J39re 62-15215

Jastsers ll-^S
Reason and Existena.
193 J39re 62-15215
Jaspers $1.^5
Reason and Exist enz.
KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LIBRARY

D DDD1 027^22 1
REASON AND IXISTENZ

FIVE LECTURES
BY KARL JASPERS

translated 'with an introduction by

WILLIAM EARLE
Copyright 1955 by
The Noonday Press

First Paper Edition 1957

These lectures on reason and Existenz were held in the
Spring of 1935 upon invitation from the University of
Groningen, Holland, as public lectures. The first edition
appeared with J. B. Wolters, Groningen, 1935. This third
edition is
unchanged.

The translation was made from the third edition, Johs.

Storm Verlag, Bremen, 1949*

Notes by translator are included 'within square brackets.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FIRST LECTURE: Origin of the contemporary philo-

of
sophic situation (the historical meaning
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) 19

SECOND THROUGH FOURTH LECTURES: Basic ideas for

the clarification of reason and Existenz:

Second Lecture: The Encompassing 5 1

Third Lecture: Truth as Comrnunicability 77

Fourth Lecture: Priority and limits of ra-

tional thinking 107

FIFTH LECTURE: Possibilities for contemporary philos-

ophizing 127

NOTES i
5 i
INTRODUCTION

The text, of course,speaks for itself. But it may be of

some assistance to the reader coming to Jaspers for the first
time in English to have in mind the basic intent of his phi-

losophizing. And, first of all, this intent has little to do with

setting forth a new hypothesis about anything. Jaspers is

not interested in sketching a picture of the physical world, or

in outlining the nature of man, or in giving us a new meta-

physical theory. Rather his philosophizing is designed to

reawaken us to our own authentic human situation. And
this situation, he is convinced, is of such a sort than any
effort to freeze it
conceptually or dogmatically, any attempt
to schematize it
exhaustively, or turn it into something
known, must end both in a falsification of the situation itself
and in a destruction of our own authentic possibilities. It is

the aim of his philosophizing, then, to call attention to the

limits of knowledge, not with the sceptical purpose of dis-

posing of knowledge altogether, but rather in order to let

the truth which always lies

just beyond those limits shine
io Introduction

through for a moment. Jaspers' philosophizing lives on

the

limits, turned both to what lies within and to what lies with-
out. It remains on these limits and does not pass into a new

theory of what is in principle beyond theory. Philosophiz-

ing here is a movement of transcending; and it is a move-
ment which each must enact for himself.
The name for what is at last beyond the relativity of all
our perspectives, horizons, and conceptual schemes, is "the
Encompassing," das Umgretfende. This name is nothing
but an index, or signum. It is not a word with a fixed,
knowable connotation. It denotes the ultimate Being which
is the foundation for our concepts but which can never

be exhaustively grasped by them. Such a term, like all the

but
key terms in Jaspers' philosophizing, has a clear use;

it has no clear, distinct, objective content.

"The Encompassing" used to designate the world

as it is

seems rather easier to grasp than it does in its correlative

usage where it
designates man himself, a use
prominent in
these lectures. For, in Jaspers' view, not only is the world
and Being itself an Encompassing, but man himself is an
Encompassing. That is to say, man himself is always more
than what he can know himself to be. In principle, he
is never exhaustible by any conceptual or scientific knowl-

edge. The theoretical identification of man with what man

knows himself to be has the inner effect of destroying

precisely that freedom and authenticity

which is the es-
sence of man. He loses himself in the picture he has formed
of himself. a sense of this always impending loss which
It is

lends to Jaspers' thought its moral earnestness. Something

more is at stake than opposed theories; in this case it
is the nature of man which can either be fostered or cor-

rupted by man's self-comprehension.

Jaspers treats man as analyzable on three levels. First he
is
simply an empirical existent, Dasein, something which
lives in space and time, a thing among other things. Secondly,
 Introduction 1 1

he is consciousness as such, Beivusstsein iiberhaupt, the ab-

stract understanding by which he
comprehends essential
connections among eternal truths, as in mathematics. Fi-

nally, he is
spirit, Geist,
that aspect which strives to embrace
all of his experience, life, and culture within certain ideal
totalities. These three levels are called "modes" of that En-

compassing which we are; for each is, on its own level, an

and inexhaustible dimension. So far, however, we
infinite

have not touched upon the central point which each man
most authentically is. This fundamental center, each individ-
ual in his inwardness, as he is to himself as just this unique,
historical self, is Existenz. "Existenz," again, is an index; it
names without characterizing. What it names is not the indi-
vidual in his organic vitality, his abstract understanding, or
his spirit; it is the individual himself, as he
comprehends him-
self, in his freedom and authenticity standing before Tran-
scendence. It is the ultimate ground, basis, or root of each
historical self; it is not the content of
any concept. And since
Existenz actual only in authentic self-awareness, a corrup-
is

tion of that awareness may corrupt Existenz itself. Existenz

is but a possibility for men; it is not a property with which
we are endowed by nature. It must be enacted inwardly if it
is to be at all; and it need not ever be.
the possibility inIt is

men of coming to themselves, of the self rejoining itself for

a moment. Existenz is only a possibility for human nature;

things in the world have no such possibility. This is not, of

course, to deny that things exist, but rather to signalize that

they exist in a
way radically different from authentic human
existence. It is for this reason that we have retained the Ger-
man Existenz throughout in our translation; it may serve as
a constant reminder that at these points Jaspers is not talking
about existence as that term is customarily used in all mod-
ern languages.
Existenz is unique, historical, and, taken in itself, isolating.
As such it tends to corrupt into something inauthentic, self-
12 Introduction

willed, defiant. It sinks back into empirical existence. But

one act of Existenz is reason. Reason is taken by Jaspers in its
most comprehensive sense: it is the ratio which binds to-
gether the diverse; it is the bond which can unite anything
with its other. And fundamentally, it can unite diverse Exist-
enzen; such a union, communion, or communication
is truth.

There will be as many senses of truth as there are levels in

7

the communicating human Thus Jaspers analysis

beings.
of

upon a series of connected ideas: reason

truth rests as a bond,

communication,
as and actual truth as a mode of his-
binding
torical communication.
Such are the principal themes of these lectures. The prob-
lem is the polarity (and not opposition) of reason and Exist-
enz. Each has limits; and there is no theoretical resolution of
the problem. There is nothing but the possibility of resolu-
tion in unique historical moments between authentic persons
where reason is kept open and free for an encounter with
what may be most alien to it. The truth which may arise in
such encounters is not expressible in theory or teachable
doctrine.

Jaspers' philosophy as a whole is Existenz-philosophy.

That is to
say, problems
are considered only insofar as they
touch Existenz. The world is not considered as something in

itself, but as that in which Existenz is, and toward which

Existenz may be oriented. This phase of his thought is called
world orientation, Weltorientierung. His philosophy comes
to a focus in the illumination or clarification of Existenz,

Existenzerhellung. Here, as elsewhere, there is no search for

explanation or causal theory; the clarification of Existenz
lights up its
possibilities,
its relations to other Existenzen and
to Transcendence; it is a clarification of Existenz to itself.
Such a no "psychology"; the situation
clarification ends in

of Existenz, possible emergence, its tension toward Tran-

its

scendence and other Existenzen are not unambiguously

stateable; in the end, they can only be enacted. A third phase
 Introduction 75

of Jaspers' thought the exploration of symbols used to des-

is

ignate Being, Metaphysik. And again we find there is no

possibility of an adequate, literal description. There are only
symbols which have the possibility of taking on ultimate
significance for Existenz, but also retain their capabilities for
misleading. They can only point; it is
up to Existenz to see
where they point.
All expressions in Existenz-philosophy are ambiguous in

principle. All its essential terms may be taken not as the in-
dicators which they are, but as literal
descriptions. Its "prop-
ositions" may be taken as objective assertions about a know-
able object. Such a misinterpretation is always possible and
cannot be prevented by further words, by warnings and in-
structions; for they too can all be misinterpreted. But Exist-

enz-philosophy may have the effect of needling the reader

to perform the same inner acts of transcending which Jas-

pers intends. This is neither

mysticism nor simple incom-
municability; a recognition that only Existenz can un-
it is

derstand Existenz. Thus, for Jaspers, the most essential thing

men have to say to one another cannot quite be said; or

rather, comprehension cannot be forced, nor can its

its

truth be objectively established. Nevertheless, it remains

the most important thing, and it remains true. Such ex-

pressions are corrigible only in existential communication,

by authentic Existenz. There is, as Jaspers insists, an essen-
tial risk in such matters.

Readers therefore who are habituated to certain strains of

contemporary Anglo-American philosophy will certainly

be irritated by what seems like a lack of definition in Jaspers'

key terms. What is Existenz? What is the Encompassing?

What is Transcendence? We are told the roles of these
terms in his thought, but not what they mean in any testable
fashion. But this feature of his thought is not accidental, nor
is it to be ascribed to some stylistic flaw. It lies at the very
heart of what he wishes to say. To give "definitions" of these
14 Introduction

terms would be to contradict the intent of his philosophy.

this reason, are their meaning
Nor, for they "meaningless";
of reason. They designate
arises only at the extreme limits
ultimately what is "other" to reason. Does reason have this
power of touching its own limits for a moment and "f eeling"

beyond? Can it transcend

that which lies itself? Jaspers in-

sists it not only can but must if it is to remain honest and

clear. The situation is as though we stood in a small pool of
Someone calls atten-
light encompassed by the vast darkness.
tion to the encompassing darkness; where is it, the others
their torches out to light up and see the dark-
cry, turning
ness, but of course they see nothing
but more and more illu-
minated areas. Nevertheless, can we not be aware of this
darkness as the limits of our light? The eye cannot literally
see the dark, but is it not aware of it? And, Jaspers would
we must be aware of that darkness
insist,
for- if we are not to
get what light
means. Our sciences become corrupt in their
own line of clarity if they become absolute. And now, what
if our small pool of light were itself darkness, and the en-

compassing darkness, the real light?

In one sense Jaspers' philosophizing gives us nothing; we
leave it with no new image of the world, no recipes for a

happy life. But if we have responded to it as Jaspers intends

we should, we may emerge with something less tangible, less
arguable, less teachable, but ultimately
more revolutionary:
a renewed sense of our own limits and of the encompassing
neither pessimism nor optimism here; and
mystery. There is

there is
nothing of Sartre, who sees man as a "futile passion."
True, man
ultimately comes to an awareness both of his

limits and of what lies beyond by "shipwreck"; his reason,

his Existenz, all must go down. But the shipwreck is not ab-
solute; in and through the shipwreck something finally au-
thentic appears for the first time. We
cannot tmll our own
destruction, nor does our destruction automatically lead to
insight; it however be the occasion for seeing some-
may
 Introduction /y

thing authentic and eternal which forever lies beyond. Noth-

ing more can be said about such a Transcendence; it is not
the proper subject matter for a new doctrine. Dogmatism is
as out of the question here as anywhere else in Jaspers.

Nevertheless, here is where human life has the opportunity

of perceiving its ultimate unsayable meaning.
The intent of Jaspers' philosophizing then is simply to re-
call us to our authentic situation. This recall is not itself a

doctrine; it is
only the stimulus to an inward action each
must perform for himself in communication with others.

Jaspers' Existenz-philosophy is thus an attempt to consider

and enact human honesty; it is
philosophy, not as wisdom,
but as the love of wisdom.
WILLIAM EARLE
Department of Philosophy
Northwestern University
REASON AND EXISTENZ
 19

first lecture

THE ORIGIN OF THE CONTEMPORARY

PHILOSOPHICAL SITUATION

The historical meaning of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

I. HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS; THE CONTEMPORARY SITUATION.

The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-

rational, and it never appears in reality without it. The only-
question is, in what form the other appears, how it remains
in spite of all, and how it is to be grasped.
appropriate for philosophizing to strive to absorb
It is

the non-rational and counter-rational, to form it through

reason, to change it into a form of reason, indeed, finally to
show it as identical with reason; all Being should become
law and order.
But both the defiant will and honest mind turn., against
this.
They recognize and assert the unconquerable non-ra-
tional.

For knowing, this non-rational is found in the opacity of

the here and now; in matter, it is what is only enveloped
but never consumed by rational form; it is in actual empir-
ical existence which is just as it is and not otherwise, which

is subsumed under just those regularities we experience and

not others; it is in the contents of faith for religious revela-

20 Reason and Existem

tion. All philosophizing which would like to dissolve Being

in spite of itself the non-rational;
into rationality retains
pure
to a residue of indifferent matter, some
this may be reduced
or an accident.
primordial fact, an impulse,
The will utilizes these possibilities in knowledge to its own
advantage. A battle arises for and against reason. Opposed to
drive toward rest within the con-
pure, transparent reason's
ceivable, stands a drive to destroy reason, not only to indi-
cate its limits, but to enslave it. We want to subordinate our-
selves to an inconceivable supersensible, which however

appears in the world through

human utterances and makes
demands. We
wish to subordinate ourselves to the natural
character of impulses and passions, to the immediacy of
what is now present. These drives are now translated by the
philosophy which adheres to them into knowledge
a of the
non-rational: philosophy expresses its
falling into the
non-
rational, the counter-rational, and the super-rational as a

knowledge about them. Yet, even in the most radical defi-

ance of reason, there remains a minimum of rationality.
To show how the many-fold distinction between reason
and non-reason appears at the bases of thinking would re-
all

out of its own

quire an analysis of the history of philosophy
actual principles. Let us recall a few selected points.
Tothe Greeks this problem of Being was already present
in myth. The clarity of the Greek gods was surrounded by
the sublime incomprehensibility of Fate, limiting their

knowledge and power.

Most of the philosophers touched incidentally, although
in important ways, upon what was inaccessible to reason.
Socrates listened to the forbidding voice of the uncompre-
hended daimon. Plato recognized madness, which if patho-
logical than reason, but if divinely begotten, more;
is less

only through madness can poets, lovers, and philosophers

come to a vision of Being. To be sure, according to Aristotle,
in human affairs, happiness was the result of rational deliber-
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 21

ation, but not totally; happiness could appear without and

even opposed to deliberation. For Aristotle, there were men,
the alogoi, who had a better principle than deliberative rea-
son; their affairs succeeded without and even counter to
>ason.
These examples stand alongside the general form of Greek
thought, which opposed appearance to Being (Parmenides),
the void to things (Democritus), non-being to genuine Be-

ing (Plato) , and matter to form (Aristotle) .

In Christianity, the opposition between reason and non-

reason developed as struggle between reason and faith with-
in each man; what was
inaccessible to reason was no longer

regarded simply other

asthan reason, but was a revelation of
something higher. In the observations of the world, the non-
rational was no longer mere chance, or blind chaos, or some

astonishing principle surpassing reason, but was taken com-

prehensively as Providence. All the fundamental ideas of a
rationally unintelligible faith could only be expressed in ir-
rational antinomies. Every rational, literal interpretation of
faith became a heresy.
In the succeeding centuries, on the other hand, Descartes
and his followers attempted a radical grounding of reason

upon itself alone at least in the philosophical excogitation

of Being which the individual accomplished by himself. Al-

though Descartes left society, state, and church intact, the

attitude of the Enlightenment arose as a consequence; with
what I
validly think and can empirically investigate, I can
achieve right organization of the world. Rational
the

thought, in the sense of presuppositionless universality, is a

sufficient basis for human life in general. From the begin-

ning, however, a counter-movement worked against this

philosophy of reason, whether it be called rationalism or
empiricism. This counter-movement was led by men who,
although in complete possession of rationality themselves, at
the same time saw its limits: that other which was important
22 Reason and Existenz

before any reason, which made reason possible,

and re-
strained it. Over Descartes, stands Pascal; over
against
and Grotius, stands Vico; over
against Descartes, Hobbes,
against Locke, Leibnitz,
and Spinoza, stands Bayle.
The philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies seems to work itself out in these great antitheses.
But
the thinkers were irreconcilable, and their ideas were mu-
tually exclusive.
In contrast to this world of thought, the philosophers of
German idealism made an to create a
astonishing attempt
reconciliation, seeing in reason more than reason itself.
Ger-
man in its
great period
went beyond all
previous
philosophy
possibilities
and developed a concept of reason which was
In Kant, a new beginning was cre-
historically independent.
ated. This of reason got lost in the fantastic
con-
concept
struction of Hegel but broke through again in Fichte and
Schelling.
Whenone looks over the thought of centuries, the same
in whatever form this Other
thing always seems to happen:
to reason appears, in the course of rational understanding it
is either changed back into reason, or sometimes it is recog-

nized as a limit inits

place; but
then in its consequences it
is circumscribed and delimited by reason itself, or some-
times it is seen and developed as the source of a new and
better reason.
It is as at the this thought, even in all
bottom of
though
its unrest, there always lay the quiet of a reason
which was
never and questioned. All awareness
of
wholly radically
Being grounded reason or in God. All ques-
itself finally in

tioning was circumscribed by unquestioned assumptions; or

else there were merely individual and historically ineffi-
cacious pioneers who never achieved a thorough under-

standing of themselves. The

counter-movements against ra-
tionality were thunder announcing storms
like a distant
which could be released, but which were not yet.
Thus the great history of Western philosophy from
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 23

Parmenides and Heraclitus through Hegel can be seen as a

thorough-going and completed unity. Its great forms are
even today preserved in the tradition, and are rediscovered
as the true salvation from the destruction of philosophy. For
a century we have seen individual philosophers become ob-
jects of special studies, and have seen restorations of their
doctrines. We
know the totality of past teachings in the
sense of "doctrines" perhaps better than any of the earlier

great philosophers. But the consciousness of a change into

mere knowing about doctrines and about history, of separa-
tion from life itself and from actually believed truth, has
made us question the ultimate sense of this tradition, great
as it is and despite all the satisfaction it has provided and pro-
vides today. We
question whether the truth of philosophiz-
ing has been grasped or even if it can be grasped in this
tradition.

Quietly, something enormous has happened in the reality

of Western man: a destruction of all authority, a radical
disillusionment in an overconfident reason, and a dissolution
of bonds have made anything, absolutely anything, seem
possible.
Work with the old words can appear as a mere veil
which hid the preparing powers of chaos from our anxious
eyes. This work seemed to have no other power than that of
a long continued deception. The passionate revivifying of
these words and doctrines, though done with good inten-
tions, appears as without real eifect, an impotent call to
hold fast. Philosophizing to be authentic must grow out of
our new reality, and there take its stand.
II. KIERKEGAARD AND NIETZSCHE.

The contemporary philosophical situation is determined

by the fact that two philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nie-
tzsche, who did not count in their times and, for a long
time, remained without influence in the history of philoso-

phy, have continually grown

in significance. Philosophers

after Hegel have increasingly returned to face them, and

24 Reason and Existenz

as the authentically gr^at

they stand today unquestioned
thinkers of their age. iBoth their influence and the opposition
to them prove it. then can these philosophers no
Why
in our time?
longer be ignored,
In the situation of philosophizing, as well as in the real
and Nietzsche as the ex-
life of men, Kierkegaard appear
of destinies, destinies which nobody noticed then,
pression
with the exception of some ephemeral
and immediately for-
but which they themselves already
gotten presentiments,
comprehended.
As to what this destiny really is, the question remains
not answered by any comparison
open even today. It is

of the two thinkers, but it is clarified and made more ur-

is all the more important since there
gent/ This comparison
could have been no influence of one upon the other,* and
because their very differences make their common features
so much more impressive. Their affinity is so compelling,
from the whole course of their lives down to the individual
details of their thought, that their nature seems to have
been elicited the necessities of the spiritual situation of
by
their times. With them a shock occurred to Western phi-
losophizing whose final meaning can not yet be underesti-
mated.
Common to both of type of thought and hu-
them is a
with a moment
manity which was indissolubly connected
of this epoch, and so understood by them. We
shall, there-

fore, discuss their affinity: first, in their thought; second, in

their actual thinking Existenz; and third, in the way in
which they understood themselves,

A. What is common to their thought: the questioning

of reason.

