are justified in considering Hegel’s “Philosophy of the Spirit,” in its content if not in its form, as the restitutio in integrum of Spinozism. Hegel affirmed that philosophy must not be edifying. Spinoza said that he was seeking not the best but the true philosophy. As for Socrates, he identified virtue with knowledge, or to use his formula: nothing bad can happen to a virtuous man, nothing good can happen to a wicked man. It seems then that Spinoza and Hegel took their departure from a principle sharply opposed to that of Socrates. Spinoza wrote in the Ethics that daily experience shows us that successes (good) and failures (bad) are distributed equally among the just and the impious. Hegel, of course, was completely in accord with Spinoza in this matter. In his Philosophy of Religion he affirms that a miracle, as a breaking of the natural relationships of things, would be violence against the spirit. Hegel shows himself in this case even more Spinozist than Spinoza himself. Spinoza appeals to daily experience which convinces him that successes and failures are distributed indifferently among the good and the wicked. This knowledge, like all empirical knowledge, is still not the highest, true knowledge (the tertium genus cognitionis, cognitio intuitiva) that philosophy seeks. Hegel does not in any way appeal to experience; what he knows, he knows before all experiences. He does not need “experience.” He, like Spinoza, needs tertium genus cognitionis, and he is not content with the simple fact but finds for it a foundation in the very structure of being. If misfortune struck only the impious and if the just alone knew success, this would be a miracle; but a miracle is violence against the spirit. Consequently, since the spirit does not tolerate violence, virtue—to employ the language of Socrates—is one thing and knowledge is another.

This is the meaning of Spinoza’s words, this is also the meaning of Hegel’s words. And yet, Spinoza and Hegel followed the way opened up by Socrates: throughout their work they never ceased to develop the idea that virtue and knowledge are one and the same thing, that nothing bad can happen to a just man and nothing good to a wicked man. Not only could not and would not their philosophy renounce edification, but it was precisely in edification that it saw its principal, one could even say its unique, task. Spinoza concluded on an inspired note the reflections on God and the soul that he set forth in the first two parts of the Ethics: “How useful the knowledge of this doctrine is for the conduct of life. . . . First, inasmuch as it teaches us to act solely according to the decree of God, and to be participants in the divine nature, and so much the more, as we perform more perfect actions and more and more understand God. . . . This doctrine then . . . teaches us wherein our highest happiness or beatitude consists, namely, solely in the knowledge of God. . . . Secondly, inasmuch as it teaches us how we ought to conduct ourselves with regard to the gifts of fortune or things that are not in our power . . . namely, to await and endure both faces of fortune with equanimity.”¹

Hegel is, in this respect, in no way outdone by Spinoza. Having taken up, against Kant, the defense of the ontological argument, he says in his Logic: “Man must, through thought, raise himself to a generality in which it is really indifferent to him . . . whether he does or does not exist, that is, whether he does or does not exist in finite life, etc., so that si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae²—as a Roman said, and the Christian must feel himself still more in this state of indifference.” Try to remove from Spinoza his docet (it teaches) and his quomodo nos gerere debeamus (how we ought to conduct ourselves)—what will remain of his philosophy? And what will remain of the ontological argument if man does not consent “to raise himself to a generality in which it is really indifferent to him whether he does or does not exist”—as Hegel translated into his own language Spinoza’s suggestion that “we ought to await and endure both faces of fortune with equanimity”?

Jesting remarks often pass for arguments, and Hegel’s irony produced a certain effect, even though his comparison was completely false. Did Kant begin by asking himself how he should philosophize, and did he attack philosophic problems only after having obtained an answer to this first question? Kant finished his Critique of Pure Reason at the age of fifty-seven; he had already been occupied with philosophy for many years without asking himself whether the methods of searching for truth that he, like everyone else, used in the realm of the exact sciences could be applied to the solution of metaphysical problems. It was only in the sixth decade of his life—whether under the influence of Hume’s “skepticism” or struck by the antinomies that he had encountered at the limits of thought—that Kant, as he himself relates, awoke from his dogmatic slumber; it was then that there arose in him the doubt that was to lead him to the “critique” of reason: are the methods of searching for truth that have been elaborated by the exact sciences, and that give such excellent results, inapplicable to metaphysical problems?

