Love

§57 In order to complete its transformation into the ''tranquillity of knowledge", Critical Criticism must first seek to dispose of love. Love is a passion, and nothing is more dangerous for the tranquillity of knowledge than passion. That is why, speaking of Madame von Paalzow's novels, which, he assures us, he has "thoroughly studied". Herr Edgar is amazed at "a childish thing like so-called love". It is a horror and abomination and excites the wrath of Critical Criticism, makes it almost as bitter as gall, indeed, insane.

§58 "Love ... is a cruel goddess, and like every deity she wishes to possess the whole of man and is not satisfied until he has surrendered to her not merely his soul, but his physical self. The worship of love is suffering, the peak of this worship is self-immolation, suicide."

§59 In order to change love into "Moloch", the devil incarnate, Herr Edgar first changes it into a goddess. When love has become a goddess, i.e., a theological object, it is of course submitted to theological criticism; moreover, it is known that god and the devil are not far apart. Herr Edgar changes love into a "goddess", a, "cruel goddess" at that, by changing man who loves, the love of man, into a man of love; by making "love" a being apart, separate from man and as such independent. By this simple process, by changing the predicate into the subject, all the attributes and manifestations of human nature can be Critically transformed into their negation and into alienations of human nature." Thus, for example, Critical Criticism makes criticism, as a predicate and activity of man, into a subject apart, criticism which relates itself to itself and is therefore Critical Criticism: a "Moloch", the worship of which consists in the self-immolation, the suicide of man, and in particular of his ability to think.

§60 "Object," exclaims, the tranquillity of knowledge, "object is the right expression, for the beloved is important to the lover [denn der Geliebte ist dem Liebenden] (there is no feminine) only as this external object of the emotion of his soul, as the object in which he wishes to see his selfish feeling satisfied."

§61 Object! Horrible! There is nothing more damnable, more profane, more mass-like than an object — agrave; bas the object! How could absolute subjectivity, the actus puris, "pure" Criticism, not see in love its bête noire, that Satan incarnate, in love, which first really teaches man to believe in the objective world outside himself, which not only makes man into an object, but even the object into a man!

§62 Love, continues the tranquillity of knowledge, beside itself, is not even content with turning man into the category of "object" for another man, it even makes him into a definite, real object, into this bad-individual (see Hegel's Phänomenologie on the categories "This" and "That", where there is also a polemic against the bad "This"), external object, which does not remain internal, hidden in the brain, but is sensuously manifest.

§63 Love
Lives not only in the brain immured.

§64 No, the beloved is a sensuous object, and if Critical Criticism is to condescend to recognition of an object, it demands at the very least a senseless object. But love is an un-Critical, un-Christian materialist.

§65 Finally, love even makes one human being "this external object of the emotion of the soul" of another, the object in which the selfish feeling of the other finds its satisfaction, a selfish feeling because it looks for its own essence in the other, and that must not be. Critical Criticism is so free from all selfishness that for it the whole range of human essence is exhausted by its own self.

§66 Herr Edgar, of course, does not tell us in what way the beloved differs from the other "external objects of the emotion of the soul in which the selfish feelings of men find their satisfaction". The spiritually profound, meaningful, highly expressive object of love means nothing to the tranquillity of knowledge but the abstract formula: "this external object of the emotion of the soul", much as the comet means nothing to the speculative natural philosopher but "negativity". By making man the external object of the emotion of his soul, man does in fact attach "importance" to him, Critical Criticism itself admits, but only objective importance, so to speak, while the importance which Criticism attaches to objects is none other than that which it attaches to itself. Hence this importance lies not in "bad external being", but in the "Nothing" of the Critically important object.

§67 If the tranquillity of knowledge has no object in real man, it has, on the other hand, a cause in humanity. Critical love "is careful above all not to forget the cause behind the personality, for that cause is none other than the cause of humanity". Un-Critical love does not separate humanity from the personal, individual man.

§68 Love itself, as an abstract passion, which comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither, is incapable of`having an interest in internal development."

§69 In the eyes of the tranquillity of knowledge, love is an abstract passion according to the speculative terminology in which the concrete is called abstract and the abstract concrete.

§70 The maid was not born in that valley,
But where she came from, no one knew.
And soon all trace of her did vanish
Once she had bidden them adieu.[9]

§71 For abstraction, love is "the maid from a foreign land" who has no dialectical passport and is therefore expelled from the country by the Critical police.

§72 The passion of love is incapable of having an interest in internal development because it cannot be construed a priori, because its development is a real one which takes place in the world of the senses and between real individuals. But the main interest of speculative construction is the "Whence" and the "Whither". The "Whence" is the "necessity of a concept, its proof and deduction" (Hegel). The "Whither" is the determination "by which each individual link of the speculative circular course, as the animated content of the method, is at the same time the beginning of a new link" (Hegel). Hence, only if its "Whence" and its "Whither" could be construed a priori would love deserve the "interest" of speculative Criticism.

§73 What Critical Criticism combats here is not merely love but everything living, everything which is immediate, every sensuous experience, any and every real experience, the "Whence" and the "Whither" of which one never knows beforehand.

§74 By overcoming love, Herr Edgar has completely asserted himself as the "tranquillity of knowledge", and now by his treatment of Proudhon, he can show great virtuosity in knowledge, the "object" of which is no longer "this external object", and a still greater lack of love for the French language.