Their thinking created a new atmosphere. They passed

beyond all of the limits then regarded as obvious. It is as if
they no longer shrank back from anything in thought.
Everything permanent was as if consumed in a dizzying
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 2$

suction: with Kierkegaard by an otherworldly Christianity

which is like
Nothingness and shows itself only in negation
(the absurd, martyrdom) and in negative resolution; with

Nietzsche, a vacuum out of which, with despairing violence,

a new reality was to be born (the eternal return, and the

corresponding dogmatics of Nietzsche) .

Both questioned reason from the depths of Existenz.

Never on such a high level of thought had there been such
a thorough-going and radical opposition to mere reason.
This questioning is never simply hostility to reason; rather
both sought to appropriate limitlessly all modes of ration-
It was no
ality. philosophy of feeling, for both pushed un-
remittingly toward the concept for expression. It is cer-

tainly not dogmatic scepticism; rather their whole thought

strove toward the genuine truth.
In a magnificent way,
penetrating a whole life with the
earnestness of philosophizing, they
brought forth not some
doctrines, not any basic position, not some picture of the
world, but rather a new total intellectual attitude for men.
This attitude was in the medium
of infinite reflection, a re-
flection which is conscious of being unable to attain
any
real ground by itself. No single thing characterizes their
nature; no fixed doctrine or requirement is to be drawn out

of them as and
something independent permanent.

I. SUSPICION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN

Out of
the consciousness of their truth, both suspect
truth in the naive form of scientific
knowledge. They do
not doubt the methodological correctness of scientific in-

sight.But Kierkegaard was astonished at the learned pro-

fessors;they live for the most part with science and die
with the idea that it will continue, and would like to live
longer that they might, in a line of direct progress, always
understand more and more. They do not experience the
maturity of that critical
point where everything turns up-
side down, where one understands more and more that
26 Reason and Existenz

there something which one cannot understand. Kierke-

is

gaard thought the most frightful way to live

was to be-
witch the whole world through one's discoveries and clever-
nessto explain the whole of nature and not understand
oneself. Nietzsche is inexhaustible in destructive analyses
of types of scholars, who have no genuine sense of their
own activity, who can not be themselves, and who, with
their ultimately futile knowledge, aspire to grasp Being itself.

2. AGAINST THE SYSTEM

The -enclosed rationality which

questioning of every self
tries to make the whole truth communicable made both
that the form which
radicalopponents of the "system," is,

had had for centuries and which had achieved

philosophy
its final polish in German idealism. The system is for them a

detour from reality and is, therefore, lies and deception.

that empirical existence could be a

Kierkegaard granted
for an existing spirit; system
system for God, but never
corresponds with what is closed and settled, but existence
is
precisely
The philosopher of systems
the contrary. is, as

a man, like someone who builds a castle, but lives next

door in a shanty. Such a fantastical being does not him-
self live within what he thinks; but the thought of a man
must be the house in which he lives become per-
or it will
The question of philosophy, what
verted. basic it itself is,

and what science is, is posed in a new and unavoidable

form, Nietzsche wanted to doubt better than Descartes,
and saw in Hegel's miscarried attempt to make reason
evolve nothing but Gothic heaven-storming. The will-to-
systein is for him a lack of honesty.

3. BEING AS INTERPRETATION

What authentic knowing is, was expressed by both in the

same way. It is, for them, nothing but interpretation. They
also understood their own thought as interpretation.
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 27

Interpretation, however, reachesno end. Existence, for

of infinite
interpretation. What has
Nietzsche, is
capable
happened and what was done, is for Kierkegaard always

capable of being understood in a new way. As it is inter-

preted anew, becomes a new reality which yet is hidden;
it

temporal can therefore never be correctly understood

life

by men; no man can absolutely penetrate through his own

consciousness.
Both apply the image of interpretation to knowledge of
Being, but in such a fashion that Being is as if deciphered in
the interpretation of the interpretation. Nietzsche wanted
to uncover the basic text, homo natura from
y
its
overpaint-
ings and read it
Kierkegaard gave his own
in its
reality.

writings no other meaning than that they should read again

the original text of individual, human existential relations.

4. MASKS
With this basic idea connected the fact that both, the
is

most open and candid of thinkers, had a misleading

aptitude for concealment and masks. For

them masks neces-
sarily belong to the truth. Indirect communication
becomes
for them the sole way of communicating genuine truth;
indirect communication, as expression, is appropriate to the

ambiguity of genuine truth in temporal existence, in which

process it must be grasped through sources in every Existenz.

5. BEING ITSELF

Both, in their thinking, push toward that basis which

would be Being itself in man. In opposition to the philos-
ophy which from Parmenides through Descartes to Hegel
said,Thought is Being, Kierkegaard asserted the proposition,
as you believe, so are you: Faith is Being. Nietzsche saw the
Will to Power. But Faith and Will to Power are mere
signa, which do not directly connote what is meant but are
themselves capable of endless explication.
28 Reason and Existenz

6. HONESTY
With both there is a decisive drive toward honesty. This
word for them both is the expression of the ultimate virtue
to which they subject themselves. It remains for them the
minimum of the absolute which is still possible although
everything else becomes involved
in a bewildering question-

It becomes for them also the dizzying demand for a

ing.
veracity which, however, brings
even itself into question,
and which is the opposite of that violence which would like
to grasp the truth in a literal and barbaric certitude.

7. THEIR READERS

One can question whether in general anything

is said

in such thought. In fact, both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

were aware that the comprehension of their thought was
not possible to the man who only thinks. It is
important
who it is that understands.

They turn to the individuals who must

bring with them
and bring forth from themselves what can only be said in-
directly.The epigram of Lichtenberg applies to Kierke-
and he himself cites it: such works are like mirrors;
gaard,
if an no apostle will
look out. Nietzsche says
ape peeks in,
one must have earned for oneself the distinction necessary

to understand him. He held it

impossible to teach the
truth
where the mode of thought is base. Both seek the reader who
belongs to them.

B. Their thinking Existenz in its actual setting: the age.

Such thinking is grounded in the Existenz of Kierkegaard

and Nietzsche insofar as it belonged to their age in a distinc-
tive way. That no single idea, no system, no require-
ment is decisive for them follows from the fact that neither
thinker expressed his epoch at its peak, that they constructed
no world, nor any image of a passing world. They did not
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 29

feel themselves to be a positive expression of their times;

they rather expressed what it was negatively through their
very being: an age absolutely rejected by them and seen
its ruin. Their
through in problem appeared to be to experi-
ence epoch to the end in their own natures, to be it
this

completely in order to overcome it. This happened at first

involuntarily, but then consciously through the fact that
they were not representatives of their epoch, but needling
and scandalous exceptions. Let us look at this a little closer.

1. THEIR PROBLEM

Both had become aware of problem by the end of

their
their youth, even if unclearly. A decision which gripped the
entire man, which sometimes was silent and no longer con-

scious, but which would return to force itself upon them,

pushed them into a radical loneliness. Although without
position, marriage, without any effective role in existence,
they nevertheless appear as the great realists, who had an
authentic feeling for the depths of reality.

2. PERCEPTION OF SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE IN ESSENCE OF MEN

They touched this reality in their fundamental experience

of their epoch as ruins; looking back over centuries, back
to the beginnings in Greek
antiquity, they felt the end of
this whole
history. At the crucial point, they called atten-
moment, without wanting to survey the meaning
tion to this
and course of history as a whole.
Men have tried to understand this epoch in economic,
technological, historico-political, and sociological terms.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, on the other hand, thought
they saw a change in the very substance of man.
Kierkegaard looked upon the whole of Christianity as
it is
today as upon an enormous deception in which God is
held to be a fool. Such Christianity has nothing to do with
that of the New Testament. There are only two ways:
$0 Reason and Exlstenz

either to maintain the deception through tricks and conceal

the real conditions, and then everything comes to nothing;
or honestly to confess the misery that in truth, today, not
one single individual is born who can pass for a Christian
in the sense of the New Testament. Not one of us is a

Christian, but rather we live in a pious softening of Chris-

tianity. The confession will show if there is

anything
true left in this honesty, if it has the approval of Providence.
everything must again be broken
If not, then so that in
this horror individuals can arise again who can support
the Christianity of the New Testament.
Nietzsche expressed the historical situation of the epoch
in one phrase: God is dead.
Thus, common to both, is an historical judgment on the

very substance of their times. They saw before them Noth-

of what had been lost,
ingness; both knew the substance
but neither willed Nothingness. If Kierkegaard presupposed
the truth, or the possibility of the truth of Christianity, and
Nietzsche, on the other hand, found in atheism not simply
a loss but rather the greatest opportunity still, what is
common to both is a will toward the substance of Being,
toward the nobility and value of man. They had no political
program for reform, no program at all; they directed their
attention to no single detail, but rather wanted to effect

something through their thought which they foresaw

in

no clear detail. For Nietzsche, this indeterminateness was

his "larger politics" at long range; for Kierkegaard, it was

becoming Christian in the new way of indifference to all

worldly being. Both in their relation to their epoch
were
the of what will become of man.
possessed by question

3.
MODERNITY OVERCOME
are itself in a somersaulting form. They
They modernity
ran to the ground, and overcame it by living it through
it

to the end. We
can see how both experienced the distress of
the epoch, not passively, but suicidally through totally
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 31

doing what most only half did: first of all, in their endless
and then, in opposition to this, in their drive
reflection;
toward the basic; and finally, in the way in which, as they
sank into the bottomless, they grasped hold
upon the
Transcendent.
(i) unlimited reflection. The age of reflection has, since

Fichte, been characterized as reasoning without restraint,

as the dissolving of all surrender of content
authority, as the
which gives to thinking measure, purpose, and meaning,
its

so that from now on, without hindrance and as an indif-

ferent play of the intellect, it can fill the world with noise
and dust.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche did not oppose reflection in

order to annihilate it, but rather in order to overcome it
by
limitlesslyengaging in it and mastering it. Man cannot sink
back into an unreflective immediacy without
losing himself;
but he can go this way to the end, not reflection,
destroying
but rather coming to. the basis in himself in the medium of
reflection.
Their "infinite reflection*' has, therefore, a twofold char-
acter. It can lead to a complete ruin just as well asit can

become the condition of authentic Existenz. Both express

this, perhaps Kierkegaard is the clearer of the two:
Reflection cannot exhaust or
stop itself. It is faithless,
since it hinders every decision. It is never finished and, in
the end, can become "dialectical twaddle"; in this
respect,
he called it the poison of reflection. But that it is
possible,
indeed necessary, in the endless
lies
grounded ambiguity of
allexistence and action for us: anything can mean some-

thing else for reflection. This situation makes possible on

one side a sophistry of existence, enables the Existenz-less
esthete to profit, who
merely wants to savor everything as
an interesting novelty. Even if he should take the most
decisive step, still he always holds before himself the
possi-
bility of reinterpreting everything, so that, in one blow, it
is all
changed. But on the other hand, this situation can be
 $2 Reason and Existenz

truly grasped by the knowledge that insofar as we are

honest we live in a "sea of reflection where no one can

call to another, where all buoys are dialectical."
Without infinite reflection we should fall into the quiet
of the settled and established which, as something perma-
nent in the world, would become absolute; that is, we should
become An atmosphere of bondage arises
superstitious.
with such a settlement. Infinite reflection, therefore,
is, pre-

its active dialectic, the condition of

cisely through endlessly
freedom. It breaks out of every prison of the finite. Only
in its medium is there any of an infinite passion
possibility
because it is un-
arising out of immediate feeling which,
unfree. In infinite passion the immediate
questioning, is still
feeling,
which is held fast and genuinely true throughout
the questioning, is grasped as free.
But in order to prevent this freedom from becoming noth-
ing through vacuous reflection, in order for it to fulfill

itself, infinite reflection must strand itself. Then, for the

first time, does it issue out of something real, or exhaust it-

self in the decision of faith and resolution. As untrue as the

so true is that
arbitrary and forced arrest of reflection is,
basis which reflection is mastered
by in the encounter of
Existenz. Here Existenz is
given to itself for the first time, so
that it becomes master of infinite reflection through totally
surrendering to it.
which can just as well dissolve into nothing
Reflection,
as become the condition of Existenz, is described as such
and same way by both Kierk 5 "-ard and Nietzsche.
in the
Out of it, they have imparted an Jmost immeasurable
wealth of thought in their works. This thinking, according
to its own meaning, is possibility: it can indicate and prepare
the way for the shipwreck, but cannot accomplish it.
Thus, in their thinking about the possibilities of man,
both thinkers were aware of what they themselves were not
in their thought. The awareness of possibilities, in analogy to

poetry, is not a false, but rather a questioning and awakening

 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 33

reflection. Possibility is the form in which I

permit my-
self to know about what I am not yet, and a preparation for

being it.
Kierkegaard called his method most frequently, "an
Nietzsche called his thought,
experimental psychology";
"seductive."
Thus they left what they themselves were and what they
to the point of unrecogniza-
ultimately thought concealed
bility and,
in its appearance, sunk into the incomprehensible.
u
Kierkegaard's pseudonym writes:
The something which I
am ... is precisely a nothing." It gave him a high satis-
faction to hold his "Existenz at that critical zero . . .

between something and nothing, a mere perhaps." And

Nietzsche willingly called himself a "philosopher of the
dangerous perhaps."
Reflection is for both pre-eminently self -reflection. For

them, the way to truth is through understanding oneself.

But they both experienced how one's own substance can
disappear this way, how the free, creative self-understanding
can be replaced by a slavish rotation about one's own em-
pirical existence. Kierkegaard
knew the horror "of every-
thing disappearing before a sick brooding
over the tale of
one's own miserable self." He sought for the way "between
this devouring of oneself in observations as though one
were the only man who had ever been, and the sorry com-
fort of a universal human shipwreck." He knew the "ur

happy relativity in everything, the unending question about

what I am." Nietzsche expressed it:

Among a hundred mirrors

before yourself false . . .

strangled in your own net

Self-knower!
Self-executioner!
crammed between two nothings,
mark
a question . . .
34 Reason and Existenz

drive toward the basic. The age which could

no
(ii)
of its reflections
longer find its
way amidst the multiplicity
and rationalizing words
pushed out of reflection toward
here too seem to be fore-
bases.Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
runners. Later generations sought the basic in general in
articulateness, in the esthetic charm of the immediately-
in unreflective experi-
striking, in a general simplification,
ence, in the existence of the things closest to us. To
them,
for both lived con-
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche seem useful;
love for the sources of human
sciously with a passionate
communicability.
creative in language to the degree that their
They were
the literatures of their
works belong to the peaks of
countries; and they knew it. They were creative in the
thrilling way which
made them among the most widely read
authors, even though the content was of the same weight
and their genuine comprehension of the same difficulty as
any of the great philosophers. But both also knew
that of the
of the verbal to become autonomous, and they
tendency
despised the literary world.
Both were moved by music to the point of intoxication;
but both warned of its seduction, and along with Plato and

Augustine belonged to those who suspected it existentially.

Everywhere they created formulas of striking simplicity.
But both were full of concern before that simplicity which,
in order to give some deceptive support to the weak and
mediocre, offered flat, spiritless simplifications in place of
the genuine simplicity which was the result of the most

complicated personal development, which, like Being it-

self, never had a single rational meaning. They warned, as
no thinker before had, against taking their words too simply,
words which seemed to stand there apodictically.
In fact, they went by the most radical way to the basic,
but in such a fashion that the dialectical movement never
stopped. Their seriousness was absorbed neither into an
dogmatic fixedness of some supposed basis,
illusion of the
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 35

nor Into the purposes of language, esthetic charm, and

simplicity.
(iii) arrest in Transcendence. Both pursued a path which,
for them, could not end short of a transcendental
stop, for
their reflections were not, like the usual reflections of

modernity, stopped by the obvious limits of vital needs

and interests. They, for whom it was a question of all or

nothing, dared limitlessness. But this they could do only

because from the very beginning onwards they were
rooted in what was at the same time hidden from them:
both, in their youth, spoke of an unknown God. Kierke-
gaard, even when twenty-five years old, wrote: "In spite of
the fact that I am very far from understanding myself, I
have . . . revered the unkown God." And Nietzsche at
twenty years of age created his first unforgettable poem,
"To the Unknown God":
I would know Thee, Unknown,

Thou who grips deep in my soul,

wandering through my life like a storm,
Thou inconceivable, my kin!
I would know Thee, even serve Thee.

Never in their limitless reflection could they remain within

the finite, conceivable, and therefore trivial; but just as

could they hold to reflection itself. Precisely because

little

he had been thoroughly penetrated by reflection, Kierke-

gaard thought: "The religious understanding
of
myself
has deserted me; I feel like an insect with which children are

playing, so pitilessly does existence handle me." In his

terrible loneliness, understood by and really bound to abso-

lutelyno one, he called to God: "God in heaven, if there

were not some most inward center in a man where all this
could be forgotten, who could hold out?"
Nietzsche was always conscious of moving on the sea of
the infinite, of having given up land once and for all. He
knew that, perhaps, neither Dante nor Spinoza knew his
36 Reason and Existenz

loneliness; somehow, they had God for company. But

Nietzsche, empty in his loneliness, without men and
without
the ancient God, envisaged Zarathustra and meditated upon
the eternal return, thoughts which left him as horrified as
He lived continually like someone mortally
happy.
wounded. He suffered his problems. His thought is a self-
arousal: "If I had the courage to think all that I
only
know." But, in this limitless reflecting, a deeply satisfying
content was revealed which was in fact transcendent.
Thus both leaped toward Transcendence, but to a form
of transcendence where practically no one could follow.

Kierkegaard leaped to a Christianity

which was conceived
as an absurd paradox, as decision for utter world negation
and martyrdom. Nietzsche leaped to the eternal return
and supermen.
Thus the ideas, which were for Nietzsche himself the
faith
very deepest, can look empty to us; Kierkegaard's
can look like a sinister alienation. If one takes the symbols
of Nietzsche's religion literally, there is no longer any tran-
scendental content in their will toward immanence: aside
from the eternal cycle of things, there is the will to power,
the affirmation of Being, the pleasure which "wills deep,

deep eternity." Only with circumspection and by taking

pains does a more essential content emerge.
With Kierke-
gaard, who revivified the profound formulas of theology, it
can seem like the peculiar art of perhaps a nonbeliever,

forcing himself to -believe.

The similarity of their thought is ever so much more
striking precisely because of their apparent differences;
the Christian belief of the one, and the atheism emphasized

by the other. In an epoch of reflection, where what had

really passed away seemed still to endure, but which actually

lived in an absence of faith rejecting faith and forcing one-
self to believe belong together. The godless can .appear to
be a believer; the believer can appear as godless; both stand
in the same dialectic.
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 57

Whatthey brought forth in their existential thinking

would not have been possible without a complete posses-
sion of tradition. Both were brought up with a classical
education. Both were nurtured in Christian piety. Their
tendencies are unthinkable without Christian origins. If

they passionately opposed the stream of this tradition in the

form which it had come to assume through the centuries,
they also found an historical and, for them, indestructible
arrest in these origins. They bound themselves to a basis
which fulfilled their own belief: Kierkegaard to a Chris-
tianity of the New Testament as he understood it, and
Nietzsche to a pre-Socratic Hellenism.
But nowhere is there any final stop for them, neither in
finitude, nor in an explicitly grasped basis, nor in a determi-
nately grasped Transcendence, nor in an historical tradition.
It is as though their
very being, experiencing the abandon-
ment of the age to the end, shattered and, in the shattering
itself, manifested a truth which otherwise would never have
come to expression. If they won an unheard-of mastery
over their own selves, they also were condemned to a world -
less loneliness;
they were as though pushed out.

4. THEIR BEING AS EXCEPTIONS

They were exceptions in every sense. Physically, their

development was in retard of their character. Their faces
disconcert one because of their relative unobtrusiveness.

