The Untouched Key Read online

  Presumably, the result would then not have been a philosophical work but an autobiographical account that would have opened readers’ eyes to reality. Nor would it have been possible to use Nietzsche’s writings for a destructive ideology if they had expressed directly all that had befallen him instead of disguising it in symbolic form (as an attack against Christianity in the abstract, for example).

  But there was never an opportunity for Nietzsche to write such a report, since its potential content—which, as it was, he could express only symbolically—was not accessible to his conscious mind, or in any case was not available to him in a direct form. Should our pedagogical system become more relaxed someday, however, should the commandment “Thou shalt not be aware of what was done to you as a child” lose its force, then our heretofore treasured “products of culture” will no doubt decline in number—from unnecessary, useless dissertations all the way to the most famous philosophical treatises. But their place would be taken by many honest reports about what really happened to their authors. These documents could give others the courage to see things as they actually are, to call a crime a crime, and to express what they themselves have gone through but have been unable, without any support, to put into words. Reports of this nature would doubtlessly be preferable to complicated speculative writing, for they would serve the crucial purpose of revealing, rather than concealing, the reality of universal human experience.

  By establishing the connection between the content, intensity, and power of Nietzsche’s thinking and his childhood experiences, I am by no means trying to call his genius into question. Nonetheless, I will probably be accused of this intent, for as a rule the significance of childhood experience is unfortunately minimized and dismissed as of no importance; what is seen as important, in this view, is to regard the abstract ideas of “great thinkers,” of adults, as pure gold—without any admixture of childhood—and to admire and interpret those ideas at face value. Neither the secondary literature on Nietzsche nor the espousal of his writing by the fascists ever went beyond these limited boundaries.

  From my perspective I would say that, on the contrary, most of Nietzsche’s writings owe their persuasiveness specifically to his ability to express the experiences he stored up at a very early age. As in the case of Kafka and other great writers, the truth asserts itself so obviously that it is virtually impossible to deny it: the truth of a mistreated child who was not allowed to cry or defend himself. The sudden flashes of insight that can come from reading certain passages in Nietzsche are not the result of the author’s power of suggestion but of the strength of experience (although repressed and unconscious) of someone who is telling about what he has suffered and perceived and whose perceptions relate to situations and conditions in which many other people have had to live—or still are living. Nietzsche has this to say about the sources a writer draws from:

  When I seek my ultimate formula for Shakespeare, I always find only this: he conceived of the type of Caesar. That sort of thing cannot be guessed: one either is it, or one is not. The great poet dips only from his own reality—up to the point where afterward he cannot endure his work any longer.

  When I have looked into my Zarathustra, I walk up and down in my room for half an hour, unable to master an unbearable fit of sobbing.

  If Nietzsche had not been forced to learn as a child that one must master an “unbearable fit of sobbing,” if he had simply been allowed to sob, then humanity would have been one philosopher poorer, but in return the life of a human being named Nietzsche would have been richer. And who knows what that vital Nietzsche would then have been able to give humanity?

  THREE

  The No Longer Avoidable Confrontation with Facts

  1

  When Isaac Arises from the Sacrificial Altar

  I had been searching for an illustration for the jacket of the British edition of Thou Shalt Not Be Aware; I didn’t want to leave the selection to chance but thought it important that I myself find an appropriate visual representation of the work’s underlying theme. Two Rembrandt depictions of the sacrifice of Isaac—one in Leningrad, the other in Munich—came to mind. In both, the father’s hand completely covers the son’s face, obstructing his sight, his speech, even his breathing. The main concerns expressed in my book (victimization of the child, the Fourth Commandment admonishing us to honor our parents, and the blindness imposed on children by parents) seemed to find a central focus in Abraham’s gesture. Although I was resolved to recommend this detail of Rembrandt’s printings to my publisher for the cover, I went to an archive to look at other portrayals of Abraham and Isaac as well. I found thirty in all, done by very dissimilar artists, and with growing astonishment I looked through them one by one.

  I had been struck by the fact that in both of the Rembrandt versions I already knew, Abraham is grasping his son’s head with his left hand and raising a knife with his right; his eyes, however, are not resting on his son but are turned upward, as though he is asking God if he is carrying out His will correctly. At first I thought that this was Rembrandt’s own interpretation and that there must be others, but I was unable to find any. In all the portrayals of this scene that I found, Abraham’s face or entire torso is turned away from his son and directed upward. Only his hands are occupied with the sacrifice. As I looked at the pictures, I thought to myself, “The son, an adult at the peak of his manhood, is simply lying there, quietly waiting to be murdered by his father. In some of the versions he is calm and obedient; in only one is he in tears, but not in a single one is he rebellious.” In none of the paintings can we detect any questioning in Isaac’s eyes, questions such as “Father, why do you want to kill me, why is my life worth nothing to you? Why won’t you look at me, why won’t you explain what is happening? How can you do this to me? I love you, I trusted in you. Why won’t you speak to me? What crime have I committed? What have I done to deserve this?”

