In the Angel of the Archive series by Jonathan Bennett, this one is about a footnote that baffled generations.
In 1723, a minor German philosopher named Johann Andreas Grüber published a dense metaphysical and epistemological treatise entitled De Tenebris Rationis (“On the Darkness of Reason”). The work had been his life’s labour for nearly three decades, during which he had eschewed marriage, family, and society in pursuit of its completion. It was not widely read, and those who did attempt it complained of its convoluted structure, baroque Latin, and lengthy footnotes that referred—often bitterly—to other works of Grüber that he, in fact, never wrote.
What makes De Tenebris Rationis notable is not its content, which no one has ever bothered to summarize, but a note discovered in the sole surviving copy, now belonging to the Stadtbibliothek of Würzburg.
What kind of an Ironist are You?
The note, in German, appears in Grüber’s own hand, written shakily in the margin of the final page:
“I have read this book three times and must confess, with growing unease, that I no longer know whether I agree with it.”
No further writings by Grüber are known to exist. His name disappears from the public record soon afterward. One contemporary letter suggests he retired to a small village and took up beekeeping “for reasons of ontological fatigue.”
Philosophical journals occasionally reference Grüber’s Paradox: the tendency of complex intellectual systems to erode the memory of the beliefs that built them.
It is unclear whether this paradox is Grüber’s invention, or a joke at his expense.
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Contributed by
Jonathan Bennett
