Saturday, November 20:
At seven in the morning R. wishes me a good morning and says he has already been thinking a lot about Socrates. It is very remarkable, he says, that his whole approach is negative; this means he is wise, but no philosopher. He is always trying to fathom where wisdom can be found, in Heaven and beneath the ground in Hades, everywhere.
In this sense he can be compared with Kant, who in his Critique of Pure Reason declares that this problem cannot be solved, and he stands in relation to Plato more or less as Schopenhauer's first book stands to his second. To this extent he is also the clearest example of a step forward in the development of the human spirit.
He could only be mild and benevolent, since all around him he saw error. But he must have been terribly irritating, since he could not be put into any category, not even among the philosophers, and yet he attracted everyone to him; if he had only accepted money, all would have been well. Plato was the first philosopher; Socrates was simply his forerunner, of the greatest importance to him, since he threw doubt on all recognized values.
Such earlier men as Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, etc., were practicians; they sought to explain the objective world. Plato was the first to recognize the world's ideality, that the species was everything, the individual nothing.
Much concern about Lulu; after I have scolded her about something, she waits until I have gone away and then gives vent to the ugliest resentment. Today she is not being allowed to work with me.
Yesterday in the A.A.Z. I read a short biography of Papin, the scholar, whose experiences and death affected me terribly. Whether absolute wisdom, like that of Socrates, or remarkable significance like Papin's, all greatness must be rejected by this world. And all here, because of lunch, I no longer know what I wanted to say.
In the evening Greek history with Lusch. Since I am coming down with a sore throat, R. tells me he does not know which is greater, his love or his concern for me. I go to bed, and R. reads Crito to me.
R. reads me his letter to the King and sends it off.