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Continuum Studies in Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA

Continuum Studies in Philosophy is a major monograph series from Contin-

uum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across
the whole field of philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to
the field of philosophical research.

Aesthetic in Kant, James Kirwan

Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion, Aaron Preston
Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus, Christopher Brown
Augustine and Roman Virtue, Brian Harding
The Challenge of Relativism, Patrick Phillips
Demands of Taste in Kant’s Aesthetics, Brent Kalar
Derrida: Profanations, Patrick O’Connor
Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, Justin Skirry
Descartes’ Theory of Ideas, David Clemenson
Dialectic of Romanticism, Peter Murphy and David Roberts
Duns Scotus and the Problem of Universals, Todd Bates
Hegel’s Philosophy of Language, Jim Vernon
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, David James
Hegel’s Theory of Recognition, Sybol S. C. Anderson
The History of Intentionality, Ryan Hickerson
Kantian Deeds, Henrik Jøker Bjerre
Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory, Alison Assiter
Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, David A. Roberts
Leibniz Re-interpreted, Lloyd Strickland
Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy, H. O. Mounce
Nietzsche and the Greeks, Dale Wilkerson
Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Delbert Reed
Philosophy of Miracles, David Corner
Platonism, Music and the Listener’s Share, Christopher Norris
Popper’s Theory of Science, Carlos Garcia
Rationality and Feminist Philosophy, Deborah K. Heikes
Role of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Sherry Deveaux
Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, James Delaney
Rousseau’s Theory of Freedom, Matthew Simpson
Spinoza and the Stoics, Firmin DeBrabander
Spinoza’s Radical Cartesian Mind, Tammy Nyden-Bullock
St Augustine and the Theory of Just War, John Mark Mattox
St Augustine of Hippo, R. W. Dyson
Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, Alex Hall
Tolerance and the Ethical Life, Andrew Fiala
Idealism and Existentialism
Hegel and Nineteenth- and
Twentieth-Century European Philosophy

Jon Stewart
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
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© Jon Stewart, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-3399-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley)
Idealism and existentialism : Hegel and nineteenth- and twentieth-century european
philosophy / Jon Stewart.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN 978-1-4411-3399-1
1. Continental philosophy--History. 2. Idealism, German--History.
3. Existentialism--History. 4. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. I. Title.

B803.S83 2010
190.9’034--dc22
2009044700

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
 Contents

Acknowledgments vi
Abbreviations of Primary Texts vii
Preface xiii

Introduction 1

Part I Hegel and German Idealism 9

Chapter 1 Hegel and the Myth of Reason 11
Chapter 2 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic Fragment 24
Chapter 3 The Architectonic of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 41

Part II Between Idealism and Existentialism 71

Chapter 4 Points of Contact in the Philosophy of Religion
of Hegel and Schopenhauer 73
Chapter 5 Kierkegaard’s Criticism of the Absence of Ethics
in Hegel’s System 79
Chapter 6 Kierkegaard’s Criticism of Abstraction and His
Proposed Solution: Appropriation 94
Chapter 7 Kierkegaard’s Recurring Criticism of Hegel’s
“The Good and Conscience” 120
Chapter 8 Hegel and Nietzsche on the Death of Tragedy
and Greek Ethical Life 142

Part III Existentialism 163

Chapter 9 Existentialist Ethics 165
Chapter 10 Merleau-Ponty’s Criticisms of Sartre’s Theory
of Freedom 199
Chapter 11 Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Consciousness
and Bad Faith 215

Notes 229
Bibliography 265
Index 279
 Acknowledgments

This volume would not have been possible if it were not for the coopera-
tion of a number of journals and publishing houses. In this regard I would
like to thank the following for generously allowing me to reprint these
essays here: ARCHE Journal of Philosophy, Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great
Britain, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung,
Kronos, Nietzscheforschung. Ein Jahrbuch, The Owl of Minerva, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Philosophy Today, and Prima Philosophia.
I would also like to thank a number of people for being such gracious
hosts to a number of colloquia that I have given over the years and who
thus provided me with the opportunity to present my ideas in a formal con-
text. This book has benefited enormously from their feedback. Under this
rubric, I would like to express my gratitude to Stacey E. Ake, Vilhjálmur
Árnason, Béla Bacsó, Joseph Ballan, Lee Barrett, Paul Cruysberghs, István
Czakó, Roe Fremstedal, Zoltán Gyenge, Hans Ruin, Robert Stern, Antoni
Szwed, and Curtis Thompson. I owe Daniel Conway an enormous debt of
gratitude for his useful ideas about how to shape the general concept of
this volume. I am most grateful to my brother Loy Stewart for his tireless
proofreading and suggestions for stylistic improvements. Finally, I would
like to thank my wife Katalin Nun for her work formatting and editing the
final versions of this text.
 Abbreviations of Primary Texts

Hegel’s Writings

Aesthetics Hegel’s Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, vols 1–2, trans.

T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975, 1998.
Briefe Briefe von und an Hegel, vols 1–4, ed. Johannes
Hoffmeister. Hamburg: Meiner 1961. Cited by volume
and page number.
EL The Encyclopaedia Logic. Part One of the Encyclopaedia
of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. T. F. Gerats, W. A.
Suchting and H. S. Harris. Indianapolis: Hackett
1991. Cited by paragraph number (§).
First Phil. of Spirit First Philosophy of Spirit in G. W. F. Hegel, System of
Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, ed. and trans.
H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox. Albany: SUNY Press
1979. Cited by page number.
Hist. of Phil. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vols 1–3, trans.
E. S. Haldane. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner
1892–6; Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press 1955. Cited by volume and page number.
Jena System The Jena System, 1804–5: Logic and Metaphysics, trans.
and ed. John W. Burbidge and George di Giovanni.
Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press 1986.
Jub. Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe in 20 Bänden, ed.
Hermann Glockner. Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann
Verlag 1928–41.
Letters Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christiane
Seiler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1984.
viii Abbreviations

MW Miscellaneous Writings by G. W. F. Hegel, ed. Jon Stewart.

Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press
2002.
Phil. of Hist. The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree. New York:
Willey Book Co. 1944. Cited by page number.
Phil. of Mind Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and
A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1971. Cited by
paragraph number (§).
Phil. of Religion Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vols 1–3, trans.
E. B. Speirs and J. Burdon Sanderson. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul; New York: The Humanities Press 1962,
1968, 1972. Cited by volume and page number.
Phil. Prop. The Philosophical Propaedeutic, trans. A. V. Miller, ed.
Michael George and Andrew Vincent. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell 1986.
PhS Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller.
Oxford: Clarendon Press 1977. Cited by page
number.
PR Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet,
ed. Allen Wood. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press 1991. Cited by paragraph
number (§).
SL Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller. London:
George Allen and Unwin 1989. Cited by page
number.

Kierkegaard’s Writings

A The Book on Adler, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna

H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.
KW, vol. 24.
B&A Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, vols 1–2,
ed. Niels Thulstrup. Copenhagen: Munksgaard
1953–4.
CA The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte in collabo-
ration with Albert B. Anderson. Princeton: Princeton
University Press 1980. KW, vol. 8.
 Abbreviations ix

CI The Concept of Irony; Schelling Lecture Notes, trans.

Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press 1989. KW, vol. 2.
CUP1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vols 1–2, trans.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press 1992, vol. 1. KW, vol. 12.1.
CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vols 1–2, trans.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press 1992, vol. 2. KW, vol. 12.2.
EO1 Either/Or 1, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987. KW, vol. 3.
EO2 Either/Or 2, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987. KW, vol. 4.
EPW Early Polemical Writings: From the Papers of One Still Living;
Articles from Student Days; The Battle between the Old and
the New Soap-Cellars, trans. Julia Watkin. Princeton:
Princeton University Press 1990. KW, vol. 1.
FT Fear and Trembling; Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University
Press 1983. KW, vol. 6.
JC Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press 1985. KW, vol. 7.
JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols 1–6, ed.
and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press
1967–78. Cited by volume number and entry num-
ber. Index and Composite Collation, vol. 7, by Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington and London:
Indiana University Press 1978.
KJN Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols 1–11, ed. Niels
Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas,
Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble
and K. Brian Söderquist. Princeton and Oxford:
Princeton University Press 2007–.
KW Kierkegaard’s Writings, vols 1–26, trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University
Press 1978–2000.
x Abbreviations

LD Kierkegaard: Letters and Documents, trans. Henrik

Rosenmeier. Princeton: Princeton University Press
1978. KW, vol. 25.
M The Moment and Late Writings, trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University
Press 1998. KW, vol. 23.
P Prefaces, trans. Todd W. Nichol. Princeton: Princeton
University Press 1998. KW, vol. 9.
Pap. Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols 1–16, ed. P. A. Heiberg,
V. Kuhr and E. Torsting. Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1909–48; supplemented by Niels Thulstrup; Copen-
hagen: Gyldendal 1968–78. Cited by volume number
and entry number.
PC Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press
1991. KW, vol. 20.
PF Philosophical Fragments; Johannes Climacus, or De omni-
bus dubitandum est, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna
H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.
KW, vol. 7.
PV The Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna
H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.
KW, vol. 22.
R Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983. KW, vol. 6.
SKS Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols 1–28, K1–K28,
ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette
Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup and Alastair McKinnon.
Copenhagen: Gad Publishers 1997– .
SLW Stages on Life’s Way, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna
H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988.
KW, vol. 11.
SUD The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press
1980. KW, vol. 19.
SV1 Samlede Værker, first edition, vols 1–14, ed.
A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange.
Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1901–06.
 Abbreviations xi

TA Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, a

Literary Review, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.
Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978.
KW, vol. 14.

Schopenhauer’s Writings

ZA Zürcher Ausgabe. Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. Arthur

Hübscher. Zürich: Diogenes Verlag 1977.

Nietzsche’s Writings

AC The Anti-Christ, in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-

Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth:
Penguin 1968.
BT The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans.
Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage 1967.
EH Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage
1967.
GS The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York:
Vintage 1974.
KSA Kritische Studienausgabe, vols 1–15, ed. Giorgio Colli
and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
1967–77, 2nd ed. 1988.
TI Twilight of the Idols, in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-
Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth:
Penguin 1968.
WP The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale. New York: Vintage 1967.

Merleau-Ponty’s Writings
Phén Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard 1945.
PP Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and New York:
The Humanities Press 1962.
xii Abbreviations

Sens Sens et Non-Sens. Paris: Nagel 1948.

Signes Signes. Paris: Gallimard 1960.
Signs Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary. Evanston: North-
western University Press 1964.
SNS Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and
Patricia Allen Dreyfus. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press 1964.

Sartre’s Writings

BN Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New

York: Philosophical Library 1956.
EH Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Philip Mairet.
London: Methuen 1948.
EN L’Être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique.
Paris: Gallimard 1943.
LEH L’Existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Nagel 1961.
 Preface

Friends and colleagues have long urged me to publish and in some cases
republish the articles and lectures featured in this volume. Some of these
pieces had been published previously but were languishing in academic
journals. Others had been published in German but never in English. Yet
others were originally oral lectures and thus have never appeared in print.
Still others were essays which for one reason or another remained unpub-
lished. The idea with the present volume was, among other things, to put
together these works in order to make them more generally accessible for
students and scholars of European philosophy.
The first essay, “Hegel and the Myth of Reason,” was originally pub-
lished in The Owl of Minerva (vol. 26, no. 2, 1995, pp. 187–200). This article
was written during my stay as a post-doctoral scholar at the Westfälische
Wilhelms-Universität Münster, in Germany, where I worked from 1992–3
with a grant from the Heinrich Hertz Foundation. It was in part the inspi-
ration for the anthology The Hegel Myths and Legends (Evanston, Illinois:
Northwestern University Press 1996), where it was reprinted (pp. 306–18.)
The essay “Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic Fragment”
is a slightly enlarged version of an essay with the same title, written for
The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (edited
by Frederick C. Beiser. New York: Cambridge University Press 2008,
pp. 74–93). This is the most recent article in the present volume, written in
Copenhagen in 2004, and can be seen as a clear continuation of my previ-
ous works on Hegel’s Phenomenology.
The essay “The Architectonic of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit” was orig-
inally published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (vol. 55, no. 4,
1995, pp. 747–76). It was subsequently reprinted in The Phenomenology of
Spirit Reader: A Collection of Critical Essays (edited by Jon Stewart. Albany,
New York: SUNY Press 1998, pp. 444–77). This work is a brief overview
of the main thesis of my book The Unity of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A
Systematic Interpretation (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press
2000). This article was written during my stay at the Humboldt University
xiv Preface

in Berlin from 1994–5, where I was a post-doctoral scholar financed by the

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The essay “Points of Contact in the Philosophy of Religion of Hegel and
Schopenhauer” was originally published in German as “Berührungspunkte
in der Religionsphilosophie Hegels und Schopenhauers,” in Prima
Philosophia (Band 6, Heft 1, 1993, pp. 3–8). No English translation of it has
appeared previously. This short article was also written during my afore-
mentioned stay at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.
The essay “Kierkegaard’s Criticism of the Absence of Ethics in Hegel’s
System” was also a spin-off from my work on Hegel and Kierkegaard at
the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Copenhagen. It was originally
given as a lecture at the Department of Philosophy at the József Attila
University, Szeged, Hungary, on 7 November 1998, and at the Department
of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, Rumania on November
10, 1998. A somewhat revised version was given at the Department of
Philosophy at Södertörns Högskola in Stockholm, on February 11,
2000. Further incarnations were given as lectures at the Department
of Philosophy and Science Studies at Roskilde University in Denmark
on April 11, 2003; the Department of Aesthetics at the Eötvös Loránd
University, Budapest, on October 13, 2003; the Department of Philosophy
at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba, Hungary, on October
14, 2003; in Warsaw, on December 6, 2003, under the auspices of the
Department of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw; at the Department
of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, on May
12, 2005; and at the Faculty of Law and Social Science at the University
of Akureyri, Iceland, on October 25, 2005. This lecture was published
in ARCHE Journal of Philosophy (Novi Sad), no. 3, 2005, pp. 47–60, and in
Chinese translation in World Philosophy [Shi Jie Zhe Xue] (Beijing: Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences), no. 3, 2006, pp. 22–32.
“Kierkegaard’s Criticism of Abstraction and his Proposed Solution:
Appropriation” was given with slight and major modifications as a paper
at the following institutions: Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, November 9, 2006; Department of English and Philosophy,
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 10, 2006; Department
of Religion, University of Syracuse, Syracuse, New York, November 14, 2006;
Department of Religious Studies, Thiel College, Greenville, Pennsylvania,
November 16, 2006; Department of Philosophy, St Thomas University,
St Paul, Minnesota, December 5, 2006; Philosophy Department, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, September 10,
2008. This piece has never appeared before in English.
 Preface xv

“Kierkegaard’s Recurring Criticism of Hegel’s ‘The Good and

Conscience’” was originally given as a paper at the conference “Hegel And/
Or Kierkegaard,” organized by the Hegel Society of Great Britain and the
Søren Kierkegaard Society of the United Kingdom. This conference was
held at the University of Sheffield on March 3, 2007. This paper was sub-
sequently published in the Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, nos
55–6, 2007, pp. 45–66.
The article “Hegel and Nietzsche on the Death of Tragedy and Greek
Ethical Life” originally appeared in Nietzscheforschung. Ein Jahrbuch (Band 3,
1996, pp. 293–316). This piece was also written during the above-mentioned
research stay at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1994–5.
The next piece, entitled “Existentialist Ethics,” was a commissioned arti-
cle, originally published as “Existentialism,” in the Encyclopedia of Applied
Ethics (edited by Ruth Chadwick; San Diego: Academic Press Inc. 1997,
pp. 203–18). It is reprinted with the kind permission of Elsevier. This
piece was written in Copenhagen during my initial period at the Søren
Kierkegaard Research Centre in 1996.
The article “Merleau-Ponty’s Criticisms of Sartre’s Theory of Freedom”
was first published in Philosophy Today (vol. 39, no. 3, 1995, pp. 311–24). It
was subsequently reprinted in The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty
(edited by Jon Stewart. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press
1998, pp. 197–214). This article was written during a research stay at the
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, from 1993–4, which was funded by
the Belgian American Educational Foundation.
The final piece included in the volume, “Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on
Consciousness and Bad Faith,” stems from the same period in Brussels. It
has never been published previously.
Some of the articles featured here have been slightly revised stylistically.
Occasionally a sentence or paragraph has been added or omitted. Further,
an attempt has been made to harmonize the textual references in the foot-
note apparatus. The articles have been updated somewhat by the addition
of some new footnotes with references to more recent works in the second-
ary literature. References to primary texts have also been updated to make
them consistent with the most recent editions and translations. For the
works of the authors quoted most frequently, references are made to the
foregoing list of abbreviations for standard editions and English transla-
tions. Apart from these slight modifications, the pieces appear in more or
less their original form.
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

