Fragments on Idealism: The Parable of the Moral Hermit (Oct. 2022)
In the dark, I leave the place where once I laughed and argued with friends; drank up their lives; spilt love and hatred over all. Tonight, provisions are gathered upon my back, and in my power the skills to live apart alone. Soft—a figure approaches. Here, at the outer bounds of the city, a stranger manifests. “Why,” he calls out, “do you travel there?” The moon lights on his face as I watch suspicion turn furiously to care.
“What lonely days, what cold nights like this await you beyond!” A gap of breath, then, “ah!” A revelation catches on: “you have suffered the burden of others, no doubt. I come here often to this human threshold. My years, they’ve seen undeserved treachery. My dear self—used like a hammer to secure the pleasure of others! I break sitting under the stars, to weep and to give thanks. This starry sky above, it neither scorns me nor sees me. So, I, dust upon dust, feel less weighty. But surely, stay awhile and go back with me in the morning. There, among human beings—forgive. When the sun walks across the vaulted arch, I too will follow harmony’s path. It was forged for us, for us to be remade under its perfect design, in the furnace of human bonds. Not so, not so out in those unlighted and unpaved roads.”
I am moved—and am anxious not to shine too much light on the shadow of his self-pity, lest I break my vow before I make good on it. I say, “stranger, do not press me. I make this one final act, to leave all others, not for my own sake. I won’t deny it, you’re right to see yourself in me. Like all of us, I did suffer. I am as unhappy as anyone. I suffer now to hear how you are wronged. But is that all I could do for you? Would you take all my goods, everything dear, even my life? You could take it, could I make you whole; and were you a good enough man to refuse me, I would make you accept. These circles of reasoning drove me mad. But I lighted, as you say, upon one final thought: I may remove myself from you and all, so that never might a wrong come from me to you. For I ought not do wrong now or ever; I ought not violate the sovereignty of others over themselves; I ought never abuse others and reduce them to a mere means; no, I will not even give myself a chance. I could not pretend that I am so wretched to seek moral rebirth. I am no glorious convert, no prodigal son. Simply put: the evil of my life is a simmering flame that refuses to go out. In truth, even evil does not belong to me, because it is radical evil. All beings like myself, like you, cannot dig up the roots of our being, because we do not create ourselves. I am the flower of my creaturehood, and I justify the nothingness of the bottom. Thus, I live on. Yes, I leave others because it is good to do so; I should never wrong anyone again. Suicide is out of the question. I am still a creature with a will, whose actions may serve as rules over all others. In respect of that, I may not do harm to myself, since in doing so I would violate the humanity in me, the root. If I were to kill myself, I would have to say ‘murder a free being for the sake of the good’, which is insanity, so instead I say ‘remove yourself from free beings so that you may do no wrong against one."
The stranger interrupts: “you are no desert father then?” I shake my head, “my retreat serves as no alternative to martyrdom. I do not undertake this quest to prove anything. I do not hope to know myself as better and more moral in the wilderness. For, these mental depths are most unfathomable to me. Will I be saved in another life? I care not; I could not care if I wanted. You yourself may surpass me in purity. But what I do know is this: if I am apart from all creatures like myself, no evil maxim could suggest itself to me; I remove not the logical possibility of evil—since I do not intend to murder myself, which would itself be evil—but the worldly possibility of evil. Maxims suggest themselves to me when my life is populated by other human beings. The moral law commands that I treat these beings in some way, not that I live alongside them. You scrutinize me. Rightly you should, and though I know the question, ask it.”
An image of his eyes rolling imposes itself in the pitch black, then the words follow: “How lucky am I to come across someone like you.” The stranger fades into the moonlight. I see him rocking back and forth in disbelief. “Oh, this is the luck I deserve! In the calm of my nightly seclusion, God still sends his messengers to throttle me. Would I have just sat fifty feet from the road, you would have been nothing to me! I would not have heard these thoughts that set my tinder dry heart on fire. How many times did I rage within myself and go out to the walls of the city? No, no, I will not be convinced. For I think I look upon a child. Oh! but God was a child! Oh! But who am I! Nothing beneath the stars. So, you smell some questions in me. I no longer hesitate to pull you to my cliff’s edge. Begin the disputation. If to leave others is good as you say, the act and its maxim should be of universal fit. What you do must fit the will of any other. You said moreover that I may exceed you in goodness; so, if I remain here among others, how could you cling to your hermitage? Why are you sure your goodness cannot be destined with me? And how could your pretension to universality not fall against the man who stands before you, who chooses to remain? How could it even be that I stand opposite you and say 'your good' when the good is by your own recognition the good of all, the humanity within you, the speech of the genus. Answer me well, young man.”