  Such questions can’t even be formulated in Isaac’s mind. They can be asked only by someone who feels himself on equal footing with the person being questioned, only if a dialogue is possible, only if one can look the other in the eye. How can a person lying on a sacrificial altar with hands bound, about to be slaughtered, ask questions when his father’s hand keeps him from seeing or speaking and hinders his breathing? Such a person has been turned into an object. He has been dehumanized by being made a sacrifice; he no longer has a right to ask questions and will scarcely even be able to articulate them to himself, for there is no room in him for anything besides fear.

  As I sat in the archive looking at the pictures, I suddenly saw in them the symbolic representation of our present situation. Inexorably, weapons are being produced for the obvious purpose of destroying the next generation. Yet those who are profiting from the production of these weapons, while enhancing their prestige and power, somehow manage not to think of this ultimate result. Like Abraham, they do not see what their hands are doing, and they devote their entire attention to fulfilling expectations from “above,” at the same time ignoring their feelings. They learned to deny their feelings as children; how should they be able to regain the ability to feel now that they are fathers? It’s too late for that. Their souls have become rigid, they have learned to adapt. They have also forgotten how to ask questions and how to listen to them. All their efforts are now directed toward creating a situation—war—in which their sons too will be unable to see and hear.

  In the face of mobilization for war—even a conventional one, a nonnuclear war—the questions of the younger generation are silenced. To doubt the wisdom of the state is regarded as treason. Any discussion or consideration of alternative possibilities is eliminated at a single stroke. Only practical questions remain: How do we win the war? How do we survive it? Once the point of asking these questions has been reached, the young forget that prosperous and prominent old men have been preparing for war for a long time. The younger generation will march, sing songs, kill and be killed, and they will be under the impression tha
t they are carrying out an extremely important mission. The state will indeed regard highly what they are doing and will reward them with medals of honor, but their souls—the childlike, living, feeling part of their personality—will be condemned to the utmost passivity. They will resemble Isaac as he is always depicted in the sacrificial scene: hands tied, eyes bound, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to wait unquestioningly in this position to be slaughtered by one’s father. (In my German translation of the Bible the verb used in this passage is schlachten, which refers to the butchering of animals.)

  Neither does the father ask any questions. He submits to the divine command as a matter of course, the same way his son submits to him. He must—and wants to—prove that his obedience is stronger than what he calls his love for his child, and as he prepares to carry out the deed his questions vanish. He doesn’t ask God for mercy or look for a way out, and if the angel didn’t intervene at the last moment, Abraham would become the murderer of his son simply because God’s voice demanded it of him. In the pictures I examined, there is no pain to be seen in Abraham’s face, no hesitation, no searching, no questioning, no sign that he is conscious of the tragic nature of his situation. All the artists, even Rembrandt, portray him as God’s obedient instrument, whose sole concern is to function properly.

  It is astonishing at first glance that not one of the artists, each with his own distinct and independent personality, was tempted to give this dramatic scene an individual, personal stamp. Of course the dress, the colors, the surroundings, and the positions of the bodies vary, but the numerous depictions of the scene reveal a remarkably uniform psychological content. An obvious explanation is that all the artists were following the Old Testament text, but we are still justified in asking why. Why wasn’t there room in the psyche of these artists for doubt? Why did they all take it for granted that the Bible passage could not be questioned? Why did all of these artists accept the story as valid? The only answer I can think of is that the situation involves a fundamental fact of our existence, with which many of us become familiar during the first years of life and which is so painful that knowledge of it can survive only in the depths of the unconscious. Our awareness of the child’s victimization is so deeply rooted in us that we scarcely seem to have reacted at all to the monstrousness of the story of Abraham and Isaac. The moral expressed in the story has almost been accorded the legitimacy of natural law, yet if the result of this legitimacy is something as horrifying as the outbreak of nuclear war, then the moral should not be passively accepted like a natural law but must be questioned. If we love life more than obedience and are not prepared to die in the name of obedience and our fathers’ lack of critical judgment, then we can no longer wait like Isaac, with our eyes bound and our hands tied, for our fathers to carry out the will of their fathers.

  Rembrandt van Rijn, The Sacrifice of Isaac Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin

  How, then, can a condition that has endured for millennia be changed? Would it change if the young were to kill off the old so as not to have to go to war? Wouldn’t that simply be a forerunner to the horrible war we are trying to prevent, and wouldn’t the old situation then be reinforced, the difference being that Abraham’s knife would now be in Isaac’s hands and the old man would become the victim of the young man? Wouldn’t the same cruelty be perpetuated?