They do not impress one as types of human greatness. It

is as if they both lacked something in sheer vitality. Or as

though they were eternally young spirits, wandering

through the world, without reality because without any
real connection with the world.
Those who knew them felt attracted In an enigmatic
way by their presence, as though elevated for a moment to
a higher mode of being; but no one really loved them.
In the circumstances of their lives, one finds astonishing
and alien features. They have been called simply insane.
3$ Reason and Existent

They would be in fact objects for a psychiatric analysis,

if that were not to the prejudice of the singular height of
theirthought and the nobility of their natures. Indeed, then
they would first come to light.
But any typical diagnosis
or classification would certainly fail.

They cannot be classed under any earlier type (poet,

philosopher, prophet, savior, genius).
With them, a new
form of human reality appears in history. They are, so
to
sacrifices whose way out of
speak, representative destinies,
the world leads to experiences for others. They are by the
total staking of their like modern martyrs,
whole natures
which, however, they precisely denied being. Through
their character as exceptions, they solved their problem.
Both are irreplaceable, as having
dared to be shipwrecked.
We orient ourselves by them. Through them we have
intimations of something we could never have perceived
without such sacrifices, of something that seems essential
which even today we cannot adequately grasp. It is as if
the Truth itself spoke, bringing an unrest into the depths
of our consciousness of being.
Even in the external circumstances of their lives we find

astonishing similarities. Both came to a sudden end in their

forties. Shortly before, without knowledge of their ap-
proaching end, they both made public and passionate at-
tacks: Kierkegaard on church Christianity and on dis-

honesty, Nietzsche on Christendom itself.

Both made literary reputations in their first publications;

but then their new books followed unceasingly, and they
had to print what they wrote at their own expense.
They also both had the fate of finding a response which
however wsfc without understanding. They were merely
when nothing opposed them. The
sensations in "an age

beauty and sparkle of language, the literary and poetic

the aggressiveness of their matter all misled readers
qualities,
from their genuine intentions. Both, toward the end, were
almost idolized by those with whom they had the least in
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 39

common. The age that^wanted to surpass itself could, so to

speak, wear itself out in ideas casually selected out of them.
The modern world has nourished itself on them precisely
in its negligence. Out of their reflection, instead of remain-

ing in the seriousness of endless reflection, it made an in-

strument for sophistry in irresponsible talk. Their words,
like their whole lives, were savored for their great esthetic
charm. They dissolved what remained of connections among
men, not to lead to the bases of true seriousness, but in
order to prepare a free path for caprice. Thus their influence
became utterly destructive, contrary to the meaning of
their thought and being.

C. The ways in which they understood themselves: against

interchangeability.

Their problem became clearer to them from their youth

onward through a continually accompanying reflection.
Both of them, at the end and in retrospect, gave us an indi-
cation of how they understood themselves through a total
interpretation of their work. This interpretation remained
convincing to the extent that we, today, in fact understand
them as they wished to be understood. All their thought
takes on a new sense beyond what is
immediately compre-
hensible in it. This pictureinseparable from their
itself is

work, for the fashion in which they understood themselves

is not an accidental addition, but an essential feature of

their total thought.

One of the motives in common for the comprehensive

expression of their self -understanding is the will not to be

mistaken for someone else. This was, they said, one of their
deepest concerns, and out of it not only were they always
seeking new forms of communication, but also they directly
announced the total meaning as it
appeared to them at the

end. They always worked by all

possible means to prepare
a correct understanding of their work through the ambigu-
ity of what they said.
4 Reason and Exist enz

1 . THEIR SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

They both had a clear perception of their epoch, seeing

what was going on before them down to the smallest detail
with a certitude that was overmastering: it was the end of a
mode of lifehung together for centuries. But they
that had
also perceived that no one else saw it, that they had an aware-
ness of their epoch which no one else yet had, but which

presently others, and finally all,

would have. Thus they nec-
essarily passed into
an unprecedented intensity of self-con-
scioumess. Their Existenz was in a very special state of
affairs. It was not just a simple spiritual superiority which

they must have noticed Kierkegaard over everybody

who
encountered him, Nietzsche over most but rather some-
thing monstrous which they made themselves into: unique,

solitary world-historical
destinies.

2. THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS OF FAILURE, OF EXCEPTIONALITY, OF

LONELINESS

But this
well-grounded self-consciousness, momentarily
expressed and then suppressed again, is always with Kierke-
gaard moderated through the humility of his Christian at-
titude and, with both, is tempered by the psychological
knowledge of their human failure. The astonishing thing
with them again is that the precise mode of their failure is
itselfthe condition of their distinctive greatness. For this

greatness is not absolute greatness, but something

that

uniquely belongs to the situation of the epoch.

It is
noteworthy how they both came to the same meta-
phors for Nietzsche compared
this side of their natures.
himself to the "scratchings which an unknown power
makes on paper, in order to test a new pen." The positive
value of his illness is his standing problem. Kierkegaard

thought he indeed "would be erased by God's mighty hand,

extinguished as an unsuccessful experiment." He felt like a
sardine squashed against the sides of a can. The idea came
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 41

a
to him in every generation there are two or three who
that,
are sacrificed for the others, who discover in
frightful
suffering what others shall profit by." He felt like an "inter-
jection in speaking, without influence upon the sentence,"
which is printed upside down in the line." He
like a "letter

compared himself with the paper notes in the financial

crises of 1813, the
year in which he was born. "There is
something in me which might have been great, but due to
the unfavorable market, I'm
only worth a little."
Both were conscious of being exceptions.
Kierkegaard
developed a theory of the exception, through which he un-
derstood himself: he loved the universal, the human in men,
but as
something other, something denied to him. Nietzsche
knew himself to be an exception,
spoke "in favor of the ex-
so as it never becomes the rule." He
ception, long required
of philosophers "that
they take care of the rule, since he is
the exception."
Thus the last thing either wished was to become exem-
plary. Kierkegaard looked upon himself as "a sort of trial
man." "In the human sense no one can imitate me. ... I
am a man as he could become in a crisis, an experimental
rabbit, so to speak, for existence." Nietzsche turned away
those who would follow him: "Follow not me, but you!"
This exceptionality, which was as excruciating to them as
it was the
unique requirement of their problem, they charac-
teriz^d and here again they
agree as pure mentality, as
though they were deprived of any authentic life. Kierke-
gaard said that he was "in almost every physical respect de-
prived of the conditions for being a whole man." He had
never lived except as mind. He had never been a man: at
very most, child and youth. He lacked "the animal side of
humanity." His melancholy carried him almost to the "edge
of imbecility" and was "something that he could conceal as

long he was independent, but made him useless for any

as
service where he could not himself determine everything."
Nietzsche experienced his own pure mentality as "through
42 Reason and Existenz

excess of light, through his radiance, condemned to be, not to

love." He expressed it convulsively in the "Nightsong" of
Zarathustra: "Light I am; ah! would that I were Night! . . .

I live in my own light. . . ."

A terrible loneliness, bound up with their exceptionality,

was common to both. Kierkegaard knew that he could have
no friends. Nietzsche suffered his own growing loneliness in
full consciousness to the limit where he felt he could endure
it no
longer. Again, the same image comes to both: Nie-
tzsche compared himself to a fir tree on the heights over-

looking an abyss: "Lonely! Who dares to be a guest here?

Perhaps a bird of prey, gloating in the hair of the branches.
..." And Kierkegaard: "Like a lonely fir tree, egoistically

looking toward something higher, I stand there,

isolated,

throwing no shadow, only the wood dove building its nest

in my branches."
3. PROVIDENCE AND CHANCE

In great contrast to the abandonment, failure, and con-

tingency of their existence was the growing consciousness

in the course of their lives of the meaning, sense, and
necessity of all that happened to them.
Kierkegaard called it Providence. He recognized the di-
it: "That
vine in everything that happens, is said, goes on, and
so forth, is portentous: the factual continually changes it-
self to mean
something far higher." The factual for him is
not something to abstract oneself from, but rather something
to be penetrated until God himself gives the meaning. Even
what he himself did became clear only later. It was "the
extra which I do not owe to myself but to Providence. It
shows itself continually in such a fashion that even what I
do out of the greatest possible conviction, afterwards I
understand far better."
Nietzsche called it chance. And he was concerned to
use chance. For him "sublime chance" ruled existence. "The
man of highest spirituality and power feels himself grown
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 43

for every chance, but also Inside a snowfall of

contingen-
cies." But this
contingency increasingly took on for Nie-
tzsche a remarkable meaning: "What you call chance
you
yourself are that which befalls and astonishes you."
Throughout his life, he found intimations of how chance
events which were of the greatest importance to him car-
ried a secret meaning, and in the end he wrote: "There Is no
more chance."

4. DANCING

At the limits of life's

possibilities came not any heavy
seriousness, but rather a complete lightness as the expres-
sion of their knowledge, and both used the image of the
dance. In the last decade of his life Nietzsche, in ever-

changing forms, used the dance as a metaphor for his

thought, where it is original. And Kierkegaard said,

"I
have trained myself always.to be
. able to
. dance in

the service of thought. . . .

My life
begins as soon as a
difficulty shows up. Then dancing is easy. The thought of
death is a nimble dancer. Everybody is too serious for me."
Nietzsche saw his archenemy in the "spirit of seriousness"
in morals, science, purposefulness, etc. But to conquer
seriousness meant not to reject it for the thoughtlessness of

arbitrary caprice, but rather to pass through the most serious

to an authentic soaring, the triumph of which is the free
dance.

5. NO PROPHECY
The knowledge that they were exceptions prevented
either from stepping forth as prophets. To be sure, they
seem like those
prophets who speak to us out of inaccessible
depths but who speak in a contemporary way. Kierkegaard
compared himself to a bird which foretells rain: "When in a
generation, a thunderstorm begins to threaten, individuals
like me appear."
They are prophets who must conceal
44 Reason and Exist enz

themselves as prophets. They were aware of their problem

in a continual return from the extremities of their demands
to a rejection of any idea which would make them models or
ways of life. Kierkegaard repeated innumerable times that
he was not an authority, or a prophet, apostle, or reformer,
nor did he have the authority of position. His problem was
to awaken men. He had a certain police talent, to be a spy
in the service of the divinity. He uncovered, but he did not
assert what should be done. Nietzsche wanted to "awaken
the highest suspicion against himself," explaining that "to
the humanity of a teacher belongs the duty of warning his
students against himself." What he wanted he let Zarathustra

say who left his "Go away from me, and turn
disciples with:
yourselves against me." And, even in EC ce Ho?no, Nietzsche

says: "And finally,

there is
nothing in me of the founder of a
I want no believers. ... I have a terrible
religion. ...
anxiety that some day, they will speak reverently of me. I

will not be a saint, rather a Punch. Maybe I am Punch."

6. THE DEED
There in both a confusing polarity between the ap-
is

pearance of an absolute and definite demand and, at the

same time, shyness, withdrawal, the appearance of not
betting anything. The Seductive, the Perhaps, the Possible is
the manner of their discourse; an unreadiness to be a leader
was their own But both lived in secret longing to
attitude.

bring salvation they could, and if it could be done in

if

human honesty. Accordingly, both toward the end of their

lives became daring, desperate, and then, in utter calm, rose
to public attack. From then on, the reticence of merely
envisaging possibilities was given up for a will to act. Both
made a similar attack: Kierkegaard attacked the Christianity
of the church; Nietzsche attacked Christendom as such.
Both acted with sudden force and merciless resolution. Both
attacks were purely negative actions: deeds from truthful-
ness, not for the construction of a world.
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 45

III. MEANING OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SITUATION PRODUCED BY

KIERKEGAARD AND NIETZSCHE.

The significance of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche first be-

comes clear through what followed in
consequence. The
effect of both is
immeasurably great, even greater in gen-
eral
thinking than in technical philosophy, but it is al-
ways ambiguous. What Kierkegaard really meant is clear
neither in
theology, nor in philosophy. Modern Prot-
estant theology in
Germany, when it is genuine, seems to
stand under either a direct or indirect influence of Kierke-

gaard. But Kierkegaard with regard to practical conse-

quences of his thought wrote in May, 1855, a pamphlet with
the motto, "But at
midnight there is a cry" (Matthew 25:6),
where he says: "By ceasing to take part in the official
worship of God as it now is ... thou hast one guilt less,
. thou dost not participate in treating God as a fool,
. .

calling it the Christianity of the New Testament, which

it is not."

A. Ambiguity of both.

In modern philosophy several decisive themes have been

developed through Kierkegaard. The most essential basic

categories of contemporary philosophizing, at least in Ger-

many, go back to whose whole
KierkegaardKierkegaard
thought however appeared to dissolve all previous systematic
philosophy, to reject speculation, and who, when he recog-
nized philosophy, said at most: "Philosophy can
pay atten-
tion to but cannot nourish us."

might be that theology, like philosophy, when it

It

follows Kierkegaard is masking something essential in order

to use his ideas and formulas for its own
totally different
purposes.
might be that within theology there is an unbelief
It

which employs the refined Kierkegaardian intellectual

techniques of dialectical paradox to set forth a kind of creed
46 Reason and Existenz

which can be understood, and which believes itself the

genuine Christian faith.

fashion of Kierke-
It
might be that philosophizing in the
on the substance of Chris-
gaard secretly nourishes itself
tianity, which it
ignores in words.
The significance of Nietzsche is no clearer. His effect in
Germany was like that of no other philosopher. But it seems
con-
as though every attitude, every world-view, every
viction claims him as authority. It might be that none of
us really knows what this thought includes and does.

B. Their disordering influence.

Theproblem, therefore, for everyone who

allows Kierke-
to become honest
gaard and Nietzsche to influence him, is
about how he really comes to terms with them, what they
are to him, what he can make out of them.
Their common effect, to enchant and then to disillusion,
to seize and then leave one standing unsatisfied as though
one's hands and heart were left empty such is only a clear

expression of their own intention: that everything depends

upon what their reader by his own inner action makes out
of their communication, where there is no specific content
as in the soecial sciences, works of art, philosophical systems,
or some accepted prophecy. They deny every satisfaction.

C The problem of philosophizing in relation to both.

In fact, they are exceptions and not models for followers.

Whenever anyone has tried to imitate Kierkegaard or
Nietzsche, if only in style, he has become ridiculous. What
they did themselves at moments approaches the limit where
the sublime into the ridiculous. What they did was
passes
only possible once. To be sure, everything great is unique,
and can never be repeated identically. But there is some-
thing essentially different in our relation
to this uniqueness:
and this whether we live through them, and, by making
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 47

them our own, revive them, or see them through the dis-
tance of an orientation which changes us but makes them
more remote.
They abandon us without giving us any final goals and
without posing any definite problems. Through them, each
one can only become what he himself is. What their con-
sequences are is not yet decided even today. The question is:
how those of us shall live who are not exceptions but who
are seeking our inner way in the
light of these exceptions.
Weare in that cultural situation where the
application of
thisknowledge already contains the kernel of dishonesty. It
is
though through them we were forced out of a certain
as

thoughtlessness, which without them would have remained

even in the study of great philosophers. We can no longer
tranquilly proceed in the continuity of a traditional, intel-
lectual education. For through Kierkegaard and Nietzsche a
mode of existential experience has become effective, whose

consequences on all sides have not yet come to light. They

posed a question which is not yet clear but which one can
feel; this question is still open. Through them we have be-
come aware that for us there is no longer any self-evident
foundation. There is no longer any secure background for
our thought.
For the individual working with them, there are two
equally great dangers: really to encounter them
and not to
take them seriously at all. Unavoidably, one's attitude to-
ward them is ambivalent. Neither constructed a world, and
both seemed to have destroyed everything; yet both were
positive spirits. We must achieve a distinctively
new re-
lation to the creative thinker if we are really to approach
them otherwise than we would any great man.

D. The question: What now?

With
respect to our epoch and the thought
of Kierke-
the question, what now?
gaard and Nietzsche, if we pose
48 Reason and Existenz

then Kierkegaard points in the direction of an absurd

Christianity before which the world sinks away, and Nie-
tzsche to the distance, the indeterminate, which does
points
not appear to be a substance out of which we can live. No-
not ours. It is
body has accepted their answers; they are
for us to see what will become of us through ourselves as we
look upon them. This is, however, in no way to sketch out
or establish anything in advance.
Thus we would err if we thought we could deduce what
must now happen from a world-historical survey of the
development of the human
spirit.
We
do not stand outside
like a god who can the whole at a glance. For us,
survey
the present cannot be replaced by some supposed world

history out of which our situation

and problems would
emerge. And this lecture has no intention of surveying
the whole, but rather of making the present situation per-
ceptible by reflecting upon
the past. Nobody knows where
man and his thinking are going. Since existence, man, and his
world are not at an end, a completed philosophy is as little
possible as an anticipation
of the whole. We men have plans
with finite ends, but something else always comes out which
no one willed. In the same way, philosophizing is an act
which works upon the inwardness of man, but whose final
meaning he cannot know. Thus the contemporary prob-
lem is not to be deduced from some a priori whole; rather it
is to be
brought to consciousness out of a basis which is
now experienced and out of a content still unclearly willed.
Philosophy as thought is always a consciousness of Being
which is complete for this moment, but which knows it has
no final permanence in its form of expression.

E. The problem we have abstracted from the situation:

Reason and Existenz.

Instead of some supposed total view' of the actual and

cultural situation, rather we philosophize in consciousness
of a situation which again leads to the final limits and bases
 Origin of the Contemporary Philosophical Situation 49

of the human reality. Today, no one can completely and

clearly develop the intellectual problems that grow out of
such a situation. Welive, so to speak, in a seething cauldron
of possibilities, continually threatened by confusion, but

always ready in spite of everything to rise up again. In

philosophizing, we must always be ready, out of the present
questioning, to elicit which bring forth what is
those ideas
real to us: that is, our humanity. These ideas are possible

when the horizon remains unlimited, the realities clear, and

the real questions manifest. Out of such problems which
force themselves upon thought, I have selected one for the
next three lectures. The ancient philosophical problem,
which appears in the relation of the rational to the non-
rational, must be seen in a new light through an appropria-
tion of the tradition with our eyes upon Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche.
We formulate this fundamental problem as that of reason
and Existenz. This abbreviated formula signifies no antith-
esis: rather a connection which at the same time
points
beyond itself.
The words "reason" and "Existenz" are chosen because
for us they express in the most penetrating and pure form
the problem of the clarification of the dark, the grasping of
the bases out of which we live, presupposing no trans-

parency, but demanding the maximum of rationality.

The word "reason" has here its Kantian scope, clarity
and truth. The word
"Existenz" through Kierkegaard has
taken on a sense through which we look into infinite depths
at what knowledge. The word is not
defies all determinate
to be taken in worn-out sense as one of the many syno-
its

nyms for "being"; it either means nothing, or is to be taken

with its Kierkegaardian claims.
What we shall undertake in the next three lectures may
seem to move around other themes. But in common, they
shall strive to grasp in the form of logically conceived

questions the meaning of what is closest to life. Philosophy,

5*0 Reason and Existenz

wherever it is successful, consists of those unique ideas in

which logical abstractness and the actual present become, so
to speak, identical The basic drives of living philosophy can

express themselves truly only in purely formal thought.

There are intellectual operations which through compre-
hension and cooperation can bring about an inner act of the
entire man: the bringing forth of oneself out of possibilities
in thought so as to apprehend Being in empirical existence.
If my lectures do not come even close to satisfying these

high demands, it is still essential that the ideal of one's con-

cerns be recognized. One can take courage to try to do that
which passes beyond his strength from the fact that it is a
human problem, and man is that creature which poses
problems beyond his powers. And also from this, that who-
ever even once thought he heard softly the authentic phil-

osophic note can never tire of trying to communicate it.

The Fifth Lecture shall take up again the theme of this
one. It will in reference to the previously developed ideas
take up the problems of contemporary philosophy in a
situation decisively determined
by Kierkegaard and Nie-
tzsche.
 second lecture

THE ENCOMPASSING

INTRODUCTION: THE MEANING OF PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC.

