Two Refutations of the Heterogeneity Doctrine

Rasmus Nielsen’s doctrine of faith and knowledge was the most discussed piece of Danish philosophy in the 1860s, and it was refuted twice within two years, by two men who knew each other well and argued in quite different ways. Georg Brandes, twenty-four years old, published Dualismen i vor nyeste Philosophie in 1866: a 76-page polemic, quick and satirical, aimed as much at Nielsen’s disciples as at Nielsen. Hans Brøchner, Brandes’s teacher, published Problemet om Tro og Viden in 1868: 226 pages of lectures that place Nielsen in a history of the problem, reconstruct his theory from its own premises, and take it apart in a fixed order. When Nielsen answered Brøchner, Brøchner replied in Et Svar til Professor R. Nielsen (1868), and the next year gave the positive half of his position in Om det Religiøse i dets Enhed med det Humane (1869). All four books are in this collection, complete in Danish and English, and so are the Nielsen texts they argue with: his reply to Brøchner, his 1866 letter to Zeuthen, the two works both critics quote most — the 1866 paper Om theoretisk og praktisk Erkjendelse, nogle Bemærkninger and Om „Den gode Villie“ som Magt i Videnskaben (1867) — the Christiania lectures of 1868, and both volumes of Grundideernes Logik. What follows states their arguments as numbered theses keyed to printed pages. Danish is quoted as the transcriptions print it; the English is the collection’s own translation.

The doctrine under attack

Both critics fix the thesis in one sentence, and the difference between their sentences is instructive. Brandes (Dualismen, p. 25): „Samme Bevidsthed kan uden Modsigelse forene Tro og Viden som absolut uensartede Principer“ — “the same consciousness can without contradiction unite faith and knowledge as absolutely heterogeneous principles.” Brøchner (Problemet, p. 126) adds, letterspacing the clause, that they can be so united netop paa Grund af deres absolute Uensartethed, “precisely on account of their absolute heterogeneity.” The clause answers Nielsen’s defenders — Brandes names Høffding, Rudolph Schmidt and Heegaard (Dualismen, p. 32n) — who complained that critics read Nielsen’s “because” as an “although.” Nielsen adopted the formula himself a year later: „At Tro og Viden lade sig forene i een Bevidsthed, ikke endskjøndt, men fordi de ere absolut ueensartede Principer, vil da med andre Ord sige, at de kun lade sig forene i et absolut Mysterium“ — “that faith and knowledge can be united in one consciousness, not although but because they are absolutely heterogeneous principles, means, in other words, that they can be united only in an absolute mystery” (Den gode Villie, p. 33). Heterogeneity is not an obstacle the union overcomes; it is the reason no conflict can arise, as a melody cannot contradict a theorem. Both critics accept this reading and argue that it makes matters worse. As they reconstruct it, the doctrine has three parts:

Heterogeneity. Faith and knowledge differ absolutely in kind — not merely in form, but in content, goal and ideal.
Non-contradiction. Therefore no proposition of faith can contradict a proposition of knowledge.
Coexistence. Therefore one consciousness can hold both without discord.

Brandes attacks chiefly the passage from (2) to (3). Brøchner attacks all three, and above all the grounds Nielsen offered for (1).

Brandes, Dualismen i vor nyeste Philosophie (1866)

The book has four chapters: Indledning (pp. 7–24), Den absolute Uensartethed (pp. 25–46), Det Antirationelle (pp. 47–54) and Dualismens Consequenser (pp. 55–76). Brandes quotes Nielsen’s Grundideernes Logik, the Philosophisk Propædeutik (the 1857 book and the 1865 lectures), and, in the last chapter, Nielsen’s 1866 paper Om theoretisk og praktisk Erkjendelse, nogle Bemærkninger, which he calls the Bemærkninger; among the disciples, chiefly Heegaard’s Indledning til Ethiken. His arguments reduce to six.

