Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Hitler and the Germans

Titel: Hitler and the Germans

Stichwort: Erste, zweite Realität; Doderer, Musil

Kurzinhalt: The expressions "first reality" and "second reality" were coined and worked out by Doderer and are to be found throughout all his writings.

Textausschnitt: 108b The expressions "first reality" and "second reality" were coined and worked out by Doderer and are to be found throughout all his writings. They were already used by Musil in his Man without Qualities, a man who also lives in the second reality and thus comes into conflict with the first. The consequence of living in the second reality is, exactly, conflict with the first reality, which indeed is not canceled by the fact that I make for myself a false idea of it and live according to it. Now the consequences of this conflict can be classified according to the two principal categories, contemplation and practice. (Fs)

108c In contemplation, the most important manifestation of the conflict between second and first reality is the construction of a system. Since reality has not the character of a system, a system is always false; and if it claims to portray reality, it can only be maintained with the trickery of an intellectual swindle. I have already spoken on this matter with regard to the specific cases of Marx and Nietzsche,1 but it is found wherever there is a system. Since this intellectual swindle is inherent in the conflict between second and first reality and in system construction, the will to swindle naturally originates here. The man is indeed pneumopathic, he is sick in spirit, and the matter can now become complicated by the fact that he is aware of this swindle, as is very clear, for example, in Nietzsche, who speaks explicitly about this problem. He constantly suffered from the fact that he swindled, because he knew what reality was from Pascal's case. The constant debate between Nietzsche and Pascal is stimulated precisely by his recognition of genuine reality in Pascal and his knowledge of himself as having a false idea of reality and that he constantly lived in this tension between the image of the swindle he is pursuing and the reality he admires in Pascal.2 (Fs)

109a In practice, the consequence of the conflict between second and first reality is, not the intellectual swindle, but the lie. The lie becomes the indispensable method because the second reality claims to be true, and since it constantly comes into conflict with the first reality, it is necessary to lie constantly: for example, one holds that the first reality is quite a different one from what it actually is, or that the second reality is most horribly misunderstood. (Fs) (notabene)

109b The result of this conflict of the lie in the practical sphere is the phenomenon of compact honesty at an intellectually less differentiated level. While on the intellectually more highly differentiated level of contemplation Marx or Nietzsche were still aware that they were swindling, there is no longer talk about swindling at the level of the swindling petit bourgeois. Instead he simply lies, and indeed with such a good conscience that he brings about this phenomenon of compact honesty and those other phenomena we saw the last time in those passages from Karl Kraus. So compact honesty is the result that so disconcerted Kraus-when these conflicts between second and first reality occur at a relatively low intellectual level." (Fs; Ende des Kapitels)