Erich Kahler - The Tower and the Abyss

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THE TOWER AND THE ABYSS

THE TOWER AND THE ABYSS

An Inquiry into the Transformation of the Individual

Erich Kahler

With a new introduction by

Joseph Frank

Originally published in 1957 by George Braziller, Inc.

Published 1989 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

New material this edition copyright 1989 by Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 88-37228

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kahler, Erich, 18851970.

The tower and the abyss: an inquiry into the transformation of the individual/Erich Kahler; with a new introduction by Joseph Frank.

p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: G. Braziller, 1957.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-88738-788-8

I. Man. 2. Civilization, Modem. 3. Civilization, Modem-20th century. 4. Germany-Civilization-Philosophy. I. Title.

BD450.K275 1989
128-dc19

88-37228
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-88738-788-3 (pbk)

For permission to include selections and quotations in this volume, grateful acknowledgment is made to:

Random House, Inc. : Ren Char, Lightning Victory, from Hypnos Waking, translated by W.S.Merwin, copyright 1956 by Random House, Inc. W.H. Auden, Petition, from The Collected Poetry of W.H.Auden, copyright 1945 by W. H. Auden.

Estate of Gertrude Stein: Gertrude Stein, Brewsie and Willie, copyright 1946 by Random House, Inc.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: Stephen Crane, The Upturned Face, from Stephen Crane: An Omnibus, edited by Robert Wooster Stallman, copyright 1952 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

The Macmillan Company: Marianne Moore, Those Various Scalpels, from Collected Poems, copyright 1951 by Marianne Moore.

Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.: T.S.Eliot, excerpts from Four Quartets, copyright, 1943, by T. S. Eliot. Excerpts from Collected Poems 19091962, copyright, 1963, by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.; copyright 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Virginia Woolf, Orlando. Adolf A. Berle, The Twentieth Century Capitalist Revolution.

New Directions: Dylan Thomas, The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. Paul Eluard, Posie Ininterrompue, from Selected Writings, translated by Lloyd Alexander. Ezra Pound, A Pact, from Selected Poems of Ezra Pound. Reprinted by arrangement with New Directions.

Harper & Brothers: Claire Huchet Bishop, All Things Common. Gardner Murphy, Personality. T. H. and Julian Huxley, Touchstone for Ethics. Yale University Press: David Riesman, Faces in the Crowd and The Lonely Crowd.

The Westminster Press: Oscar Cullman, Christ and Time, copyright 1950 by W.L.Jenkins.

William Morrow & Company, Inc. : Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, translated by Richard Aldington.

Pantheon Books, Inc.: Andr Gide, Anthologie de la Posie Franaise. Selected Prose of Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, translated by Mary Hottinger and Tania and James Stern, Bollingen Series XXXIII.

Cambridge University Press: William H. Rivers, Instinct and the Unconscious. Rinehart & Company, Inc.: Erich Fromm, Man for Himself and Escape from Freedom.

W.W.Norton & Company: Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by M.D.Herter Norton, copyright 1942 by W.W.Norton & Company, Inc. Oxford University Press, Inc.: C. Wright Mills, White Collar. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Robert Bridges.

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, copyright 1948 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Little, Brown & Company: John P. Marquand, Point of No Return. Schocken Books, Inc.: Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters and The Later Masters, translated by Olga Marx.

Charles Scribners Sons: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, In Our Time, and Death in the Afternoon.

e.e.cummings: Poems, 19231954, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. Copyright 1954 by e.e.cummings. Selections reprinted by permission of e.e.cummings.

Rien ne sarrte pour nous. Cest ltat qui nous est naturel, et toutefois le plus contraire notre inclination; nous brlons de dsir de trouver une assiette ferme, et une dernire base constante pour y difier une tour qui slve linfini; mais tout notre fondement craque, et la terre souvre jusquaux abmes.

(Nothing stands still for us. This is the state which is ours by nature, yet to which we least incline: we burn to find solid ground, a final steady base on which to build a tower that rises to Infinity; but the whole foundation cracks beneath us and the earth splits open down to the abyss.)

PASCAL

Comprendre cest avant tout unifier.

(To understand is first of all to unify.)

CAMUS

CONTENTS

The Split from Without: I Collectivization

The Split from Without: II Totalization and Terror

The Split from Within: I Second Consciousness and Fractionized Universe

The Split from Within: II New Sensibility, Psychoanalysis and Existentialist Experience

WHEN The Tower and the Abyss was first published in 1957, T. S. Eliot made some striking comments about it that are very helpful in explaining why the work, after the passage of thirty years, still continues to retain its exemplary value. In response to an inquiry from the Sunday Times about the books that had made the greatest impact on him in the past year, Eliot referred to Kahlers exploration of the perils to which modern man has now become exposed. Whether one agrees with the author or not, Eliot said,

what he writes must provoke fresh thinking on the part of any reader capable of that exertion. There have been many books written on the predicament of our age, some of which I have read, but none of which has impressed me more deeply. Few books in its field of thought since Ortega y Gassets The Revolt of the Masses have stirred and disturbed my mind so deeply.

These laudatory words, from a poet and critic hardly given to unduly expansive evaluations, are enough to guarantee the perennial interest of Kahlers pages. But it is not so much Eliots praise that is notable as his remark on the capacity of Kahler to stimulate thought independently of any particular agreement or disagreement. This is always the sign of a book with a vision destined to rise above its time, and whose reading becomes a vital experience quite transcending the terms of usual intellectual argument.

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