Introduction

1 The condemned man, who has not been heard during the trial, will not expect from his defence that it will meet with a favourable reception from those who have condemned him, if they have condemned him and had to condemn him in their own interest, as soon as they asserted their interest as the sole supreme right against him. His judges are at the same time his opponents: where their interest begins, his right ceases. He can defend himself, i.e., prove that the interest which governs his opponents is unjust, if it seeks to restrict the right for which he has risen and on account of which he is damned, but he will not hope for a justification which could consist only in this, that his opponents, if not deny their private interest, at least reduce it to the measure which belongs to it in comparison with a higher right.

2 His position would still be attended with fewer difficulties if he only had to work upon the insight of his opponents or could count from the outset on their coming to meet him willingly. But his judges fight rather for their interest, they want absolutely to be in the right, they want him to be in the wrong, he therefore has to do with a decided, interested will, and this will is even the only decisive thing which is opposed to him by his opponents.

3 In those epochs when the times part from one another, the interests break with one another, the past condemns the future, this rupture, this solution of the vital question is only possible because the old feels that it is incompatible with the new, but has only the unclear, though infallible, feeling of this incompatibility. It does not even dare to examine and understand the new impartially, since in understanding it fears its own loss and would indeed already have to deny itself if it were even to examine the new impartially. It only does not want the new and applies the whole force of its will to repelling the future and the new principle from itself.

4 In the first moment of the struggle, however, it cannot even understand the new. Before the rupture, when the new principle still lay in the womb of the past, the two principles which the crisis tears asunder had still in an unclear manner mutually penetrated, limited, but also supported and sustained each other.

5 The old, which breaks with the new, therefore deceives itself about itself when it takes itself for the old and appeals to its inherited rights. It does not know itself.

6 The Catholic Church, which formed itself in opposition to the Reformation, was no longer the Church as it was constituted before the rupture with the principle which it had borne in its womb. It was a self-deception when the Catholic opponent of the Reformation thought to assert only the old, or when the Stuarts believed they were defending the old hereditary monarchical power against the communities which claimed their rights. The old which resists the new is no longer really the old; through the opposition it has itself rather become a new form of spirit: its rights lie not in the past, but are yet to be proved.

7 If that power which would revoke, forbid or render impossible progress is no longer the old itself, it is nevertheless the consequence of the old, the true meaning, the true carrying-out of the same, the unveiled secret of the old, the confession which the opposition of the new has wrung from it. The Catholic Church, which proves itself in the struggle with Protestantism, betrays the true meaning of the Church of the Middle Ages; the struggle of the Stuarts against the liberties of the communities elevates the arbitrariness of the Tudors into a principle; the theological faculties, when they expel free inquiry from themselves, thereby prove that their previous existence fundamentally rested on the restriction of thought; the government which lets itself be determined by the judgment of the faculties thereby declares that its existence is incompatible with the freedom of thought; the public, finally, which takes sides against critique, does not shrink from confessing that its indolence does not wish to be disturbed by free inquiry and that it lacks the courage which must not be lacking if old, deep-rooted prejudices are to be laid aside.

8 Before the rupture, the theological faculties harboured free tendencies, the governments declared that religion and philosophy must be companions, and the public could enthuse for freedom of thought and inquiry when the struggle against so-called obscurantists was at issue.

9 The rupture proves that this conduct, these declarations, this enthusiasm were inconsistent and limited. The rupture is the real liberation of freedom and the transformation of limitation into the essence of the opponents of freedom.

10 After the rupture, when this essence of the corporation, the government and the prejudice of the mass has revealed itself, the opponents and judges of critique appeal to their earlier liberal tendencies and declarations. They thus fall into the contradiction that they count as their essence that which is revoked by their real essence, into a contradiction which brings about their downfall.

11 I am condemned before I have been heard and without opportunity having been given me to explain the object of the accusation, the corpus delicti, and to correct or contest the explanations which my judges have given concerning it. Only now, when the trial is over, do I learn that it has been conducted at all; the disadvantage, however, into which I am thereby placed affords me the advantage that the contradictions into which the opposing party must fall are developed, so that I can grasp them at their true essence.

12 Before what tribunal, however, do I now plead my case? Are the faculties, the Christian government, the public prejudice my natural judges?

13 No! The natural judge, to whose verdict my case is subject together with that of the faculties and the government, is science and its history.

14 The faculties did not act rightly when they gave their verdict as a party over critique and against it. The government forfeited its dignity as a state government when it made the decision dependent solely on the standpoint of limited corporations and thereby made itself a party against critique. If finally a part of the public decided against critique and did not consider that freedom in general is in mortal danger when the freedom of inquiry is threatened, it took sides against critique for the sake of its peace of mind and rejected an investigation on the ground that it might finally impose upon it decisions which would be too burdensome for its phlegm.

15 Shall I now, if I am not left to my natural judge, plead my case before judges whom it by no means redounds to the honour that they have decided against it as a party?

16 I must do so: for critique must first itself create its true judge, history. History does not come to us, but our deed must lead us to it.

17 It is no dishonour to me if I once again lay the matter before the parties who have set themselves up as its judges, since these parties have developed their true essence and critique can only derive benefit from coming to terms with its essential opposite.

18 It is only for a moment that critique recognises its opposing party as judge, since it only needs to illuminate the essence of the same in order to make recognisable in the background that judge whose verdicts are irrevocable.

19 We shall therefore first give the trial its true, natural direction.

20 The trial is only now beginning!