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removed by enlightenment, this is not
ipso facto
true of many kinds
of "protective coloration" and concealment. There is a duty to
be
discreet, a right to secrecy, to privacy.
No one may rightfully appeal to truth who,
in
his urge for
enlightenment, does not really want truth itself, but wants to de–
preciate the facts or his opponent. "Debunkers" are seldom the
friends of truth they give themselves out to be. There is no enlighten–
ment based on delight
in
destruction or denigration,
in
doing harm,
on fear of what is profound and great, on a passionate feeling against
the greatness of truth, against mystery. All three great historical
movements of enlightenment of the three last centuries-the classical
in the eighteenth, the Marxist in the nineteenth, and the psychoana–
lytic
in
the twentieth-contain both motifs: the
will
to truth (con–
cerning mankind, concerning history, concerning the "soul") and
the delight in denigration; the latter produced cynicism as an ac–
companiment to the classical Enlightenment and "soapbox economics"
as the degenerate form of Marxism, and here and there it has sullied
and nullified the achievement of modern psychological research.
Yet another motif of the classical Enlightenment must be
critically considered: happiness-be it that of others or one's own.
Rightly understood, it is no less legitimate than the aim of truth
inherent in the process of enlightenment. To maintain oneself and
others can be even more pressing than any theoretical truth; only
in the highest realm,
th~
realm of salvation, do these two efforts
coincide: for salvation is to be found only in truth and truth only in
salvation. But this practical interest in enlightenment can falsify the
will to truth, and with it enlightenment itself: a will merely to use–
ful or pleasure-giving truth can develop, and in unfavorable circum–
stances this can reverse the movement: uncomfortable truths, per–
haps also dark and difficult truths, but above
all
demanding and
obligating truths, are resolved, in a deceptive enlightenment, in favor
of comfortable illusions.
The most significant and ominous of these illusions, which are
given out to be enlightened wisdom, concerns enlightenment itself:
it
is the thesis that enlightenment can totally elucidate the world. We
commonly term this illusion "rationalism." It has immensely for–
warded the business of enlightenment-it is only natural that reason,
that all the powers of the mind, should be strained to the utmost