B1. The doctrine turns a failing into a principle (pp. 7–24). People already keep one morality for business and another for life. The doctrine gives this dividedness a theory, and so „hæver Principløsheden selv til Princip“ — it “raises unprincipledness itself into a principle, and gives the uncertain man precisely what he craves: leave to be whole in his halfness” (p. 14). Its war on theology is a “sham battle” (p. 17): miracles expelled from science are readmitted into the believer’s practical life, as if chemists banished phlogiston from science in order to believe in it more fervently outside it. Brandes makes the point by turning Nielsen’s own dialogue about the Minorite’s roasted birds around, so that its rationalist has to answer exactly as its theologian does (pp. 17–20). Nielsen was fond of that dialogue: he reprints it, in almost the same words, in his letter to Zeuthen (pp. 4–6), citing it there to the lectures of 1861–62, pp. 158–59, where Brandes cites the autumn 1865 lectures, p. 159. The disciple asked about the six days of creation must answer: “as a truthful man I assume, in the interest of truth, that these so-called facts are quite unhistorical; but as a moral individuality I assume, in the name of the good, that these same facts are completely reliable and real” (p. 23).

B2. Absolute heterogeneity is absolute irreconcilability (pp. 25–32). This is the central reductio. Heterogeneity explains why two propositions cannot contradict each other, since contradiction requires comparability; for the same reason it cannot ground their union. „Absolut Uensartethed er et andet Udtryk for absolut Uforenelighed“ (p. 32). Nielsen might as well have said that “absolutely irreconcilable principles can be reconciled … all without contradiction. He has said it, but in other words.” Brandes adds that the thesis says only that the union can occur, so that it has “no universal validity” and no account of what makes a union legitimate (p. 26); and that “existence,” the name for what unites the two, is a pure abstraction, so that the union rests on nothing but “personal need” (p. 27).

B3. A divided subject cannot exist (pp. 33–34, 44–46). If “the world was created in six days” and its denial are utterances of absolutely heterogeneous principles, they are utterances of absolutely different beings, and the Nielsen who asserts the one is another man than the Nielsen who asserts the other. „Den absolute Uensartethed er den absolute Dualisme; men den absolute Dualisme er en Maskeradespøg, en Attrappe, der skjuler en virkelig Ensartethed og Enhed“ — “a masquerade joke, a dummy concealing a real homogeneity and unity” (p. 34). The same point is made metaphysically: „At være, det er at være indbefattet i en Tilværelse; naar absolut uensartede Gjenstande ere, saa ere de ikke absolut uensartede“ (p. 44). Brandes adds, with relish, that he learned this from Nielsen (p. 45).

B4. The principle opens the floodgates (pp. 35–43). Detached from its Christian content, the principle licenses any positive religion and any private belief a person needs, and Nielsen could resist only by appeal to reason, which his position forbids (pp. 35–37). The disciples’ analogies fail: Heegaard’s pairing of an aesthetic with an astronomical problem is “not so much as a trace of an analogy” (pp. 38–39), and Schmidt’s poetic truth — the meadow mist as the bog-woman’s brewing — is poetic only when known to be imaginary; made real, it restores the medieval duæ veritates (pp. 39–43).

B5. The anti-rational cannot be spoken of (pp. 47–54). Concepts made to express the anti-rational express nothing; communication becomes a freemason’s handshake; and since the rational and the real permeate each other, the anti-rational cannot even be called real. „Vi kunne Intet sige, ligesaa lidt bekræfte som benægte Noget derom“ (p. 54).

B6. Every dualist ends as a monist (pp. 55–76). In the Bemærkninger the dualism has spread from faith and knowledge to theory and practice as such. Nielsen now hedges: the life of spirit contains „Modsætninger, dybe, stærke, til Dualisme grændsende Modsætninger“ (1866, p. 66), which Brandes christens Næstendels-Dualisme, “pretty-nearly-dualism” (p. 60). In the same paper Nielsen locates spirit in the will — „Aandens Liv er i Villien“ (1866, p. 75) — and concedes that if one consciousness could not acknowledge both, „da vilde det i al Fald blive det Theoretiske, ikke det Praktiske, der maatte opgives“, “then in any case it would be the theoretical, and not the practical, that would have to be given up” (1866, p. 76; Dualismen, pp. 65–66). The dualism is thus unstable, and resolved in favor of the will. Nielsen’s example of courage, known in theory but not possessed in practice (1866, p. 69), meets a dilemma: if courage is temperament, the same holds of theoretical gifts; if it is virtue, knowledge of duty can pass “into flesh and blood” (pp. 62–64).