The history of Continental philosophy is often conceived as being repre-

sented by two major schools: German idealism and phenomenology/exis-
tentialism. These are frequently juxtaposed in such a way as to highlight
their purported radical differences. The idea is that there was an abrupt
break in the nineteenth century that resulted in a disdainful rejection of
idealism in all its forms. The result was the introduction of a new kind of
philosophy that was closer to the lived experience of the individual human
being.1
At times the key break is located in the transition from Hegel, purport-
edly the last idealist, to Kierkegaard, purportedly the first existentialist.
According to this interpretation, the history of philosophy in the first half
of the nineteenth century has been read as a grand confrontation between
the ambitious but sadly naïve rationalistic system of Hegel and the devas-
tating criticisms of it by Kierkegaard’s philosophy, with its emphasis on
actuality and existence. While Kierkegaard champions the individual and
human freedom, Hegel, by contrast, emphasizes the universal and rational
necessity. While Kierkegaard insists on the absolute irreducibility of the
individual, Hegel presents his view in the form of a grotesque, impersonal,
abstract monstrosity called “the system,” which mercilessly destroys every-
thing in its path, including the individual.
This is a nice dramatic story to tell undergraduate students and to
rehearse in introductory textbooks but in the end, instead of providing
a useful framework for further studies, it gives rise to a series of misun-
derstandings and outright myths about the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation,
and thus about the development of philosophy in general. The history of
European philosophy is only rarely characterized by seismic shocks, tec-
tonic shifts, and eruptions of a simple either/or nature. Even as thinkers
criticize their predecessors, they invariably, perhaps unwittingly, adopt
something positive from them. This might involve a common understand-
ing of a specific philosophical problem, or a common methodology on
how to confront it; but in any case even the most radical critic inherits
something of the philosophical spirit of the times, and shares a wealth of
2 Idealism and Existentialism

background information and presuppositions with others thinkers from

the same period.
The goal of the present work is to challenge this caricatured view of the
radical break between idealism and existentialism by means of a series of
specialized studies of specific episodes of European thought. While the
individual chapters each pursue their own goals with respect to specific
texts or concepts, they are united in their attempt to reveal in one way or
another the long shadow cast by Kant and Hegel over the subsequent his-
tory of European thought.
For the sake of convenience this volume has been divided into three
roughly chronological sections. The first is primarily concerned with
Hegel and German idealism. Its focus is above all on the early Hegel and
the Phenomenology of Spirit. The second section, entitled “Between Idealism
and Existentialism,” is dedicated to thinkers such as Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche, who are often thought to be critics of German idealism and,
at the same time, forerunners of existentialism. This section explores the
relation of these thinkers to both of these intellectual traditions. The third
and final section is dedicated to twentieth-century existentialism proper.

Part I: Hegel and German Idealism

Chapter 1, “Hegel and the Myth of Reason,” addresses itself to the long-
standing view that Hegel was a naïve Enlightenment thinker, who stub-
bornly insisted on the power of reason. This view has often been used to
set Hegel apart from the thinkers of the later nineteenth and early twen-
tieth century, such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Sartre and
Derrida. In contrast to Hegel, these so-called “irrationalists” are thought
to have disabused themselves of the belief in Enlightenment reason and to
have glimpsed the deeply irrational nature of the human mind, and the
true workings of history and culture. This chapter tries to argue against
this view by analyzing Hegel’s account of the struggle of the Enlightenment
with religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit. There Hegel is surprisingly criti-
cal of what he takes to be the Enlightenment’s deep misunderstanding
of religion. Further, he uses the metaphor of Enlightenment reason as
an illness that takes over the human spirit at a specific point in history.
This same metaphor is then traced in several subsequent thinkers who
are generally associated with the irrationalist tradition, i.e. Dostoevsky,
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre. These thinkers use precisely
the same image to capture the notion of self-conscious critical reflection,
 Introduction 3

which they take to be paradigmatic of the modern mind. With this point
of contact or overlap, one can see that Hegel, far from being the naïve
proponent of Enlightenment reason, in fact foreshadows the existentialist
tradition’s suspicion of rationality.
The second chapter, “Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic
Fragment,” begins with an account of Hegel’s repeated claims about the
need for philosophy to be systematic. This is understood in the general con-
text of German idealism, and parallels are drawn between Hegel’s account
of systematic philosophy and those of Kant, Fichte and Schelling. Given
Hegel’s insistence on systematic or speculative philosophy, it becomes
problematic to interpret the Phenomenology of Spirit in a piecemeal manner,
as has often been done in the secondary literature. While he may well have
been mistaken in this view of philosophy or may well have been unsuccess-
ful in creating a philosophical system in accordance with this systematic
conception, there can be no doubt that it was his conscious goal to do
so. An overview is given of the different ways in which the Phenomenology
in particular has often been regarded as an unsystematic text. The main
argument given for this view is that, during its composition, Hegel changed
his mind about the nature of the book and the philosophical work it was
intended to do. As a result, different strands pointing in different direc-
tions remain in the final product. This chapter traces and attempts to
refute other arguments, both biographical and text-internal, that call into
question the unity of the Phenomenology. In response to a series of appar-
ent breaks in the argumentation of the work at key transitions, an attempt
is made to demonstrate the unity of the argument by sketching a series
of parallel analyses, which run throughout the text. Finally, the question
is taken up about the Phenomenology as a fragmentary text. When seen in
relation to Hegel’s later works and lectures, it can indeed be regarded as
fragmentary in the sense that individual analyses that appear there for
the first time are worked out in much more detail later. A clear example
of this is the cursory treatment that Hegel gives to different forms of reli-
gious consciousness in the Phenomenology in contrast to the elaborate and
much more detailed analyses he gives of the same religions in his Lectures
on the Philosophy of Religion. While it is clear that some of the analyses in the
Phenomenology could certainly be worked out in more detail, it is argued at
the end of the chapter that this does not in any way undermine its system-
atic structure, which consists in the parallel analyses.
Chapter 3, “The Architectonic of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” follows
in the footsteps of the preceding chapter. It argues against the various
conceptions of this book as a patchwork with no underlying systematic
4 Idealism and Existentialism

structure. Here it is claimed that many of the misunderstandings about

the organization and structure of the work have arisen due to the fact
that Hegel revised the table of contents, and this revised version was con-
fusingly combined with the original version by later editors. The result
of this combination was a highly complicated organizational scheme that
was impossible to understand. This chapter proposes to take the second,
revised table of contents as Hegel’s considered view. Using this as a guide,
the chapter traces the argument of the Phenomenology through different
analyses, which are intended to run parallel to one another in the corre-
sponding chapters and sections. Hegel’s organizational statements in the
“Reason” chapter are explored in some detail since there he sets forth what
he takes to be the parallel structures between the three sections of that
chapter and the two foregoing chapters, i.e. “Consciousness” and “Self-
Consciousness.” This then provides the key for the general pattern that
is repeated in the “Spirit” and “Religion” chapters that follow. With this
sketch it is argued that the Phenomenology does in fact contain an underly-
ing systematic structure that scholars have overlooked.

Part II: Between Idealism and Existentialism

The first chapter in this next section is a short piece entitled “Points of
Contact in the Philosophy of Religion of Hegel and Schopenhauer.” It is well
known that Schopenhauer engaged in a ruthless polemic against Hegel and
other followers of Kant, claiming that he alone was the true heir of Kant’s
transcendental idealism. This explicit outward polemic has led scholars to
overlook many of the points of commonality between Schopenhauer and
Hegel. This chapter sketches a couple of very basic points of agreement
between the two thinkers with regard to their respective views on the phi-
losophy of religion. First, Hegel’s unhappy consciousness is compared to
Schopenhauer’s account of the lives of saints, ascetics and other holy per-
sons. Both thinkers are critical of the view of religion as something tran-
scendent or pointing to another world or an unknown beyond. Instead,
in their respective analyses, both Hegel and Schopenhauer attempt to
demonstrate the truth of religion in terms of its significance for the lives
and values of the concrete religious believer. Second, Hegel’s conceptual
understanding of religion in terms of the abstract philosophical Idea is
compared with Schopenhauer’s conception of a deeper philosophical
truth underlying religious myths and symbols. Once again, despite their
use of different philosophical language and their different interpretations
 Introduction 5

of the individual myths, and despite their different preferences for specific
religions (Hegel preferring Protestant Christianity and Schopenhauer
preferring Buddhism and Eastern religion), the two thinkers nonetheless
share a fundamental view according to which the truth of religion lies in
its philosophical meaning, which is not generally accessible to the common
religious believer.
The next chapter, “Kierkegaard’s Criticism of the Absence of Ethics in
Hegel’s System,” treats a well-known criticism in Kierkegaard’s authorship.
In a number of his works, Kierkegaard has his pseudonymous authors
criticize Hegel’s philosophical system for lacking an ethics. This has often
struck commentators as an odd criticism since Hegel does in fact have an
ethical theory, which he presents along with his political philosophy in
his famous work, The Philosophy of Right. The thesis of this chapter is that
Kierkegaard’s criticism can best be grasped when one understands what
he actually means by “ethics.” Once this is determined, then it becomes
clear what it is that he finds missing. This analysis helps to make clear
Kierkegaard’s own intuitions about ethical theory and their relation to the
theory of Hegel.
The chapter “Kierkegaard’s Criticism of Abstraction and His Proposed
Solution: Appropriation” addresses one of Kierkegaard’s familiar attacks
on Hegel and idealist philosophy: namely, that idealism is overly abstract
and fails to take into account the realm of actuality and existence. As
a positive doctrine intended to overcome the problem of abstraction,
Kierkegaard presents a handful of concepts, including appropriation.
This piece explores both Kierkegaard’s negative criticism and his posi-
tive proposal. It is argued that he ultimately fails to offer a philosophi-
cally satisfying solution with the doctrine of appropriation, although it
may well be adequate at a personal level for the individual Christian, who
is Kierkegaard’s intended reader. In the end Kierkegaard’s account of
appropriation looks rather similar to standard concepts in the ethics of
Kant and Hegel.
Kierkegaard frequently refers to Hegel’s section “The Good and
Conscience” from the “Morality” chapter of Philosophy of Right. This topic
is addressed in the next chapter, “Kierkegaard’s Recurring Criticism of
Hegel’s ‘The Good and Conscience.’ ” This section in Hegel’s political phi-
losophy is well known for its criticism of what he regards as the pernicious
forms of relativism and individualism found in German Romanticism.
Here Hegel analyzes the rights and limitations of the individual conscience
vis-à-vis other individuals and the community as a whole. This is of great
interest to Kierkegaard, who wishes to insist on the absolute irreducibility
6 Idealism and Existentialism

of individual faith. He thus returns to this section in Hegel’s text in The

Concept of Irony, in the first “Problema” from Fear and Trembling, in Journal
NB2, and finally in Practice in Christianity. By tracing the references in these
works that span Kierkegaard’s authorship, this chapter demonstrates a
development in his relation to Hegel with respect to the issue at stake in
“The Good and Conscience.” It is argued that while Kierkegaard’s picture
of Hegel’s position is somewhat caricatured and must thus be taken with
a grain of salt, nonetheless his use of this text can be seen as positive in
the sense that it provides him with a negative position by means of which
he can construct his own doctrines of, for example, the paradox, offense,
and faith.
The final chapter of this section, “Hegel and Nietzsche on the Death
of Tragedy and Greek Ethical Life,” examines the little-explored relation
between Hegel and Nietzsche. While these two thinkers are thought to
have such radically differing conceptions of philosophy that they are rarely
regarded as having anything in common, this chapter argues that in fact
Hegel’s analysis of the development of Greek religion in the “Religion”
chapter of Phenomenology of Spirit in fact foreshadows Nietzsche’s account of
the death of Greek tragedy at the hands of Socratic rationality. It is argued
that Hegel’s analysis anticipates, among other things, Nietzsche’s famous
distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles.

Part III: Existentialism

The chapter “Existentialist Ethics” addresses itself to the commonly held

view that the existentialist tradition is fundamentally at odds with ethi-
cal thinking and for this reason has no ethical theory of its own. Since
the existentialists tend to be critical of traditional morality in the form of
established religion or custom, and of different kinds of abstract moral
theory, it would seem that they reject ethics tout court. This chapter argues,
to the contrary, that the existentialist thinkers and those often considered
to be their precursors all have at least the outlines of a theory of ethics in
the form of a theory of authenticity and responsibility. Seen negatively, the
existentialists are in agreement that there is some positive ethical value
to be found in seeing through purported religious truths or philosophi-
cal systems, and exposing them as false. Having disposed of traditional
values and modern philosophies in this way, the existentialists then seek
some positive ethical value in the authentic and free choice that one is
faced with in a meaningless world. Thus, resolute and authentic choice
 Introduction 7

becomes the model for existentialist ethics. Different versions of this are
sketched in the thought of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir. It is argued that the tradition of existen-
tialist ethics derives key features from Kant’s theory of the will and ethical
action. Finally, it is claimed that this existentialist tradition of ethics can
be compared with the ancient tradition of virtue ethics in the sense that
the existentialists have a conception of virtue with the model of free choice
and authenticity. Similarly, they have a conception of vice with the differ-
ent theories of how human beings attempt to escape their freedom and
sink into inauthenticity. Thus, the existentialists do in fact have a theory
of ethics, and indeed it is one that has significant points in common with
both Kant and ancient virtue ethics.
The next chapter featured here is entitled “Merleau-Ponty’s Criticisms
of Sartre’s Theory of Freedom.” It is well known that the concept of exis-
tential freedom is absolutely central to Sartre’s philosophical project. It
is thematized in his literary and dramatic works and has its philosophi-
cal basis in Being and Nothingness. Merleau-Ponty gives a detailed criticism
of this theory in the final section of his magnum opus, Phenomenology of
Perception. The present chapter isolates three main criticisms that Merleau-
Ponty puts forth there. The thesis of this chapter is that while these criti-
cisms are in many ways insightful, ultimately Sartre has the theoretical
tools to deal with them. These criticisms are, however, useful for under-
standing Merleau-Ponty’s own theory of freedom. It is argued that Sartre’s
somewhat voluntaristic theory of freedom is based on his dualism, which
regards the individual as radically separate from the surrounding world.
By contrast, Merleau-Ponty has a much more integrated, monistic ontol-
ogy, according to which the individual is always already bound up in nec-
essary relations with the world. As a result, his theory of freedom is not
one of a unilateral, spontaneous voluntarism from the side of the isolated
human subject, as in Sartre, but instead one of a reciprocity between sub-
ject and object, human being and world.
The final chapter, “Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Consciousness and
Bad Faith,” continues the comparison between these two most famous
French existentialists. This chapter explores Sartre’s criticism, in Being and
Nothingness, of Freud’s theory of the human mind, according to which cer-
tain parts of our mental life remain hidden from us. Sartre tries to show
that such a view is conceptually incoherent since it amounts to conscious-
ness hiding something from itself, which is simply impossible. In response
he sets forth his own theory of the lucidity and complete transparency
of consciousness. This forms the basis of Sartre’s famous analysis of “bad
8 Idealism and Existentialism

faith,” his term of art for self-deception. This chapter sketches this theory
and explores Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of it in the section entitled “The
Cogito” from Phenomenology of Perception. According to Merleau-Ponty,
Sartre’s theory of a completely self-transparent consciousness is a concep-
tual impossibility, since it is the very nature of perception to be incomplete
and thus ambiguous. There are always hidden sides of things that we do
not immediately see; this holds true not just of objects in the world, but
also of our own consciousness. Moreover, Sartre’s theory of a transparent
consciousness has the undesirable result of implicitly positing a fi xed onto-
logical subject, which runs counter to his explicitly stated anti-essentialism.
Finally, it is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s critique is in large part justified,
and his theory of human consciousness ultimately represents a more satis-
factory explanation of the phenomena in question.

