THE ENLIGHTENMENT
543
citing the "authorities," especially "the philosopher" Aristotle, still
does not follow their dicta but lets the facts decide, then there is
an element of enlightenment even in this pious emancipation, as
there is in the experiments of his pupil Albert-an element of
sovereign criticism. The Enlightenment has been traced even further
back, through the Roman Stoics and the Greek Sophists to Socrates,
the "Father of the Enlightenment"- the beginning of all evil or the
great seeker after truth.
If
anyone wishes, he may see the beginning
of the Enlightenment in the earliest known philosophers, in the pre–
Socratics, in the pretension to philosophize at all: some see this as
the beginning of the human spirit, others as the decisive victory of
the opponents of the soul, the betrayal of the unity of life, the loss
of magic depths, the death-sickness of the human animal. Is Apollo
and his Hellas the beginning of mankind proper or the beginning
of the end?- that too is a way of formulating the problem of the
meaning and value of the Enlightenment.
Finally, it is with remarkable ambivalence that the motif of
enlightenment appears in the oldest document of our
J
udaeo-Chris–
tian world, in Genesis: Satan tempts man into curiosity, into eman–
cipation, into knowledge, and into power- all motifs of enlighten–
ment; the apple from the tree of knowledge looks like enlightenment
itself; these first men want to know, and through knowledge to be
like God, and they want it of their own volition, through an act of
progress which is an act of disobedience. There is the whole portrait
of the man ,:\,hom the critic of enlightenment describes as "enlight–
ened." But it would be very short-sighted to deduce from this, with–
out further investigation, that enlightenment is to be condemned.
The existence of man which this account interprets for us is ir–
reversible; since that time man has been enlightened and he cannot
return to "innocence"-indeed the outcast immediately learns that
enlightenment is now one of
his
tasks. "Subdue the earth!"-that
means, among other things: Know, investigate the world, so that
you can command it; you have the right and the duty to know it
and command it. This is a charge which is valid in the world of en–
lightenment, in the "pilgrim state." It does not lead beyond this
world, but it is valid. It is hardly necessary to refer to Kleist's well–
known essay: he sees the dichotomy which has sprung from en–
lightenment overcome not in a retrograde motion, in a return to