Brandes argues by dilemma, by reductio through restatement, and by turning the opponent’s words against him. His master premise is the unity of consciousness and of being. His authority, strikingly, is Kierkegaard, whom he quotes against the disciples (pp. 40, 57, 72) and credits with the whole religious content of Nielsen’s position (p. 9). That authority belongs to 1866 alone. Within a year Brandes is calling Kierkegaard „vor Filosofis Tycho Brahe“ — great as Tycho was great, but too reverent of authority to put the sun at the center of the system, and in philosophy “this sun is called reason” (Samlede Skrifter XIII, p. 97).

An unheaded Efterskrift on p. 76 disposes of a piece that reached Brandes too late. Nielsen’s Svar til Hr. Dr. phil. Pastor Zeuthen „indeholder for største Delen kun Optryk af Forf.s Udfald mod Martensens Dogmatik“ — “for the most part it contains only a reprinting of the author’s sallies against Martensen’s Dogmatics” — and so calls for no change in what he had written. The letter is now in the collection, and the verdict is half right. Nielsen does reprint: pp. 4–6 carry the roasted-birds dialogue, and pp. 6–11 take Martensen’s Dogmatics through creation, incarnation and Pentecost, to the conclusion that a dogmatics which explains miracles ends with “a dogmatic thermometer for miracles” (p. 7). But the letter also states the thesis in a form Brandes could have used. A doctrine of ideas, Nielsen grants, must rest on the mathematical-empirical foundation of the doctrine of nature, must be cognition by law, and cannot conflict with the doctrine of nature (p. 2); what no science can do is explain a miracle. „Videnskaben er ikke religiøs, Religionen ikke videnskabelig; Astronomien er ikke andægtig, Andagten ikke videnskabelig“ — “science is not religious, religion not scientific; astronomy is not devout, devotion not scientific” — and so faith and knowledge must, for the sake of a higher reconciliation, sue for divorce, while theology, which would wear the cloak on both shoulders, must go (p. 11).

Brandes in the newspapers, 1865–67

Dualismen was not Brandes’s opening move, and the volume of his collected writings that gathers the journalism around it shows how much of the quarrel happened in the papers. Six things in it bear on the book.

The quarrel starts before the book. The first piece, a review of A. C. Larsen’s Samvittighed og Videnskab, carries the dateline „I December 1865“ (XIII, p. 10), and it already finds the contradiction where Dualismen will find it: the Propædeutik of 1857 lets faith and knowledge, “though absolutely heterogeneous principles,” be reconciled in one consciousness (p. 8).
Høffding put the “because” to Brandes in print. Answering Høffding’s Philosophie og Theologie, Brandes writes: „Hr. Høffding lærer mig, at efter Prof. Nielsens Anskuelse kan denne Forsoning ské, ikke skønt, men fordi disse Principer er absolut uensartede. Dette er temmelig langt fra at være nogen Hemmelighed; men Modsigelsen er ligefuldt betegnet ved mit ‹skønt›“ — “this is rather far from being any secret; but the contradiction is designated all the same by my ‘although’” (p. 14). The footnote at Dualismen p. 32n is the book’s version of an exchange already conducted in public.
Two arguments that did not reach the book. If the principles are absolutely heterogeneous, then ranking them — faith highest, science lowest — is as comic as asking which is higher, a poplar-willow or a thunderclap; and absolutely heterogeneous powers „kan hverken føre Krig eller slutte Fred med hinanden“, can neither make war nor make peace, so Nielsen’s talk of strife and reconciliation between them is idle (p. 14).
Nielsen is said to have softened already. Between 1857 and 1864 the doctrine shifts, and „hermed er i Grunden den absolute Uensartethed af Tro og Viden opgivet, skønt ikke tilbagekaldt“ — “with this the absolute heterogeneity of faith and knowledge is at bottom given up, though not retracted” (p. 15).
The Paradox must at least be. Reviewing Grundideernes Logik, Brandes turns Nielsen’s own refutation of Kant’s thing in itself against the Paradox: whoever can say nothing else of it must still say that it is, „men Væren er en Fornuftbestemmelse“ — but being is a determination of reason — so the paradoxical takes nothing but predicates determined by reason (pp. 41–42).
Brandes attacks Mening a year before Brøchner. Reviewing Om den gode Villie he goes at the same pages Brøchner will use (R5 above), and adds a catch Brøchner does not make. Nielsen had written that Paradise cannot be taken as outward reality „paa Kulturbevidsthedens nuværende Trin“, at the present stage of cultural consciousness. „Skal Troskritiken grundes paa Kulturbevidstheden, og Troen endda være absolut uensartet med denne, ikke til at bestemme og ikke til at indskrænke ud fra den?“ — is the critique of faith to be grounded on cultural consciousness while faith stays absolutely heterogeneous with it? „Ræk ikke Kulturbevidstheden den lille Finger, ellers tager den hurtigt den hele Haand“ (XIII, p. 89).

