"Without a notion of the transcendental, human beings would, indeed, be animals; however, only fools can be convinced of it, and only degenerates need such a conviction"
About this Quote
Grillparzer’s line is a trap baited with flattery and snapped shut with contempt. He opens with a lofty premise - the “transcendental” as the thin membrane separating humans from animals - then swerves into a harsher claim: the people who most loudly need to be “convinced” of that membrane are either stupid or morally ruined. It’s a portrait of belief not as serene metaphysics, but as social triage.
The intent is less to defend faith than to police the psychology of disbelief. “Without a notion” is carefully phrased: you don’t have to prove God, you only have to keep the category of the beyond on the table. Remove it, and the human becomes mere organism. Yet Grillparzer is suspicious of anyone who requires certainty about this point. The “fool” is the rationalist zealot who treats a metaphysical boundary like a syllogism to be settled. The “degenerate” is the person who needs the boundary because their appetites are already winning; they clutch transcendence as a sobriety token, a prophylactic against their own collapse.
Context sharpens the cynicism. A Biedermeier-era Austrian poet writing under censorship and post-Napoleonic reaction, Grillparzer lived in a culture where public virtue, private compromise, and official piety were entangled. The quote reads like an indictment of both camps: the Enlightenment’s smug reduction of man to matter, and the Church-and-state moral economy that turns “higher things” into a badge for the anxious and the corrupt.
What makes it work is the double move: transcendence is declared indispensable, then belief in that indispensability is treated as suspect. It’s not theology; it’s a cold diagnosis of motives.
The intent is less to defend faith than to police the psychology of disbelief. “Without a notion” is carefully phrased: you don’t have to prove God, you only have to keep the category of the beyond on the table. Remove it, and the human becomes mere organism. Yet Grillparzer is suspicious of anyone who requires certainty about this point. The “fool” is the rationalist zealot who treats a metaphysical boundary like a syllogism to be settled. The “degenerate” is the person who needs the boundary because their appetites are already winning; they clutch transcendence as a sobriety token, a prophylactic against their own collapse.
Context sharpens the cynicism. A Biedermeier-era Austrian poet writing under censorship and post-Napoleonic reaction, Grillparzer lived in a culture where public virtue, private compromise, and official piety were entangled. The quote reads like an indictment of both camps: the Enlightenment’s smug reduction of man to matter, and the Church-and-state moral economy that turns “higher things” into a badge for the anxious and the corrupt.
What makes it work is the double move: transcendence is declared indispensable, then belief in that indispensability is treated as suspect. It’s not theology; it’s a cold diagnosis of motives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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