While each of the chapters in this volume has its own specific thesis, collec-
tively they address in one way or another the complex relation between the
traditions of German idealism and existentialism. What these discussions
show is that existentialism was not the radical break with the past that it
is often thought to be. While this is the story that many members of this
latter tradition like to tell themselves and that many later histories of mod-
ern philosophy have uncritically adopted, the truth is that there are many
significant points of overlap between the key representatives of the idealist
tradition, that is, Kant and Hegel, and the many figures of the existentialist
or pre-existentialist tradition.
 Part I

Hegel and German Idealism

This page intentionally left blank
 Chapter 1

Hegel and the Myth of Reason

The oeuvre of Hegel, like that of many thinkers of the post-Kantian tradi-
tion in European philosophy, has been subject to a number of misread-
ings and misrepresentations by both specialists and non-specialists alike;
these have until fairly recently rendered Hegel’s reception in the Anglo-
American philosophical world extremely problematic. These often willful
misrepresentations, variously referred to by scholars as the Hegel myths or
legends,1 have given rise to a number of prejudices against Hegel’s philoso-
phy, primarily, although by no means exclusively, in the English-speaking
world.2 Among the caricatures that have enjoyed the widest currency are
the following: that Hegel denied the law of contradiction, 3 that his dia-
lectical method of argumentation took the form of the thesis-antithesis-
synthesis triad,4 that he saw the end of history in his own philosophical
system, 5 that he tried to prove a priori the number of planets,6 that he was
a reactionary apologist for the Prussian state,7 or worse, a proto-fascist,8
and finally, that he was a kind of pre-Kantian metaphysician9 or “cosmic
rationalist”10 who believed, like Schelling and some of the romantics, in a
metaphysical world soul.
One of the most pervasive of these famous myths is that Hegel was an
arch-rationalist and the last great spokesman for reason before the full-
scale attack on rationality by Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Freud, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida and others. According to this
myth, Hegel, as the last Aufklärer, believed in the all-conquering force of
reason and in his philosophy gave a description of the march of reason
in history. As one commentator writes, “The whole thrust of his thinking
was an affirmation of absolute reason. With him, moreover, belief in rea-
son was at the highest summit.”11 We are told by another expositor, “For
Hegel, if reason is rightly understood, it is sovereign.”12 On this view of
Hegel, everything is reducible to reason or to what Hegel calls the Concept
(Begriff ). One writer characterizes this purportedly Hegelian view by say-
ing, “The ‘Concept’ meets with no opposition in Hegel’s system that it
12 Idealism and Existentialism

cannot overcome; it holds a position of power that no other thinker before

ever dared ascribe to it, that no one had ever claimed that it possessed. The
Concept is omnipotent.”13 Allegedly, Hegel was wholeheartedly and naïvely
under the spell of all-powerful reason. According to this myth, not only
does Hegel’s philosophy purport to demonstrate reason in history, but it
also affirms it normatively.14 By gaining an insight into the rationality in
history, we are then reconciled with the world as it exists.15 The normative
side of Hegel’s account, with its unqualified acceptance and approval of
reason, appears on this view particularly naïve and vulnerable to criticism.
Nietzsche’s analysis of how unrelenting Socratic rationality destroyed Greek
tragedy by demanding that it live up to reason’s own ideals of intelligibility
and self-reflectivity, and Foucault’s analysis of the subtle and ubiquitous
forms of contemporary power relations that have resulted largely from the
pernicious employment of instrumental reason, are seen as two corrective
accounts of Hegel’s unreflective and over-enthusiastic view of reason.
I would like to show that this simplistic view of Hegelian philosophy vastly
underestimates and, indeed, ignores Hegel’s own criticism of reason and
its purportedly positive effects. What I ultimately wish to suggest is that
Hegel is very aware of the pernicious aspects of reason and thus is best seen
not as the last Aufklärer but rather as a forerunner of the so-called “irra-
tionalist tradition.”16 Thus, the tradition that is inaugurated after Hegel is
most accurately understood not as a new beginning or a radical break with
the past, but rather as something continuous with what preceded it.17

I. Hegel as a Naïve Rationalist

I wish simply to put to the side whatever historical accidents might have
played a role in the distancing of Hegel from the existentialist tradition.18
Instead, the question I wish to concentrate on for the moment is what in
Hegel’s philosophy itself has been the cause of his having been tagged
with the label of “arch-rationalist.” The tendency to see in Hegel a naïve
proponent of the Enlightenment has doubtless been largely due to a wide-
spread misinterpretation of his famous claim, “What is rational, is actual,
and what is actual, is rational.”19 The common understanding of this famous
Hegelian maxim, made famous by Rudolf Haym’s interpretation,20 is that
everything that exists or that is “actual” has its own logos and internal
justification. Thus, existing practices and institutions would seem to be
above reproach.21 This would apparently imply an extreme conservatism
and a callous, Panglossian theodicy since in this maxim one could find a
 Hegel and the Myth of Reason 13

justification for oppressive institutions and needless human suffering. On

this view, totalitarian states with all their abuses would be rational simply
because they exist.22 To make such a claim seriously would be to support
some kind of naïve whiggish stance—the view that historical development
is always synonymous with cultural or moral progress—and to be guilty of a
misinformed optimism purportedly characteristic of the Enlightenment.23
Blinded by his overpowering belief in reason, Hegel allegedly was entirely
uncritical or unfeeling not to have seen the obvious evils of the world
around him, in particular those of the contemporary Prussian state. One
commentator writes, “In their post-Enlightenment optimism all but a few
modern philosophers have ignored or denied the demonic. Hegel’s philos-
ophy—which unites Christian religious with modern secular optimism—is
the most radical and hence most serious of this modern tendency.”24 Hegel,
due to his belief in the omnipotence of reason, was thus purportedly blind
to the evil or “demonic” aspects of culture, history or society.
This view of Hegel as a naïve optimist or as a nineteenth-century Candide
is still quite common, although, as recent interpreters have made clear,
this certainly cannot be what Hegel meant in the famous or, perhaps infa-
mous, passage cited above.25 In his discussion of this disputed dictum in
the Encyclopaedia, Hegel makes it clear that he is not so naïve as to believe
that everything that exists is rational and thus beyond reproach simply by
virtue of its existence: “Who is not smart enough to be able to see around
him quite a lot that is not, in fact, how it ought to be?”26 Clearly, Hegel
recognizes that there are injustices, atrocities and crimes that exist and for
which there can be no justification, rational or otherwise. Moreover, in a
passage from Philosophy of Right, Hegel refutes precisely this position that
he is accused of holding. In distinguishing between the philosophical and
the historical approach to law, he argues that laws and institutions cannot
be justified by an appeal to their mere existence, or by uncovering their
historical origins in the world:

When a historical justification confuses an origin in external factors with

an origin in the concept, it unconsciously achieves the opposite of what
it intends. If it can be shown that the origin of an institution was entirely
expedient and necessary under the specific circumstances of the time,
the requirements of the historical viewpoint are fulfilled. But if this is
supposed to amount to a general justification of the thing itself, the
result is precisely the opposite, for since the original circumstances are
no longer present, the institution has thereby lost its meaning and its
right.27
14 Idealism and Existentialism

Thus, for Hegel, historical justifications fail on their own terms; simply lay-
ing bare the historical origins of an institution is not enough to justify it
since in this way one could justify all existing institutions: “. . . a determina-
tion of right may be shown to be entirely grounded in and consistent with the
prevailing circumstances and existing legal institutions, yet it may be contrary
to right and irrational in and for itself.”28 The historian is only able to see a
given law in its particular social-historical context and thus can never criti-
cally judge it; however, the philosopher, for Hegel, is able to examine the
specific laws against an independent criterion, i.e. that of the concept of
right itself. Thus, he clearly could not have held that whatever law or state
exists is, by mere virtue of its existence, just and right. His general claim
that there is reason in history ought not to be construed as meaning that
every single historical event is rational; likewise, his claim that the state as
a concept is rational does not mean that every single existing state is ratio-
nal. Precisely this misunderstanding has promoted the picture of Hegel as
the naïve and anachronistic Aufklärer.
Admittedly, Hegel’s use of the term “reason” (Vernunft) is not always as
clear as it might be; however, he does tell us that it is synonymous with his
term of art, the “Idea” (Idee).29 In his philosophy, the “Idea” is a two-sided
concept: on the one hand, it is the form or abstract concept of thought, but
on the other hand, it is also the concrete content in which reason, implicit
in thought, is embodied in reality.30 Insofar as reason is both in the abstract
concept and in the concrete actuality, it is synonymous with the Idea. This
rather abstract notion of reason in Hegel then comes in the following way to
be associated with the conception of reason that we are more familiar with,
i.e. reason understood as reflection or critical self-consciousness: the task of
philosophy, for Hegel, is not to posit utopias or some world beyond our own,
but rather to examine reality or what is the case, and to find the reason that
is in it.31 In order to discover reason in the manifold of concrete contexts,
the philosopher must understand this variety conceptually. Hegel writes
concerning the study of nature: “people grant . . . that nature is inherently
rational, and that what knowledge has to investigate and grasp in concepts
is this actual reason present in it.”32 The task of the speculative philosopher
is then for Hegel by means of reflection and criticism to examine reality
and deduce its implicit rationality. Through this critical reflection the phi-
losopher is also then participating in that rationality. Thus, rationality also
takes on the meaning of critical observation or reflection for Hegel. In this
sense, Hegel’s conception of rationality resembles Socratic rationality, which
applies the dialectical criticism to all institutions and beliefs to see if they
rest on a rational basis. It is Hegel’s purportedly unqualified positive assess-
ment of reason in this sense that I wish to analyze.
 Hegel and the Myth of Reason 15

I wish merely to suggest that Hegel is in fact aware of the pernicious

aspects of history and culture as well as the negative aspects of reason itself,
understood in the aforementioned sense of philosophical reflection. This
should suffice to demonstrate that the myth of Hegel as an arch-rationalist
is in need of, at the very least, some serious qualification if it is not to be dis-
missed altogether, although it may leave the question open concerning the
degree to which Hegel ascribes to reason and what precisely the concep-
tion of reason is that he subscribes to.33 The modest objective of this chap-
ter is simply to provide sufficient grounds for rejecting this myth and thus
to call for a reevaluation of Hegel’s advocation of reason along the lines
indicated above. It would be impossible here to give an overview of Hegel’s
philosophy to the end of discussing the role of reason and rationality in it.
My argumentative strategy will be instead to analyze a few passages from
Hegel’s account of the conflict between the Enlightenment and religion in
the Phenomenology of Spirit. Short of giving an overview of Hegel’s use and
understanding of these very broad concepts, this analysis will provide suf-
ficient counterevidence to expose this Hegelian myth and to demonstrate
the connections between his thought and that of the so-called “anti-ratio-
nalistic” thinkers listed above.
I do not wish to imply that Hegel has not occasionally been seen to some
extent as an important forerunner of the irrationalist or existentialist
movement, since this connection has been suggested by some intellectual
historians. Clearly, Hegel’s account of, for instance, the lordship-bondage
dialectic34 or the unhappy consciousness35 has had a profound influence on
existentialist philosophy and psychology. His dialectical methodology and
his view of the situatedness of human knowledge have also found positive
resonance among the existentialists. However, with respect to the question of
reason, Hegel has been, for whatever reason, presented as a typical Feindbild
by commentators of this tradition. Thus, despite the many continuities that
can be found in Hegel’s thought and that of the existentialists, the impor-
tant difference is usually thought to lie in Hegel’s allegedly unreflective
view of reason which is contrasted with the existentialists’ disabused, hard-
headed critical assessment of it. This, in my view, is a part of the Hegelian
myth of reason which can be debunked by an analysis of his portrayal of
reason in a few carefully selected loci in his philosophical corpus.

II. Hegel’s Critical View of Reason in the Phenomenology

In the section entitled “Self-Alienated Spirit” in the “Spirit” chapter of the

Phenomenology, one finds an extended account of the Enlightenment and the
16 Idealism and Existentialism

French Revolution. The majority of this material is dedicated to an account

of the Enlightenment’s conflict with what it perceives as the simple supersti-
tion of religion. I do not wish to go into detail about Hegel’s account of how
the Enlightenment misses the point of religion and continually erects a straw
man that it uses as a ready foil for its criticisms.36 These passages show merely
that Enlightenment rationality is limited in its approach to Christianity and
fails to see religion’s truth in falsity, so to speak. Moreover, I do not wish to go
into Hegel’s criticism of the unrestrained madness of Enlightenment reason
during the Reign of Terror, since that has been fairly well documented.37 I
wish instead to focus on a specific passage in the Phenomenology which, in my
view, best illustrates Hegel’s awareness of the pernicious nature of reason.
Before we examine this passage, however, it will be useful to see how Hegel
expresses the same thought elsewhere in his corpus.
Hegel clearly recognizes the destructive power of rational thought and
reflectivity on cultural institutions, as is evidenced by a provocative passage
in the Encyclopaedia Logic. He writes:

In earlier times people saw no harm in thinking and happily used their
own heads. They thought about God, Nature, and the State, and were
convinced that only by thinking would they become cognizant of what
the truth is, not through the senses or through some chance notion or
opinion. But, because they pushed on with thinking in this way, it turned
out that the highest relationships in life were compromised by it.
Thinking deprived what was positive of its power. Political constitutions
fell victim to thought; religion was attacked by thought; firm religious
notions that counted as totally genuine revelations were undermined,
and in many minds the old faith was overthrown. For example, the
Greek philosophers set themselves against the old religion and destroyed
its representations.38

Here Hegel portrays philosophical reflection as a destructive influence on

various aspects of society and culture at large. When reason examines spe-
cific institutions in the social order and demands that they give an account
of themselves, it invariably finds many of them to be wanting in rational
justification. From the perspective of reason, the institutions in question
seem arbitrary and are no longer viewed as legitimate. At this point the
institutions lose their cultural meaning and gradually fall into desuetude.
Reason and reflective thought are thus destructive forces in traditional
societies. Hegel sees this dynamic of awakened rationality as destroying
traditional beliefs and customs in the Greek world. This same thought
 Hegel and the Myth of Reason 17

about the destructive nature of reason is expressed in the Phenomenology,

but there reason and reflection are characterized in a different way.
In the section on “Self-Alienated Spirit” in the “Spirit” chapter of the
Phenomenology, Hegel uses a provocative and, for some perhaps, surprising
set of metaphors to describe the subtle encroachment of skeptical, scientis-
tic reason into traditional areas of religion and ethical life. He writes:

It is on this account that the communication of pure insight is compara-

ble to a silent expansion or to the diffusion, say, of a perfume in the unre-
sisting atmosphere. It is a penetrating infection which does not make
itself noticeable beforehand as something opposed to the indifferent ele-
ment into which it insinuates itself, and therefore cannot be warded off.
Only when the infection has become widespread is that consciousness,
which unheedingly yielded to its influence, aware of it.39

Here he uses two metaphors for reason: a perfume and an infection. Like
a perfume, “pure insight,” Hegel’s synonym for Enlightenment reason,
works its way initially unimpaired into the ways of thinking and acting
that form the matrix of our ethical life. Religion is simply a part of the
passive and “unresisting atmosphere” which reason interpenetrates since
the former does not perceive the imminent danger that rationality pres-
ents to its most dearly held beliefs and institutions. But gradually reason,
like a perfume, diffuses itself silently and insidiously into all aspects of
culture.
Hegel then changes the metaphor from that of a benign diffusion of
perfume in space to the clearly negative image of an infection. According
to this metaphor, Spirit is conceived as an organic system which is attacked
from the inside by a deleterious force, i.e. a cancerous disease. But this
disease is latent and goes undetected for a long time by spiritual doc-
tors with even the greatest prognostic acumen. When the illness is finally
detected, the disaster and the consequent lasting damage have already
occurred:

Consequently, when consciousness does become aware of pure insight,

the latter is already widespread; the struggle against it betrays the fact
that infection has occurred. The struggle is too late, and every remedy
adopted only aggravates the disease, for it has laid hold of the marrow of
spiritual life, viz. the Notion of consciousness, or the pure essence itself
of consciousness. Therefore, there is no power in consciousness which
could overcome the disease.40
18 Idealism and Existentialism

Just as self-awareness comes about only after the original sin, so also aware-
ness of the destructive nature of reason comes only after the damage has
already been done. Here the remedies to save religion from the onslaught
of reason are ineffectual since religion attempts to defend itself by using
the tools of reason, thus giving away the game from the start. Religion
attempts to justify itself with rational argumentation and scientistic reason
in order to show that it can hold up under the test of this scientistic ratio-
nality, yet this betrays that the attempt at defense or treatment has come
about entirely too late since even the defenders of religion have already
unknowingly come to accept the basics of Enlightenment rationality and
its methodology and criteria for truth as their standard.41 Thus, the disease
is only aggravated: far from erecting an effective defense, the defenders
of religion unknowingly ally themselves with the enemy. By using reason
as its standard, religion destroys itself since at its heart are mystery and
revelation which are by their very nature irreducible to logical categories
and rational explanation. Reason has by this time so permeated our way of
thinking that we cannot imagine anything else as a viable option. As Hegel
puts it, reason “has laid hold of the marrow of spiritual life.” Thus, the
spiritual life of religion cannot be rescued since it has become unable to
defend itself, having been so infected by the foreign principle of thought.
Reason here is clearly portrayed as something subtle, insidious and destruc-
tive, and this account stands squarely in opposition to the myth of Hegel’s
unqualified advocation of reason outlined above.
Hegel also uses the biblical image of the serpent to describe the status of
reason after the capitulation of religion. For the disabused, religion remains
but a hollow husk lacking any substantial meaning, alive only in memory
and history books: “Memory alone then still preserves the dead form of
Spirit’s previous shape as a vanished history, vanished one knows not how.
And the new serpent of wisdom raised on high for adoration has in this way
painlessly cast merely a withered skin.”42 Here reason frees itself of religion
and superstition just as the serpent sheds its skin. Religion is merely a dead
form of spirit that falls away when it is no longer of use. This image suggests
that in fact religion and reason are in a sense the same thing, i.e. the same
serpent with a new form. This new form of religion then simply replaces
the old form.43 Similarly, Dostoevsky describes the zealous belief in tech-
nology and scientific rationality that he sees embodied in the hustle and
bustle of the city of London as a new sort of religious affirmation: “You feel
that a great amount of spiritual fortitude and denial would be necessary in
order not to submit, not to capitulate to the impression, not to bow down to
the fact and not to worship Baal.”44 For Dostoevsky, science and reason are
 Hegel and the Myth of Reason 19

the new Baal in which London has corrupted itself, just as for Hegel they
are the new serpent of wisdom. Both images imply a deception or a seduc-
tion, and both clearly indicate the pernicious side of reason.