It is hardly to be admitted that Hegel himself did not understand how little Kant resembled the ridiculous scholastic. Apparently he simply was not able to answer Kant, and he realized at the same time that, were the “critique” of reason carried through, the very foundations of human thought would be ruined. That this disturbing thought was not entirely strange to Hegel is to be divined from certain reflections in his Phenomenology of the Spirit: “Meanwhile, if the fear of making a mistake sets up a distrust of knowledge which, without any such scruples, goes about its work and really knows, it is not to be conceived why, conversely, a distrust of this distrust should not be set up, so that this fear of making a mistake is already itself a mistake.”

Distrust and distrust of the distrust! Is there any place in philosophy for such a struggle between distrusts? Kant knew before Hegel—and he spoke of it sufficiently in his book—that the exact sciences have no need of the critique of reason, and they can calmly accomplish their task without at all concerning themselves with the doubts and anxieties of the philosophers; nothing is more foreign to them than distrust of their work. But this is not the meaning of Hegel’s remark. The important thing is that there came to Hegel’s mind the thought that one could trust knowledge, but one could likewise distrust it. He immediately brushes aside this thought, it is true, by saying “what is called fear of error is rather to be recognized as fear of truth.” But it is hardly probable that this consideration can make the reader forget that Hegel himself felt at times uneasily that one could trust knowledge but that one could also refuse to trust it, and to the distrust of knowledge there was nothing else to oppose than distrust of the distrust. For those who make scientific knowledge the ideal of philosophy, “the distrust of distrust” is a truly shattering thought. It turns out, then, that in the last resort knowledge is based on the trust that we accord to it and that it is up to man to decide, to choose freely, whether knowledge deserves his trust or not.

What is to be done with this freedom? And even if it should appear that fear of error in this case is fear of knowledge, this would in no way simplify the situation: if knowledge inspires fear, it is perhaps because it really hides in itself something terrible against which man must guard himself. The fear of knowledge poses a problem as difficult as that which underlies the distrust of knowledge. And, of course, the philosopher must, before everything else, in some way overcome his distrust and his fears. As long as he sought truth naively without suspecting that there could be in his methods of search a defect which prevents man from recognizing truth even when he encounters it on his way, as long as he was also naively convinced that knowledge must be beneficial for man, the philosopher could calmly give himself over to his task. It seemed to him that trust is founded only on knowledge and that knowledge alone is capable of driving away all terrors. But suddenly it turns out that knowledge cannot found itself on itself, that it demands that trust be placed in it, and that not only does it not drive away terrors but on the contrary provokes them.

If Hegel had decided to plumb this thought to its depths, perhaps he would have seen that Kant’s sin was not in having criticized reason but in never having been able to decide to fulfill the promise he had made of giving us a critique of reason. Spinoza said: “What altar will he who insults the majesty of reason build for himself?” Kant could have taken this phrase as the motto of his “critique.” And, indeed, to criticize reason—is this not to commit an offence against its sovereign rights and to render oneself guilty of laesio majestatis? Who has the right to criticize reason? What is the power that will dare put reason in its place and deprive it of its scepter? Kant, it is true, affirmed that he had limited the rights of reason in order to open the way to faith. But Kant’s faith is a faith within the limits of reason; it is reason itself but under another name. Hegel, who spoke of “distrust of distrust,” was—if you please—more radical, more daring than Kant; but, of course, in words only. In fact Hegel had neither the audacity nor the desire to stop for a moment and ask himself why he had such trust in reason and knowledge and whence this trust came to him. More than once he brushed up against this question but always passed it by.