I expected another question, since I had thought this was resolved by my earlier remarks. But I am glad for the stranger, who condescends to me without warrant from his intelligence. I won’t provoke more doubt against myself than has already made a dwelling in me. “What,” I begin, “is contradictory about withdrawing from others for the sake of the moral good, the autonomy of other rational beings? If elevated into a practical law, it should all work out. I respect the autonomy of others to the point of not even touching it. If every possible agent should make it their maxim too—to live by oneself, away from others, for the duty towards moral perfection—then all actual evil is eliminated. That duty, let me say again, does not depend on whether I know I am perfect; even more, I know I cannot be perfect because I am evil, and I also know that I cannot know where I am along the road to perfection. The spirit is an unchartered continent, whose inhabitants drown all pioneers in their sacred lakes. I simply act according to the good, and the duty justifies the act: to leave the city of man. I thus commit myself to this supreme duty that stands behind all other particular duties, for all duties I am charged with are done by me for the sake of themselves, that is, for the perfection of the good in me. Though ‘I’ am of no consequence, ‘I’ must do what is right for myself also because ‘I’ have value only insofar as I can act according to the good. I’m sure you wonder whether or not there is enough earth to fit a race of hermits. But the real has nothing to do with the good. Indeed, I am no desert father. I do not look for a new society. I seek no moral fraternity. And I would flee from anyone who sought me. On the other hand, I can give you a realistic answer to your realistic question. There would be no need to worry about the required space for a universal departure of humanity from itself, since our needs would run out along with the species. But do not misunderstand. I do not set out to destroy the species. If anyone who takes up my mantle acts against humanity, if they would withdraw from it to annihilate generations to come, then they commit terrible wrong. Take myself, an individual man; I abandon no children, no sick or dependent bodies, and if I was burdened by some such beings, I could not abandon them. Abandoning one’s children is morally unacceptable because they cannot be considered fully free. But I have a duty to them in respect of their developing freedom, not in respect of their being underdeveloped. So, I have no duty to the unborn, for whom development is not a question. Those whose bodies cannot work to live for themselves, if they need my individual body, I must support their free will to exist and think and act for themselves. Yet, I, one man among many, simply find myself unburdened. Does the fact that other mortals who are charged with such duties cannot in good conscience withdraw from others, as I do, lead my act into moral contradiction? No. For, the universal agent of the will—and that is all we consider moral consistency—does not refute himself if he gives up society with others for the sake of the good. The duty to withdraw from others, as I say it is a duty, and the duty to care for other who need care, are not in themselves in conflict with each other. Only: this or that human being cannot do both at some given time, as a result of some given circumstances. But that does not render the maxim of my act inconsistent. Listen how I choose my words carefully: ‘society with others.’ I mean, I do not abandon ‘society,’ but communion with other beings. If I were to just say ‘society’, to use the word as a noun, then I would put myself in the position of presupposing the very thing I am to deny, and therefore render my maxim unusable as universal law. That is because there is no ‘society’ apart from our free communion with each other. We may leave and break the contract at any time. And so ‘society’ has no value over the good, which in truth must and shall supersede society. Therefore, if, as a consequence of universal moral hermitage, no humanity remains in a hundred years, no children are born—then I do no wrong. Again, this way does not contradict yours. If you should act for the happiness of others with others, restricting yourself as well to remain within the boundaries of the narrower duties to not kill, steal, lie, and so on—all of which are only negative—then you shall be acting morally. But do you have a duty to remain with others? No, you simply have a duty towards them, already being around them. If you were to say that you act every day to remain within society for the good, and that you may suggest it as a duty to all, what are you really saying? You are stating the necessity to merely act morally towards others, and that one cannot act morally without acting in relation to others. The very existence of another justifies the command to do good unto and thus with them. If the whole town were to pursue me out into these hard lands and make it impossible for me to live by myself, and become dependent on me, I could not fight back. But nothing in that contradicts my action now, which, because it is a moral action, is directed towards others, to be inactive towards those others in order to remove the possibility of doing them wrong. If you would demonstrate my error, you would have to prove not only that acting morally towards others is necessary, which is obviously accepted by me, but also that simply acting towards others, without regard to the moral content of the action, is necessary. And you cannot give a moral justification for that, by definition, since what is morally necessary is necessary because it is good in relation to another, not simply because it is an act in relation to another. No, follow me further: the only possible justification to act in the world towards men would have to be in terms of the world of men; my will would have to speak in the codes and devices of the animal self-interest that binds us all together; it would have to seek out its own motives from others, rather than from the absolute law of freedom— totally, utterly inadmissible, dear stranger.”
He receives me speechlessly, nodding and shaking in silence. Just as quietly he moves to grab my arm, successfully against my will, for I cannot see clearly and I do not desire even this moment of contact. “You’ve been trained well,” continuing on before I can deny him, “very well, it’s all very well. I cannot outwit you, not now at least. Spare me a final word. Yes, you are strange to me as well, stranger than I have been to myself—a comfortable thought up till now.”
Another pause between us that I think is the last. I’ve gone on too long with this perilous exhaustion. No wrong has been done him, true. Yet something in me suffers for his mute bitterness. I repent with my feet, moving to escape him—when he opens his mouth for a new and unheard voice: “fateless man, you are a bond and a place. You now steal yourself from the pure fire that rises and descends. Now be prostrate before yourself, solemnly, like cold ashes in the hearth.”