III. Reason as an Illness in Later Thinkers

The metaphor for reason or reflectivity as an illness and a disease links

Hegel with the more recent thinkers in the European philosophical tradi-
tion who unambiguously place emphasis on the pervasive and deleterious
force of rationality. This illness metaphor has been a dominant one in the
philosophical and literary schools of existentialism and phenomenology. I
wish simply to trace this image in a handful of thinkers in order to show
that they make use of this metaphor in the same way as Hegel does, i.e. to
represent the destructive or pernicious force of reason. By pointing out the
similar use of the illness metaphor in Hegel and in the “irrationalists,” I
do not mean to imply that the latter necessarily self-consciously made use
of Hegel’s metaphor or even that they read the passages cited above. My
claim is merely that the similarity in language and in meaning with respect
to this issue of reason and its effects that can be located precisely in this
metaphor reveals that Hegel has more in common with the “irrational-
ist” tradition than is commonly acknowledged, and that Hegel was not the
naïve advocate of reason that he is often caricatured as being. This analysis
of the illness metaphor helps to establish a hitherto unseen connection
between Hegel and this tradition with respect to the issue of reason.45
Dostoevsky’s criticism of modern science and rationality and the schools
of Marxism, utilitarianism, socialist utopianism, and so on, that labor
under their banner is well known. His portrayal of this criticism through
the underground man in Notes from Underground takes on an interesting
form which invites comparison with the passages from Hegel cited above.
Dostoevsky’s underground man characterizes himself as suffering from
the disease of reflectivity, or what he calls “hyperconsciousness,” by virtue
of which he differs from the normal man. The underground man writes:
“I swear to you, gentlemen, that to be hyperconscious is a disease, a real
positive disease . . . I am firmly convinced not only that a great deal of con-
sciousness, but that any consciousness, is a disease. I insist on it.”46 Here one
finds critical rationality in the form of self-consciousness, which the under-
ground man says leads to a negative, pernicious hyperconsciousness that
precludes action and inhibits social intercourse. Like a disease, conscious-
ness begins innocently and unsuspectingly as simple reflection, but then
20 Idealism and Existentialism

it expands into a global re-evaluation of one’s life and social interactions.

After the onset of this illness, one cannot return to the naïve pre-reflec-
tive life of custom and habit. Reflection then comes to have a paralyzing
effect on the individual, who can no longer immediately engage in and
enjoy communal life. It incapacitates the underground man in his feeble
attempts at human interaction. It renders him a pathetic and jaded intel-
lectual, alienated from all ordinary human contact. Thus, even the unre-
flective lives of the underground man’s former schoolmates begin to look
attractive insofar as they, uninfected by the disease of hyperconsciousness,
are able to engage in the social world spontaneously and attain a kind of
immediate fraternity, regardless of that world’s superficiality or want of a
rational basis.
The concepts of scienticity, objective thought and rationality are also
well-known targets for Kierkegaard. In The Sickness unto Death, he develops
at great length the metaphor of rational reflection as an illness in a way that
is strikingly similar to Dostoevsky’s account.47 In his Preface, Kierkegaard
writes: “. . . once and for all may I point out that in the whole book, as the title
indeed declares, despair is interpreted as a sickness.”48 Just as Dostoevsky’s
underground man suffers from despair, which is a symptom of the disease
of hyperconsciousness, so also despair is for Kierkegaard strongly associated
with rational reflection.49 He writes simply, “Consciousness is decisive.”50
The spread of the “dialectical disease” of despair is traced in what might be
seen as Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of despair. 51 In analyzing the verti-
cal path of despair, the degrees of despair and thus of the sickness are cor-
related with the degrees of consciousness: “The ever increasing intensity of
despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to
its increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intense the
despair.”52 Increased reflection and rationality are here again portrayed as
the spreading of a disease.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues that self-reflection and reason
led Socrates to demand of every custom and tradition in Greek life that it
give a self-justifying rational account of its existence, and in his portrayal
of this cultural movement he uses the same illness metaphor. 53 With this
demand, Socratic rationality thus destroyed the immediate primordial
nature of Greek tragedy in the satyr chorus, which, for Nietzsche, was one
of the original “irrational” Greek institutions, which originated from the
inebriated and orgiastic Dionysian rites in which the follower found “a mys-
tic feeling of oneness”54 or a “primal unity”55 in the community of fellow
revelers. He asks: “. . . might not this very Socratism be a sign of decline,
of weariness, of infection, of the anarchical dissolution of instincts?”56 The
 Hegel and the Myth of Reason 21

new scientistic rationality, called by Nietzsche the “logic and logicizing of

the world,”57 which was embodied by Socrates, functioned like an irrevers-
ible infection on Greek tragedy and on the immediate irrational impulse
for which tragedy provided a forum. As soon as there was reflectivity, the
immediate unity with the whole was broken and the Apollonian principle
of individuation set in again. The infection had become fatal. Rationality
and science thus destroyed Greek tragedy and became a threat to all imme-
diate forms of art, which aimed to overcome this individuality and wallow
in a primeval universality and harmony. Scientistic, Socratic rationality,
which was a disease among the Greeks, then spread into a plague for the
Western world as a whole:

Once we see clearly how after Socrates, the mystagogue of science, one
philosophical school succeeds another, wave upon wave; how the hunger
for knowledge reached a never-suspected universality in the widest
domain of the educated world, became the real task for every educated
person of higher gifts, and led science onto the high seas from which it
has never again been driven altogether . . . For if we imagine that the
whole incalculable sum of energy used up for this world tendency had
been used not in the service of knowledge but for the practical, i.e., ego-
istic aims of individuals and peoples, then we realize that in that case
universal wars of annihilation and continual migrations of peoples would
probably have weakened the instinctive lust for life to such an extent that
suicide would have become a general custom . . . as a remedy and a pre-
ventive for this breath of pestilence.58

For Nietzsche, scientistic rationality in the West has not been used to
improve humanity’s lot but rather, like a growing plague, has been an
increasingly destructive force.59
Camus, in his criticism of reason, makes use of the same metaphor. He
writes in the Introduction to The Myth of Sisyphus about the object of his
inquiry: “There will be found here merely the description, in the pure
state, of an intellectual malady.”60 This intellectual malady has its origin in
consciousness, or reflectivity: “For everything begins with consciousness
and nothing is worth anything except through it.”61 It is through reason
or reflectivity, which Camus here describes as “consciousness,” that we
are jarred out of our daily routine and habit and come to recognize the
contingency of our goals and projects. The dominant metaphor used to
describe consciousness and the use of reason as a universally critical tool
that undermines transcendent values, and causes one to see the absurd
22 Idealism and Existentialism

in human existence, is that of an illness. In The Plague, Camus’ charac-

ter Tarrou also equates self-reflection with a disease. He explains how he
had long lived in innocence until reason and reflectivity caught up with
him: “Then one day I started thinking.”62 Thus he explains to the valiant
Doctor Rieux: “I had the plague already, long before I came to this town
and encountered it here.”63 The plague he refers to is not that which affects
Oran, but rather that of reflectivity. Camus here uses the plague as a fitting
symbol for the cause or occasion of the self-reflection which reshapes the
life of the existential hero Tarrou, and jars the townspeople of Oran out
of their complacency and lack of reflection. Camus, like Dostoevsky, views
this new lucidity about the disjointedness between humanity’s nostalgia for
unity and comprehension of the universe, and the utter indifference of the
universe to our demands, as a positive insight that leads to liberation. The
goal then is not to backslide into some form of what Nietzsche called “meta-
physical comfort,” but rather to keep the paradoxical or absurd nature of
the human condition continually in focus. Camus writes, “The important
thing . . . is not to be cured, but to live with one’s ailments.”64 For Camus,
many existentialist philosophers are guilty of what he calls “philosophi-
cal suicide” since they offer a cure to this disease by positing some form
of hope, in spite of their original recognition of its absurdity. Here, the
disease is the awareness, brought about by critical reason, of the indiffer-
ence of the world to our hopes and values, and the existential task is to live
unflinchingly with this awareness.
Sartre uses the metaphor of a particular kind of illness—the nausea—to
describe the awareness of consciousness via the employment of reason.65
Sartre’s first-person narrator Roquentin in the novel Nausea explains the
origin of his condition: “Something has happened to me, I can’t doubt
it any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not
like anything evident.”66 Nausea, like the plague, is a disease of conscious-
ness that comes on secretly and unexpectedly, arising insidiously and per-
niciously for Roquentin. One feels the nausea when contemplating the
banality of the facticity of our existence. When one, via reason and reflec-
tion, realizes the lack of transcendent meaning or the nothingness in the
world around oneself, the disease sets in. The disease of reflectivity leads to
the realization of the contingency of human existence and to the existen-
tial requirement of positing human values in place of any divine meaning.
Roquentin’s rational reflection on the nothingness of existence hinders his
ability to act in the world. He describes his failed attempt to write as fol-
lows: “An immense sickness flooded over me suddenly and the pen fell from
my hand, spluttering ink. What happened? Did I have the Nausea?”67 The
 Hegel and the Myth of Reason 23

vertigo of the nausea is brought on by the over-reflectivity of consciousness.

Roquentin, like Dostoevsky’s underground man, is hyperconscious, as is
evidenced in his narrative:

How serpentine is this feeling of existing—I unwind it, slowly . . . If I

could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to
fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: “Smoke . . . not to think . . .
don’t want to think . . . I think I don’t want to think. I mustn’t think that
I don’t want to think. Because that’s still a thought.” Will there never be
an end to it?68

Despite his mental exertions, Roquentin cannot stop reflectivity or the

existential disease of nausea with a simple act of will. Like many a physical
disease, the nausea runs its own course and is not within one’s control.

The use of this dominant metaphor throughout the existentialist tradition

provides a point of contact or overlap between this tradition and Hegel’s
thought with respect to the conception of reason. Hegel’s portrayal of rea-
son as a malady and a destructive force clearly reveals his awareness of
its darker aspects, and this awareness, on the one hand, associates him
with the existentialists and the self-avowed irrationalists and, on the other,
distances him from the caricature of the naïve Aufklärer. The continuity
of Hegel and these later thinkers in the European tradition is most obvi-
ously seen in the common use of the illness image to portray the spread of
reason. Hegel can thus be seen, not as the great enemy of the irrationalist
tradition and the bitterest opponent of Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer,
but rather as an important forerunner of the existentialist tradition, on
this issue as on many others. This insight will then help to lay to rest one
of the better-known Hegel myths and will afford a fresh opportunity for
evaluating Hegel’s significance with respect to the question of reason.
The difficult and controversial road that Hegel studies has trodden in the
Anglo-American philosophical world has only added to the intrinsic dif-
ficulty of Hegel’s own texts, in our effort to achieve a sober assessment of
his thought. This can only be done to the degree to which one is able and
willing to put aside the Hegel caricatures, legends and myths, and to the
extent that one is willing to stop viewing him as an angel or a devil, as a
Candide or a Hitler.69
 Chapter 2

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a

Systematic Fragment

The inherent problem with any philosophy that claims to be systematic is

as easy to pose as it is troublesome to solve: namely, how do the parts of the
system hang together? Of all the great systems in the history of philosophy,
perhaps none has been subject to as much criticism as Hegel’s. One author
baldly claims that it makes sense to dismiss Hegel entirely “if one emphasizes
the Logic and Hegel’s rhetoric about ‘system’ and ‘Wissenschaft.’ ”1 Likewise,
even as great an admirer of Hegel as John Dewey writes: “The form, the
schematism, of his [sc. Hegel’s] system now seems to me artificial to the last
degree.”2 The tendency to shy away from Hegel’s own statements about the
systematic nature of his philosophy is doubtless due to the complexity and
opacity of the Hegelian system, which have baffled scholars since Hegel’s
own time. A common reaction to these problems has been simply to aban-
don any attempt to understand Hegel’s philosophy as a systematic whole.
Due to these problems and despite Hegel’s own statements to the con-
trary, the Phenomenology of Spirit has often been criticized as an unsystem-
atic text. In the words of one scholar:

The Phenomenology is indeed a movement, or rather a set of movements,

an odyssey, as Hegel later said it was, a wandering, like Faust, with skips
and jumps and slow meanderings. Those who take Hegel at his word and
look for a “ladder” or a path or yellow brick road to the Absolute are
bound to be disappointed. The Phenomenology is a conceptual landscape,
through which Hegel leads us somewhat at his whim.3

Another commentator echoes this view: “The Phenomenology of Spirit is a

profoundly incongruous book.”4 Finally, the suggestion has been made that
the Phenomenology be read not as a “single-minded argument” but rather
as a disconnected “panoramic painting,”5 which has no bona fide sense of
unity or coherence. The work is thus seen simply as an odd collection of
atomic analyses on sundry topics. This view has been dubbed the “poetic”
 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic Fragment 25

conception of the work by some commentators, and its basic presupposi-

tion is as follows: “The Phenomenology is a loose series of imaginative and
suggestive reflections on the life of the Spirit.”6 This understanding, how-
ever, disregards Hegel’s own stated intent and reflects a failure to grasp the
general conception of the work.
Scholars holding this view have been able to satisfy themselves with trying to
understand individual sections of the Phenomenology in which Hegel analyzes
issues such as alienation, religion, Greek tragedy and the Enlightenment,
while ignoring the schematic connections between them that his philosophi-
cal system seeks to demonstrate. This results in analyses and interpretations
of individual sections of Hegel’s text taken out of their larger systematic con-
text. This method seems to offer a convenient way to present Hegel’s thought
on specific issues, but its use necessarily misrepresents his positions, which
can only be fully understood within the framework of his system.
A good example of this distortion of Hegel’s systematic intent in the
Phenomenology is provided by Alexandre Kojève’s Marxist reading, which
almost entirely ignores the “Consciousness” chapter7 and interprets the
goal not only of the “Self-Consciousness” chapter but, indeed, of the entire
Phenomenology as overcoming the various lordship and bondage relations
that he sees mirrored in class structures. Kojève simply ignores sections
which fail to accord with his Marxist agenda. One can say without exagger-
ation that, for Kojève, the importance of the entire Phenomenology is limited
to the “Self-Consciousness” or “Spirit” chapters, while the “Consciousness,”
“Reason” and “Religion” chapters are more or less irrelevant to what he
perceives as the desired goal of the text.
In order to save Hegel, according to this strategy, one must first apolo-
gize for his excessive systematic pretensions, which amounts in most cases
to forsaking the system altogether. Clearly, one cannot do away with the
systematic structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology in such an offhanded man-
ner and still hope to understand the text as Hegel intended it to be under-
stood. Hegel is firmly committed to a systematic conception of philosophy,
and thus if one is to attempt to interpret him by wholly abandoning his
expressly stated intentions on this regard, then one must have very compel-
ling reasons for doing so.