One possible way of philosophizing is the movement of

philosophical logic in those acts of thought which formally

represent the various modes of Being. Since we shall make an
initial
investigation of this possibility in the three middle
lectures, here we shall ignore all concrete philosophizing,
that is, the development of particular physical, existential, or

metaphysical subjects. Rather we shall be concerned with

the horizons and forms within which philosophical con-
tents can be established without deceptionhorizons which
became visible when our humanity was pushed to its very
limits by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

A. 1. The Question of the Encompassing.

In order to see most clearly into what is true and real, into
what is no longer fastened to any particular thing or colored
by any particular atmosphere, we must push into the
widest range of the possible. And then^we experience the
following: everything that is an object for us^ even thougti
5-2 Reason and Exist enz

jtbethej^
all. Wherev^.wa.arrg^ the ..horizon which includes jthe
attained itself goes further and forces us to give
'
up any

would be surveyable, nor any

of Being

sequence of standpoints through

whose totality Being would
be given even indirectly.
We always live and think within a horizon. But the very
fact that a horizon indicates something further which
it is

surrounds the horizon. From this situation

given
again
arises the question about the Encompassing. The Encom-
passmgis n taj^^
mode of TJ5nglinH~m
as in

longer

2. The Two Modes of the Encompassing.

The Encompassing appears anddisappears for usjn_twp_

^ Being itself, j

selves are,jin^ us^

The latterwould be as the mediumTor condition under
is
^
the Encompassing
^& ^the sum^oFsome provisional lands of
_
, .
~* i ^ _
"
...,,,.. A!
;

TW , ,_4 _ .^ t , ,
, , , . ,

a
being, part of whose contents we know, but rather
jit^sjrne
ground of Being,

of our natural knowledge and dealings with things

lies between these final and no longer conditioned bases of

encompassing Being. The Encompassing never appears

as

an object in experience, nor as an explicit theme of thinking,

and therefore might seem to be empty. But precisely here is
where the possibility for our deepest insight into Being
arises, whereas all other knowledge about Being is
merely
knowledge of particular, individual being.
 The Encompassing 55

Knowledge of the many always leads to distraction. One

runs into the infinite unless one arbitrarily sets a limit by
some unquestioned purpose or contingent interest. And in
that case, precisely at these limits, one always runs into be-

wildering difficulties. KflQ^ad^dge^about the Encompassing

wouldjp^ con
ditions.

B. Historical Reflections on this Basic Philosophical Question,

To seek this Being itself beyond the endlessness of the

what Aristotle meant when

*s

which was raised of old

the question
and is raised now and always, and is ever the subject of
doubt is, what is Being" (Aietaphysics, 1028 b). Schelling,
too, held it to be "the oldest and most correct explanation
of what philosophy is ... that it is the science of
Being.
But to find what Being is, that is, true Being that is the
difficulty:
hoc opus, hie labor est" (II, 3, 76). That from
the beginning of philosophy up to the present this question

continually recurs might arouse confidence in the abiding,

fundamental meaning of philosophy throughout its almost
endless multiplicities of appearance.
The first difficulty is to understand the question correctly.
And the correct understanding of the question shows itself
in the answer, shows the degree to which we can
itself in

appropriate the truth and reject the falsity of historically

given questions and answers in their basic and connected
meaning. But such a task, in the light of the enormous
projects and catastrophes of philosophy, can be accom-
plished neither through a collection of ideas, nor through
forcibly limiting it to some supposedly basic feature to
which everything is to be added. We must presuppose a
philosophic attitude whose passion for the truth, in a con-
tinuing attempt to grasp one's own Existenz, achieves aware-
ness of an unlimited range by continued questioning. In
54 Reason and Exist enz

such an unlimited range, the simplicity of the origin may

finally be given truly.
Of the two approaches to Being as the Encompassing, the
most usual and most natural way for every beginning phi-
losophy is toward Being in itself, conceived as Nature,
World, or God. However, we shall approach ^frcrajhe

the Encompassing which we are. Although we know, or at

leastnta^KeTnto^account, the fact that the Encompassing
which we are is in no wise Being itself, still this can be seen
in critical purity only after we have gone to the end of the
path opened up by Kant.

I THE ENCOMPASSING WHICH WE ARE: EMPIRICAL EXISTENCE,

CONSCIOUSNESS AS SUCH, SPIRIT.

Whether we call the Encompassing whichwe are our

as such, or in no
empirical^ggence v coi^aousness
1 "1 """ "" '"" ''''""""'' 11 "r '^ -." -J._u I' "..-i
-- "'i- in,
,,,
||n ^
spirit,
,.,. ,,_VMm^m ^^^^. _^ .
^

m
>
Cr*'"""" "";""" ^ i

case can it
begrased^ the
usTRather ElTtKat iff"whfch
alH>tE^^ we do not appropri-
ately cognize it as an object; rather we become aware
it as a limit. This is confirmed when we abandon the
pf
determinate, clear because objective knowledge which is
directed to particular things distinguishable from other

things. We
should like, so to speak, to stand outside our-
selves in order to look and see what we are; but in this

supposed looking we are and always remain enclosed within

that at which we are looking.
Let us consider for a moment some beginnings from
which, by repeated questioning, the Encompassing can be
conceived. I am, first of all, an empirical existent.
ll^Ygmcal
existence means the actual taken comprehemivel^

^
as such particyJam the Encompassingof
empEcaTexistence, Everything^^wK^^
 The Encompassing 55

for me must in some sense be actual as a part of being, my

as, for example, in the continually perceptible presence of

my body as it is touched, altered, or as it is perceiving.

Empirical existence, as the overpowering Other which
determines me, is the world. TheJEia^effip^
cal existencejducb-J am^jadiat^^ also

we
become absorbed into the
being of the woriZwhicE^STKat
Nature. In this fashion we are ap-
plreKenHedoirily as one sort oFbeing among others, not yet
as properly human. Knowledge of the Encompassing of
empirical existence with which we are united removes
from particular sciences the claim of grasping us as a whole.
Although I can never comprehend my empirical exist-
ence as an Encompassing, but only particular empirical
forms like matter, life, and soul which I can never reduce
back to a single principle, still I stand in the continuous

presence of this embracing empirical reality. But even if

we know the body, life, the soul, and consciousness merely
as they become objectively accessible to us, even here W&

can, so to speak, see through them all back to that Encom-

passing of empirical existence with which we are one and
which becomes only particularized in every physical, bio-
logical,and psychological object, but which, as such, is no
longer the Encompassing. Thus the empirical awareness
which I have as a living actuality is, as such, not constitutive
by itself of that Encompassing which I am as an empirical
existent.
The second mode of the Encompassing which I am is con-
sciousness as such. Only what appears to our conscious-
ness as experienceable, as an object, has being for us. What
does not aggear to consciousne^,jwhacan^jgo jyjs touch

ourjcogmti^n, is as
good as nothing for us. Hence^ every-
for us must take on that fbnnjn jwhich
it can be thought or experienced by consciousness.
$6 Reason and Existenz

in
somefashi^n^^agg^^ In the form of an object; it
jnust
become presenttbx^

^ That all
being f orjis J[nust appear

thinkability.
But we can make clear its limits and, with thiFcorTscious-
ness of limits, become open to the possibility of the Other
which we do not know. Consciousness has two meanings
however: (i) we are conscious as living existents and, as
such, are not yet or no longer encompassing. This con-
sciousness is carried
by life itself, the unconscious ground
of what we consciously experience. As living existents
which we are in an absolute Encompassing of empirical
existence, we become possible objects of empirical investi-

gation for ourselves. We

find ourselves divided into groups
of races and into those always particular individualities
into which this form of reality divides itself. However, we
are not only countless single consciousne^
or leSTsi^
sciousness as such. Through such conscioum^
can
^E^
feelingj^
061^
we are as
Encompassmg.JThere is a leap between the multi-
plicity of subjective consciousnesses and the universal vali-
dity of that true consciousness which can only be one.
As the consciousness of living beings, we are split into the
multiplicity of endless particular realities, i

and not encompassing. As con-

sciousness in general, we participate in an inactuality, the
universally valid truth, and, as such consciousness, are an
infiniteEncompassing. As a conscious living actuality, we
are always a mere kind, even a unique individual enclosed
within its own individuality. But we participate in the

Encompassing through the possiBffif^fl^^

 The Encompassing 57

inHeedTwe participate, not only In the validity of the know-

able, but also in a universally recognized, formal lawful-
ness in willing, action,and feeling. So defined, truth is time-
less, and our temporal actuality is a more or less complete
actualization of this timeless permanence.
This sharp_separai^^
of living consciousnessjnjg temporal process and the in-
in general, as the site of the
timeless J^^ onp ^omrnon truth
Rather it is an abstraction which can be transcended through
actual existence

^^^ff^ ^
*

as lt *s
somethingLproduced,
and moves itself, is a new
sojnethingtempord,v^ich grasps "
sense oFtKeTS^
"~
SpiHrlsTftFThi^^ the Encompassing which we
_
are. Out of the origins of its
being, spirit is the totality of
intelligible thought, action, and feeling a totality which is

not a closed object for knowledge but remains Idea. Al-

though spirit is necessarily oriented to the truth of con-
sciousness as such, as well as to the actuality of its Other
(Nature as known and used), yet in both directions it is
moved by Ideas which bring everything into clarity and
connection. Spirit is the comprehensive reality of activity
which is actualized by itself and by what it encounters in
a world which is always given yet always being changed. It is
the process of fusing and reconstructing all totalities in a

present which is never finished yet always fulfilled. It is

always on its way toward a possible completion of empiri-
cal existence where universality, the whole, and every par-
ticular would all be members of a totality. Out of a con-

tinuously actual and continuously fragmenting whole, it

pushes forward, creating again and again out of its con-
temporary origins its own possible reality. Since it pushes
toward the whole, spirit
would preserve, enhance, and re-
$8 Reason and Existenz

late everything to ever} thing else, exclude nothing, and give

to everything its place and limits.

Spirit,
in contrast to the abstraction of timeless con-
sciousness as such, again a temporal process, and as such
is

it is
comparable to empirical existence. But, as distinguished
from it moves
this latter, by a xdkxmr;^
stead of by some merely biologico-psychological process.
Understood from within and not capable of being investi-
gated as a natural object, spirit is always directed toward
the universality of consciousness as such. Thus it is a

grasping of itself, a through denial and

working upon itself

approval. It
produces by struggling with itself.
itself

As mere empirical existence and as spirit, we are an en-

compassing reality. But as empirical existence, we are un-
consciously bound to our ultimate bases in matter, life, and
the psyche. When we understand ourselves as objects in
this horizon, we see ourselves in an infinite, and only from
the outside. We
become split from one another, and only as
thus split are
we objects of scientific investigation (as matter,
living beings, psyches). But^asjsgirit we are coiisciously
related to
everything
^
wKclFencloseT tot aTSSTAs'ob j
ects in this mode of the

Encompassing, w^TEiow^ from within as the one,

unique, all-embracing reality which is wholly spirit and
only spirit.
The distinctions of empirical existence, consciousness as

such, and spirit do not imply separable facts. Rather they

represent three starting points through which we can come
to feel that comprehensive Being which we are and in which
all
Being and everything scientifically investigable appears.
These three modes taken individually are not yet the
Encompassing as we represent it. Consciousness as such,
the location of universally valid truth, is in itself nothing

independent. On one side, it points to its basis in empirical

existence. On the other it points to spirit, the power it must
 The Encompassing 5^

let itself be dominated by if it would attain

meaning and
totality. In itself, consciousness as such is an unreal articula-
tion of the Encompassing. Through it, the
Encompassing is
differentiated into those modes according to one of which
the Encompassing can become individuated and knowable as

empirical natural processes, and, according to- the other

of which understandable, a self-transparent, totalizing
it is

reality or Freedom. Empirical existence and spirit produce

forms ofrealjtv; consciousness as such is the form in which,
we envisagejthe Encompassing as the condition of_the_unir
^
II. THE ENCOMPASSING AS BEING ITSELF; WORLD AND TRANSCENDENCE.
We pass beyond the Encompassing which we are (em-
pirical existence, consciousness as such, and spirit)
when
we ask whether this whole is Being itself.
If Being itself is that in which
everything that is for us
must become present, then it might be thought that this
appearance-for-us is in fact all Being. Thus Nietzsche, who
conceived all
Being as interpretation and our being as in-

terpretative, wanted to reject any further being as an

illusory otherworld. But the question does not stop with the
limits of our knowledge of things, nor in the inwardness of
the limiting consciousness of the Encompassing which we
are. Rather this Encompassing which I am and know as

empirical existence, consciousness as such, and spirit, is

not conceivable in but refers beyond itself. JTJZ&
itself

Encompassing'
which we are is not Barter irsplf hnr rather ^

the genuine appearance in the F nTOippftSflmg Q f R^ing itself.

f

This Being itself which we feel as indicated at the

limits, and which therefore is the last thing we reach
the first.
through questioning from our situation, is in itself
It is not made by us, is not interpretation, and is not an

object. Rather it itself brings forth our questioning

and
permits it no rest.

The Encompassing which we are has one of its limits in

6o Reason and Existenz

fact.Even though we create the form of everything that

we know, since it must appear to us in those modes accord-
can
ing to which it can become an object, yet knowledge
not create the least particle of dust in its
empirical existence.
In the same way, Being itsejfjsjha^^
measurabkjaiHiA^e ofappearances to inquiry, but it itself

sdes and <

j^
of our^geriences and
i"j:br^^

The Encompassing which we are has its other limit in

the question through which it is.
Beingjtsdf^ the Tran-

^
^
. It is that which as the absolute Encom-
passing just as certainly "is as it remains unseen and
unknown.

III. EXISTENZ, ANIMATION AND GROUND OF ALL MODES OF THE

ENCOMPASSING.

Any philosopher who is not lost in the perspective of the

conceptual but wishes to push toward genuine Being feels

a deep dissatisfaction looking at all the hitherto mentioned
modes of the Encompassing. He knows too little in the vast

superfluity of apparently immeasurable multiplicities toward

which he is directed. He can not find Being itself in all the
dimensions of an Encompassing so conceived. He is liber-

ated into a vastness where Being becomes void. The Tran-

scendent seems to be merely an unknowable which makes no
difference, and the spirit comes to seem like a sublime
whole, but one in which each individual in his deepest
inwardness almost seems to have disappeared.
Thecentral point of philosophizing is first reached in
the awareness of potential Existenz.
not in thesense jof, the
ExistenzJajIi^Encompassing,
vastne^of a honzoiTof^^
 The Encompassing 61

oa fundamental origin, the condition_of selfhood without

which BSngl^
alFtfi va^mess of

alfE^^^nev^^^, becomingj^^
tEe"meaning of every mode of the Encompassing.
WKIfFlme^^ such,
and spirit
all
appear in the world and become scientifically
investigable realities, Existenz is the object of no science.
In spite of which, we find here the very axis about which

everything in the world turns if it is to have any genuine

meaning for us.
At first Existenz seems to be a new narrowing, for it is

always merely one among others. It might appear as though

the spaciousness of the Encompassing had been contracted
into the uniqueness of the individual self which, in contrast
to the reality ofencompassing spirit,
looks like the empti-
ness of a point. But^lhis^^

consciousness, and in this spirit, is,

In fact, the sole possible
re^atiolTofTb^
f
SkfeJEl^

first contrast Existenz with consciousness ds such,

it becomes the hidden ground in me to which Transcend-

ence is first revealed. The Encompassing which we are
exists only in relation to something other than itself. Thus,
as I jyjijciHisciQm-^
anj>b) ective^eingjj^fore me by which I then am determined
and with which I am concerned, so also La
as know Transcendence^ the power through which I
I_

genuinely am myself. The Qther is either the being which

is in theworidfor consciousness as sucR, ^rjtjsJ

_ twofold Other first becomes clear

through the inwardness of Existenz. WjjjroutJExistenz the

meaning of Transcendence is lost. It remains only^omething
............ ' *
............... ""^ - '

iiia,*"'!.,,,,,**, ........ """>

, u H- -
jpS^**"" ), .......... _ L ................

irionferent and not to be known, something supposed to

be at the bottom of things, something excogitated, or,
62 Reason and Existenz

perhaps for our animal consciousness, something weird

or terrifying plunging it into superstition and anxiety, a

subject to be investigated psychologically and removed

through a rational insight into the factual by consciousness
as such. Only through Existenz can Transcendence become
present without supersition, as
the genuine reality which
to itself never disappears.
Furth^i^Existenz isjike the counterpart to^ spirit. Spirit
is the will to become 'whole; potential Existent jsLtbe wili^
b e authentic^pirit is intelligible throughout, coming to it-
self in the whole; but Existenz is the unintelligible, standing

by and against other Existenzen, breaking up every whole

and never reaching any real totality. For spirit, a final trans-
parency would be the origin of Being; Existenz on the other
hand remains in all clarity of spirit as the irremediably dark
origin. Spirit lets everything disappear and vanish into uni-
versality and totality. The individual as spirit is not himself
but, so to speak, the unity of contingent individuals and of
the necessary universal Existenz however is irreducibly in
another; it is the absolutely firm, the irreplaceable, and there-
fore, as against all mere empirical existence, consciousness
as such, and spirit, it is authentic being before Transcend-
ence to which alone it surrenders itself without reservation.
Spirit wants to grasp the individual either as an example
of a universal or as a
part of a whole. On the other hand,
Existenz, as the possibility of decision derivable from no
is an
universal validity, origin in time, is the individual as
historicity. Tr^kf4if^^ _Qjjmelessness through
temporality, not through universal concepts. Q
c>pint isHhStoncaTby representing liself in retrospect as
a transparent totality. Existenz is historical as eternity in
time, as the absolute historicity of its concrete empirical
existence in a spiritual opacity which is never removed. But
Existenz is not merely incompletion and perversity
this
in all temporal existence, which, as such, must always ex-

pand and change into some spiritual totality, but rather

 The Encompassing 63

temporal existence thoroughly and authentically penetrated:

the paradox of the unity of temporality and
eternity.
Spirit in its
immediacy is the potential Idea, whose univer-
sality unfolds
into full clarity. Existenz in its immediacy,
on the other hand, isc its^jiistoricitv^ in relation to Tran-
scendencSpre., the^ irremovable immediacy of its faith.
The faith of spirit is the life of the universal Idea, where*"
Thought is Being ultimately is valid. The faith of Existenz,

however, is the Absolute in Existenz itself on which

every-
thing for it rests, in which spirit,
consciousness as such, and

empirical existence are all bound together and decided,

where for the first time there is both impulse and goal; here
Kierkegaard's proposition, "Faith is Being," applies.
When Existenz understands itself, it is not like my under-
standing of another, nor the sort of understanding whose
contents can be abstracted from the person understanding,
nor a sort of looking at; rather it is an origin which itself
first arises in its own self -clarification. It is not like
sharing
in something else, but is at once the understanding and
the being of what is understood. It is not understanding

through universals, but moves above such understanding in

the mediumof spirit to become an understanding without

any generalization in the absolute present, in deed, in love,

and in every form of absolute consciousness. It is the dif-
ference between the love of another, which I understand but
yet never really understand, and my own love, which I
understand because I am that love. Or, in other words,
the difference between understanding other things by em-

pathy as process or experience, and' understanding myself

as
unique since I know myself before Transcendence.
When we compare Existenz with consciousness
as such,

spirit,
or any other of the mode
Encompassing, the same
thing appears: without Existenz everything seems empty,
hollowed out, without ground, fake, because everything
has turned into endless masks, mere possibilities, or mere
empirical existence.
64 Reason and Existenz

IV. REASON: THE BOND BETWEEN THE VARIOUS MODES OF THE

ENCOMPASSING.
We have seen as modes of the Encompassing:
a) Being as the Other, which was either World (empir-
ical existence which can be investigated in a universally
valid way) or Transcendence (35 Being in itself) .

b) The Being of the Encompassing which we are,

which was either our empirical existence (the still indeter-

minate, comprehensive actuality), or consciousness as such

(the site of all objective and intelligible validities for us),
or spirit (the single
whole of coherent movement of con-
sciousness as it is activated by Ideas) .