A strange thing! Hegel hardly appreciated the Bible; he did not like the New Testament, and as for the Old, he despised it. And yet, when there arose before him the fundamental philosophic problem, forgetting all that he said about Scripture, he sought support in the biblical account of original sin. Hegel writes: “This is found in another form in the old story of the fall of man—the serpent did not, according to it, deceive the man; for God says, ‘See, Adam is become as one of us, to know good and evil.’” Again in his meditations on the fate of Socrates (in the same Lectures on the History of Philosophy), we read: “The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—of the knowledge that is of reason out of itself—[is] the universal principle of philosophy for all later times.”

It is not only Hegel who thinks thus. All of us are persuaded that the serpent who enticed our primal forefathers to taste of the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not deceive them, that the deceiver was God who had forbidden Adam to eat of these fruits in the fear that the man would become like God. Whether it was proper for Hegel to appeal to Scripture is another question. Hegel could permit himself everything and his disciples, whom the atheism (or pantheism) of Spinoza angered, listened piously to Hegel’s discourses and almost considered his philosophy the only possible apology for Christianity. Yet here again, Hegel was only repeating Spinoza’s thought, with the difference that Spinoza declared openly and forthrightly that there is no truth in the Bible and that the sole source of truth is reason, whereas Hegel spoke of revelation at the very moment when in the “dispute” between God and the serpent he took the side of the latter. There is no doubt that if the problem of truth had been posed in this form to Spinoza, he would have given his full approval to Hegel. If it is necessary to choose between God who warns us against the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the serpent who extols these fruits to us, the educated European cannot hesitate; he will follow the serpent. Daily experience convinces us that learned people enjoy great advantages over the ignorant. Consequently, he who seeks to discredit knowledge in our eyes lies, while the truth speaks through the mouth of him who glorifies knowledge. To be sure, as I have already said, according to Spinoza and to Hegel who followed him in everything, experience does not give us perfect knowledge (tertium genus cognitionis). Thus, when it is a question of choosing between the serpent and God, we are in the same situation as when we must choose between distrust of knowledge and distrust of distrust. In difficult moments reason refuses to guide us, and then we are obliged to decide at our own risk and peril without any guarantee that our decision will be justified by its results.

Such has always been the tradition of human thought: distrust of reason has always been considered a crime oflaesio majestatis. Plato said that the greatest misfortune that could come to a man was to become a “hater of reason.” For Aristotle, knowledge is universal and necessary knowledge (katholou gar hai epistêmai panton, ex anankês ara estin to epistêton). From Socrates on, we have once and for all renounced what constitutes the essential problem of knowledge and, at the same time, the metaphysical problem. The aim of the Socratic thought was precisely to protect knowledge from every attempt at criticism, as appears in that statement which at first glance appears precisely the condition and the beginning of all criticism—“I know that I know nothing” (a statement which, according to Socrates’ own testimony, made the oracle declare him the wisest of all men)—but which actually kills in the germ the very possibility of all criticism. Indeed only he who is convinced that knowledge is the sole source of truth will say he knows that he knows nothing. Not for nothing did Hegel, in connection with Socrates’ fate, recall the tree of knowledge and the words of the tempting serpent, “You shall be like God.” Only he who has tasted the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil is capable of handing himself over so unreservedly to the enchantments of knowledge. For Socrates, to despise knowledge was a mortal sin. He reproached the poets, mocking them for seeking to attain truth by ways other than those of knowledge. And he could not find words harsh enough for those who, knowing nothing, believed that they did know something. Whence comes this unshakable assurance that knowledge alone brings man the truth? And what does this assurance that we have all inherited from Socrates mean? Did the oracle seduce Socrates as the biblical serpent had once seduced Adam? Or did the seduction lie elsewhere, and did Pythia, like Eve, only offer Socrates the fruit that she had herself tasted at the suggestion of a p...