Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Hitler and the Germans

Titel: Hitler and the Germans

Stichwort: Wille, voluntas: im christlichen Sinne - Libido, Konkupiszenz; Schramm (Hitler)

Kurzinhalt: ... again we just do not have in modern German-in other languages we do-the expressions to differentiate between what "will" in the classical and Christian sense is, and what "will" in revolt against God is ...

Textausschnitt: 107b Now here one encounters a problem, that again we just do not have in modern German-in other languages we do-the expressions to differentiate between what "will" in the classical and Christian sense is, and what "will" in revolt against God is. In the classical and Christian sense, the will, the voluntas, is always and only the rationally ordered will. This means that wherever the power of existence (Existenzmacht) joins forces with reason and spirit, there is the "will." Where power of existence separates itself from reason and spirit, we do not speak of will, in the classic Christian vocabulary, but of concupiscentia or of libido. The expression "libido" has become very popular through psychoanalysis. But it is the general expression for existence-powerful desire that is not ordered by reason or spirit. A very large part of what is called German idealistic philosophy from Fichte up to the present must always be so understood that when the author in question speaks of will, one has to put in place of the word "will" the expression "libido." When Nietzsche speaks of the will to power, then he intends the libido; he is still aware of that. "Libido" is the Pascalian expression toward which he orients himself. (Fs)

107c That is relevant for understanding Schramm's problem when he tries to characterize Hitler as a particularly strong-willed man. There is no willpower in Hitler at all. He had absolutely no will of any recognizable kind, that is, an existence that was ordered by reason or spirit. But he did have an extraordinarily existence-intensive libido, and he maintained this up to the end. He apparently was able to do so simply because any reasonable and spiritual order was radically absent in him, and there was, so to speak, no further possibility of escape for him. So, in Hitler a radical libido, which had fully separated itself from reason and spirit. Now, that is enough on the question of libido and the loss of reality through dehumanization; but the matter goes further than this. (Fs)

108a Man remains man in full reality, even when he loses reason and spirit as those parts of reality that help him to order his existence; he does not cease to be man. And there is no point, as is still so often done, in accusing Hitler of inhumanity; it was absolute humanity in human form, only a most remarkably disordered, diseased humanity, a pneumopathological humanity. Such a man's image of reality, therefore, although defective, has not lost the form of reality; that is, he is still a man, with the full claim to make statements of order, even when the ordering force of orientation toward divine being has got lost-even then-except that he puts a pseudo-order in place of the real order. So reality and experience of reality are replaced by a false image of reality. The man, thus, no longer lives in reality, but in a false image of reality, which claims, however, to be the genuine reality. There are then, if this pneumopathic condition has occurred, two realities: the first reality, where the normally ordeied man lives, and the second reality, in which the pneumatically disturbed man now lives and which thus comes into constant conflict with the first reality. (Fs)