Faith is perhaps a concession: “After all, I might be wrong.” The possibility of an error in judgment salvages from the ignoble certainty. The residuum eventually thwarts the self-sufficiency of reason and keeps us humble. And doubt is the reason’s reason. Even more, it is the faith in reason: “My thought compels me to make a rational choice between two types of error—between two styles of ignorance.” Radical pessimism is thus a potential origin of the brightest horizons and of the everlasting futures. The glory of the species becomes a matter of principle. The overwhelming evidence to the contrary must be rejected on methodological grounds. The very possibility, however remote and apparently insignificant, however ridiculous, is otherwise forfeited: “Without faith I have no choice.” Without faith there remains but the abdication by default. Thus, and only thus, faith and doubt coincide. Behold—the modesty of reason, or the salto mortale of negative thought: “After all, so many others before me have been wrong as well.”

Addendum (January 1, 1981)

The desperate character of optimism is well illustrated (as well as argued) by Horkheimer:

Necessary Vanity: It is true that a single individual cannot change the course of the world. But if he does not feel throughout his life the wild despair that rebels against this, he will not even accomplish the infinitely small, insignificant, vain, pointless little bit of good he, the individual, is capable of.[1]

The idea of faith is only implicit here, though. Horkheimer’s premonition concerning the treacherous link between critique and faith can be found elsewhere in a somewhat timid form:

The Difference Between Critical Theory and the Idea of Faith: Faced with the sciences and the entire present situation, my idea of expressing the concept of an omnipotent and benevolent Being no longer as dogma but as a longing that unites all men so that the horrible events, the injustice of history so far would not be permitted to be final, ultimate fate of the victim, seems to come close to the solution of the problem: the rôle of faith becomes central. The essential difference is that faith is burdened with too many ideas, such as that of Trinity, that are difficult to accept; that a compulsion that can hardly be submitted to any longer attaches to it, and that it nonetheless become dogma once again. That explains a tendency toward aggression that sees itself as religious.[2]

It is perhaps sad that Horkheimer concentrated upon the difference here. The painful discovery is thus tucked away, as though it could be hidden again. In short, he must have felt the euphoria associated with drowning, the sharp sweetness of defeat and of old age, for he apparently felt that he had to justify his despair, let alone his solution, to a potential reader, but without ever becoming explicit about his uneasiness (which tends to spoil the thrills that the reader could otherwise extract from false confessions, such as this one could have been). Was he embarrassed? Was he embarrassed because he felt that he was drowning, or vice versa? But enough! After all, it is only my comparison that separates us.

Footnotes

1. Horkheimer, M., Dawn and Decline, New York: The Seabury Press, 1978, p. 218.

2. Op. cit., p. 239.