The same volume records the disciples changing sides. By late 1867 Heegaard had written against Nielsen, and Brandes, who had spent two pieces demolishing his Indledning til den rationelle Etik for having no standpoint of its own (pp. 28–33, 34–39), welcomed the new book as “as able as it is serious,” praising exactly the method Brøchner would use a year later: showing „hvorledes Nielsen i enhver Gren af sin Videnskab kommer i Modsigelse med sig selv“ (pp. 107–108). Brandes also records, with sarcasm, that Heegaard had rebuked Dualismen as an immature youth’s overhasty attempt — „Var det maaske ikke en Overilelse?“ — and asks why the young were in such a hurry, why they came fully two years too early (pp. 106–107).

Brøchner, Problemet om Tro og Viden (1868)

After a history of the problem (ch. I, pp. 8–31) and definitions (ch. II, pp. 31–43), Brøchner examines two attempts at reconciliation: theology’s “science of faith,” represented by Martensen (ch. III, pp. 43–118), and the separation of principles for the sake of reconciliation (ch. IV, pp. 118–224), which treats Kierkegaard briefly, then Nielsen at length (exposition pp. 126–130; critique pp. 130–212), and then Kierkegaard again. Chapter II fixes the stakes: Tro means faith in revelation, the faith of a positive religion, whose mythical and historical content cannot be separated from it, and not Jacobi’s immediate certainty (pp. 31–35). The preface announces that the theory leads „til en factisk Dualisme i Menneskevæsenet … til Bevidsthedens uundgaaelige Selvopløsning“ (pp. 6–7). The arguments reduce to seven.

R1. What is new in Nielsen is not sound, and what is sound is not new (pp. 26–30, 212–213). Nielsen claims, against Kierkegaard, that the two spheres are both infinite and coordinate. But a knowledge that only “mirrors” faith’s content gains extent without content, so that what seems common to the spheres becomes “a mere homonym” (p. 29); and the coordination is illusory, since knowledge is subordinated to faith four times over — in the will’s primacy, in the priority of practical cognition, of religious ethics, and of “supra-scientific” truth (pp. 29–30). Only the absolute heterogeneity is Nielsen’s own, and there the contradictions lie.

R2. The borrowed vocabulary is equivocal (pp. 130–133). “Existence” means first individual being, then being-as-will; the slide is a sleight of hand, since „Bevidstheden er kun existerende som værende theoretisk“ (p. 131). “Subjective” is doubled likewise, so that it is forgotten that subjective truth is appropriated objective truth (pp. 132–133).

R3. Distinctness is not heterogeneity (pp. 133–153). Nielsen is right that will cannot be reduced to thought, but „ved en Subreption“ he turns this distinctiveness into an opposition carried over from form to content (p. 134). Will and cognition are two forms of one self-activity, and passing between them changes form, not content (pp. 135–140). The courage example (Nielsen 1866, p. 69) equivocates between disposition and virtue (pp. 140–142 — Brandes’s B6 again). And if knowledge merely “mirrors” the will, then either the mirroring changes what it mirrors, and is not mirroring, or it does not, and the two are homogeneous; wherever there is interaction there is unity of essence (pp. 148–150).