I. Hegel’s View of Systematic Philosophy

From the passages cited above, it is clear that often no distinction is made
between the notion of “systematic” in the everyday sense of “orderly” or
“well-organized” and in the technical sense in which it is used in German
26 Idealism and Existentialism

idealism. This confusion evinces the fact that many scholars are not even
aware of the technical use of this concept in this philosophical tradition,
and thus are not sensitive to Hegel’s appropriation of it.
With respect to the question of systematic philosophy, Hegel is a typi-
cal representative of the entire German idealist tradition, which aimed
at offering a systematic and exhaustive account of the cognitive faculties.
Kant, for instance, says of his own philosophy, “it is nothing but the inven-
tory of all our possessions through pure reason, systematically arranged.”8
Kant’s transcendental philosophy can thus be seen as a catalogue of the
various functions of the intellect by means of which we come to know and
understand. This inventory, he claims, is ordered in a necessary, system-
atic fashion. “As a systematic unity is what first raises ordinary knowledge
to the rank of science, that is, makes a system out of a mere aggregate
of knowledge,” he explains, “architectonic is the doctrine of the scientific
in our knowledge and therefore necessarily forms part of the doctrine of
method.”9 For Kant, it is the ensemble or organic unity of knowledge that
makes it a true science, and what does not belong to this systematic unity
is a “mere aggregate” or collection of facts. One might be able to make
specific observations about the operation of the intellect, but to adequately
account for it one must consider all of the cognitive faculties and their inter-
connections, for otherwise the observations would remain incomplete. In
the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes,
“For pure speculative reason has a structure wherein everything is an
organ, the whole being for the sake of all others . . . Any attempt to change
even the smallest part at once gives rise to contradictions, not merely in
the system, but in human reason in general.”10 To change or remove the
account of one individual cognitive faculty would destroy the system since
there would then be something open-ended about our cognitive functions
which the system could not explain with the remaining faculties. It is thus
reason itself, for Kant, which demands this systematic unity.11
Kant’s successors accepted, without serious qualification, his insis-
tence on system as an organic unity. Fichte, for instance, in the “First
Introduction” of the Science of Knowledge, claims: “As surely as they are to
be grounded in the unitary being of the intellect, the intellect’s assumed
laws of operation themselves constitute a system.”12 Likewise, Schelling, in
his System of Transcendental Idealism, states that his goal in philosophy is
not to add anything to what has already been said but to rearrange the
information (already provided by Kant and Fichte) into a genuine system.
“Now the purpose of the present work is simply this,” he writes, “to enlarge
transcendental idealism into what it really should be, namely a system of
 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic Fragment 27

all knowledge.”13 Given this unanimous insistence among the German ide-
alists on the systematicity of philosophy, Hegel can hardly be regarded as
a maverick on this point. If one assumes a dismissive stance toward him
on this issue, then one might just as well dismiss the entire tradition of
German idealism. He simply inherits this conception of philosophy from
his predecessors and expands it in his own way. One can of course still
raise the question of how successful Hegel was at carrying out his system-
atic program, but there can be no doubt that this was a key element in his
general approach.
In addition to the examples set by Hegel’s immediate forerunners in
the German idealist tradition, the model of a rigorous philosophical sys-
tem among the philosophers of Hegel’s day was that of Spinoza’s Ethics.
In Hegel’s time, Spinoza’s philosophy had become something of a fad in
German literary circles and was influential for, among others, Herder,
Lessing, Goethe, Fichte and Schelling.14 In fact, some German intellectual
figures were brought into difficulties with the religious orthodoxy for their
purported affiliations with Spinozism and its pantheism.15 Written in the
form of a geometrical proof, the Ethics was an attempt to apply the rigorous
methodology of analytic geometry to metaphysical questions. According to
Hegel’s view, the geometrical method was not appropriate for philosophi-
cal questions; however, he thought that Spinoza’s belief in the importance
of a rigorous systematic philosophy that demanded proofs with the power
of necessity was fundamentally correct. Moreover, Spinoza’s monism was
also extremely attractive to the generation of post-Kantian philosophers
who were trying to resolve the paradoxes of the dualism of representation
and thing-in-itself that seemed to arise naturally from Kant’s theoretical
philosophy.
Like his forerunners, Hegel believed that the very notion of truth was
necessarily bound up with its systematic form.16 In some ways it is odd that
Anglophone philosophers have been so quick to dismiss Hegel’s concep-
tion of systematic philosophy given the fact that in contemporary thought,
his conception, albeit under names such as “a network theory of truth,” “a
scientific paradigm,” or “holism,” remain quite popular. While the names
used today to designate this way of thinking differ from Hegel’s designation
of “speculative philosophy,” the idea underlying them is fundamentally the
same: individual parts of the system have their meaning only in their neces-
sary relation to the other parts, and thus as parts of a larger whole.
Hegel’s methodological investment in this view is demonstrated in the
Phenomenology. He portrays the notion of a systematic philosophy by means
of an organic analogy. The development of a plant at its different stages
28 Idealism and Existentialism

is necessary for the plant as a whole, and no single stage represents the
plant’s entire history. He writes:

The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might
say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit
appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of
the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of it instead. These
forms are not just distinguished from one another, they also supplant
one another as mutually incompatible. Yet at the same time their fluid
nature makes them moments of an organic unity in which they not only
do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary as the other; and this
mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole.17

Just as when a plant grows and develops, each of its individual stages is
necessary for the succeeding stages, so also individual concepts in a philo-
sophical system have their meaning in the context of other concepts from
which they were developed. Just as the different stages of its development
change the plant’s appearance so radically that it appears to become
another “contradictory” species, so also contradictory concepts can con-
tribute to the development of a single philosophical system. What this
simile makes clear is that the system, for Hegel, involves the sum total of
the individual parts as they develop organically. Thus, just as the plant is
not merely the sum total of its parts at a given moment in its development,
but rather the organic whole of its developmental stages, so also a philo-
sophical system is the complete development or unfolding of individual
concepts.
In the Preface of the Phenomenology, Hegel flatly claims: “The true shape
in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth.”18 A little
later, he says: “ . . . knowledge is only actual, and can only be expounded, as
Science or as system.”19 Surely, one could ask for no clearer statement of the
relation of truth to a system; hence, however opaque Hegel may be about
the details of the system, he is crystal clear that a systematic approach is
necessary to reach the truth. To understand Hegel’s systematic pretensions
merely as a simple matter of the orderly presentation of ideas is to miss his
philosophical point.20 The systematic whole is essentially bound up with
the notion of truth itself, and cannot be sundered from it.
This conception of a network of interrelated beliefs implies a certain
kind of philosophy, namely, one that examines the totality of beliefs, con-
cepts, institutions, and so on, instead of concentrating only on certain
individual isolated ones. The kind of philosophy that examines the whole
 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic Fragment 29

is what Hegel, following tradition, calls “speculative philosophy.” He con-

trasts it to what he calls “dogmatism,” which treats concepts individually
and thus abstracted from their organic unity:

But in the narrower sense dogmatism consists in adhering to one-sided

determinations of the understanding whilst excluding their opposites.
This is just the strict “either-or,” according to which (for instance) the
world is either finite or infinite, but not both. On the contrary, what is genu-
ine and speculative is precisely what does not have any such one-sided
determination in it and is therefore not exhausted by it; on the contrary,
being a totality, it contains the determinations that dogmatism holds to
be fixed and true in a state of separation from one another united within
itself.21

Here Hegel refers to Kant’s “First Antinomy,” which presents the universe
as both finite and infinite.22 By choosing this example, Hegel thereby
implicitly praises Kant’s speculative treatment of the issue. The key point
for the present purposes is that speculative philosophy removes concepts
from the isolation of abstraction and puts them in their appropriate sys-
tematic context where they can be properly analyzed. “The speculative or
positively rational,” says Hegel, “apprehends the unity of determinations in
their opposition, the affirmative that is contained in their dissolution and in
their transition.”23 In a similar passage from the introduction to the Science
of Logic, he writes: “It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in
the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative,
that speculative thought consists.”24 Speculative philosophy involves exam-
ining the whole universe of thought, which invariably involves contradic-
tions. Instead of insisting on one side of a contradiction or the other, or
stopping once a contradiction has been reached, it observes the dynamical
movement in pairs of opposites, and looks beyond the immediate contra-
dictory terms towards a higher truth that arises from the dialectical devel-
opment of the contradiction.
One can of course continue for the sake of pedagogical expedience to
cut and splice Hegel in order to make him fit into the customary under-
graduate course, but in so doing one must recognize that such a procedure
is entirely contrary to his own methodology and thoroughly goes against
the grain of his conception of philosophy. Hegel conceived of his philoso-
phy as a system, and it is in this context that his thought must be under-
stood. Even if one no longer finds systematic philosophy plausible, one is
nonetheless obliged to attempt to understand Hegel in this way in order
30 Idealism and Existentialism

to be able to grasp his philosophical motivations and intuitions. If one

chooses instead to simply purge Hegel’s works of their systematic elements,
then in effect one loses Hegel in the process.

II. The Ambiguous Role of the Phenomenology

One of the earliest commentators to point out the ambiguous nature of the
argumentation in the Phenomenology was Rudolf Haym in his Hegel und seine
Zeit from 1857. Haym pointed out that the work contains two kinds of argu-
ment. The first is what he designates as “transcendental-psychological.” 25
This is characteristic of the analyses in the first part of the work, which trace
the forms of the individual consciousness on its road of discovery and self-
knowledge. By contrast, there is also a “historical” form of argumentation,26
in which the individual forms of consciousness are suddenly transformed
into historical epochs. Thus, apparently without explanation, the devel-
opment of consciousness becomes the development of historical peoples.
Haym argues that these two different forms of argumentation make the
work disunified. Using a metaphor from classical philology, he claims that
the work is a palimpsest, on which one text was originally written, only to
be eclipsed by another text with a different conception, which was subse-
quently written over the first.27 These two different texts then reflect differ-
ent conceptions of the work itself.
In a celebrated paper delivered at the 1933 Hegel Congress in Rome, 28
Theodor Haering took up this view, arguing that the Phenomenology was
a disunified work due to the fact that Hegel changed his mind about
the conception of its philosophical task during the composition of the
text itself. The change concerns specifically what philosophical work
the Phenomenology is intended to do. According to Haering’s account,
the Phenomenology was originally conceived as an introduction to a philo-
sophical system and as the “experience of consciousness.” Through the
beginning of the “Reason” chapter, so the argument goes, the work pro-
ceeded as planned. But then the chapters became much longer, much
less unified, and departed from the original argumentative structure of
the work established in the “Consciousness” and “Self-Consciousness”
chapters. In the middle of the “Reason” chapter, the account of the devel-
opment of the forms of individual consciousness grew into an account of
the forms of “Spirit” or group consciousness. At this point the work could
no longer be considered a mere introduction but rather had grown into
a substantive part of the system in its own right. This view is purportedly
 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic Fragment 31

confirmed by, among other things, Hegel’s own ambiguous statements

about the role of the Phenomenology and various items of biographical
information surrounding its composition.
In his Preface, Hegel indicates that the Phenomenology is to be understood
as the first part of the system: “Further, an exposition of this kind consti-
tutes the first part of Science, because the existence of Spirit qua primary
is nothing but the immediate or the beginning—but not yet its return into
itself.”29 Moreover, the Encyclopaedia Logic, written ten years later, still refers
to the Phenomenology as “the first part of the system of science.”30 Thus,
Hegel appears at this later date still to consider the Phenomenology to be
the first part of a system. However, in a letter to Schelling shortly after the
publication of the work, he writes, “I am curious as to what you will say to
the idea of this first part, which is really the introduction—for I have not
yet got beyond the introducing right into the heart of the matter.”31 This
seems to indicate that the Phenomenology is a mere introduction and the
actual subject matter of the system has not yet been broached. This ambi-
guity has been interpreted as evidence of Hegel’s own confusion about the
status and philosophical task of the text.
In addition to the arguments offered by Haym and Haering concerning
the ambiguous role of the Phenomenology, there has also been confusion
concerning an intermediate title page that appeared after the preface in
the work’s first edition.32 The original title was The Science of the Experience
of Consciousness, which was apparently replaced at the last minute, indeed
after some copies had already been printed, by the title Science of the
Phenomenology of Spirit. This amendment has been interpreted as evidence
that Hegel originally intended to give an account of the experience of con-
sciousness but, during the course of the work, changed his mind and added
social and historical forms which went beyond individual consciousness; he
then altered the title accordingly to reflect the change in content. The new
title then refers not merely to consciousness but rather to Spirit.
Although these arguments offer evidence that the Phenomenology serves
at least two distinct philosophical agendas, they are not sufficient to justify
the conclusion that it is a disunified text. Many works of philosophy and
literature have changed direction during the course of their composition,
without necessarily being disunified. It depends, of course, on the indi-
vidual text and the nature of the changes. In one case, the author may
be so overpowered by the discontinuous strands of the work that the final
product is indeed chaotic, but in another the author may succeed in incor-
porating the new conception into the material that had been written up
until that point. The new element may then be seen as an improvement, an
32 Idealism and Existentialism

expansion or a supplement, and need not necessarily imply that the final
product is disunified. It cannot be assumed that a change in the concep-
tion of a work during its composition always necessarily results in a disuni-
fied text.
Hegel appears to have realized that his transcendental argument, which
gives an exhaustive account of the necessary conditions of the possibility
of objective thought, would be incomplete without an account of the social
interactions and historical influences which constitute the medium in
which truth claims are determined. He was able to incorporate these anal-
yses into his overall plan for a transcendental argument without damaging
the unity of the work as a whole. To be sure, these analyses differed from
those given in the “Consciousness” and “Self-Consciousness” chapters with
respect to content, but the aim of the analyses and their dialectical form
remained the same. Thus, the conception of the Phenomenology as a tran-
scendental argument never changed, although during the composition of
the text, Hegel discovered new aspects and elements of this argument that
he had not considered when he started on the work.

III. The Coherence Problem in General

Haym’s thesis about the disunity of the Phenomenology has been reworked
with more philological detail by subsequent authors. Most notably, Otto
Pöggeler in his influential essay on the composition of the work confirms
the main points of Haym’s and Haering’s discontinuity thesis, although
differing from it in some details.33 Other commentators use this thesis as a
point of departure or presupposition for their own interpretation of indi-
vidual parts of the text as atomic units. The question of the Phenomenology
as an introduction, or alternatively as a first part of a system, has fallen
somewhat into the background, while the thesis that it is disunified remains
as strong as ever.
The main arguments used by Pöggeler and later commentators can be
separated into two interrelated groups. The first line of argumentation is
external to the text itself and uses as evidence biographical information
about Hegel during the period of the composition of the Phenomenology.
This sort of argument begins with some fact about Hegel’s life or the cir-
cumstances of the composition of the work, and then proceeds to a claim
about the patchwork nature of the text itself. The second line of argumen-
tation is internal to the text. On this view, the text of the Phenomenology on
its own terms cannot be made sense of as a systematic work. The transitions
 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as a Systematic Fragment 33

between the individual chapters are seen as unclear, and the radical diver-
sity of the themes treated is seen to undermine any continuity.

A. The Arguments Based on Hegel’s Biography

There are above all biographical reasons to believe that the Phenomenology
could not be a carefully organized and unified argument. Hegel purport-
edly wrote the work, or at least a large part of it, during an extremely short
period of time. Although he had already sent off the first half of the text
shortly after Easter of 1806, he was under tremendous pressure to com-
plete the manuscript by 18 October of that year. This was the deadline set
by his publisher, Goebhardt, who was appeased only after Hegel’s friend
Niethammer offered to personally pay the printing costs if Hegel failed to
deliver the rest of the manuscript on time. 34 On 8 October Hegel sent part
of the second half of the manuscript, and had to finish the rest of the work
in great haste to meet the deadline.
Yet even if the composition of the final part of the text was quite hurried,
it does not necessarily follow that the text is disunified. There is evidence
that Hegel used much of the subject matter found in the Phenomenology in
his lecture courses throughout the Jena period,35 which suggests that he
had been working with the same material for some years. A work which he
had already thought out and worked through in his lectures would presum-
ably have required much less time to compose than a work that had to be
constructed from the ground up.
A related biographical argument is that the threatening approach of
the French army and the confusion and disorder surrounding the Battle
of Jena distracted and distressed Hegel during the composition of the
Phenomenology.36 First, the Battle of Jena compelled him to finish the work
quickly, thus providing yet another external pressure that magnified the
difficulties he was already having with his publisher. Second, he feared
for his personal safety. French soldiers who came to his house had to be
appeased with food and wine, and Hegel, then completely destitute, ulti-
mately had to seek refuge in the home of a friend.
Again, however, the fact that a work is composed in chaotic circumstances
does not necessarily mean that the finished product must be disunified.
A number of philosophical masterpieces were written under likewise try-
ing circumstances. Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy while await-
ing the death sentence to be carried out; Condorcet wrote his systematic
masterpiece, Sketch of a Historical Description of the Progress of the Human
Spirit, under similar circumstances. The Golden Age of Roman literature
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Kaunotar
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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Title: Kaunotar

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Translator: Valfrid Hedman

Release date: March 9, 2024 [eBook #73129]

Language: Finnish

Original publication: Hämeenlinna: Arvi A. Karisto Oy, 1920

Credits: Juhani Kärkkäinen and Tapio Riikonen

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KAUNOTAR ***

KAUNOTAR

Kirj.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Suomentanut

Valfrid Hedman

Hämeenlinnassa, Arvi A. Karisto Osakeyhtiö, 1920.

ENSIMÄINEN LUKU.