But for the source from which all these modes of the
Encompassing receive animation and for which they speak,
we touched upon Existenz, the dark ground of selfhood, the
concealment out of which I come to encounter myself and
for which Transcendence first becomes real

Inextricably bound to Existenz is something else which

concerns the connection of all these modes of the Encom-
passing, Thisno new whole, but rather a continuing
is

It is not a mode
demand and movement. through which the
Encompassing appears, but rather the bond which unites all
modes of the Encompassing; it is called reason.
There is a question as to what "reason" means in the
history of philosophy, how it comprehended itself, what
it meant for
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, what they meant
when they both trusted and mistrusted it. The clarification
of the modes of the Encompassing must go into the
ambiguity of what has passed for reason.
Ifreason means clear, objective thinking, the transfojCr
matioQ.of the opaque intCthejransparent, then it is nothing
more than the Encompassing of consciousness asT sucKTSoT

:^
stand] .
 The Encompassing 6$

If reason means the way to to^Hti^j.l^Yife, of the Idea,

then it is tEe Encompassing of spirit.
But if reason means the pre-eminence of thought in all
modes of the Encompassing, then more is included than
mere thinking. It is then what goes beyond all limits, the
omnipresent demand of thought, that not only grasps
what is universally valid and is an ens rationis in the sense of
being a law or principle of order of some process, but also
brings to light the Other, stands before the absolutely
counter-rational, touching it and bringing it, too, into
being. Reason, through the pre-eminence of thought, can
bring all the modes of the Encompassing to light by con-
tinually transcending limits, without itself being an En-
compassing like them. It is, so to speak, like the final authen-
tic
Encompassing which continually must withdraw and
remain inconceivable except in those modes of the Encom-
passing in which it moves.
Reason of itself is no source; but, as it is an encompassing
bond, it is like a source in which all sources first come to
It is the unrest which
light. permits acquiescence in noth-
it forces a break with the
ing; immediacy of the uncon-
scious in every mode of the Encompassing which we are.
It
pushes on continually. But it is also that which can
effect the great peace, not the peace of a self-confident
rational whole, but that of Being itself opened up to us
through reason.
Reason is the inextinguishable impulse to philosophize
with whose destruction reason itself is destroyed. This
impulse is to achieve reason, to restore reason; it is that
reason which always rises clearer from all the deviations
and narrowings of so-called "reason" and which can ac-
knowledge the justice of objections
to reason and set their

limits.

Reason should not get caught within any mode of the

Encompassing: not in empirical existence to favor a will-
to-exist which in its very narrowness asserts itself pur-
66 Reason and Existenz

posively yet blindly; nor in consciousness as such in favor

of endless validities which are indifferent to us; nor in
spirit infavor of a self-enclosed, harmonious totality which
can be contemplated but not lived.
Reason is always too little when it is enclosed within
final and determinate forms, and it is
always too much when
it
appears as a self-sufficient substitute.
With the rational attitude I desire unlimited clarity; I
try to know scientifically, to grasp the empirically real and
the compelling validities of the thinkable; but at the same
time, I live with an awareness of the limits of scientific
penetrability and of clarity in general; however, I push
forward from all sources in all modes of the Encom-
passing toward a universal unfolding of them in thought
and reject above all thoughtlessness.
But reason itself is no timeless permanence; it is neither
a quiet realm of truth (such as the contents of scientific

cognition whose validity does not change although their

attainment is an endless and restless movement); nor is it
Being itself. Neither is it the mere moment of some chance
thought. Rather it is the bindi^^ pro-
gressive powe^^wfejsenroi^ from its

beyond every^on^of"these
^^ all

yet seems to be

^
both whatitkself^
RHson^dnves toward unity, but it is not satisfied either
with the one level of knowable accuracies for conscious-
ness as such, or with the great effective unities of
spirit.
It
goes along just as well with Existenz where the latter
breaks through these unities, and so reason is
again present
in order to bring Existenzen
separated by an abyss of
absolute distance together into communication.
Its essence seems to be the universal, that which
pushes
 The Encompassing 6j

toward law and order or is identical with it. But it remains

a possibility in Existenz even when these fail. Reason is
itself still the
only thing by and for which the chaos of the
negative in its passion for Night preserves its mode of po-
tential Existenz, a reason which otherwise would be sur-
rendered to what is
absolutely alien at these extreme limits.

V. REASON AND EXISTENZ.

The great poles of our being, which encounter one
another in every mode of the Encompassing, are thus reason
and Existenz. They are inseparable. Each disappears with
the disappearance of the other. Reason should not surrender
to Existenz to produce an isolating defiance which resists
communication in despair. Existenz should not surrender
to reason in favor of a transparency which is substituted for
substantial reality.
Existenz only becomes clear through reason; reason only
has content through Existenz.
There is an impulse in reason to move out of the im-
mobility and endless triviality of the merely correct into
a living bond through the totality of the ideas of the spirit,
and out of these toward Existenz as that which supports and
first
gives authentic being to the spirit.
Reason is oriented toward its Other, toward the content
of the Existenz which supports it, which clarifies itself in

reason, and which gives decisive impulses to reason. Reason

without content would be mere understanding, without any
And, as the concepts of the understanding
basis as reason.
are empty without intuition, so reason is hollow without
Existenz. Reason is not itself as mere understanding, but

only in the acts of potential Existenz.

But Existenz is also oriented toward an Other. It is re-
lated to Transcendence through which it first becomes an
independent cause in the world; for Existenz did not create
itself. Without Transcendence, Existenz becomes a sterile,

loveless, and demonic defiance. Existenz, oriented to reason

68 Reason and Existenz

through whose clarity it first experiences unrest and the ap-

peal of Transcendence, under
the needling questioning of
reason first comes into its own authentic movement. With-
out reason, Existenz is inactive, sleeping, and as though not
there.
Thus reason and Existenz are not two opposed powers
which struggle with one another for victory. Each exists
only through the other. They mutually develop one another
and find through one another clarity and reality.
Although they never combine Into an ultimate whole,
every genuine accomplishment is whole only through them.
Reason without Existenz even in the richest possible field
finally passes into an Indifferent thinking, a merely
intellec-
tual movement of consciousness as such, or into a dialectic of
the spirit.
And into intellectual universality
as it slips away
without the binding root of its historicity, it ceases to be
reason.

res^jippn_ feeling, experienc-

ing, unquestioned raygu^^
Wind^^^
which ovenTriiSirS

In
i^l*^^
be Exlstenz.^^
EScfTwithout the other loses the genuine continuity of

Being and, therefore, the reliability which, although it can

not be calculated, is nevertheless appropriate to genuine
reason and Existenz. They separate themselves from one
another only to become violent powers lacking any com-
munication. In isolation they no longer mean what they
should; only formulas without either basis or purpose re-
main, in a narrowing sphere of empirical existence. There,
through a veil of justifications which are no longer true and
no longer believed, they are simply the means of expression
for mutually destructive empirical existents.
But there is rest nowhere in temporal existence. Rather
 The Encompassing 69

there is
always movement issuing forth from the ultimate
ground movement in the tension between the
substantial
individual and the universal, between the actual and the
total range of the possible, between the unquestionable
immediacy of existential faith and the infinite movement of
reason.

VI. REFLECTIONS ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FORM OF THIS

BASIC IDEA.

After this survey of how we think of the modes of the

Encompassing which we are and which Being itself is, and
the polarity of reason and Existenz, let us now reflect on
what such ideas, formally considered, can and can not mean
ideas whose development has given rise to whole phi-

losophies.
Our knowledge of objects in the world has the form of

relating them to one another and deriving them from one

another. What appears to us is understood by understanding
relation to something else. But where, in philosophizing^
its

we are concerned with the Encompassing, it is clear that we

are dealing with something which can not be understood
like some object in the world; more especially, we find that
themodes of the Encompassing can not be derived from
some particular which appears in them. For example: if we
call the Encompassing thought, we can not derive thought
itself from anything which can be thought of. Or if the En/
compassing is our consciousness, it can not be derived froil
anything which appears to this consciousness. Or if it is tt
Whole, it can not be derived from any individual, be it eve
so comprehensive. Or if it is empirical existence, then as
such it can never be derived from any determinate, ob-
jectively known empirical thing. If it is reason, then we cari

not derive from the non-rational. Or if it is Existenz, it

it

can not be derived from any mode of the Encompassing,

let alone one of its contents. In_ short, jcior^being can
never be derivedFrom^^Am
jo Reason and Exist enz

jnjzsdf cafluofiKer he
understood through anything whichj
encounter.
derived from any
"Just as little can Being in itself be
we know. we can never be
being which If call it Being, it

derived from the multiplicity of beings. Being in it-

If it is

If it is Tran-
self, it can never be derived from appearance.

scendence, we find we can never derive the absolute from

the objective, actual, or empirically existent. There always

thinking man that which passes beyond everything

arises in
of which he thinks.
In philosophy there has also been a contrary tendency
to deduce from Being as such, as the Encompassing was re-

garded, the particular things

we objectively know to deduce
the whole world, ourselves included, from a philosophically

cognized origin, just as we grasp things

in the world through
their causes. This is again always a radical error which

destroys philosophizing itself. For the Encompassing can

never be known as a particular something from which other
things can be deduced EzagLObjectj^^
comrehensiye, every conceived vfasfi&j&Qg^^
conceived Enconipa^ingv

dividual^
over against us. The Encompassing itself, whether itbe the
Enconlpassing" which we are or Being escapes from
in itself,
determinate Insofar as we are that En-
every objectivity.
compassing, it can only be illuminated; insofar
as it is

thought of as Being in itself, it is

apprehended by inquiry into
its infinite appearance; insofar as it speaks as Transcendence
it is heard by absolute, historical Existenz.
Therefore, since the Encompassing is in no form known
in itself, we can not deduce from it the being which appears
to us. That could only occur if the Encompassing were
previously known in itself. These false derivations proceed
as though they had already cognitively mastered Being itself.
These deductions from one principle, perhaps in the form
of a deduction of all categories of the thinkable and of what-
 The Encompassing 71

ever we can encounter in the world, are always merely

relative derivations of individual groups in their connections.
An exhaustive deduction has never succeeded and never can
succeed.The attempt, however, has the value of sharpening
our awareness of our limits.
Deductions of actual occurrences from theories of some
fundamental reality construct models, but they never suc-
ceed in grasping anything except limited realities, mere as-
pects of empirical existence. They prove themselves to be
functions of an endlessly progressive knowing; but they are
never what in intention they might well like to be: cogni-
tion of the real in itself.

The deduction of the whole world including ourselves

from Transcendence (by emanation, evolution, causality,
etc.) is imaginary. Tlieideajofj^
a primal secret, of an inconceiyabil^

question through an uncaused cause.

However the Encompassing is conceived, the idea seems
for a moment to achieve stability when it appears as an

object for scientific research. This actually occurs in all

modes of the Encompassing. The error lies in trying to
secure as a content for knowledge what is true only as a
limit for consciousness and a demand of the self.
The Encompassing in the form of empirical existence,
consciousness as such, or spirit becomes an apparent object
for anthropology, psychology, sociology, and the humanis-
tic sciences. These sciences investigate human phenomena in
the world, but in such a fashion that what they grasp is

precisely not the encompassing reality of this kind of being,

a reality which is always present to it even though unrecog-
nized. No history or sociology of religion has arrived in
what they which was the Existenz itself
call religion at that

of men. They can only consider religion according to its

factual character, observe how it

emerges into observable
reality with a leap which is incomprehensible. All these
sciences push toward something which is
precisely what
72 Reason and Existenz

they can never reach. They have the fascination of being

concerned with something genuinely relevant, but they
deceive if they suppose they can grasp Being itself through
an immanence which deduces and establishes things. These
universal sciences, therefore, can not consolidate themselves,
All their demarcations are only relative. Individually, they
have the form of cutting across all other sciences. But they
never seem to reach their own proper basis, since the en-
compassing which they have before their eyes is no longer
the Encompassing. Their magic is deceptive, but it can be-
come fruitful if there should ensue a sense of the modest,
relative, and open character of our knowledge of our own

appearance in the world.

Both reason and Existenz have a mode of thinking which
awakens them and pushes them toward clarity; to reason
belongs philosophical logic, and to Existenz, the clarification
of Existenz.
However, if logic pretends to be a universal science of
consciousness as such, it loses its philosophical truth and

slips into a deceptive science of the Whole. In these magnifi-

cent doctrines of categories which unfold themselves out
of a single principle, the whole of the Encompassing as the

totality of Being itself in its form, the thought of God

before creation would be penetrated and reproduced. But
these investigations have truth only within an open phil-

osophical logic as an orientation toward the formal pos-

sibilities of thought in
its
many directions which can only
be added together, and which are valid for objective ap-
pearance; but they are endless and they lack any thor-
oughly controlling principle which is
supposed to produce
them. As the elucidation of reason by itself, logic is
phi-
losophy and no longer a supposedly objective cognition of
the Whole.
The clarification of Existenz does not cognize Existenz,
but makes an appeal to its
potentialities. However, as
"existentialism," it
pretends to be discourse about a known
 The Encompassing 73

object; and precisely because it should perceive its limits

and seek to clarify the absolute ground, it only wanders
deeper into error, trying to subsume appearances in the
world cognitively and judgmentally under its concepts.
Thus the authentic idea of the Encompassing disappears
with every attempt to establish, isolate, and absolutize it.
An Encompassing which has become objective is no longer
the true Encompassing.
The idea of the Encompassing is rather, so to speak, a

subverting idea which removes from us all the natural ob-

jectivity of our usual thought. In the world, we are con-
cerned with things, contents, objects, but we never question
in all this what we have, think, or will. We assert truths,
but do not ask what truth itself is. We have to do with
questions about the world, but do not ask about the ques-
tioner. Dominated by what is important in action or injury,
as by something which is attainable and knowable, we never
reach the limits from which this whole world of action,
and inquiry would become questionable. J^jxjdie.
possession,
other hand,the idea of the Encompassing requires of us a

jpec"ognition of the limits^ of. alLthjtL exists. for

us~by giving
up" the usual coalition of jc^j[ects..^ince ^t sets limits to
objective cognition, itlrees the real man and all being which
4e^toucHesTrom "a^sug^seH^Tdioiity ^ with its knowability,
^e3T55ownness. Such thinking vitally encompasses the
eaT5emg^^
~~TKisls a simple thought, but philosophically one of in-
finitely rich consequences. First, it concerns the thinker
himself. I am
not authentically myself if I am merely what
I know myself to be (in all modes of the schemata of the
1
Ego and their determinations). Whenever I
objectify
myself, I am myself more than this object, namely, I am
that being which can thus objectify itself. All characteriza-
tions of being concern me only insofar as I am turned
my
into an object; but, in such an object, I recognize only
one side of myself, or myself in one particular aspect, but
14 Reason tmd Existenz

not myself. If I understand myself exclusively as an empiri-

cal existent, as a
living natural being, since
I have then
objectified myself and conceived myself only insofar as I
am an object, I have, at the same time, lost myself and sub-
stituted what I understand myself to be for what I can be.

belongs a self-aware-
ness which sees itself just as much as empirical existence and

life, as it "achieves a""criticaHimiting "awareness~~o Jtself as

^
and spirit; JraHt^^ fully
awarejgfjtt^jwithout the impoverishment which comes
from absolutizing some limited aspecf "anSnthr consequent
exriffedSnlal^^ as reason aiid^Existenzr^
Now if I were to soar beyond and conceive myself to be
authentic Being itself, i.e., regard myself as Transcendence
over and above mere empirical existence, consciousness, or
I should
spirit, again lose myself in false self-divinization,
and cease to be possible Existenz and its actualization.
That / am over against all
cognizable empirical existence
in the world and, at the same time, am posited in my self-
created freedom through Transcendenceto affirm such
as the position of man in temporal existence is the task on

his small
path from which he is constantly tempted to
deviate, both in his thinking about himself, and in the
actual deeds which are connected therewith.
Secondly, the idea concerns absolutely all known being.
I know this Other, just as with myself, only as it appears
to me and not as it is in itself. No known being is Being it-
self.
Every time I let Being itself slip into known being,
Transcendence disappears and I become dark to myself.
In spite of these continual deviations, we must think
about the Encompassing in order to make it really present,
at first even in a false
specificity, but then, by passing
through the whole process of these modes of thinking the
Encompassing, we can transcend them and push to then-
source which is no longer an object.
 The Encompassing 75

VII. PHILOSOPHICAL RESULT.

The purpose and therefore the meaning of a philosophi-

cal idea not the cognition of an object, but rather an
is

alteration of our consciousness of Being and of our Inner

attitude toward things.
Understanding the meaning of the Encompassing has the
significance of creating a possibility. The philosopher there-
in says to himself: preserve the open space of the Encom-

passing! Do merely known! Do

not lose yourself in what
is

not become separated from Transcendence!

let yourself

In thinking about temporal existence, one must continu-

ally run through the circuit of the modes of the Encom-

passing. We can remain static in none of its modes. Each
demands the others. The loss of one mode lets all the others
become false. The philosopher seeks to omit none.
The modes are related to one another. Their tension is
not a battle where each seeks to annihilate the others, but
rather a mutual enlivening and intensification. Hence the

polarity of reason and Existenz must be prevented from

being a mutual exclusion; rather, instead of each turning
away from the other in hostility, each should grow through
mutual questioning.
The relation between the two is not that of flat
recipro-
city but goes up and down. One can not expect that the
higher will be automatically produced by the lower, or that
with the lower the higher can be depended
as a condition,

its own
upon For
to arise. the higher has proper cause. The
higher gives limits and order of rank to the lower without
being able, however, to generate it. One should never for-
get the relation of every mode of the Encompassing to
every other and the direction of this relation.
So far, every mode of the Encompassing appears in the

light of reason as something relatively dark, and thus there

is an external
similarity among them in terms of more or
less reason. An awareness of this requires that the phUoso-
j6 Reason and Existenz

pher not substitute mere vitality for Existenz,

or Nature for
Transcendence.
The open space of such philosophizing becomes a danger
unless one keeps in steady consciousness one's potential
Existenz: there is a danger that one may see oneself as lost

through abstract thinking on the whole range of things.

Genuine thinking about the Encompassing, however, is
reflected back from the total range of revealed directions
ever so much more decisively onto the concrete historicity
of my own present. Now for the first time it is
possible
to be in the present without disappearing into the re-
strictions of the unthinking, the blind, and the unrelated.
Now also possible to grasp the whole spaciousness of
it is

Being without losing oneself in the void of the mere uni-

versal of the understanding, in the meaningless facticity of

empirical existence, or in some empty For the

beyond.
determinateness of the historical depths is bound up with
the openness of unlimited ranges of Being, and the truth
of one's own bases with their relation to the ungrounded
openness of Being, Existenz with reason. The more un-
restrictedly I penetrate by thought into the depths, the
truer my love becomes in its historical present. Holderlin
said: "Who has thought about the deepest, loves what is
most alive."
Man can seek the path of his truth in unf anatical absolute-
ness, in a decisiveness which remains open.
 77

third lecture

TRUTH AS COMMUNICABILITY

INTRODUCTION: FROM THE AMPLITUDE OF THE ENCOMPASSING TO THE

BOND THROUGH COMMUNICATION.

The question of truth can be posed in its greatest ampli-

tude through the knowledge of the modes of the Encom-
passing which we have discussed in the last lecture. In each
of these modes Being and truth have a proper and distinct
sense. Weonly grasp truth if we experience it in every
horizon and omit none of its modes.
But in each of these modes there occurs a retraction from
the vastness of the Encompassing, which as mere vastness
would tend to sink into nothingness, through that binding
which grows out of what is common to all truth in all
modes of the Encompassing: that to be genuinely true,
truth must be communicable,
We represent this original phenomenon of our humanity
thus: we are what we community of
are only through the

mutually conscious understandings. There can be no man

who is a man for himself alone, as a mere individual.