R4. The metaphysical grounding refutes itself (pp. 153–160, 171–177). To posit unity in the Absolute and dualism in existence is „en Modsigelse“ (p. 153). An absolute limit to knowledge cannot be known (Nielsen himself had written that „at vide om en Ting, at Intet vides om den, er jo dog at vide Noget om den“, Grundideernes Logik I, p. 5): “thought by itself as thought cannot cognize its own absolute limitation, for inasmuch as it cognized it, it would at once set and abolish the boundary” (p. 158). Appeal to a wider subject that knows the limit presupposes the heterogeneity it was meant to prove (pp. 158–159). Brøchner’s alternative is „en bestandig bevægelig Grændse“, a boundary always in motion (p. 160).

R5. Faith and knowledge claim the same object (pp. 177–195). This is the core. Unlike fantasy, to which Nielsen’s expositors had compared it, faith posits its object as real, as knowledge does (pp. 178–179). The “absolute mystery” at the boundary either merely names their mutual limitation — „Troen er altsaa Videns Mysterium, Viden Troens“ (p. 184) — or, taken as a medium of transition, reintroduces homogeneity. Hence: „Tro og Viden gjøre hver for sig Krav paa hele Aanden; de forholde sig begge til Virkeligheden som Heelhed og til denne Virkeligheds Princip, altsaa til samme Object, og idet de skulle gjøre det som absolut uensartede, saa ligger heri Modsigelsens og Adsplittelsens Uundgaaelighed“ — “faith and knowledge each make claim to the whole spirit … hence to the same object, and inasmuch as they are to do it as absolutely heterogeneous, there lies herein the contradiction’s and the division’s unavoidability” (p. 187). Nielsen’s way out was a third term, Mening, opinion: one may keep the faith of the fathers and reject their opinion, since whether Paradise was an outer or an inner reality is a question on which „der er forskjellige Meninger“ (Den gode Villie, pp. 62–64). The separation works only by doubling reality, against which faith itself “protests in the most determinate way,” since it will not have Christ’s birth, death and resurrection moved out of history (p. 192). Brøchner’s quotations of Nielsen in this section are not always exact. Nielsen writes that „Med sin iboende Grændse, sin indre Begrændsning, er Viden ligeoverfor Troen aldeles uindskrænket“, “with its inherent boundary, its inner limitation, knowledge is wholly unrestricted over against faith” (Den gode Villie, p. 35); Brøchner prints „Med sin absolute Grændse“ (p. 182), substituting the very word in dispute.

R6. Both sides are damaged, and the theory cannot be lived (pp. 161–215). The will, cut off from knowledge, becomes blind drive, and God a “God of arbitrariness” (pp. 164–170). Knowledge, forced into a non liquet on miracle, loses its universality (pp. 191–195). Religion loses any criterion for telling the genuine from the spurious (pp. 199–210). Pages 213–214 list twelve contradictions, and the last argument is performative: the theory says the highest ethical subject turns its back on theory, yet Nielsen goes on theorizing, so the doctrine is a Tanke-Experiment no one has tried to live (p. 215).

R7. Kierkegaard is consistent, and still wrong (pp. 212–224). Kierkegaard does not set will and cognition in a metaphysical opposition (p. 196n), and his life confirms his theory (pp. 215–216). But „Paradoxet er Underet i Tankens Verden“ (p. 220): like the miracle, the paradox dissolves certainty, and his position too ends in “unavoidable division” (p. 224).

The result (p. 225) is that faith as Aabenbaringstro and knowledge, differing in content and source, stand in „en uophævelig Incongruents, en uforenelig Modsætning“. Brøchner does not deny that faith and knowledge differ; he even agrees with Nielsen, against Martensen, that they cannot be fused into a science of faith (p. 117). What he denies is that their difference permits peace. It requires a choice.

