A DECLARATION OF HUMAN DIGNITY

Excerpt of The Philosophy of Freedom as a Basis for Artistic Creation

(Section 4, Ch. IV) by Herbert Witzenmann from the Translation in Progress
by Robert J. Kelder That Can Be Consulted On This Blog

The main content of the work culminates in a declaration of human dignity. This is
human self-creation from self-comprehension requiring no other reason than that of
freedom. One considers oneself modest when upon passing a judgment one’s
subjective limitation and its need for amendment is flaunted in beautiful humility.
From this “humbleness” follows the willingness to reach consensus, to fall in line with
public opinion. Granted, among free human beings the interest for the mindset of the
other will always be an unlimited one. Just now [in the previous section], the
elusiveness of the essential nature of one’s fellow human being through external
attachment of concepts was spoken of and emphasized that the tendency for forming
censorial judgments signifies a lack of respect for the inviolable nature in every
human being. Just for that reason, however, the courage for the validity of one’s own
carefully considered judgment is also a demand of self-respect. For free communities
do not arise through the blurred mixture of average, run of the mill opinions, but
through the unified concord of many-colored cognizant aspirations for that
communal consciousness generated by the unison of free insights. The thoroughly
individual nature of a judgment is not its weakness but its strength. For genuine
community does not require collectivity but individuality. The less individually
pronounced a judgment, the less it can lay claim to be heard by an audience armed
with the faculty of discrimination, the more so, to each higher degree, when it shows
its true countenance. A judgment steeped in cognizance requires no amendment,
because it is precisely that in which others holding different views can concur. It
defies amending, because it is a variation of the whole, befriending other variants. A
judgment is fully valid in so far as it is thoroughly individual, while a merely
repetitive accordance does not exclude doubt as to its validity, since it begs the
question whether it is individually wrought or just a trainbearer of the rumor of
public opinion. An individual judgment does not amend judgments formed from
other perspectives, provided it is derived from real knowledge, but rather strengthens
it and therefore the variety of individual judgments is even a community building
factor. For the diversity of individual judgments includes the respect for and the
forming of every other real contribution to the community spirit, and the insight that
the community attains nothing from a “levelling” consensus, but only by offering each
and every one the widest possible scope of individual unfoldment. The deviation of a
judgment from public opinion is a yardstick for the probability of its truth and a
building block for a true communal consciousness. A community building judgment
is not servile but proud, - proud not in the reflex of vanity of oneself, but in
confidence of oneself without becoming presumptuous, in confidence of the spiritual
gaze transcending the merely personal. The generic nature of public opinion is the
lack of interest of its members for each other and the seeking of protection of those in
anonymity who do not dare to be themselves The public confession to one’s own
insight in the awareness to thereby turn oneself into the receiving end of collective
resentment is in contrast the manifestation of the highest respect for the ability of the
addressee to bust the templates of habitual ways of thinking. Here too the words of
[German poet and writer] Goethe are valid: “What is the general? The individual case.
What is the particular? Millions of cases.”

Since a true anthropology can only be a manifesto of human dignity, it is not

surprising that its structural design is humanness.

The first chapter of the first main part and the last chapter of the second main part
are based, as emerges from what was presented, on the same structural principle, -
yet in different metamorphosis. This is an important observation, for it presents the
key to the structure of the whole work. The next chapter shall enter into this.