« back to search

"The soul of a good man had become empty of all psychological content, of grounds and consequences; it has become a pure white slate, upon which fate writes its absurd command, and this command will be followed blindly, rashly, and fiercely to the end."

— Lukács, Georg [György] (1885-1971)

Author

Lukács, Georg [György] (1885-1971)

Work Title

On the Poverty of Spirit

Date

1908, 1911

Metaphor

"The soul of a good man had become empty of all psychological content, of grounds and consequences; it has become a pure white slate, upon which fate writes its absurd command, and this command will be followed blindly, rashly, and fiercely to the end."

Metaphor in Context

You really are womanly and headstrong today; you want to save me partout, but you completely fail to ask yourself if I'm really in a situation from which you have to save me. And your accusation of frivolity is distorted and unjust. You cling to the way I express myself, as if you didn't know that one has to abstract everything in an explanation--one has, therefore, to make everything conscious--and that I always do this in a way that is, perhaps, unnecessarily exaggerated. Yes, Goodness is a grace, a miracle, not because we wait for it in a lazy, self-satisfied, and frivolous manner but rather because it is a wondrous, unexpected, and unpredictable--and, nevertheless, a necessary resolution of a maximally intense paradox. God's claim on us is absolute and unsatisfiable: we are to leap the bounds of interpersonal forms of understanding. Our knowledge of this impossibility is just as unshakable; but he to whom the grace of Goodness has been granted, and who is in Goodness--his faith in the "Nevertheless" is just as absolute and unshakable. Goodness is madness, it is not mild, not refined, and not quietistic; it is wild, terrible, blind, and adventurous. The soul of a good man had become empty of all psychological content, of grounds and consequences; it has become a pure white slate, upon which fate writes its absurd command, and this command will be followed blindly, rashly, and fiercely to the end. That this impossibility becomes fact, this blindness becomes clear-sightedness, this fierceness becomes Goodness--that is the miracle, the grace.