Oli vienyt Josélta pitkän ajan ja tuottanut hänelle paljon puuhaa, kun
hän vanhaa isoäitiänsä ja Pepitaa varten asetti kuntoon pienen
asunnon Madridin ulkopuolella, jonne hän vihdoin riemulla saattoi
heidät kuumana kesäpäivänä, viiniköynnösten ja oliivipuidenkin
lehtien ollessa tomun peittäminä. Se oli hänelle ollut iso homma,
koska hän luonteeltaan oli hyvin hiljainen ja säyseä sekä yhtä hidas
kuin hän oli hyvä ja uskollinen Pepitaa ja isänsä äitiä kohtaan.
Hänellä oli iso ja voimakas ruumiinrakennus, ja sydänkin oli suuri ja
avara. Hän oli, kuten sanottu, hiljainen ja hidas — kaikessa muussa
paitsi puusepäntyössään. Ammattityönsä hän teki sekä nopeasti että
hyvin, jopa oivallisestikin, sillä tähän hänellä oli ollut halua ja
taipumusta aina siitä asti, kun hän pienenä poikana alkoi ahertaa
enonsa viinitarhassa, viljellä hänen vainioitaan ja ruokkia hänen
kotieläimiään.

Hänen enoansa pidettiin naapurien kesken rikkaana miehenä,

mutta kun hänen sisarensa ja tämän mies kuolivat jättäen jälkeensä
kaksi lasta, Josén ja Pepitan, ilman ropoakaan perinnöksi ja ilman
ketään muuta hoitajaa kuin hän itse ja näiden isänäiti, joka jo oli
vanha nainen, joutui kuorma viimemainitun harteille, sillä eno ei
tehnyt mitään muuta heidän puolestaan kuin että silloin tällöin
vastahakoisesti antoi heille hiukan vihanneksia tai maahan varisseita
hedelmiä. On kyllä totta, että kun José tuli kyllin vanhaksi
työskennelläkseen vainioilla, hän antoi pojalle työtä; mutta hän
maksoi hänelle huonosti, ja kohtelu oli vielä kehnompaa:
nuorukainen sai huonoa ruokaa, kuuli vihaisia sanoja ja usein tuli
hänen osakseen iskujakin, joita poloinen ei ansainnut. Siitä johtui,
että José työssään käydessään vähitellen teki suunnitelman jättää
tämän kaiken ja hankkia toisen kodin itselleen, pienelle sisarelleen ja
vanhalle isoäidilleen.

Hän tiesi, että se kävi päinsä vain yhdellä tavalla — jos hän voisi
päästä seutuun, missä hänen ainoa lahjakkuutensa kenties voisi olla
hänelle suuremmaksi hyödyksi kuin pienessä kurjassa maakylässä —
jos hän voisi päästä paikkaan, missä oli enemmän ihmisiä ja missä
työstä maksettiin runsaammin.

Siellä, missä kuningas ja kuningatar asuivat, täytyi tietysti olla

enemmän rahaa, ja siellä voisi saada enemmän työtä ja paremmat
elämismahdollisuudet. Tämän tuuman oli padre Alessandro,
kylänpappi, hänelle ensiksi ehdottanut. Tämä padre oli
hyväluontoinen ja hilpeä vanhus, joka kauan sitten oli nähnyt vähän
maailmaakin; ja siitä ehkä johtuikin, ettei hän koskaan ollut kovin
ankara ripille tullutta syntis-parkaa kohtaan; ja toisinaan hän saattoi
antaa jonkun hyvän neuvonkin. Hän oli aina ollut ystävällinen
Josélle, ja kun Pepita päivä päivältä tuli kauniimmaksi, oli hän usein
puhunut tytöstä vanhalle Jovitalle ja sanonut hänelle, että hänen oli
opetettava pojantyttärelleen kaikki mitä taisi sekä hyvin vartioitava
häntä. Olipa hau kerran, kun tyttö tuli sisälle vasullinen viinirypäleitä
pienen päänsä päällä, posket punottaen kuumuudesta Ja musta
tukka kiemuroiden kosteina kiharina otsalla — niin, silloin hän oli
tehnyt sen maailmallisen huomautuksen, että näin kauniilla nuorella
tytöllä pitäisi olla joitakin iloisempia tulevaisuudentoiveita kuin
kovassa työssä niukalla ravinnolla uurastaminen, mikä vanhensi
ihmistä ennen aikojansa eikä jättänyt mitään hauskoja muistoja
elämän tieltä.

Mutta hän sanoi sen ainoastaan Jovitalle, ja Jovita vain tuijotti,

sillä hän ei ollut koskaan ajatellut, että maailmassa voisi olla muuta
kuin kovaa työtä ja köyhyyttä. Ja mitäpä kauneus hyödytti? Tekihän
vain luultavammaksi että joku iloinen nuori vetelehtijä olisi tyttöön
rakastuvinaan ja sitten vihkimisen jälkeen jättäisi hänet toimitta
maan kaikki työt kodissa ja hankkimaan ruokaa nälkäiselle
lapsilaumalle. Sellaista hän kyllä usein oli nähnyt. Eikö niin ollut
käynyt Pepitan äidin, joka kuoli kahdenkolmatta vuoden iässä työstä
ja kovasta kohtelusta melkein loppuun kuluneena kuin vanha akka?

Mutta sitte kun padre Alessandro tapasi Josén, jutteli hän

tämänkin kanssa Pepitasta, joskin vain ikäänkuin tilapäisesti muiden
ainesten lomassa.

»Hänen tulisi mennä naimisiin jonkun kunnon miehen kanssa, joka

voisi pitää hänestä huolta», sanoi hän. »Jos sinä muutat Madridiin,
tulee hänellekin paremmat olot.»

Ja kaiken lopuksi tuli, että pitkien, tarkkojen suunnittelujen,

monien toivomusten, paljon pelon ja useamman kuin yhden
pettymyksen jälkeen koitti päivä, jolloin enon täytyi mielipahakseen
menettää parhain ja kärsivällisin työntekijänsä. Kurja mökki oli nyt
tyhjänä, ja José, Pepita ja Jovita olivat uudessa maailmassa.

Ja millaiselta se uusi maailma heistä näyttikään! Padre

Alessandron ja erään tämän ystävän välityksellä José sai tuottavaa
työtä, ja hänestä tuntui, että hän kädenkäänteessä oli tullut
rikkaaksi. Ja mökki vankkoine seinineen ja kattoineen, siistine
huoneineen ja pienine puutarhoineen oli heidän entiseen hökkeliinsä
verrattuna oikea palatsi. Mutta ensimäisinä päivinä Jovitan oli vaikea
sopeutua uusiin oloihin Että ei tarvinnut tehdä mitään raskasta työtä,
että oli riittävästi ruokaa ja kaikki niin mukavaa, se oli hänestä
luonnotonta ja ikäänkuin jotakin suurta onnettomuutta ennustavaa.

Niin ei kuitenkaan ollut Pepitan laita. Nuoruuden koko ilo, kaikki

sen riemut ja toivomukset täyttivät hänen sydämensä. Olla niin
lähellä suurta tenhoavaa kaupunkia, pian saada nähdä kaikki sen
ihanuudet, kulkea sen kaduilla, ottaa osaa sen huhuiltuihin
huvituksiin — tuo oli korkein onni. Jos hän ennen oli ollut kaunis, tuli
hän nyt kymmentä kertaa kauniimmaksi. Hänen säteilevät silmänsä
avartuivat ilosta ja ihmettelystä, kepeät jalat liikkuivat melkein
tanssiaskelin, hipiä oli heleä kuin Damaskon ruusu. Jokainen päivä
toi hänelle uusia viattoman ilon aiheita.

Kun José iltasin tuli kotiin työstään, asettui Pepita hänen viereensä
istumaan ja kyseli häneltä tuhansia seikkoja. Oliko hän nähnyt
palatsin? — oliko nähnyt kuninkaan tai kuningattaren? — mitä
puuhailivat kaikki ihmiset? — olivatko kaupungin puistot kauniit? Ja
sitten hän väliin otti kitaransa, joka oli kuulunut hänen iloiselle
isälleen tämän iloisimpina päivinä, ja istuskeli ulkona pienessä
puutarhassa viiniköynnösten, sitruunapuiden ja oleanderien keskellä
soittaen ja laulaen toisen laulun toisensa perästä Josén poltellessa ja
lepäillessä, ihmetellessä ja iloitessa sisarestansa. Tuntui siltä kuin
Pepita olisi perinyt isän kaiken hilpeyden ja vilkkauden. José ei siitä
ollut saanut mitään osalleen, ja kun hän oli hidas ja yksinkertainen,
oli tyttö aina ollut hänelle ihme ja tuottanut hänelle omituista huvia.
Sisar oli oikeastaan ollut hänen elämänsä ainoa ilo, ja hänen
itsepäisyytensäkin viehätti häntä. Hän antoi sille aina perään ja oli
tyytyväinen. Pepitahan oli kerran uhmannut enoakin, kun kukaan
muu ei ollut sitä tohtinut. Hän oli keikauttanut pientä päätänsä,
mennyt häntä vastaan ja näyttänyt niin kauniilta vihansa puuskassa,
että vanha saituri ensi kertaa elämässään aivan lannistui ja
senjälkeen aina oli kohdellut häntä tavallaan kunnioittavasti, vieläpä
sanonut eräälle naapurille, että »poika oli tyhmeliini, mutta tyttönen
sensijaan niin viehättävän veikeä».

Kaikissa suunnitteluissaan oli José ennen kaikkea ajatellut Pepitaa.

Madrid oli hänestä kuin jonkinlainen kehys Pepitalle, pieni, siisti ja
mukava tupa oli Pepitan koti, ruusuja ja sitruunankukkia hän pitäisi
tukassaan; komeiden viiniköynnösten alla hän istuisi iltasin soitellen
kitaraansa. Josén palkka riittäisi hankkimaan tytölle mukavuutta ja
siroja yksinkertaisia vaatteita. Ja sitten saisivat kaikki nähdä, kuinka
kaunis hän oli, ja kun hän meni kirkkoon tai veljensä ja Jovitan
kanssa Pradolle tai Paso de la Virgen del Puertolle, tirkistelisivät
ihmiset häntä ja juttelisivat keskenään hänen ihanuudestaan; ja
kaikki tämä ehkä aikaa myöten päättyisi hyvään avioliittoon. Joku
kunnon mies rakastaisi Pepitaa ja tämä saisi oman kodin, missä hän
hyörisi iloisena päivät pitkät. Oli ainoastaan yksi este tämän
oivallisen tuuman tiellä, vain yksi pieni este — Pepita itse.

Omituista kyllä, Pepita tunsi piintynyttä vastenmielisyyttä

avioliittoa kohtaan. Hän oli jo aikaisin ilmoittanut aikovansa jäädä
naimattomaksi, ja kotikylänsä nuoria miehiä, jotka olivat tahtoneet
häntä kosiskella, hän oli kohdellut tylysti ja halveksivasti. Tietäen
rakkaudesta yhtä vähän kuin sulaton linnunpoika hän oli
kylmäkiskoisuudessaan viattoman julma. Hän ei koskaan yrittänyt
tilannetta lieventää. Hän oli kyllä valmis tanssimaan, nauramaan ja
laulamaan, mutta kun hän näki herättäneensä hellempiä tunteita, oli
hän rehellisyyden perikuva.
 »Miksi minä teitä kuuntelisin», oli hän sanonut useammin kuin
kerran. »Minä en pidä teistä. Te ette miellytä minua. Koska tahdotte
minua kanssanne avioliittoon, niin minä kammoan teitä. Menkää
tiehenne ja kosikaa jotakuta toista.»

Ja Josélle hän sanoi:

»Minä en tahdo mennä naimisiin. Tahdon jäädä sinun luoksesi,

täällä kun olen onnellisin. Tytöt, jotka menevät avioliittoon, tulevat
rumiksi ja onnettomiksi. Heidän miehensä eivät rakasta heitä, heidän
täytyy ahertaa työssä kuin orjat, hoitaa kotia ja lapsia. Katso Tessaa!
Hänen miehensähän oli ihan hullu hänen peräänsä. Nyt hän
tähystelee Juanitaa ja lyö Tessaa, jos hän valittaa. Ja emmekö
molemmat muista, kuinka äidillemme kävi? Minä en tahdo koskaan
rakastaa ketään enkä koskaan mene naimisiin. Rakastakoot minua,
jos ovat niin typeriä, mutta minä haluan olla rauhassa. En välitä
ainoastakaan miehestä.»

Totta puhuen José tiesi, että muisto äidin onnettomuudesta ja

Jovitan kertomukset olivat kaiken tämän pohjana. Kauhistuen hän
itsekin muisti nuo onnettomat vuodet heidän aikaisimman
lapsuutensa ajalta — äidin suuret, kauniit, surulliset silmät sekä
heidän iloisen, komean isänsä ja tämän huolettoman julmuuden ja
raakuuden. Kuinka monta kertaa he, José ja Pepita, olivatkaan
ryömineet iltasilla johonkin ullakon nurkkaan ja kuulleet äidin
nyyhkytykset ja monesti iskujen läiskähdykset ja kiroukset, joita
satoi hänen päällensä senvuoksi, ettei hän enää ollut kaunotar ja
että oli muita kaunottaria, jotka tuhlasivat hymyjään pulskille
miehille, sekä vapaille että avioliiton kahleilla sidotuille. Oli kovin
kiusoittavaa kauniille miehelle — niin hän ajatteli — saapua likaiseen
kotiin, sitte kun oli pitänyt hauskaa muualla, ja pakosta joutua
tuijottamaan köyhyyttä kasvoista kasvoihin ja katselemaan repaleisia
lapsia ja vaimoa, jolla oli suuret, itkettyneet silmät. Niin, Pepita ja
José muistivat kaiken tämän, ja Pepitan luonteeseen se oli jättänyt
ihmeellisiä merkkejä.

Nuori kun oli, hän oli herättänyt kiihkeitä intohimoja useammassa

kuin yhdessä sydämessä, ja parissa tapauksessa olivat kosijat olleet
paljoa paremmassa yhteiskunnallisessa asemassa kuin hän —
joukossa oli ollut rikkaan maanviljelijän ainoa poikakin, joka olisi
voinut valita itselleen paljoa ylväämmän puolison kuin tuon pienen
ynseän kaunottaren ja jonka vanhemmat mitä ankarimmin
paheksuivat hänen mielettömyyttänsä ja vihdoin lähettivät hänet
Sevillaan. Mutta sitä ennen oli Pepita häikäilemättä polkenut hänet
pienillä jaloillansa maahan.

»Minä inhoan teitä enemmän kuin ketään niistä muista», sanoi

hän ja loi häneen isot, rehelliset silmänsä, kun hän paljasti hurjan
raivonsa. »Menkää tiehenne ja naikaa se tyttö, jonka isänne on teille
valinnut — jos hän teistä huolii. Heidän ei enää tarvitse minua pelätä
eikä minua panetella. Minä en huoli teistä. En voi sietää teitä
lähelläni.»

Josén päähän ei koskaan pälkähtänyt valitella tytön käytöstä,

mutta Jovitan maailmallisten etujen vaisto tällä kertaa loukkaantui,
eikä hän epäröinyt lausua paheksumistansa.

»Eihän tässä Jumala nähköön kiirettä ole», sanoi hän, »mutta

tämä on tilaisuus, josta kuka tyttö tahansa voisi ylpeillä. Mutta kun
on sellainen houkkio! Niinhän se aina on. Sitten tulee joku, joka ei
ole minkään arvoinen, ja silloin tyttö tulee hulluksi, kuten muutkin, ja
juoksee kylläkin kärkkäästi hänen perässään.»
 »Minäkö!» huudahti Pepita, joka seisoi ovella. »Minäkö?» Ja hän
avasi mustat silmänsä vihasta ja hämmästyksestä.

»Niin, juuri sinä», vastasi Jovita. »Ja sinun käy vielä kymmentä
kertaa pahemmin kuin kenenkään muun. Tytöt, jotka mielestään
ovat liian hyviä puhuteltaviksikin, ovat aina helpoimmat hupsuttaa,
kun tapaavat mestarinsa. Kun hän vain tulee, niin sinä putoat kuin
kypsä rypäle.»

»Hän ei koskaan tule», sanoi Pepita, »ei koskaan!» Eikä hänen

kasvoillaan näkynyt epäilyksen vilahdustakaan — ei mitään muuta
kuin närkästystä Jovitan pahantuulisuudesta. »Minä en pelkää
miehiä. Ne ovat kaikki tyhmiä. Ne luulevat saavansa kaikki, mitä
tahtovat, eivätkä saakaan mitään. Heidän täytyy ensin kysyä, ja tytöt
voivat vastata kieltävästi. Silloin he tulevat onnettomiksi, kerjäävät ja
rukoilevat, kunnes heihin kyllästyy. Jos joku antaisi minulle kieltävän
vastauksen, en totisesti sallisi heidän nähdä, että se minua
katkeroittaa. He saisivat luulla, etten siitä vähääkään piinaisi.»

