If
ethics must include
sin, its
ideality is lost. The more it remains in its ideality, and yet never becomes
inhuman enough to lose sight of reality, but corresponds with this by willing to suggest itself as a task for every man, in such a way as to make him the true man, the whole man, the man
kat exohin, all the greater is the tension of the difficulty it proposes. In the fight to realise the task of ethics sin shows itself not as something which only casually belongs to-a casual individual, but sin
withdraws deeper and deeper as a deeper and deeper
presupposition, as a presupposition which goes well beyond the individual. Now all is lost for ethics, and it has contributed to the loss of all. There has, come to the fore a category which lies entirely outside its province.
Original sin makes everything still more desperate - that is to say, it settles the difficulty, not, however, by the help of ethics but by the help of
dogmatics. As all ancient thought and speculation were founded upon the assumption that thought had reality, so also all ancient ethics upon the assumption that virtue is realisable.
Scepticism of sin is entirely foreign to
paganism. For the ethical
consciousness, sin is what an error is in relation to knowledge, it is the particular exception which proves nothing.
With dogmatics begins the science which, in contrast to that science of ethics which can strictly be called ideal, starts with reality. It begins with the real in order to raise it up into the ideality. It does not deny the presence of sin, on the contrary, it assumes it, and explains it by assuming original sin. However, since dogmatics is very seldom treated purely, one will often find original sin drawn into its domain in such a way that the impression of the heterogeneous originality of dogmatics does not strike the eye but is obscured, which happens also when one finds in it a dogma about angels, about the Holy Scripture, etc. Dogmatics therefore should not explain original sin but expound it by assuming it, like that vortex the Greeks talked so much about, a something originating movement, upon which no science can lay its hand.
That such is the case with dogmatics will readily be admitted when one finds leisure to understand for- a second time Schleiermacher's immortal services" to this science. People long ago deserted him when they chose Hegel, and yet Schleiermacher was in the beautiful Greek sense a thinker who could talk of what he has known, whereas Hegel, in spite of his remarkable and colossal learning, reminds us nevertheless again and again by his performance that he was in the German sense a professor of philosophy on a big scale, who รก tout prix must explain all things.
The new science then begins with dogmatics, in the same sense that the immanent science begins with metaphysics. Here ethics finds its place again as the science which has the dogmatic consciousness of reality as a task for reality. This ethic does not ignore sin, and its ideality does not consist in making ideal requirements, but its ideality consists in the penetrating consciousness of reality, of the reality of sin, yet not, be it observed, with metaphysical frivolity or psychological concupiscence.
One readily sees the difference of the movement, and that the ethic of which we are now speaking belongs to another order. The first ethic foundered upon the sinfulness of the individual. So far from being able to explain this, the difficulty had to become still greater and the riddle more enigmatic, for the fact that the sin of the individual widens out and becomes the sin of the whole race. At this juncture came dogmatics and helped by the doctrine of original sin. The new ethics presupposes dogmatics and along with that original sin, and by this it now explains the sin of the individual, while at the same time it presents ideality as a task, not however by a movement from above down, but from below up.
It is well known that Aristotle used the name proto philosophia the first philosophy and denoted by that more especially metaphysics, although he included also a part of what to our notion belongs to theology. It is entirely natural that in paganism theology should be treated in this place; it evinces the same lack of infinite penetrating reflection which accounts for the fact that in paganism the theater had reality as a sort of divine worship. If now one will waive the objection to this ambiguity, we might retain this name and understand by proto philosophia the totality of science, we might describe it as ethnic, the nature of it being immanence or use the Greek term "recollection"; and understand by secunda philosophia that of which the nature is "repetition".
{Schelling recalled this Aristotelian name to favour his distinction between negative and positive philosophy. By negative philosophy he understood "logic," that was clear enough; on the other hand it was not so clear to me what he really understood by "positive," except in so far as it remained indubitable that positive philosophy was that which he himself provided. However, it is not feasible to go into that, since I have nothing to hold on to, except my own interpretation.
Of this Constantine Constantius has reminded us by pointing out that immanence founders upon "interest". It is in fact with this concept that reality first comes into view.}
The concept of sin does not properly belong in any science; only the second ethics can deal with its apparition but not with its origin. If any other science were to discuss it, the concept would be confused. For example, coming closer to our theme, if psychology were to do so.
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