A. Comparison of man with animal.

Animals either are what they are as individuals, in all

their generations always thesame through heredity and
7# Reason and Exist enz

natural growth; or they build communities into which

they are unconsciously absorbed through their instincts,

bringing forth repeatable, identical, non-historical structures
according to strict natural law; they are indifferently re-
placeable functions of the whole. Thus animals on the one
hand pass into the immediate actuality of a community
which is tightly held together, or on the other hand they run
independently of one another as if nothing had happened
natural processes always dominated by the moment's in-
stinct. Animals make themselves understood instinctively.
That they find themselves together, give something like
signs to one another, even, as individuals, bind themselves
fast to one another does not mean that they are bound to-

gether in a human bond in which men, to some degree,

express themselves. With animals it is always a consequence
of an unconscious and, in its
meaning to men, inaccessible

biological order, always in an unhistorical identity with

simply other examples.
Man, on the other hand, is comparatively more detached
as an individual than
many animals, but his community also
conditions him more decisively, and this community is

essentially different from that of the animals.

The human community in analogy to the animal is weak
from the point of view of supplying a natural and reliable
bond. Purely biologically, man here, as everywhere, is below
the animals. His community is, first of all, no state of im-

mediacy, but is mediated through a relation to something

else:
through a relation to common conscious purposes in
the world, through a relation to truth, and through rela-
tion to God.

Secondly, human communication is continually moved in

its relation to these changing potential contents; it finds
no resting place and, unlike that of the animals, has no re-
peating final goal. It is historical and on a path of unceasing
change of which the beginning and end are not visible, a
change through the recollection and appropriation of the past
 Truth as Conmmnic ability 79

as well as through ever new planning for a future. Human

communities, therefore, stand in opposition to those of the
animals in their potentiality for an incalculable continuity
in unfolding and gathering together out of the past and
present. Thus, through this movement, it is a continually in-
secure and endangered reality which must always re-estab-
lish itself, limit and expand itself, test itself, and push on.
In itstrue being it does not possess its final state, but rather
is
only directed toward it. It exists therefore in the tension
of detours, errors, somersaults, and recoveries.

Thirdly, because of this manner of movement, human

nature is not solely a matter of heredity, but also of tradi-
tion. Every new human being begins in communication, and
not merely with his biological nature. This is externally
visible in the unfortunate cases of deaf mutes in the past,

who, in consequence of an inborn or early acquired deaf-

ness (and lacking modern education which today brings
them to complete humanity), remained undeveloped; since

they could not hear it, speech was without influence upon
them, and thus they could not participate in tradition. They
were hardly distinguishable from real idiots.

This comparison of man and animal only points to com-

munication as the universal condition of man's being. It is
so much his comprehensive essence that both what man is
and what is forhim are in some sense bound up with com-
munication. The Encompassing which we are is, in every

form, communication; the Encompassing which is Being

itself exists for us
only insofar as it achieves communica-
bility by becomng speech or becoming utterable.

B. Truth in Communication.

Truth therefore cannot be separated from communica-

only appears in time as a reality-through-communi-
bility. It
cation. Abstracted from communication, truth hardens into
an unreality. The movement of communication is at one
So Reason and Exlstenz

and the same time the preservation of, and the search for,
the truth.
In general then, It applies to my being, my authenticity,
and my grasp of the truth that, not only factually am I
not for myself alone, but I can not even become myself
alone without emerging out of my being with others.

L A. Communication in the Encompassing which we are: com-

munication in empirical existence, in consciousness as

such, and in spirit.

Truth is not of one and unique in its meaning.

sort, single
It has as many senses as there are modes of communication
in which it arises. For what truth is, is determined by the
character of the Encompassing within which communica-
tion takes place; for example, communication from one

empirical existent to another, or in consciousness as such,

or in the idea of spirit; and then further, it is determined by
whether it is achieved in the binding together of these modes
of the Encompassing in reason, and its basis, Existenz. The
truth which is ever valid
is determined
by the Encompassing
in which we stand in communication, by who communi-
cates, and by whom the communication is understood.
We shall analyze the modes of the Encompassing by in-
quiring into the kind of communication which occurs in
them, characterizing them singly as though they were
separable.
i . The Encompassing of our mere empirical existence is

not identical with our empirical existence as already scien-

tifically known; rather it remains as a problem for ad-

vancing knowledge through all our acquired knowledge of

its
physiological, psychological, and sociological character.
This empirical existence of ours has the will to preserve
and develop itself without limits; it wills satisfaction and
happiness. To
achieve these goals, the Encompassing of

empirical existence demands the communication of a com-

munity which can preserve life. Interest (or rather what
 Truth as Communic ability Si

each holds to be his interest) is again found in the other.

Need binds them all together against nature, which threat-
ens all in common, and against other communities. The

private interests of each individual existent at the same

time stand in tension toward this bond, almost always ready
to break out of the community when there is any slackening
of the need. According to Kant, "unsocial sociability,"
in which none can dispense with
yet none tolerate the other,
is the basic feature of empirical existence. Communication
on this level of
empirical existence can be characterized as
follows:

Danger forces everyone quickly and easily to compre-

hend what is necessary. But how this is understood is
based upon the experience of the majority, the average,
that which when it is said is understood by everybody. The

similarity within the species defines what happiness or satis-

faction what is necessary for life.
is,

Further, on this level of communication, the greater the

danger, the more decisively is the unity of the will of all
necessary. And this is only to be secured through obedience.
Hence not every individual can decide what it is
necessary
to do to fulfill the interests in sheer existence.
How occur gives rise to the many forms of
this is to

government. In the communication of the community, we

do not find a simple relation between a single omniscient
commander and the masses of everybody else who unthink-

ingly obey; rather there are always many together in a

complex organization who in mutual understanding work
out their decision.
In the empirical community, therefore, insofar as we
isolate it in its meaning, it is the pragmatic concept of truth
which valid: truth does not lie in something already
is

known, or something finally knowable, or in an absolute,

but rather in what arises and comes to pass. Here there is
only a relative and changing truth, for empirical existence
changes. This process can run so that my opponent's
itself
82 Reason and Existenz

standpoint
which for me today is
wrong, tomorrow, in a
be relevant to my Con-
changed situation, may purposes.
structive acts in the community are perpetual compromises.

is the truth that every

which does not
Compromise forget

standpoint, no
matter how right seems, can also be refuted
it

for the con-

through the very fact of process. Accordingly,
the art of conversation must
tinuity of a living community
1
be developed.
2. The communication of consciousness as such [Be-
'wusstsein iiberhaupt] is that between point-consciousnesses,
dissimilar yet agreeing, which,
indifferently replaceable,
dichotomies of the knowabie (subject-object,
through the
form-matter, anything and its other), by means of all the
in affirmation and denial that which
logical categories, grasp
is valid for everybody. It is the communication of a self-
identical consciousness dispersed into the multiplicities of its

empirical existence. The communication occurs in a dis-

interested attention upon some matter one is

inquiring into,
either into its factual character or into its
validity through
agreed-upon methods of argument.
3. The communication
of spirit the emergence of the is

Idea of a whole out of the communal substance. The indi-

vidual conscious of standing in a place which has its
is

proper meaning only in that whole. His communication is

that of a member with its organism. He is different, as all
the others are, but agrees with them in the order which
comprehends all.
They communicate with one another out
of the common presence of the Idea. In this communica-
tion, it is as
though some whole not clearly knowabie by
consciousness as such spoke, limited itself, and gave indica-
tions of whence it came. When the communication is not
enlivened with the actual content of this whole, to that ex-
tent it
slips
into the indifferent and trivial.
 Truth as Communic ability 83

B. Comparison of meanings of truth.

In each of these three modes of the Encompassing which

we are empirical existence, consciousness as such, and

spirit
there is always an appropriate sense of truth.^JTruth
for jgmgjrical existence comes from usefulness of con-
custom. It is a function of

self-preserving and developing existence. Here truth is

not based upon its own independent grounds, but arises
out of action and exists for action in a mobility of generation
and preservation which ultimately is purposeless. In the
^

^ evidence pertains
to the understanding itself as a function of its grasp of the
timeless Tightness of what is universally valid,
of spirit, it is convictionj*^
Out of the substance of a
from my place in the com-
munity of the whole that which belongs to an historical
totality.
Intended pragmatic endurance, cogent evidence, and
full conviction are the three senses of truth in these three
forms of the Encompassing. A further comparison of com-
munication in the three modes will be concerned with the
nature of him who communicates, and who he is. For, in
fact, we
are not always identical on every level of meaning
in our speaking. In the multiplicity of speeches and asser-

tions, which so often are no longer understood, the question:

who speaks? is
clarifying.
If it is
empirical existence that speaks, not a question
it is

of truth in all earnestness, but rather, whether hidden or

clear, of what appears to this empirical existence as rele-
vant to his interests and desires, of what he seeks to satisfy
him in the world of the senses, of wealth, power, or what-
84 Reason and Existenz

ever other form the inevitably ambiguous "happiness" ap-

pears to him.
If consciousness as such speaks, then an absolutely uni-

understanding must occur in both speech and

versal, possible

reply for the speaking to be meaningful. meaningful A

argument therefore requires that the words describe some-
thing definite, that they not be equivocal, and the recogni-
tion that the contradictory cancels itself. It is therefore
which aims at something uni-
impossible to have a discussion
someone who does not regard the identity
versally valid with
of consciousness as such as the speaker. Such a one is en-

tangled in the empirical existence of a living being, "almost

like the plants" (Aristotle), and is to be regarded either as

such, or as a vital will which is

concealing But when
itself.

consciousness as such speaks, it is, in that respect, like an

empty, indifferently replaceable point.

For communication of spirit to be possible, it is not
sufficientthat I as a pure understanding recognize and
follow the principles of identity and contradiction. Who
speaks and understands here speaks out of the substance^F
alTTIea^^ which is not
merely an object in the world which could be known by
consciousness as such: Only out" of this hew source can the
meaning of wKatTssaTcTbe grasped and developed.
If we call a
community which understands itself a

"community of minds," then such a community has a three-

fold sense:

Empirically, it is a community of vital

sympathies and
it is itself
interests; continually mobile, always delimiting
against others, expanding, and then again breaking up into
smaller parts.
On the level of consciousness as such, it is the universality
of the general, that which binds men together identically
all

as
understandings in an impersonal community which has
no actual power and which is determined the by merely
valid.
 Truth as Communic ability 85

As a community of the spirit,

the members are united

through the knowledge of a whole into the community of

its Idea. It is
always a whole, never the whole, and it must
as a whole relate itself to other wholes and
always remain
uncompleted in its own actual existence.

II. A. The will to communicate of reason and Existenz; unsatis-

factoriness of the three modes of communication.

The representation of the human community in these

three modes of the Encompassing does not yet show what
truth really even though truth plays a role in each of the
is,

moments we have touched upon. And it has not yet shown

the final ground and basis for the possibility of communi-
cation.

Community through communication is found, to be sure,

already among the merely living existences; it is in con-

sciousness as such, and in spirit. However, on the level
it is

of mere vitality,
it can remain instinctive sympathies or
interests limited to certain purposes. In consciousness as

such, it can remain an unconcerned agreement upon what is

correct or valid; in spirit, a deceptive consciousness of

totality which however suddenly breaks off fellowship.

There is an insufficiency in every mode of the_Enom-

passing,, an insufficiency as~mucti in communication as in

truth. This insufficiency can be made intelligible initially by
pointing out the limits which show that no mode of the

Encompassing can stand by itself:

ings^
remains both unclearjjrj^^^ whose every
w5E"was lulfilied would be destroyed in consequence. No
happiness permanent, and every fulfillment is deceptive.
is

The meaninglessness of the will which is forever desiring

yet which has no goal is an old theme in philosophy.
Qonsciousness as such touches on the universally valid
86 Reason and Exist enz

truth. But its limit is that these indubitable validities as

such .are, trivialities, and they can be heaped up in a sense-

less infinity.
__
Spirit grasps the Idea of the
whole. Its limit
hpweyerjs
that which can not be absorbed into s^^^i^^^o^
theless-than-total, of the trontirrgent, of the merely factual.
If one level of the Encompassing is absolutized, we must

always question those characteristic phenomena which ap-

pear when the other modes of the Encompassing are neg-
lected and the limits of this one ignored.
i. What
happens when natural existence as such is not
only regarded as Being itself but also when one so acts?
What happens, words, when such a naturalistic
in other
idea is not only uttered, but when the idea is practiced, when
the absolutizing of the level of empirical existence is ac-

complished in fact?
When this happens there occurs a surrender of both the
universally valid truth of consciousness in general and the
Ideas of the spirit. To
be sure, in the beginning there still
can be present a certain honesty which grasps the de-
ceptiveness of merely intellectual thinking detached from
reality, of a detached and merely cultured In fact,
spirit.

many times a passionate "idealism" which strives for Sub-

stance can be found working in a new "materialism." But
afterwards, through the influence of the contents of the
thought insofar as their consequences are actually drawn,
the meaning of the hidden source of truth becomes lost, a

meaning which was still

present as a negative truthfulness
in a self-deceived will to authentic
being. Then it
might
happen that, recklessly following the contingencies and
laws of empirical existence, I would will else, I nothing
would renounce communication on the level of valid and in-
telligible
truth or effective Ideas in general. Or perhaps I
would merely savor them as attitudes or charming efforts in
realms irrelevant to and unaffected by the conflict of ex-
istence where force and cleverness rule, attitudes which
 Truth as Coirnnimlcability 87

have no real influence upon the will to know or communi-

cate. Thus conceived they are fraudulent experiences.
The
confidence in nature, whose origin is a metaphysi-
cal confidence in the grounds of Being, is changed into
a confidence in those insufficient, known, yet always ques-
tionable, regularities which scientific investigation wrings
out of appearance. The essence of man is lost in this blind re-
liance upon nature, where seems identical with
his existence

nature, and nature identical with knowable regularities. For

even if those regularities or laws were exhaustively known,
they would only make matter and biological life compre-
hensible, not man only man as a species of animal, which
could then be called the endangered, the sick animal. When
becomes the only pogjbjlity_irLjhe
t

known world, manjose^ of

fiis
impulses which, however, he cannotjkftjworkjgd^
of meaning.
maTlriam^
Thus, in the helpless confusionof his empirical existence
which ensues, his thought and spiritual possibilities vanish
into a thoughtless obedience to incomprehensible forces
above or in him, simply in order to exist here and now.
If we
extrapolate such a tendency to its limit in a distant
future, would be possible for man to relapse into an
it

animal-like existence which preserved a technical apparatus

like ants, but an apparatus which arose in another mental
world and remained as a residue. It would be only a self-

repeating, non-historical species of living thing, the result

of an astonishing, but now forgotten, intermediary moment
of humanity. What was once incorporated and proven In
the struggle for existence to be useful for the preservation
and expansion of existence would now have become instinct.
In all the chaos of natural existence, a long time
it could last

like other forms of life until, with a thorough change in the

living conditions on the surface of the earth, final catas-

trophe would also come to this species.

2.
WIiEjrf^ as such circles
88 Reason and Exlstenz

JL
validities^as absolute, as though the truth
werejtherebygrasped,
and laws of n^beyond ^ all relativity.
straction of the thinlong^conSciousness from Beingfjre-
Through the ab-

for the being which is living being and

sponsibility ceases
spiritTlrhe empty play
of a dissolving intellectualism begins,
a play which in fact is
actually directed by psychologically
knowable impulses.
3. The absolutizing of spirit in a
wealth of merely under-
stood contents simply is an intensified mode of the isolation
of thinking. In its self-satisfaction it creates a hollow world
of culture under contingent, favorable conditions, an object
of pleasure, of unreal longing, a realm of flight and nega-
tivity.

What is
unsatisfactory in the communication of the true
in all these hitherto mentioned modes of the Encompassing
could lie in the isolation of single modes. From this stand-
point, truecommunication is already under the following
demands: none of the modes can be ignored; to play off
one against the other is to miss the ground of their con-
nection. For true communication it is important to perceive
the limits of every level and therewith their inability to be

completed in themselves, and further, not to deceive one-

self by a fixation on one of the levels over the possibility of
a communication which goes through all.
The binding together of the modes of the Encompassing
is here in the form of a
rising series where the succeeding
can be real only under the conditions set by the preceding.
The termination of the preceding in isolation against the

succeeding always means a specific break-off of communi-

cation. Thus a two-fold formal requirement is laid upon
T5n5*' > *

it is
that^ j^dition^^^
For example, communication on
t thejlevel of mere existence
 Truth as CommunicablUty 89

must be under the condition ^jhat^eyident ruth remains

valid and underjhe Ideas _of sgiri^) The higher level can
not be actualized forjtself in isolation, but only under the

presuppositions of the lower which it delimits and breaks

through but to which it must hold fast. Thus the will to
knowledge must not forget its incorporation as science in
the community of human beings, nor must the spirit forget
itsentire dependence upon empirical existence if
they are
not forthwith to disappear.
The higher levels are made possible by the effects of the
lower and, perhaps, influenced by them. The lower on the
other hand are given direction by the higher in always
determinate ways.
In empirical existence the higher levels are the weaker.
For the lower levels can stand without the higher, not in
their authentic truth, but still as sheer existents. From this
two consequences follow: First, there is

umvgc^obKgarions^ Encompassing
without considering their
r^tion^^^e^^^^J"e^^mce^

s. Thus Max Weber in the political

sphere opposed an ethics of principle which would let it-

selfbe pushed to destruction through adherence to some
single law (acting unconditionally according to moral
axioms and justifying itself
by having willed the good and
trusting in God for the result). He argued instead for an
ethics of responsibility where one is concerned also for
the consequences (even though the formulations of such
an ethics can be misused arbitrarily). I let myself and my
friends be pushed into the position of the weaker, the

impotent, the ruined, by holding to attitudes which may be

valid on own level; but, where I am not acting on this
their

level, I simply am misused and abandoned to the cleverness

of others.

Secondly, endless duration of empirical existence as such

520 Reason and Existenz

can not be a meaningful goal. Man can endure as a sheer

existent,but he ceases thereby to be man, just as every
living being can die, and dead matter have the victorious
duration. The lower in rank, the greater the durability of a

being. The higher levels are the more mobile, more im-
periled, more perishable. The will to endure in time, except

through the limited continuity of a changing and ful-

filling historicity, is a misunderstanding of the meaning of
these higher levels.
Thus everywhere we see how the absolutization and
one mode of the Encompassing shows its limits
isolation of
and at the same time the falseness which arises therewith.
The unsatisfied will to communicate can be
only satisfied

according to the formula: every mode of communicability

has its right, none can be omitted. It would always be a
fault in the realization of my will to communicate if I were
to ignore any level as unimportant.

