52. Karl Bleibtreu - Last Truths

Leipzig 1892

If anyone, as would seem justified by the title, were looking for the results of philosophical considerations in this book, he would be sorely mistaken. One will find views such as those put forward by the whim and arbitrariness of a witty man who shies away from serious, calm thinking, but one will also feel offended by the imposition of having to accept the most subjective talk in matters about which only reason, which has worked its way to the highest possible degree of objectivity, should speak. Bleibtreu says everything he likes about the nature of man, about sexual relations and love, about marriage and family life, about genius, about intellect and will, about criminal law and socialism, without any further qualms about the fact that personal preference for a view is not yet a criterion of its truth. I am not philistine enough to accuse Mr. Bleibtreu of blunting the feeling for conscientiousness in the great questions of life and the world through writings such as his, and perhaps I enjoyed myself too much while reading them. I also quite liked some of the witty, half-true, quarter-true and eighth-true assertions. But the book is bad because Mr. Bleibtreu has no idea that every thing has many pages. The opposite of every sentence he writes is also true. A German writer who does not know this seems like a relic from the last century. Ever since the Germans have had a philosophy and Goethe's works, they have known that one point of the eye is not enough to look at a thing, but that one must walk around it and look at it from all sides. It is splendid what Mr. Bleibtreu says about genius, that it is its own standard, that it cannot exist without a self-confidence that almost reaches the point of megalomania; but this only illuminates the essence of genius from one side, and that always produces a distorted image, a caricature. Bleibtreu is a caricaturist of "ultimate truths". He advocates monogamy with dissolution of marriage. The children should belong to the mother. He considers fatherly love to be hypocrisy. He who says A must also say B. In this case that means: whoever demands things like Bleibtreu must also describe the social conditions under which they are possible. Bleibtreu asserts the relationship between genius and insanity following Lombroso. He even wants to formulate the matter more precisely: Under unfavorable circumstances, insanity occurs wherever genius occurs under favorable circumstances. Has Mr. Bleibtreu never heard that genius has also developed under the most unfavorable circumstances? Or does he simply say: yes, then these circumstances were only seemingly unfavorable, but in reality they were favorable to genius, which was strengthened all the more by this or that difficulty? One could, of course, justify any sentence in this way. Incidentally, Bleibtreu's reasons are not very different in value from these. All in all, Bleibtreu's book would only make sense if the author were a god and his assertions were divine commandments, a kind of revelation that the rest of humanity would simply have to accept without criticism. We do not consider Mr. Bleibtreu to be a god, but his book to be amusing, amateurish writing.