»Et sinä aina vastaa kieltävästi», murisi Jovita. »Odotahan, vielä

tulee päivä, jolloin vastaat myöntäen. Silloin teet sen kylläkin
mielelläsi. Sellaisia ovat naiset.»

Hurmaava pieni hymy värähdytti Pepitan huulia ja laajeni hänen

silmiinsä asti.

»Minä en ole mikään nainen», virkkoi tyttö ja katsahti

päiväpaisteiseen viinitarhaan. »Sen sanoi hän itse. Filippo sanoi: 'te
ette ole nainen — te olette velho, eikä kukaan voi liikuttaa
sydäntänne tai voittaa teitä'. Minä tahdon olla velho.»
 Omassa mielessään hän oli pitänyt enemmän näistä sanoista kuin
mistään aikaisemmin kuulemistaan ihailevista lauseista. Hän kuuli
kernaasti, että oli voittamaton ja kaikelta vaaralta turvassa — että oli
velho, vapaa kaikesta tuollaisesta onnettomasta hupsuudesta ja siis
voittamaton. Niin, se miellytti häntä. Ei ollut hänen syynsä, että
miehet rakastuivat häneen. Hän ei heitä siihen kehoitellut. Ei
ensinkään. Hän ei koskaan sallinut heidän tulla lähelle tai itseään
koskea — hän ei milloinkaan suonut heille helliä silmäyksiä tai sanoja
Hän vain nauroi ja oli Pepita — siinä kaikki. Hänessä ei siis voinut
olla syytä.

Ja kuitenkin oli hänen pieni sydämensä lämmin. Hän rakasti

hartaasti Joséta — hän piti Jovitasta, hän helli pieniä lapsia ja
eläimiä, ja nekin suosivat häntä. Vanhat ukot ja akat rakastivat häntä
hänen yksinkertaisen, melkein lapsellisen hyväntahtoisuutensa ja
avuliaisuutensa vuoksi, hän kun aina oli valmis auttamaan niitä,
jotka tarvitsivat hänen nuorta voimaansa tai hänen iloista
hilpeyttänsä. Ainoastaan niille miehille, jotka tarjosivat hänelle
rakkautta, hän ei osoittanut mitään myötätuntoa. Sillä hän ei näitä
asioita ymmärtänyt.
TOINEN LUKU

Kävi niinkuin José oli otaksunutkin. Kun hän ensimäisenä

vapaapäivällään vei Pepitan ja Jovitan mukanaan kaupungin
puistoon, loi jokainen ohikulkija useankin silmäyksen kauniiseen
tyttöön. Ihmiset melkein pysähtyivät häntä katselemaan, eikä
varmaan ollut ainoatakaan miestä, joka ei kääntänyt päätänsä
tarkatakseen lumoavaa, vyötäisiltään sirosti pyöreää,
loistavakasvoista tyttöä, kun tämä pieni pää ryhdikkäässä asennossa
ja punainen ruusu mustien kiharain pilvessä astui heidän ohitseen.
Piankin pari kolme Josén työtoveria etsivät tämän käsiinsä ja
tervehtivät erinomaisen sydämellisesti. Heillä oli mielestään kovin
paljon hänelle puhuttavaa ja he tuhlasivat hänelle
huomaavaisuuttansa. Sellainen hauska mies tämä José — niin
oivallinen poika ja taitava työssään, että niitä Madridissa harvoin
tapaa! Ja näissä puistoissa saattoi tosiaan huvitella. Kaiken aikaa he
katselivat Pepitaa, ja onnellinen se heistä, jolla oli äiti tai sisar
avustamassa tyttöön tutustumisessa. Eikä vanha Jovita koskaan ollut
saanut osakseen tällaista kohteliaisuutta ja nauttinut tällaista
kunnioitusta.

Pepita tunsi samanlaista riemua kuin linnunpoikanen ensimäisellä

lennollaan. Ja ilo elähytti kaikkea hänen ympärillään: juhlapukuinen
kansa, sininen taivas, päiväpaiste, vaatimattomat huvit, kaikki tuotti
hänelle päihdyttävää riemua. Hän teki tuttavuutta nuorten tyttöjen ja
heidän vanhempainsa kanssa, osoittautuipa ystävälliseksi nuorille
miehillekin, jotka kieppuivat Josén kintereillä ja näkyivät pitävän
hänen seuraansa viehättävämpänä kuin kenenkään muun.

Eräältä näistä nuorista miehistä — nimeltä Manuelo — Pepita ensin

kuuli Sebastianosta — iloisesta, ihmeellisestä, maankuulusta
Sebastianosta. Hän oli kysynyt Pepitalta, tuo Manuelo, menisikö hän
ensi viikolla Plaza de Torosille härkätaistelua katsomaan, ja kun tyttö
vastasi, ettei tiennyt — ettei koskaan ollut nähnyt härkätaistelua, oli
miehellä paljon asioita kerrottavana. Hän kuvaili laajan kilpakentän
ihmeitä, siellä kun oli tilaa kahdelletoistatuhannelle katsojalle ja
rikkaasti puetut ylhäiset ja kauniit naiset ihailijainsa ja
aviopuolisoittansa ympäröiminä huusivat ilosta ja innostuksesta
taistelun käydessä vaaralliseksi ja sekä härkäin että toreadorien
osoittaessa erityistä rohkeutta ja eloisuutta; hän kuvaili pukuja,
soitantoa, ratsuillaan areenalle syöksyviä picadoreja, banderilleroja
heittokeihäineen ja nauhoineen sekä matadorin uhmailevaa
rohkeutta, teräksisiä lihaksia ja hermoja ja salamannopeata
hyppäystä.

Sitten hän kuvaili Sebastianoa. Hänen innostuksestaan päättäen ei

Madridissa koskaan ennen ollut nähty sellaista matadoria, sellaista
surmaniskijää kuin Sebastiano. Ei koskaan niin kaunista, niin
säteilevää, niin yleensä jumaloitua nuorta miestä. Mitkä kaikuvat
kättentaputukset tervehtivätkään häntä, kun hän näyttäytyi
areenalla! Kun hän teki ylvään kumarruksensa juhlan esimiehelle ja
sanoi: »Minä kaadan tämän härän Madridin kansan ja tämän
näytelmän korkea-arvoisen ja mainion presidentin kunniaksi» ja
viskasi hattunsa ilmaan astuessaan eteenpäin ja heiluttaessaan
punaista viittaansa, niin millaista ihastusta hän herättikään! Hänestä
laulettiin kaduilla, hänen kuvallaan koristettiin viuhkoja ja hänen
rohkeita tekojaan kerrottiin hienoille vallasnaisille, jotka rakkaudesta
häneen olivat itkeneet silmänsä päästä. Mitä taas hänen oman
säätyluokkansa naisiin tuli, ei ollut ainoatakaan tyttöä Madridissa,
joka ei hänestä uneksinut.

»Miksi niin?» kysyi Pepita lempeällä, järkkymättömällä äänellään ja

kylmä, utelias katse suurissa, pitkien ripsien verhoamissa silmissä.

»Siksi, että he ovat häneen rakastuneet — jok'ainoa», vastasi

Manuelo liioitellen.

»Miksi niin?» kysyi Pepita vielä kerran.

»Miksikö?» huudahti Manuelo hiukan hämillään tässä

kysymyksessä esiintyvästä rehellisestä ja välinpitämättömästä
kaikkien luonnollisten syiden tietämättömyydestä, »miksikö? Siksi,
että hän on kookas ja vahva, siksi, että hän on kaunis, siksi, että hän
on rohkeampi ja notkeampi kuin kukaan muu — siksi että hän on
Sebastiano.»

Pepita nauroi ja avasi ja sulki nopeasti viuhkansa.

»Minkätähden te nauratte?» kysyi Manuelo.

»Ajattelin vain, kuinka hän niitä halveksineekaan», vastasi tyttö.

»Oh, ei suinkaan», sanoi Manuelo, joka ei ollut kovin nokkela,

»hän on aina ystävällinen naisille. Muistan Saritan — pienen raukan,
joka aina oli asunut maalla. Tyttö näki hänet ensi kerran
härkätaistelussa eikä senjälkeen enää koskaan ollut onnellinen. Hän
ei voinut ajatella ketään muuta kuin häntä ja oli liian viattoman
yksinkertainen sitä salatakseen. Usein hän hiipi kotoansa ja seurasi
Sebastianoa tämän näkemättä. Hän tapasi naisen, joka tunsi jonkun
Sebastianon tuttavista, ja tuhlasi kaikki pienet säästönsä lahjoiksi
hänelle suositellakseen hänet ystäväkseen ja juttelemaan hänelle
Sebastianosta. Pari kertaa hän tapasi Sebastianon, ja koska hän oli
niin pieni ja herttainen tyttönen, puhutteli Sebastiano häntä
ystävällisesti ja lausui ihastuksensa hänen silmistään ja tanssistaan.
Hän ei aavistanut, että tyttö oli häneen rakastunut.»

Pepita nauroi taas.

»Miksi ihmeessä te nauratte?» kysyi Manuelo.

»Hän tiesi sen», sanoi Pepita. »Hän tietysti uskoi, että tyttö oli
häneen rakastunut, vaikkei tämä olisi välittänyt hänestä rahtuakaan;
ja koska hän välitti hänestä, tiesi hän sen jo ennenkuin tyttö tiesi
itsekään ja oli siitä ylpeä ja teki asian niin paljon pahemmaksi kuin
voi.»

Manuelo katseli häntä hetkisen ääneti, kierrellen pieniä viiksiänsä.

Tuo pieni kaunis ilvehtivä olento, jonka huulten hymyn ja silmien
sulattavan lempeyden olisi luullut lupaavan suurta naisellista
hellyyttä, hämmästytti häntä kovin — oli ilmeistä, että Sebastianon
ihanuus oli jättänyt tytön aivan kylmäksi ja ettei tämä nähnyt mitään
lumoavaa hänen lemmenseikkailuissaan. Kuka muu tyttö olisi
kysynyt: »miksi?» — ja tuohon äänensävyyn? Manuelon oli vaikea
jatkaa kertomustaan.

»Sebastiano ei sille mitään voinut, että tyttö oli häneen

rakastunut», sanoi hän. »Eikä tyttökään sille mitään voinut.»
 »Miksi niin?» kysyi Pepita kolmannen kerran ja entistä
välinpitämättömämpänä.

»Miksikö?» sopersi Manuelo. »Siksi… siksi että niin käy kaikille.»

Pepita näytti kaikki pienet valkoiset hampaansa ja pisti sitten

ruusunvanan niiden väliin pitäen sitä kuin savuketta katsellessaan
ihmisvirtaa silmäripsiensä läpi. Ruusu ei ollut niin punainen kuin
hänen pieni pilkallinen suunsa.

»Sebastiano oli aina ystävällinen hänelle, kun hänet näki», jatkoi

Manuelo. »Kerran hän antoi hänelle divisansa [härkätaistelijan
kokardi]. Kuollessaan tyttö piti sitä kädessään eikä tahtonut siitä
erota. Se sai seurata häntä hautaan. Hän oli kaunis lapsi, se Sarita,
mutta hän oli aina elänyt maalla ja oli kovin tietämätön.»

»Minäkin olen aina elänyt maalla ja olen kovin tietämätön», sanoi

Pepita singahduttaen veitikkamaisen katseen suurista silmistään,
»mutta minä voin tehdä kaikki, mihin minulla on halua. Muut eivät
sitä voikaan.»

Pepitan mielestä Manuelo oli ikävä ja väsyttävä, ja hän toivoi, että

mies pian menisi tiehensä, mutta sitä hän ei tehnyt, vaan viipyi
kaikenlaisilla tyhmillä verukkeilla. Mitä enemmän tyttö sai hänet
ymmälle, sitä enemmän nuori mies lumoutui. Hänelle oli melkein
kylliksi vain seisoa ja tuijottaa tyttöön ja kuunnella tämän ääntä
hänen jutellessaan muille. Tuo tyttö oli niin hurmaava, hän piti
päätään niin ryhdikkäästi kuin olisi ollut ylhäissyntyinen nainen eikä
mikään maalaistyttö!

Kun eräät ohikulkevat, jotka olivat muita rohkeampia, tekivät kyllin

kuuluvasti huomautuksia hänen kauneudestaan, ei se häntä
vähääkään häirinnyt, ikäänkuin se ei olisi häntä koskenutkaan. Oliko
mahdollista, että joku tyttö saattoi olla välittämättä siitä, että oli niin
kaunis? Mutta luulottelu, ettei hän siitä välittänyt, oli suuri erehdys.
Hän välitti siitä paljon.

Aina pienestä lapsesta asti hän oli kuvastimenkappaleessaan ja

lähteen vedessä nähnyt kauniit kasvonsa vienoille rusoposkineen ja
pehmeine huulineen, mustat kosteat silmät ja otsaa kaartelevat
lapselliset kiharat. Hän oli myöskin aina kuullut, että oli kaunis, ja
vanhemmaksi tultuaan hän oli huomannut jotakin muutakin,
nimittäin sen, että hänellä oli kauneuttaankin valtavampi voima —
voima, jota ihmiset tuskin yrittivät vastustaa. Hän ei itse tiennyt sille
mitään nimeä eikä vähimmässäkään määrässä sitä ymmärtänyt.
Usein hän sitä ihmetteli ja usein hän tunsi salaista, lapsellista pelkoa,
että paholaisella oli siinä jotakin osaa, varsinkin kun hän ilman
pienintäkään ponnistusta, vain syrjässä seisoen ja katsellen muita,
pienellä hymyllä oli esiin loihtinut tyhmiä lemmenpurkauksia, jotka
häntä suorastaan tympäisivät. Sellaiseen ei kyennyt Dolores eikä
Maria eikä Isabella, vaikka hekin olivat kauniita. Ja vaikka he olivat
kauniita, täytyi heidän luoda silmäyksiä ihailijoihinsa, nauraa, tanssia
ja haastaa tullakseen huomatuiksi, kun hänen sitävastoin vain tarvitsi
olla Pepita.

Kun hän myöhään sinä iltana istui Josén kanssa puutarhassa,

missä ilma oli raskas jasmiinin-, oranssin- ja sitruunankukkien
tuoksusta, teki hän tälle paljon kysymyksiä härkätaisteluista. Se oli
varmaan jotakin suurenmoista katseltavaa — sellainen ihmispaljous,
niin koreita värejä, tenhoavaa musiikkia! José osasi kuvailla niitä
paremmin kuin Manuelo. Hänen täytyi kertoa hänelle kaikki, mitä
niistä tiesi.
 Hän kuvaili niin hyvin kuin taisi, ja hitaasta esitystavastaan
huolimatta hän loihti sisarensa silmien eteen varsin jännittävän
taulun. Tai pikemminkin se oli tytöstä jännittävä, kuten kaikkien
näiden päivien uutuudet. Kun José ennen isoäidin ja Pepitan tuloa oli
ollut tekemässä pieniä valmistuksiansa heidän
vastaanottamisekseen, oli hän pistäytynyt parissa härkätaistelussa
eikä mikään yksityiskohta ollut jäänyt hänen miettiväiseltä
luonteeltaan huomaamatta. Hän muisti kaikki, se José.

»Mutta sinä saat tulla sinne», sanoi hän. »Sinä saat ensi kerralla
käydä itse katsomassa. Ensi viikolla taas on härkätaistelu. Me
menemme sinne ja otamme Jovitan mukaamme.»

Pepita löi ihastuksesta käsiänsä yhteen. Hän hypähti ylös ja

pyörähti muutaman tanssiaskeleen lapsellisessa ilossaan.

»Mikä onni!» huudahti hän. »Siitä tulee ihanaa! Ehkä sinne saapuu
kuningas ja kuningatarkin!»

»Sinä saat nähdä Sebastianon», sanoi José vakavasti.

»En välitä Sebastianosta», tuiskahti Pepita vallattomasti.

»Et välitä hänestä?» ihmetteli José hämmästyneenä.

»Et välitä Sebastianosta! Mitä tarkoitat?»

Pepita kohautti olkapäitänsä.

»Ne puhuvat hänestä liian paljon», vastasi hän, »ja hän on liian
itserakas. Hän luulee, että kaikki naiset ovat häneen rakastuneita ja
että maalta tullut tyttö ei käsitä mitään ja kuolee rakkaudesta, kun
vain saa hänet nähdä.»
 »Sitä minä en tiennyt», virkkoi José hämillään. »En ole koskaan
kuullut kenenkään niin sanovan. Häntä mainitaan kunnon mieheksi.»