Further, since the modes of the Encompassing are not

separate things which can be set alongside one another and

which together as a sum make up what I am as a whole,
it is
inadequate to present them as alternatives for some
supposed choice. Rather it is necessary to apprehend them
in their order of rank.
But this whole way of looking at things still some-
leaves

thing in us unsatisfied. It is as
though the had not
essential

yet been said. WJiSLk^ unsatisfactory can be felt

first of all in this;
thatjtl^modes^^

Neither can the essentij^^

munication and truth in the three modes be effaced; nor
can they be reduced to a knowable totality. It would be a
deception to suppose that the modes of the Encompassing
and the kinds of communication could grow into one
another so that a harmonious whole would be
possible in
temporal existence.
dissatisfaction of ours, that first strove to
 Truth as CommunicabiUty 91

grasp all the modes of communication together and then

D J^rM-""-"""" ""- * ' ='" Mum* MmuHw ..
IW^WUMMR,, ~M' !> !<<
-" """
u*l I" *"">' "*" 3"S ' ' I 1
J "* 1 1 " ** <."

its of an
experienced impossibility, sprang jout impulse,
which, in its unlimited dissatisfaction and its open readiness
belongs to none of the three modes of
for all sides, itself the

Encompassing. Even the will to communicate in these three

modes holds its own energy at the service of a universal
will to communicate which comes out of reason and
Existenz. Let us now characterize this further. 2

B. Existential and rational communication.

even the basic problem for empirical existents, which

If

can endure only through community, is how one is to

understand the other, how we can think and will the same
things so that we can be actively bound together,
then the
authentic human essence, Existenz and reason, can nowhere
be touched as deeply as by the question of its communi-
cation.
The communication of Existenz is
accomplished through
membership in the spirit, through the umversaEty'bf "croti-
sciousnessjis such,* tfimG^li proving itself in empirical' exist-
ence, but also by breaking through these, ^passing beyond ^ u

them in tlie loving struggle

of jhos^who jwfljljto beeping

tlfems^lyes.J|i contrast to the communication of identical

and indifferently replaceable points of consciousness as such,
communication is between irreplaceable in-
this existential
dividuals. In contrast to the ^ sl 01 existence over

power, superiority^ ^n^mm^^tion^h^ro^^ struggle"bver

the*content of Existenz is
withouy^j^^
sffile sense;f 'if is alstrap^^ *",
of tEe U3J-
_ f j , ,< <*<>
""^B^cy ^ ,>, tt ,^, iwu ^ ,,,,
vidual comes only if the other ^adyaneesjtpo, and every
destruction of the other jsjny. own. In contrast to spiritual

community, where there is

security in the comprehensive
Idea, does not overlook thefcraEETrTBeuig"for us, and it
it

is
open for Transcendence, It expresses the inevitability of
struggle in temporal existence and
the inability of truth to
be completed by unceasingly pushing the movement of com-
P2 Reason and Existenz

munication forward as the authentic appearance of truth/To

preserve
oneself would beprecisely to lose oneself.

aMxistenz, then, only .becomes apparent and thereby real

if it comes to itself through^ and at the same time with,

another Existenz, What is authentically human in the com-

before in physical
munity of reason and Existenz is not, as
of naturally generated ex-
simply present in a plurality
life,

amples, which
then find one another and bind themselves

together.Rather communication seems to produce for the

first communicating: independent natures
time that which is

which come to consciousness of themselves, however, as

of em-
though they were not touched by the contingencies
pirical existence,
but had been bound together eternally.
Since this occurs in historical situations which are always
new, every form of Existenz which unfolds itself in com-
munication is both the revelation of an irreplaceable (because
historical) and essentially never repeatable selfhood, and
also an unconditional binding together of historical men.

Now, in existential communication, reason is what pene-

trates everything. Existenz as the ground bears in its depths
the which is present in all modes of the Encompassing,
organ
which is the universal bond as well as the unrest which dis-
turbs every fixation. Reason, having its substance in Exist-
en2bJiiis^^
with another, and it arises
ij^suchji^
existence, consciousness as such, an5 jpirit are^sp
:
jto speak,
tlie
body of its appearance. Not for an instant is reason with-
out these, and they are all moved and changed by it,
Reasonis
potential Existenz which in its thinking is con-
tinually directed upon an other, upon the Being which we
are not, upon the world, and upon Transcendence. What
these are then becomes communicable and, therewith, being-
f or-us, but in the formality through which
they authentically
touch Existenz. Reason is present as an unlimited drive in
 Truth as Cowrmunicability $3

empirical existence, in consciousness as such, and in the

spirit.
No
range is sufficient for it; as a passionate will-to-
know oriented toward the world, it reaches no end. How
Existenz shipwrecked upon Transcendence becomes clear
is

through reason. Reason moves toward rendering all Being

transparent to itself only to experience the shock of the ab-
solutely opaque, which as such is accessible only to the
clearest reason.
^jL2ffi^^
reason is the same time the measure of the ^

"con^
men who are altered
^emrum^^
ablewa^s.
The higher sense of the word reason should be preserved.
It should not sink to mean mere
comprehensiblity, spirit-
uality, or the necessities of empirical existence. Its sense
however can not be immediately expressed or pointed out in
a fixed definition but
only through the movement of a phil-
osophical logic.
Communication remains original and unrestricted only
where reason is dependably present, a reason which as a
source can not be objectified nor directly perceived In
any
argumentation. It is truth itself, the total will-to-communi-
cate.
That man always holds himself still in reserve, or, so to
speak, hovers over what he knows, does, is, somewhere has
its limits if he is not nothing, or
he is not merely the formal
if

empty point of this hovering. The limits are there where he

is; he is himself as reason, and he is reason as potential Exist-

enz. But, as a
consequence, reason and Existenz can not be
objectified like the modes of the Encompassing. Where
J^OStenz,, jajo&jn is

reachedjxcept tlK^ner^
of Existenz throu ,

TEe 'way in which

reason and Existenz belong together is
not, however, that of mere identity. If Existenz finds the
94 Reason and Existenz

limit of counter-rational in every sense, which coin-

what is

cides with the break-off of all communication, still, it can

in itself only through reason. This
perceive this possibility
negative Existenz, to which no thought and being can fol-
low, remains true that is, does not collapse into the restric-
mode of the Encompassing, but remains as
tions of a definite

something and without a world before an incomprehen-

lost

sible Transcendenceonly by a path which leads above the

full realization of the reason which it has finally sur-
3
rendered.

C. Resume of meanings of truth.

If Existenz and reason ground and
are, so to speak, the
bond of the three modes of the Encompassing which we are,
we now can summarize our comparisons of the senses of
truth in these three modes:
1. We distinguish among the senses of truth pragmatic
evidence for
preservation of empirical existence, cogent
consciousness as such, and conviction in the spiritual
Idea.

As Existenz, I experience truth in faith whose truth however

is not yet comprised in those three. Where there is no effect-

ivepreservation of existence, no demonstta^^^^tude^o

there I come upon a depth of
longerliny "saving^jwholeness,
truth whererwithout
, unwKww, w
+* i <
leaving tKaf
^jnr',-lii-rw-r-***'* ** *" "*
kr
whole wfffcITT?S5y "actual
1 <n ' 1 * '
l
s*a^
of the
w|j^iJL^^
experience of Transcen^^ "~" " w *"
anTouFofk.
2. *We
distinguish in these meanings
of truth who it is
that speaks in communicating the truth. In existential and
rational communication, it is the existing man who speaks

decisively the man who

not merely living vitality, nor
is

merely an abstract understanding, but who is himself in all

of these.
3. We
distinguish modes in the community of mind.
Existenz finds itself in a realm of mind which can not be
closed, of Existenz open before Transcendence. Out of
 Truth as Communic ability py

such a realm, the forms of community which develop in the

modes of the Encompassing first derive their soul, while
these forms always remain the indispensable appearance, the
condition for the actualization of Existenz a condition
which must be both participated in and broken through.

III. A. The meaning of truth and the will to total

communication.

The dissatisfaction with every particular mode of com-

munication leads to a will to total communication, a will
which can only be one and which is the authentically driv-
ing and binding force in all the modes of communication.
But this will to communicate, which actualizes itself out
of potential Existenz through reason in the three modes of
the Encompassing, itself does not reach fulfillment. For it is

continuously bound within the three modes, and, although

aroused and moved, yet it is, so to speak, muddied in its
mode. And, finally, it finds itself limited through its own, as
well as through others', historicity. This historicity both
brings communication in its depths before the multiplicity of
truth and also lets it be wrecked.

Fromjh^^ ,firstjthat,
if trm^^ truth itself can

t djjgmaticjiut:
municative. Outof the consciousness of a becoming truth,
first
springs the possibility of a radical openness of the will to
communicate in actuality a will, however, that can never
fulfill itself
except in an historical moment which, precisely
as such, becomes incommunicable.
There follows secondly, in being wrecked by the multi-

plicity of truth, a self -recovery of the unlimited

will to com-
municate in an attitude which just as resolutely envisages
failure in the whole while it nevertheless holds to its
path,
not knowing where it leads.
It follows
thirdly that, if truth in communication can
never be definitively won and established truth like com-
$6 Reason and Existenz

munication seeing itself, so to speak, disappear before Tran-

scendence, change before Being nevertheless, its resolute
actualization brings forth also the deepest openness for
Transcendence.

B. The double sense of truth in time (dogmatic and communi-

cative truth).

The question is, how far total communication is the real-

ity of truth,
our truth in time. The question will become
clear by distinguishing two senses of truth in time:
When truth seemed to be grasped historically and con-

clusively in
object, symbol, and expression, then the ques-
tion still remained how such a truth, attained and now pres-
ent, was to be transmitted to all men. Such truth was closed
in itself, timeless in time, and therefore complete to itself
and independent of men. But men had their value dependent
upon it. Communication from man to man then began which
T
was not cooperative prbHiaHi6n7"Burra5Eier a giving of a
possessed truth, to which jhey^refejred t
bm which they
diJ'not participate. And therewith began the process by
it in, understood
which this truth
changed. For they took
it in itself, but in fact there was no surrender to it. The truth,
instead of being given to meri while it itself remained in its

original purity,was watered down and perverted, or, in the

transformation, became something totally different out of
new origins. Its spread among men in such forms went to
the limits beyond which its further spread was factually im-

paired.
The truth which from the first would bind itself to com-
munication would be different. It would not be found out-
side of its
incorporation in communication. In itself, it

would neither be nor be complete. As conditions, it would

have changes, not only in the men to whom it would be
communicated, but also in the men who would communi-
cate, in consequence of their readiness and ability to com-
municatetheir resolute capacities for speaking and hear-
 Truth as Communic ability 97

ing and their inward perception of all modes and levels of

communication. It would be a truth which would arise for
the first time in communication, which would become
actual only in and through it; it would be a truth which is
neither already here to be transmitted to another, nor which

presents us with a methodically attainable end in which it

could be valid without communication.
Historically,permanent truths have been developed into
philosophical and religious techniques for the formation of
men. All those exercitia spiritualia, yoga exercises, and mys-
tic initiations have sought to transform the individual into a

perception of the truth, not by communication, but by a

self-sufficient discipline. ButJdLQn&-will.iioiLjemain satisfied
with such fixed, leveling, fina!5 and therefore degenerative
types of man supposed fulfillment, even though they
as his
have their own -magnificence, he will need a deeper
may
discipline of a communication continually, exercised with
perspicuity
/That which was often reached by restriction to
rationally clear enHs but which beyond that
accomplished
little In historical communities, and that little
always ques-
tionablethat must be_ the, beginning; what is required is
the bringing forth of humanity under the conditions of a
communication which is not deceptive, not superficial,
not degenerating, but limitlessly clarifying.
But, even in this communication, falsehood must also be
present insofar as truth, in its never complete,
movement, is

but in every factual completion also remains continuously

open.
Again, there is a radical abyss between the dogmatic and
the communicative modes of knowing the truth;
If the
presupposition is made of a permanent truth which
as such isaccessible to us, and if it is valid as something
fixed outside of me that is
already there needing only to be
found, then our problem is
simply to discover it, and not to
produce it. Then, either there would be a single world-
order of a purely immanent sort and our problem would be
 Reason and Existenz

to set it
up, or there would be a Beyond which is
only like
another world in safer prospect.
Jiowever, truth for us in every form i^ams^limit
If
in the realization^f^communica5ra7 "tEerTthe insurmount-
of the worf<"an3"all
must Be
shipwrecked jn^the world, and none
can substitute itself

absolutely for the truth.^ ^

If, therefore, there is truth in this last way, then it can
not some Beyond
only be in the Transcendence which is
as a mere second world, or this world taken again as a better
world. The idea which grasps Transcendence from the
unfulfillment of all communication and from the ship-
wrecking of every form of truth in the world is like a proof
of God: from the unfulfillment of every sense of truth and
under the assumption that truth must be, thought touches
upon Transcendence. Such an idea is valid only for Exist-
enz which is an absolute concern for truth, and to whose
honesty truth, as a single, unique, and static possession of
timelessness, never shows itself in the world.

C The openness of the will-to-communicate on its path

through existence.

Philosophically, to become conscious of communicative

truth comes to this: so to think through all the modes of
the Encompassing that potential Existenz has the largest

space in the world. Existenz, as irremediably a movement in

time, should hold itself open before the whole range of
possibilities and actualities. Only then can that radical
will-
to-communicate which springs out of reason and Existenz
work; whereas the possession of truth as though it were
conclusively asserted in fact breaks communication off.
is a double

^ first, openness to the knowability of what is not

yet
ince,th,at ;wlucl^
it were not at all, openness strives to, brintg, every ^possibility
 Truth as Communlcability

into the medium of communicatJOT.spjhat^

Being for us. Secondly", this openness must be ready to

encounter tfte substance of every being that really communi-
cates with me as another who I am not, but in solidarity
with whom I can without limit will to become myself. This
loving search of men reaches no termination.
Myconsciousness however remains continually restricted:
in the first place, by that being which, lacking communi-
is not for me but which, unnoticed
cability, by me, works
upon my existence and my world; and, in the second place,
by the empirical existence and Existenz of others who are
not identical with me and do not think in the same way, but
who through their communication also determine my em-
pirical existence without my knowing it, and whose com-
munication can bring me still closer to myself. Hence my
consciousness is never the absolutely true consciousness f 01
it is
Through this unexpected effect, I am
never the whole.
continually reminded not to stop in the movement toward
truth; otherwise my own truth will discover that matters
themselves have gone beyond me. Truth, said Hegel, is in

league with reality against consciousness. This reality is

given in the workings of what is not communicated, and
perhaps is incommunicable, in the world, as that which we
hear without understanding what comes between us, and as
what we can only suffer. Theunlimited
^ to the othei
^
^ a transfor-
""""

Living in the totality of the Encompassing in which 1

find myself therefore necessarily a venture. Clarification

is

itself shows me in a situation of venture, not because I seel*

danger out of bravado, but because I must venture. Onty

a which remains blind can mask from itself this standing
life

riskjand
remain between the polarity of supposed safety
and a rising, but then immediately forgotten, anxiety, II
wo Reason and Exist enz

isrisk to see the possible pushed to its highest degree, to dare

to*"entice it out at the risk of one's own openness and

bearing responsibility for which men I trust and how I

trust myself and knowing that on every level communi-

cation is only possible among equals. I must assume respon-

sibility for
failure and deception, perhaps as a crisis in
which communication can for the first time grow, perhaps
as a disaster which I can not understand.

D. The many-fold existential truth for the radical will-to-com-

municate.

Where the Encompassing remains present in every f orm,

the will-to-communicate can be genuinely total; and there
Existenz stands before its final limits: that there are many
truths in the sense of existential absolutes.
To recognize philosophically this multiplicity of truths
can seem fickle. One can object: only a single truth is the

truth absolutely, if not for God at least for man; man can
not act categorically if he does not believe his truth to be
the only one.
To this there is a
reply.jiricgjtj^ jjmgo^ible f^iMnjto
have Transcendence iflJOTlfi js a knpwable object, identical

^^^e^k&iy^ every mode of

thj3nj^
be historicjybjracra
^ since it is not
<

2j]^^
impossible, but only psychologically infinitely difficult, for
a man to act according to his own truth, realizing at the same
time the truth of others which is not truth for him, holding
fast to the relativity and particularity of all universally,
valid truths since it is not
impossible, he must not shirk
this highest demand of truthfulness which is only apparently
incompatible with that of others. The Idea of man can not
be projected too high so long as the absolutely impossible is
avoided, that which contradicts his finitude in time. The
empirically improbable, i.e., that which is
improbable in
 Truth as Communic ability 101

the light of the actual, average, observable human species,

is not valid before the Idea of a communication ready
for anything, which is possible in the basis of human
nature. Before the empirical reality such an Idea changes
itself into an
unending problem whose limits of accom-
plishment are not foreseeable.
The most radical disruption of communication lies close
to the existential recognition of the plurality of truths. Yet
the total will-to-communicate, once it is on its way, can not
surrender has a confidence in itself and in possi-
itself. It

bilities world which may be deceived again and again,

in the
but it can doubt only its limited expressions, never its own
principle. It trusts the truth of others which is not its own,
but which, as truth, must contain a possibility of communi-
cation. Thus it can not collapse absolutely under the burden
of failure. Perhaps a courageous modesty suits it best, -where
it
projects a vision of its path as an Idea, to be sure without
any extensive reality, but as an expression of a possibility
which never betrays itself.
For example, the greatest extremes of clarity and truth can
still"enter into warring enmity" if, in the struggle for ex-

istence, fundamentally and essentially different E^istenzen

apprehend unavoidably diverse .destinies. Out of their

potential communication, they may put the srruggle
under rules, thereby ceasing to be concealed beasts, and
Sght chivalrously, that is, under laws which presuppose
potential Existenz on both sides, and which do not make
if this were
genuine 'future communication impossible. Yet,
attained, the leap to genuine communication would already
in fact have been
accomplished; the struggle would be
subordinated to conditions, no longer a course of events
flowing from the necessities of empirical existence, but
rather like a play, even though a play which is portentous,
life-imperiling, and perhaps life-destroying.
Only thus would an unlimited will-to-communicate be
honestly maintained. A humanity might arise
which would
202 Reason and Exist enz

not be weak, but rather capable of unforeseeable growth

real Substance, a unique
through openness, touched by every
consciousness of limits where the reality of action points,
not to some dogmatically hardened, but rather to a genuine
Transcendence.
Only thus can the genuine strength of man be developed.
The power of the absolute in man tested in every possibility
of struggle and questioning no longer needs the power of
suasion, hatred, and cruelty in order to become active; nor
the intoxication of magniloquent words and unintelligible

dogmas in order to be believed in. And in such ways it

would
thus can
only become rough, harsh, and disillusioned. Only
self-deception disappear without
man also being destroyed
through the destruction of his vital lies.
Only thus does the
genuine Ground reveal itself unmasked
out of the depths.
On the other hand, falseness sets in with the assertion of
a singletruth as valid for all men, despite the greatness of
the men who lived thereby and the greatness of their
history.
This shown by the most manifold connections. If
is

this one truth in the form of an intuitive, universal validity

is taken as the form of all truth and for the work of reason,

or inversely as a super-rational or counter-rational matter

of faith, then everyone must bow before such a mighty
truth without thereby being able to be himself. Thus, as a

consequence of the false presupposition of a unique form of

truth accessible to man, and as a consequence of what is con-
nected therewith the perversion of the multiplicity of the
Encompassing an incomprehension continually arises at the
limits of what does not agree with one's own truth. Then sud-

denly a fanaticism appears which disrupts all communica-

tion. In the apparently free medium of speech, communi-
cation, listening, showing, and the giving of reasons, secretly
the brutal force of what is momentarily the most powerful
in existence is
deciding.
However, a doctrine of the plurality of truths would
 Truth as Communic ability 105

have the same effect in producing falseness, if it appeared as

a dogma of the deplorable multiplicity of truths instead of
being an attitude of unlimited willingness to communicate
one's own possible truth. The plurality of truths is untrue
at the moment when they are seen externally as many, as
determinable standpoints; for every standpoint can also
absorb him who thinks it. They become even more untrue
when they become mutually indifferent and simply rest

alongside one another. Whatjwill nojL^nd what can not

becon^^
Transcendence^^
go<3^^
distant God, which
J[qui^^

is the

sophistry of an easy tolerance which wishes to be valid, but

not to be really touched. On the other hand, there is the
truth of tolerance which listens and gives and enters into the

unpredictable process of communication by which force is

restrained; in such a process, man reaches from his roots to
The very highest arrives only
the heights possible for him.

through a transforming appropriation, through a knowl-

edge which, even though it repudiates itself, searches into
everything which can be encountered in the world.
To demand fulfillment and salvation in time, or even the
picture of salvation, would be to cancel the problem of
men, who must always become themselves through com-
munication. It comes to this: never close off authentic
possi-
bilities of human development by anticipation.
Our horizon is not closed off with the contents of com-
pleted pictures. What is final for us philosophically is the
forms of our attitude, sketches of a project which itself
is to be
thought of only as form, truths which are experi-
enced only in their tendency, not alien impossibilities, but
rather possibilities which are just beginning to speak even
when they also appear to sink away again.
104 Reason and Exist enz

E. Transcendence: appearance of temporal existence as

communication.