The exchange continued: Nielsen’s reply, Et Svar (1868), Det Religiøse (1869)

Brøchner reports that Nielsen, in a postscript to his Christiania lectures, declined to answer his “four assailants,” Brandes among them, and answered the fifth (Svar, p. 3). The postscript is now in the collection, and it names nobody. Nielsen parades his critics instead: a First in the bantering gallant wit manner with „Dualisme“ and „Genialitet“ and „Kulsviertro“ — Brandes, whose charcoal-burner is at Dualismen pp. 28–29 — then a Second balancing a theological universal monarchy on the point of „den gode Villie“, a Third sounding twelve blasts on a mystical trumpet, a Fourth arriving with a conviction on a critical lime-twig, each of them greeted with „og saa skal jeg svare paa det!“,”and I’m supposed to answer that!” Then „Her kommer en Femte, en Sjette …“ — “here comes a Fifth, a Sixth …” — „det overgaaer mine Kræfter“ (Om Hindringer, p. 325). Brøchner’s four are Nielsen’s four, though Nielsen’s own sentence does not stop at four. Hr. Professor Brøchners philosophiske Kritik gjennemseet (1868) is a single unbroken polemic of 52 pages, and its case reduces to five claims.

The critique confirms the doctrine (pp. 3–8). Brøchner has piled up contradictions in a “theory” assembled from occasional writings and a disciple’s report; but „Langt fra at undergrave min Troeslære, har Kritiken just bidraget Sit til at stadfæste, hvad jeg ved enhver Leilighed atter og atter indskærper, at Troeslæren umulig kan bestaae for Videnskabens Domstol“ — “far from undermining my doctrine of faith, the critique has contributed its share to confirming just what I inculcate again and again on every occasion: that the doctrine of faith cannot possibly stand before the tribunal of science” (p. 4). Science’s claim to judge faith is postulated, not proved: „Videnskaben beviser ikke sin Ret; den postulerer den kun“, since every proof is a proof of knowledge and so presupposes what it was to establish (p. 8).
The miracle and the doubling of reality are Brøchner’s inventions (pp. 4–7, 51–52). The concept of miracle ascribed to Nielsen agrees with his own “as the square with the circle,” and the “subjective water” of the rock “springs solely from [Brøchner’s] own spring” (pp. 6–7). What characterizes a miracle is not a breach of law but that a fact „bliver umiddelbart henført til Guds almægtige Villie“, and whether to accept such a mystery “is not a question of science; no, it is now as before a question of conscience” (p. 52).
Subjective validity rests on subjective grounds (pp. 8–19). “Theory” in Nielsen’s usage simply means science, and his opposition of subjective and objective is that of a lower, egoistic to a higher, religious self-regard. The Stoic and the hedonist can each master the other’s theory without being converted, whereas no one who has grasped the proofs of the Pythagorean theorem or the Copernican system can hold a standpoint opposed to them (pp. 13–15).
The law of duty is a law of conscience (pp. 20–44). Brøchner’s “energy of selfhood” is literally Nielsen’s own view (pp. 20–21). Duty concerns persons, gravity bodies: „Er Samvittighedsloven nu en Theori; er Samvittighed maaskee en Videnskab?“ (p. 28). Buffon and Clairaut settled their dispute on objective grounds, Luther and Zwingli could appeal only to conscience (pp. 27–31). And Brøchner’s three energies of selfhood make a harsher dualism than Nielsen’s (pp. 36–44).
The motive is not knowledge (pp. 44–52). The interest behind the critique is „ikke … en positiv Vidensinteresse, men en negativ Troesinteresse“ (p. 46), as its treatment of Grundideernes Logik shows (pp. 46–47).

Set beside the pamphlet, Brøchner’s Svar reports Nielsen fairly on most points: the tribunal of science, the definition of miracle, and the law of duty against the law of gravity are Nielsen’s own (pp. 4, 27–31, 52). There are three exceptions. Nielsen never names Kierkegaard, so the concession that Brøchner had refuted him (Svar, p. 4n) is an inference from an ironic remark (p. 3); the “empty play on words” that Brøchner places at Nielsen’s p. 50 is on p. 51; and Nielsen nowhere says that Brøchner spent “only 6 pages” on the Logik, though he does cite Problemet pp. 154–160 against its sixty sheets (pp. 46–47). The Svar itself adds three points of substance.

