/lit/ - Literature

All refuted in a single section.

"In both of the previous generations, one paid great attention to the relationship we have to values. If one can trust the multiple and careful inventories of our fortune, which this time has brought forth, then our historical rank might have to be set quite low. The critique of this time has gained in sharpness and maliciousness and one cannot claim that we are brought up to overestimate our achievements.

We are more inclined to afford criticism a rank which appears rather precarious. It does indeed have its limits, and there is no criticism capable of extracting itself from the overall view of its time and making judgements from a higher position. Where this nevertheless happens, one must establish what certainties and what criteria form the basis of such judgement.
Obviously, one seeks to secure such criteria through comparison. In fact, the method is that such critique seeks to carve out for itself a foundation of historical achievements, and then proceed from them to approach the present. This method seems plausible; it is, however, dependent upon the presupposition of a linear unfolding of time as a unitary phenomenon; in other words, a certain past corresponds to a certain present – otherwise a unitary, consistent measure is unthinkable.

One must, however, know that the merciless assessments to which this time is subjected, and which we find confirmed in so many minute details, are both accurate and inaccurate. This is because the uniform division of time into past, present and future, whilst it may be adequate for astronomical time, it is not for the time of life, or the time of destiny. There is one astronomical time, but simultaneously a multitude of life times whose rhythm ticks like the pendulum swings of innumerable clocks next to each another.
So there isn’t a single time, the time, but a multiplicity of times, which raise their claim upon man. Thus it is to be explained that a generation is at the same time older and younger than that of the fathers, that it belongs therefore to two different times. Now, it depends a great deal on the perspective from which one is capable of seeing time. One stands upon it as if upon a carpet and sees that the old pattern is woven right up to the edges. Or one sees that the fabric builds itself up to entirely new and different figures. Both perspectives are valid, and so it can be that one and the same phenomenon appears both as the symbol of the end and of the beginning. In the sphere of death everything becomes the symbol of death, and, in turn, death is the element which nourishes life.