»Minäkään en ole koskaan kuullut kenenkään sitä sanovan»,

vastasi Pepita ivallisesti, »mutta minä tiedän sen. Olen varma, että
hän on tyhmä ja itserakas.»

Tämä huomautus sai Josén aivan ymmälle ja antoi hänelle aihetta

pitkään ja syvälliseen mietiskelyyn, vaikkei hän kuitenkaan päässyt
mihinkään muuhun tulokseen kuin siihen, että se oli vain Pepitan
oikkuja. Hän melkein arasteli mainita, että hänellä oli ollut kunnia
tavata tuo suurenmoinen sankari kilpakentän ulkopuolella, vieläpä
saada puhuakin hänen kanssaan ja kuulla hänen puhuvan, kun hän
seisoi ihailijajoukon ympäröimänä eräässä kahvilassa. Tämän uutisen
hän oli säästänyt Pepitallc kerrottavaksi, mutta nyt hänestä tuntui,
että oli paras säästää sitä vielä vähän kauemmin.

Mutta kun härkätaistelun päivä tuli, ei ollut mahdollista sitä enää

salata.

Oi tuota ihmeellistä, tuota alusta loppuun ihanaa päivää! Pepita oli

ylhäällä jo aamunkoitteessa ja lauleskeli. Jovitan täytyi levätä, jotta
olisi parhaalla tuulellaan ja nauttisi juhlallisuuksista tärvelemättä niitä
torailulla. Pepita ei kaivannut lepoa — hänen pienet jalkansa
tanssivat hänen liikkuessaan.

Valmistaessaan aamiaista hän haastoi taukoamatta Josén kanssa

kysellen häneltä tuhansia asioita. Kaikki lisäsi hänen iloansa. Taivas
oli kirkkaan sininen, ja kevyt tuulonen teki lämmön siedettäväksi;
linnut lauloivat niin että niiden kurkut olivat haljeta, kasvit
puutarhassa näkyivät peittyneen uusilla kukkaröykkiöillä
hilpeyttääksensä pientä maailmaa heidän ympärillään. Ylhäällä
Pepitan ullakkokamarissa oli hänen juhlapukunsa levitettynä
vuoteelle, ja hänen pienet uudet kenkänsä olivat lattialla. Hän oli
katsellut niitä kuunvalossa joka kerta, kun hän yöllä heräsi. Vuosi
sitten ei hänelle olisi ollut mahdollista omistaa niin kauniita kapineita,
ei niistä edes uneksia, mutta tässä uudessa lumoavassa elämässä
näytti kaikki mahdolliselta.

Ja kuinka hurmaava hän pukeuduttuaan olikaan! Hänen

ruusunväriset kasvonsa hehkuivat ja hymyilivät, tenhoavasti
säteilivät sametinmustat silmät, ylpeästi hän keikautti pientä
tummatukkaista päätänsä, johon oli kiharaisen hiussolmun sivuun
pistetty loistava kukka. Jovita töllisteli suu ammollaan ja melkein
huudahti — hänen tapoihinsa ei kuulunut vapaaehtoisesti ilmilausua
mitään hyväksymistä, ja hän ei pitänyt ihmisistä, jotka nuorille
tytöille kehuskelivat näiden kauneutta. Mutta José katseli sisartaan
kuin tämä olisi ollut harvinainen troopillinen lintu, joka äkkiä oli
lentää pyrähtänyt taloon. Hän tirkisti kerran toisensa perään ja
väänteli viiksiänsä, samalla kun hänen usein jäykänlaiset piirteensä
lämpenivät.

»Niin, niin», sanoi hän, »kaikki on mainiota ja puku on kaunis.

Kukaan muista tytöistä ei ole hienompi. Ei edes Candida…»

Pepita nauroi. Candidaa oli heidän entisessä kotikylässään pidetty

suurena kaunottarena. Mutta Pepita tiesi olevansa kauniimpi kuin
Candida.

José nauroi myöskin, vaikka tuskin tiesi miksi. Sitten hän melkein
varovasti ja epävarmasti otti esille korean viuhkan —
huokeahintaisen, mutta heleävärisen.

»Kas tässä…» aloitti hän.

 Pepita otti sen häneltä ja avasi sen nopealla ranteen liikkeellä.
Toisella puolen oli kuva, joka esitti komeata, uljasta miestä rikkaasti
koristellussa puvussa.

»Hän on Sebastiano», sanoi José arastellen.

Pepita nyökkäsi ja hymyili.

»Sen tiesin», vastasi hän. »Minä tiesin, että hän näyttäisi

tuollaiselta.»

»Kukaan muu ei voi kaataa härkää sillä tavalla kuin hän», virkkoi
José.

»Minun puolestani hän saa niitä kernaasti kaataa», vastasi Pepita

ja löyhytteli viuhkallaan mitä siroin ja tutkimattomin ilme
kasvoillansa.

Matka Plaza de Torosille oli Pepitasta melkein yhtä ihana kuin

härkätaistelu. Laajat ihmislaumat, jotka kaikki tulvivat samalle
taholle, kaikki parhaissa pukineissaan ja parhaalla tuulella nauraen,
tuuppien toisiaan, haastaen sekä vaihtaen tervehdyksiä tai leikillisiä
lauseita; upeat vaunut, jotka vierivät ohitse kuljettaen hienoja naisia
ja herroja; vanhat ränstyneet yhteis- ja raitiovaunut ja muut
ajovehkeet, joiden matkustajat olivat paljoa hilpeämpiä kuin noissa
komeammissa ajopeleissä istuvat; muulien kellojen kilinä, ajajien
huudot, ruoskanläiskähdykset, päiväpaiste, värit, vieläpä tomukin —
kaikki kohotti hetken jännitystä.

Kun he olivat raivanneet tiensä tungoksen lävitse, tuntui taas kuin

tuona ensimmäisenä sunnuntaina puistossa: päät kääntyivät ja
huudahduksia kuului Pepitan ohi kulkiessa. Ja miten olikaan, José
näkyi olevan tunnetumpi kuin hän itsekään oli luullut, sillä niin monet
häntä tervehtivät. Asian todellinen laita oli se, että ne, jotka olivat
nähneet nuoren tytön, olivat jutelleet hänestä keskenään ja muiden
kanssa, ja heidän helposti syttyvä espanjalainen luonteensa oli
ilmiliekissä. Ja ne, jotka eivät olleet häntä nähneet, vaan kuulleet
hänestä puhuttavan, olivat yhtä innokkaita kuin nuo
onnellisimmatkin. Häntä oli niin elävästi ja vaikuttavasti kuvailtu
kerta toisensa perään, että monet tunsivat hänet »Josén kauniiksi
sisareksi».

Niin he häntä nimittivät, — Josén kauniiksi sisareksi. Hän kuuli sen

ainakin puolisen tusinaa kertaa, muttei edes kohottanut pitkiä
silmäripsiänsä. Hän oli niin tottunut ihailuun, että tuskin huomasi sen
häntä koskevankaan; eikä häneen tehnyt pienintäkään vaikutusta,
vaikka hän istuessaan härkiä katselemassa tiesi rohkeiden tai
kaihoavien silmien väijyvän hänen kasvojansa ja vaikka lakkaamatta
tehtiin yrityksiä hänen huomionsa herättämiseksi.

Se oli kaikkien mielestä ihana päivä. Nähtiin komeita härkiä ja

upeita pukuja, ja taistelijat olivat parhaimmillaan. Katselijatkin olivat
mitä parhaimmalla tuulella — pienellä vilvoittavalla viimalla oli ehkä
osansa siinä. Kaikki huvitti heitä, he paukuttivat hurjasti käsiänsä,
huusivat ihastuksesta tai rohkaistakseen härkiä samoin kuin
toreadorejakin. Yleisön hienompi osa oli kallisarvoisissa pukimissa;
kauniit naiset katselivat innostuksesta loistavin silmin härkiä, jotka
kantoivat heidän värejänsä silkkisissä ja kiiltokultaisissa
nauharuusuissa, tuhannet koreat viuhkat liehuivat kuin perhosparvi
ja soitonsäveleet täyttivät ilman.

Pepita istui kuin lumoavassa unessa. Väri vaihteli hänen poskillaan

ja ihastus säteili hänen silmistänsä. Hän oli espanjalainen tyttö eikä
niin paljoa aikaansa edellä, että kauhun silmänräpäykset hänen
edessään tapahtuvassa huvissa olisivat voineet himmentää sen
tenhoa ja jännitystä Totta puhuen hän unohti kokonaan Sebastianon
eikä edes tuntenut häntä uljaan jonon komeudessa: niin kiintynyt
hän oli loistavaan näytelmään.

Mutta kun härkä oli surmattava, oli se toista. — Juuri vähää ennen
hän oli huomannut Manuelon vieressään — kyllin lähellä, jotta tämä
voi häntä puhutella. Manuelo oli nähnyt hänet ja hetki hetkeltä
käynyt yhä levottomammaksi, kunnes vihdoin oli kiinnittänyt itseensä
Josén ja Jovitan huomion, ja ensi sanansa Pepitalle hän lausui
riemuhuutojen ja kättentaputusten kaikuessa.

»Sebastiano!» sanoi hän. »Tuolla on Sebastiano!»

Pepita kääntyi katsoakseen osoitettuun suuntaan. Kuinka ylpeänä

ja huolettoman näköisenä hän kulkikaan eteenpäin varmoin joustavin
askelin, kuinka ryhdikkäästi hän kohotti päätänsä ja hartioitansa,
kuinka hänen kulta- ja hopeanauhansa kimaltelivat ihmisjoukon
huudellessa hänelle ikäänkuin lemmekkäässä hurmassa! Häntä
palveltiin, hän oli kansan epäjumala. Niin, viilsipä Pepitankin kylmää
sydäntä. Hän tunsi sen sykkivän nopeammin. Olla noin ylväs ja
rohkea ja voitokas — olla kaiken keskipisteenä — kyetä herättämään
näin ääretöntä riemua — siinä oli sentään jotakin. Ja kaunis hän
myöskin oli, vaikkei Pepita siitä muutoin välittänyt, paitsi että näki
sen lisäävän hänen voittojaan ja tekevän ne täydellisemmiksi. Hänen
miellyttävä tapansa liikuttaa kookasta vartaloansa, hänen tummat,
eloisat kasvonsa intohimoisine andalusialaisine silmineen, joiden
syvyyttä enensi pitkien mustien ripsien varjo, jalan kaartuminen ja
jäsenten kauniit liikkeet — kaikki tuo oli omiaan tekemään hänet
poikkeukseksi vähemmän onnellisten kuolevaisten joukossa. Mutta
omistaa tuo ja lisäksi olla koko innostuneen kansan epäjumala — se
oli kyllä elämisen arvoista. Jos ollenkaan välitti miehistä, jollei pitänyt
heitä ikävinä, jos oli typerä — niinkuin Sarita — ja salli itsensä
hurmata, oli tuossa kaikessa toki jotakin, mikä saattoi viehättää.

»Tuolla on Sebastiano», virkkoi José.

Mutta Sebastiano puhui kisojen esimiehelle. Hän kohotti kiiltävän

miekkansa ja lausui sanottavansa kirkkaalla ja täyteläisellä äänellä.
Pepita kuunteli hänen puhuessaan. Ja sitten alkoi esityksen
jännittävin kohta. Sebastianon tehtävä ei ollut mitään lapsenleikkiä.
Hurja musta sonni, joka mulkoili häneen palavin silmin ja pää alas
työnnettynä, mylvi raivosta repiessään sarvillaan maata ja
paiskellessaan sitä tomupilvenä ympärilleen, oli taitavan ja uljaan
vastustajan arvoinen. Se oli vihainen, häijynilkinen, salakavala sonni.
Picadorien ja banderillerojen härnäily oli jo kiihoittanut sen raivoon,
ja sitä täytyi vartioida, tutkia, ärsyttää ja viekoitella. Ainoatakaan sen
liikettä ei saanut päästää silmistä eikä pitää vähäpätöisenä —
tarvittiin varovaisuutta, nopeutta, suurenmoista rohkeutta ja
joustavinta valppautta.

Millainen näytelmä se olikaan! Hurja kamppailu eläimen

viekkauden, voiman ja villiyden sekä inhimillisen rohkeuden, taidon
ja harkitsemisen välillä! Uljas ja notkea mies lepäsi tuskin
silmänräpäystäkään: hän syöksyi eteenpäin kieputtaen koreata
viittaansa taisteluhaasteeksi sonnille, heiluttaen miekkaansa, leikkien
kuolemalla ja vaaralla, mutta välttäen molemmat vastustamattomalla
notkeudella ja nopeudella, mikä oli ihmeellistä katsella ja kiihoitti
yleisön uusiin riemun ja ihastuksen huutoihin. Vanha Jovitakin
havahti innostukseen, joka muistutti hänen kauvan sitten paenneen
nuoruutensa päivistä. José ja Manuelo huusivat muiden mukana, ja
Pepita tunsi jälleen — tunsi entistä voimakkaampana — äkillisen
vihlauksen ja sydämentykytyksen.

Vihdoin leikki läheni loppuansa; millä uljaalla harppauksella sankari

syöksähtikään antamaan viimeisen kunniakkaan iskun! Toista ei
tarvittu: härkä horjui, vavahti, putosi etunojoon polvilleen ja kellahti
kyljellensä. Sebastiano seisoi suorana, loistavana, huolettomana ja
taaskin voittajana, ilman kajahdellessa paukkuvista
kättentaputuksista.

»Nyt olette hänet nähnyt», huudahti Manuelo Pepitalle, »te olette

nähnyt Sebastianon!»

»Niin», vastasi tyttö hiukan hengästyneenä, »minä olen nähnyt

hänet».

Ja juuri kun hän puhui, tiesi hän, että Sebastianokin oli nähnyt
hänet; hän tiesi sen ennenkuin Manuelo vielä kerran kovin
innostuneena lausui:

»Hän katsoo tännepäin… katselee meitä… teitä!»

Se oli aivan totta. Jokin oli vetänyt hänen huomionsa sille riville,
missä he istuivat, joku huuto — tai kuka tietää? — joku hieno
magneettinen voima. Sebastiano käänsi päänsä nopealla liikkeellä ja
hänen silmänsä sattuivat ja kiintyivät heti loistaviin kasvoihin, jotka
hehkuivat kuin kaunis kukka muiden vähemmän kukoistavien
kasvojen joukossa.

»Hän katselee sinua, Pepita», sanoi José.

»Hän katselee sinua ja Jovitaa», vastasi Pepita nauraen ja käänsi

kasvonsa pois.
 Mutta sitä ennen oli Sebastiano ne kyllä nähnyt. Se oli sallimus.
Niin, sen hän tiesi. Hän oli usein ollut rakastunut, hänellä oli ollut
romanttisia seikkailuja, mutta hän oli aina ollut vastaanottajana ja
muut antaneet. Hän oli aina pysynyt Sebastianona, jumaloituna
sankarina. Ja nyt hän seisoi katsellen viuhkan puolittain kätkemää
pientä päätä ja unohti hetkiseksi, missä oli, ja että kansa yhä
riemuitsi ja mielipuolten tavoin paukutti hänelle käsiänsä.
KOLMAS LUKU.

Pepita ja muut, Manuelo heidän mukanaan, lopettivat päivänsä vielä

toisella juhlallisuudella. He aterioisivat kahvilassa ja kuulivat
ympärillä istuvien keskustelevan härkätaistelusta.

Erään pöydän ääressä heidän lähellään istui kolme chuloa

[härkätaistelijan apulainen. Suom.], jotka haastoivat niin
äänekkäästi, että he kaiken aikaa kuulivat heidän sanansa. Ja
Sebastianosta he puhuivat, vaikuttavasti kuvaillen hänen rohkeata
urotyötään, kertoen, mitä hän oli tehnyt ja mihin hän kykeni, sekä
vakuutellen, ettei Madridissa koskaan ollut nähty hänen vertaistaan.
Ja sitten hänen valloituksensa! Oli totta, että korkeasäätyiset naiset
— kauniit ja jalosukuiset — olivat lähettäneet hänelle kirjeitä ja
lahjoja. Gonsalvo, joka oli hänen läheinen ystävänsä, voisi kertoa
paljon, jos tahtoisi. Sebastiano oli saanut loistavia voittoja. Kerran
hän oli ollut suuressa vaarassakin senvuoksi, että nainen, joka häntä
rakasti ja kävi häntä tapaamassa, oli hyvin korkea-arvoinen: tämän
sukulaiset uhkasivat mieluummin tarttua tikariin kuin sallisivat hänen
jatkaa oikkuaan.

»Mutta sanotaan myöskin, ettei Sebastiano tuntenut häntä

kohtaan mitään rakkautta — ettei hän välitä kenestäkään»,