The doctrine hangs on one word. Were absolute heterogeneity given up, „saa er Slaget tabt for ham … Men selve Ordet er undgaaet i Prof. N.’s Skrift“ — “the battle is lost for him … But the word itself is avoided in Prof. N.’s book” (p. 5). The charge is literally true. The noun Ueensartethed never occurs in Nielsen’s reply, and the adjective only twice, of metaphysical against mathematical thinking (p. 25) and of the law of gravity against the law of duty (p. 27). In Den gode Villie, a year earlier, “absolutely heterogeneous” occurs more than fifty times.
Without knowledge there is no norm. Deny knowledge’s normative validity for the whole person, and one faces “the insoluble problem” of finding a norm that separates the true from the untrue in ethics and religion (p. 9).
One essence, two forms. In cognition and will the essence expresses itself so that „dets Enhed bevares — ikke, som Prof. N. vil, adsplittes i absolut Uensartethed“ (p. 14). As in the ballad Elverdandsen the One became Three, “here the One becomes Two; but the Two will, ‘on account of’ the absolute heterogeneity, unfortunately not become One again” (p. 10n).

The rest of the Svar (pp. 18–29) is sharper and more personal. It closes with Brøchner’s statement of his task, “to find, by the way of knowledge, that which brings unity and reconciliation into the life of the human spirit” (p. 31). Om det Religiøse is that task carried out. Its introduction (pp. 1–4) turns the negative result of 1868 into a demand to choose, and argues that only knowledge can be chosen. The old arguments recur in the body — two heterogeneous kinds of cognition would make “cognition” an empty name (p. 8), and the norm for true faith cannot lie in anything heterogeneous with knowledge (p. 50) — and the Slutning dismisses Nielsen’s Religionsphilosophie (1869) as first trivializing and then conjuring away “the absolute heterogeneity” (pp. 208–209). Brøchner names no page, but his target is almost certainly the passage in Nielsen’s introduction that answers R4 directly: „Skulde det, hvad Tankeløse paastaae, være en Modsigelse, at Videnskaben bliver vidende om et med Viden absolut ueensartet Princip, da maatte det netop være den negative Kritik, der har hildet sig i Modsigelsen“ — “if it were, as the thoughtless assert, a contradiction that science should come to know of a principle absolutely heterogeneous with knowledge, then it would have to be precisely the negative critique that has entangled itself in the contradiction” (Religionsphilosophie, p. 17).

The two critiques compared

Shared premise. Both rest on the unity of the conscious subject (B3; R5; Svar p. 14).
Shared diagnosis. The heterogeneity that blocks contradiction equally blocks union (B2; R5), and in practice the doctrine is resolved in favor of the will (B6; R6).
Target. Brandes aims at the doctrine’s cultural effect and at the disciples, Heegaard above all — until late 1867, when Heegaard changed sides and Brandes welcomed his book against Nielsen. Brøchner aims at Nielsen’s system and at his psychology of the will.
Method. Brandes argues by dilemma, restatement and satire. Brøchner argues immanently: he grants what is right in Nielsen (p. 133) and derives the contradictions from Nielsen’s own premises.
Kierkegaard. Brandes enlists him against the disciples. Brøchner distinguishes him from Nielsen and refutes him separately.
Outcome. Brandes concludes that the union is impossible and disclaims any proposal to throw faith away (pp. 73–74). Brøchner concludes with a choice for knowledge, and a positive philosophy of religion to follow.

Brøchner never mentions Brandes in Problemet, although he covers much of the same ground. Brandes’s later verdict, in Levned I (p. 203, in the excerpts transcribed here), is that he fought above all „imod R. Nielsen, Teologernes Angriber, der i mine Øjne ikke var mindre teologisk sindet end sine Modstandere“.

Hans Halvorson