  But what would happen if Isaac, instead of reaching for the knife, were to use every ounce of his strength to free his hands so that he could remove Abraham’s hand from his face? That would change his situation altogether. He would no longer lie there like a sacrificial lamb but would stand up; he would dare to use his eyes and see his father as he really is: uncertain and hesitant yet intent on carrying out a command he does not comprehend. Now Isaac’s nose and mouth would be free too, and he could finally draw a deep breath and make use of his voice. He would be able to speak and ask questions, and Abraham, whose left hand could no longer keep his son from seeing and speaking, would have to enter into a dialogue with his son, at the end of which he might possibly encounter the young man he had once been himself, who was never allowed to ask questions.

  And now that the scenario has changed and Isaac can no longer be counted on to be a victim, there will have to be a confrontation between the two, a confrontation that has no conventional precedent but that nevertheless, or perhaps for this very reason, offers a golden opportunity. Isaac will ask, “Father, why do you want to kill me?” and will be given the answer “It is God’s will.” “Who is God?” the son will ask. “The great and benevolent Father of us all, Whom we must obey,” Abraham will answer. “Doesn’t it grieve you,” the son will want to know, “to have to carry out this command?” “It is not for me to take my feelings into account when God orders me to do something.” “Then who are you,” Isaac will ask, “if you carry out His orders without any feeling, and Who is this God, Who can demand such a thing of you?”

  It may be that Abraham is too old, that it is too late for him to perceive the message of life his son is bringing him, that he will say, “Keep quiet! You understand nothing of all this.” But it may be that he is open to Isaac’s questions because they are his own questions as well, which he has had to suppress for decades. Even in the former case, however, the encounter is not doomed to failure as long as Isaac is unwilling to shut his eyes again but is determined to endure the sight of his father as he really is. If Isaac refuses to allow himself to be bound and blinded again for the sake of preserving the illusion of a strong and wise and benevolent father but instead finds the courage to look his fallible father in the eye and hear his “Keep quiet” without letting himself be silenced, the confrontation will continue. Then young people will not have to die in wars to preserve the image of their wise fathers. Once young men see what is actually happening, once they become aware that their fathers are steadfastly, unwaveringly, and unthinkingly developing a gigantic weapons system that they hope will not destroy them, although it may their children, then the children will refuse to lie down voluntarily like lambs on the sacrificial altar. But for this to be possible, the children first must be willing to stop obeying the commandment “Thou shalt not be aware.”

  The commandment itself provides the explanation of why it is so difficult to take that step to awareness. Yet the decision to take it is the first requirement for change. We can still avert our probable fate, provided we do not wait to be rescued by the angel who rewarded Abraham for his obedience. More and more people are refusing to go on playing Isaac’s sacrificial role with all its consequences for the future. And perhaps there are also people who reject Abraham’s role, who refuse to obey orders that strike them as absurd because they are directed against life. Their ability to ask questions and their refusal to accept senseless answers may signal the beginning of a long overdue reorientation that will help reinforce our Yes to life and No to death. The new Isaac—with his questions, with his awareness, with his refusal to let himself be killed—not only saves his own life but also saves his father from the fate of becoming the unthinking murderer of his child.

  Monika Laimgruber, Drawing for Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, Artemis-Verlag © Monika Laimgruber

  2

  The Emperor’s New Clothes

  In the preceding chapter, I chose the depictions in art of the sacrifice of Isaac to suggest that it is possible for grown children to have a creative confrontation with their parents. But I do not see the symbolic content of that scene as being limited to the relationship between father and son. Everything I said about Abraham’s attitude is equally valid for mothers, and of course Isaac also symbolizes the daughter who can be hindered by both father and mother not only in her movements but also in her ability to see, speak, and breathe.

  The assertion that men are solely responsible for conditions in today’s world does just as little to expose and combat the presence of evil, destructive rage, violence, and perversion as does the demonization of women. Both sexes have always
contributed to the genesis of the forces of evil. Mothers as well as fathers have considered it their duty to punish their children and have used their children to satisfy their own ambitions and other needs. Every aggressive reaction on the child’s part to this abuse was suppressed, and this suppression laid the foundation for destructive behavior in adulthood. And yet there must always have been individual parents who were capable of giving love and who provided their children with a counterbalance for the cruelty they suffered. Above all, however, there must have been helping witnesses present—in the person of nannies, household staff, aunts, uncles, siblings, or grandparents—who did not feel responsible for raising the child and who were not camouflaging cruelty as love because they had experienced love in their own childhoods. If this were not the case, the human race would have died out long ago. On the other hand, if there had been more mothers and fathers capable of love, our world would be different today; it would be more humane. People would also have a clear understanding of what love is because they would have experienced it in childhood, and it would be inconceivable for biographers to call something an expression of maternal love that in its essence was a prison, concentration camp, refrigerator, or brainwashing institute. Yet according to most of today’s biographers, Stalin and Hitler had “loving mothers.”