The unfulfillment of communication and the difficulty

of bearing its become the revelation of a depth
shipwreck
which nothing other than Transcendence can fill. If God
is eternal, still for man truth is as a developing truth, indeed,
a truth developing in communication. A^stracted_Jrom
this as something permanent, truth instead
w
r
^i
___^ "JeF5ST5ateTEiowledge, into a fin-

tOTiporaTexistence.
"Before" Transcendence, however, the unfulfillment of
communication disappears as the temporal appearance of
truth. Our communication is, so to speak, animated by some-

thing which expressed in the play of some metaphysical

is

ideas: a pretemporal origin of a temporal need to communi-

cate, or a final fulfillment which surpasses communication.
Such ideas can not make anything
clearly knowable, but
in their collapse they can touch for a moment the over-

whelming impulse which is the actual power in genuine

communication.
In the
beginning
was the One, the Truth asjns inaccessible
to us* But it is as though the lost One should be recovered
from its dispersionb^c^mun^ation; as though the con-
fiisiM^ resolve it^ITTn^^^rtKrough

conjunction; as though a forgotten truth coald never again

be \vhblly attained.
Or, Truth lies in the future. In temporal existence, to be
sure, there is an awareness of limits: what is not communi-
cable is as though it were not, since it is not for any con-
sciousness or knowledge. But precisely in communication
the drive goes out beyond these limits, not at all to fall back
into stupor, but to go onwards into unlimited disclosure so
that what is can show itself by entering into communication.
But then the drive goes beyond the greatest existential
 Truth as Communic ability /oy

for there always remains something unsatisfied in it.

clarity,
The high moments of seemingly perfect agreement of com-
munication in the thoroughgoing presence of all modes of
the Encompassing, of the knowable, and of Transcendence
show themselves even in time either to be false, or to be
seeds again for new efforts toward disclosure, toward con-

tinuity in time. They are like anticipations of a possible

fulfilled communication, which would mean at the same
time completed truth and a timeless unity of the soul and
the cosmos. The idea of such an as a communica-
unreality
tion which reaches goal means the elevation of communi-
its

cation into a transcendent

perfection where there is no
longer any need to communicate. The question whether, in-
sofar as we have an unlimited will-to-communicate out of
Existenz and reason, we do not
already live out of this
guiding and communicationless Being such a question is
not to be answered. Either the
question asks something that
is for us or it becomes an
perfectly empty unquestionable
certitude which dispenses with communication and, falsely
expressed, only destroys itself. That is, it would paralyze the
working of an unconditioned will-to-communicate by a
specious knowledge about perfect communication.
If all communication must be
thought of as canceled in
Transcendence, as a lack in temporal existence, then all coii-
is also canceled. For
ceivability in general example, I think
upon the old proposition that God is the Truth. Then such
a Truth has
nothing to correspond with, since it is un-
divided and without opposition, whereas all other truths
are modes of agreement. In fact, such an idea is
empty and
can only be felt existentially by me historically. Here where I
can not penetrate, truth can retain no thinkable sense. The
shipwrecking of all thinking about truth can shake one in
his depths, but can not
provide a tenable thought.
The stillness of the being of truth in Transcendence
not by abandoning the modes of the
Encompassing, but in
surpassing their worlds such is the
boundary where what
/ 06 Reason and Exist enz

the Whole is
beyond all division can momentarily flash out.
But this illumination is
transitory in the world and, although
of decisive influence upon men, incommunicable; for when
it is communicated it is drawn into the modes of the En-

compassing where it is ever

lacking. Its experience is abso-
lutely historical, in time out beyond time. One can speak
out of this experience, but not of it. The ultimate in thinking
as in communication is silence.
 707

-fourth lecture

THE PRIORITY AND LIMITS OF

RATIONAL THOUGHT

The question of the priority of thought

The modes of the Encompassing are: i) as the Encom-

passing which we are: empirical existence, consciousness
as such, and spirit; ii) as
Being itself: world and Transcend-
ence. They have their roots in Existenz, their bond in reason.
Insofar as we are objects of investigation to ourselves,

empirical existents, we are ourselves world; here the Encom-

passing which we are intersects with the Encompassing
which is Being itself insofar as it appears as world.
When we inquire into the priority of one of the modes,
it seems that the Encompassing is conceived by us as
in levels, and in levels of such a sort that the earlier lose
substance without the later, while the later without the
without actuality.
earlier are To
be sure, Transcendence has
in but it is hidden. None of the other
priority being;
modes of the Encompassing can claim an absolute pri-
ority in being; each is indispensable in the whole a
whole, moreover, which is no mere sum of levels, but an
internally articulated structure of modes
of Being and
io8 Reason and Exist enz

mode of Transcendence.
each belongs to the cryptogram
But there is a hierarchy,, surely of Existenz over empirical
existence and over "spirit, and of spirit over consciousness as
such. If we were to express the meaning of this hierarchy in
terms such as, "in case of conflict the higher rank should
not have touched the real issue. For
5

prevail/ we would
there are conflicts only on the same level. In order to come
into conflict, the meaning of the higher must appear in a
form which can enter into that of the lower, where it
can touch another form which in itself would be as nothing
without power from above. More occurs in the struggle
for existence than mere struggle for existence; and in spiritual
conflict, more than this alone; the event of existential com-
munication opens a view into Transcendence. The question
of the hierarchy of the modes of the Encompassing is an

ontological question, and

not one merely of the comparative
values of modes of Being or of their possible conflict which is
never possible anyway except on the level of one of the
modes.
To speak of the priority of thought has a totally,
dif-

ferent meaning. Thought has a formal priority, not a pri-

ority in being or value. The priority of thought

means
that no mode of the Encompassing can be present to us .or
becomes effective in us unless its content enters into the
medium of thought.
While the Encompassing in all its modes is more than
mere thought, thougKt, has its formal priority, firstly,
'because it
penetrates everywhere, because nothing
can with-
draw itself from its contact. Everything else becomes the
.

matter, impulse, meaning and goal, content and fulfillment

of thought. Even though the actual existence of all modes
of the Encompassing has priority over thought which is
dependent upon them, is animated by them, and draw:s
its

objects from them, still this priority itself

is first
brought
to light and to its full range as though to its origins by

thought. Nothing can withdraw itself from the universality

 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought / 09

of thought., It is thought which turns

everything else into a
possibility for us. Its-
origins are disclosed and its suitable
development permitted by thought. There is nothing which
can come into appearance without thought.
Secondly, in addition to power this of
rendering things
present, thought priority because it is the, only me-
ha<?

dium through which the modes of the Encompassing can

Income related to one another. There is never a single, true,
1

and finally correct form of the Encompassing in time.

Thought is the thorn which forces them to order themselves
one to the other; thought is the medium of movement in the
Whole.
The universality of thought is not merely a fact of
human nature, but a demand made by its freedom upon it-
self. But this universality can appear as a fatality because,

through formal priority of thought, everything can

,the
become evacuated into the mere form of the thinkable, and
humanity can be dissolved into the
empty play which
universally touches upon everything without penetrating
into anything, or
becoming naybodv. The originally positive
aspect of opening up possibilities becomes in formalization
something negative which destroys everything serious in
reality. But now, if one turns against thought, the struggle
can only succeed by thought. The destruction of
thought
always remains itself still thought, but now violent, simplis-
tic, narrow, and self -blinding thought. The fate of thought is
the destiny of our humanity; the danger that lies therein is-
in the unceasing questioning over the
path of fulfillment to-
ward a reality which has come to itself and been awakened
into development, possibilities first liberated
by thought
itself.

The formal priority of thought is

destroyed in its for-
malization but is real in the priority of rational
thought.

The universality of thought might seem to be identical

with the mode of the Encompassing which is conscious-
no Reason and Exist enz

ness as such. And In fact the form of thought has its

origin
here. It is not merely identical with it, but is consciousness
as such transcending itself. That there is this transcending,

that universality is willed radically, arises, not from con-

sciousness as such, but from the totality of the modes of the

Encompassing which we are. They all push toward the light

through which they first genuinely
come into being; all
are reason in this sense. Thus, they want to become clear,
to all the modes of
they want to become whole in relation
the Encompassing; they will the universal in some sense, to
come under law and order.
But this is only possible because even what is non-
rational in this sense is affected by reason. It first becomes

being-for~us by being affected by reason. The non-ra-

tional acquires being and meaning for us only through its
connection with reason. Reason is the indispensable. Thus,
I
perceive ignorance
itself through knowledge, and perfect
ignorance only through
the maximum of reason. The uni-

^^ but
Js

Therefore, while the modes of the Encompassing might

find their fulfillment in clarity, totality, in the universal,
inlaw and orderreason, although it pushes them on this
way, itself is beyond them not only because it can find
satisfaction in no clarity, whole, or order, but also because
it is
open to the essentially unclear, the genuinely fragmen-
tary, and to the non-rational
itself.

That which is
logically graspable, consistent, univocally
to consciousness as such is rational in the narrowest
present
sense, the understandable. What is
a-logical to the under-

standing, the Other at the

limits of understanding, must
itself be felt as rational

Weonly grasp the a-logical in transcending. are We

natures which not only inquire into the things in the world,
hnt also into ourselves and into the Whole. Thus, to be
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought 1 11

sure, we are real only as empirical existents, as consciousness

as such, and as spirit; but therein we are also beyond our-
selves and beyond every determinate mode of our empirical
existence, beyond every determinate content of thought,
and in this "beyond" we first come to ourselves and to
Transcendence.
Already m jdj^jmeja^^
passing which we have tried, we have transcended in
thought owar3'TM^^
that which bhd~ every ^determinate
passes "Fey jobjectivity.
For the ig^^Fd^^F^e'^Encon^^i^^
clarification'jof
wFKave used^woFcfs'and corTcepts'lvM^h^hM^^
meaning for definite things in the world; now however
they
are used to go beyond the limits and are not to be under-
stood in their original sense, but rather as
objectifying
aids in the the
bringing non-objective, Encompassing to
expression.
The question is what this transcending thought means.
It should have an influence upon inner life; it aims at
making
communicable the non-objective, that which does not ap-
pear like things in the world. It is only for consciousness
as such that the object of thought is directly
intelligible
simply as the presence of the object or concept, as identical
for every understanding, and whose concrete content is

given through what can be perceived and through the

trivialities of what can be and universally felt by
identically
everybody. In transcending thought, on the other hand,
comprehension is only possible through an encounter in
real experience of that
Encompassing about which one is
talking.
The communicability of thought which passes beyond
the understanding of consciousness as such comes to
forms which eventually run counter to the understanding.
Through reason, I catch sight of something which is only
communicable in the form of contradiction and paradox.
Here a rational a-Iogic arises, a true reason which reaches
/ 12 Reason and Existenz

of the under-
its goal through the shattering of the logic
standing.
What intended through these objectifications, which
is

never mean themselves, can be misunderstood if one tries

to grasp it immediately and directly. It is a basic error of
the mere understanding to suppose that to enter into thought
is to be made thinkable for consciousnss as such. But if

transcending expression is taken in direct literalness for

consciousness as such, its real meaning will be missed. Here
a false logic arises, an untrue reason in the shape of a logic
of the understanding.
is to be made
Indirect expression logically clear through
what is
a-logical to the understanding, and here there is
a perpetual possibility of misunderstanding in which all
that goes beyond the contents of consciousness as such
becomes a supposedly known object. What may be sense-
less for the understanding can be a necessary form of sense;

and that which to the understanding seems literal can be a

total perversion of the meaning of what is intended.

Thought seems to have its

power by restricting itself
to the validities of consciousness as such, through its identi-
cal, universal spread among all understandings, through the
technical mastery of the known; in contrast, transcending

thought seems impotent. It is

impotent, first of all, in its
form of thinking the unthinkable: it
always seems to be
canceling itself. It is
impotent, secondly, in its inadequate
objectification of its
transcending contents when it thinks
it can apply these contents in argument or technique. Thus
transcending thought experiences in confusion the ruinous
consequences of a perversion which seeks to use what is
impotent for consciousness as such. But in spite of all
impotence, this thought has a power which can be neither
willed nor controlled by technique, a power which can

silently bring forth a revelation and transformation in the

mosti interior being of man.
Fyom the immeasurable field of logical clarity in tran-
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought 113

scending and absolutely universal thoughtthought about

which alone it can be said that nothing is for us unless it
enters into thought we should now like to show in ex-

amples the two directions we have already characterized:

i) rational a-logic; ii) false
logicizing.

1. A. Rational a-!ogic; the circle as a necessary form of

genuine philosophy.

We shall start with a Kantian idea. Kant conceived all

objectivity as a material formed by the categories of the

subject which was consciousness as such. live in a We
world of appearance produced by us not, to be sure, in its
empirical existence, but in its
general form. The thing-in-
itself was absolutely hidden, a mere limiting concept implied
by the phenomenality of
empirical existents. Now the
categories like unity, plurality, substance, causality, etc.,
were for Kant to be derived from the original unity of the
thinking consciousness, the so-called unity of transcenden-
tal
apperception which bound whatever we might encounter
into the unity of an object. But Kant said, "this
unity which
a all is not at all the
precedes priori synthesizing concepts
category of unity." Kant thus requires us in thinking by
categoriesand, according to him, we can not think other-
wiseto grasp something which does not fall under the

categories. This he had to do since he wanted to touch the

origin of all
objectivity which itself could not be objective.
Thus, I must think a non-objectivity objectively, that which

grounds the categories, including that of unity, under the

category of unity. We
arrive thus in formal logic either at
a circle: unity is
explained through unity; or at a con-
tradiction: unity is not unity.
In genuine philosophies we find such circles and con-
all

tradictions at the decisive point, whether it is

metaphysics,
transcendental philosophy, or the clarification of Existenz.
And everywhere one sees the critics at work triumphantly
ii4 Reason and Exist enz

exposing these discrepancies and imagining the

criticized

philosophy thereby destroyed.

But it must be shown that such forms of thought are
necessary in philosophy by the nature of things. And, in
order to do this, we will first look at the process by which

these circles and contradictions arise, according to a purely

logical interpretation. To be sure

we shall not be interested
in those many which can be corrected verbally
mistakes
without further change, but rather in errors which appear
to be logically unavoidable and irresolvable.
There are many striking examples from antiquity. Epi-
menides the Cretan said, "All Cretans always lie when
they speak." Thus, that which Epimenides, a Cretan, said
is not true; thus his proposition, "all Cretans lie," is not
true, etc. Or there is the story of the sophist Protagoras and
his pupil Euathhis who took lessons from him but was to

pay only when he had won his first lawsuit. But Euathlus
took no cases. When Protagoras brought suit for his money,
Euathlus explained: "If I win this suit, I need not pay, for
the judgment is against you; and if I lose the suit, I also
need not pay since our agreement was that I must pay
only on winning my first suit." Or there is the argument
of the crocodile: a crocodile stole a child from its mother
and told the mother, "I will give it back to you if you
will give me the right answer to the following question:
Will I give you back your child?" The mother replied,
"Yon will not return my child; and now you must give
it back to me in either case. For if
my answer was right, then
you must return it
according to our agreement. And also
was wrong, for it would be wrong only if you did re-
if it

turn my child." But the crocodile answered, "I can not

return the child in either case. For if your answer is wrong,
then the child is not returned according to our agreement,
and if
your answer is right, then it is
right only if I do return
the child/'
Without going into the particularities and necessarily
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought / /y

more precise conceptions in these examples, we find as

the general principle of the difficulties that in each case
there is a so-called self-reflexivity. The lying Cretan says

something whose content cancels the saying of it, which is

then restored ad infinitum. The object of the trial of
Euathlus and the content of the mother's assertion are both
condition and conditioned. But we can only think meaning-
fully and unambiguously if in the content of our thought we
have two terms to be related; thus, in the relation of con-
dition, the conditioning and the conditioned must be dis-
tinct, and in the relation of object, the thing and its prop-
erties must be distinct. The error lies, not in the individual

conclusions, but in the premises where only a single term is

related to itself. As soon as two are distinguished, all the
difficulties fall
away, as well as the wit in these oddities
invented by the Greeks. These striking examples are so

easily grasped that the solution is easy. But we are interested,

not so much in these examples, as in the principle to be
grasped through them: of a limit to literal
conceivability
for us.
Now precisely in distinction from cognition of things
in the world, in philosophizing something is thought which,
to be touched upon, can permit nothing outside of its
if it is

being thought, since it is the fundamental origin; it may be

Being itself, or the condition of all objectivity as in the
Kantian philosophy, or it may be Existenz. We
always have
something which the understanding can not grasp but
which is decisive for our certainty of being, which is less
before us than present in our thought. The difficulties of
formal logic with respect to self-reflexivity must arise. If
we make the content of such philosophical ideas one' relative
term alongside of others, which we must do when we make
assertions, then, as so expressed, it is no longer of philosophi-
cal content. Therefore such assertions must be made re-
flexive.Thus, in general, the thinking of that which is in-
accessible to the understanding takes on the appearance of
/ r6 Reason and Exist enz

a logical impossibility or insolubility, where what is asserted

as the supposed cognition of something cancels itself out.

Only thus can we reach the point where the essential

sense of philosophical thinking is not displaced by a false

insight of the mere understanding.

In this double fashion, we can now understand what we
often experience in philosophical study. The result of phi-

losophizing is no statable ultimate insight but rather

an
accomplishment of thought in which our total conscious-
ness, the way in which Being is present to us, is changed.
And all philosophy which wishes to improve itself into
an unambiguous communication of knowledge by removing
its
apparent circles and contradictions falls, so to speak,
flat on its face and becomes totally empty.

The critique of philosophy therefore has as its task not

the removal of its circles and contradictions, but rather the

bringing of them to light in order to see whether they are

significant or merely empty circles. For the form of the
circle in fact returns in every philosophy, be it ever so
confused.
If, for example, a materialist explains the external world
as a creation of our physiological organization, more par-
ticularly our brain, still the brain, including his own, is
a part of the external world which can be observed under
local anesthesia, with a trepanation and mirrors. Thus the
brain becomes a creation of the brain formally the same
mode of thought which describes God as causa sui.

an interesting and stimulating investigation to follow

It is

the circles and other logical difficulties in philosophy and

to notice how
absurd stupidities have the same logical form
for the understanding as a deep contact with the limits.
But philosophical ideas no longer retain their total ex-
pressive power when reduced to these bare circles although
they are still preserved in seed. They are dissolved in such
a bareness as they are in objective knowledge which they are
always on the verge of becoming for the mere understand-
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought 1 77

ing.We can speak objectively and we men can not speak

otherwiseabout the absolutely non-objective only in forms
which cancel themselves out as objective.

B. Examples of the a-logical drawn from the clarification of

Existenz.

Let us now trace the a-logical form in the province of

Existenz-philosophy. Existenz is something which accord-

ing to its essence is incapable of being established as an em-
pirical existent and which, therefore, can not be dis-

criminated by any objective investigation. Thus it is as

though it were not; it is not verifiable as a stable reality in the

world.
should say, potential Existenz could truly be in an
If I
act which is not only not universal, but runs counter to it-
such an act being willed out of historical grounds and enter-
ing into rationality by itself, i.e., not from the outside
by some commandment of God then what is thus said
would be unverifiable. Objectively, one can not distinguish
whether a case of a brutal will to live based upon itself
it is

in arbitrary stubbornness (which can also occur in a negative

will to live, in a desparing negation of life) , or whether it
is an existential will arising out of the bases of concrete
history, related to Transcendence in true freedom, and thus
open to all rationality although unclear to itself.
Both of these two possibilities in their mere external ap-
pearance for the knowledge of consciousness as such look

alike, and are to be distinguished only by Existenz which can

see in them two things completely and essentially different.
In the same way, it is impossible to distinguish objectively
the ability of Existenz to be alone, which is the origin of
true communication, from the self-isolation of an empirical
existent which will only enter into commerce with others
under definitely settled conditions and not into authentic
communication. The truth of my communication is decided
by whether I can be alone before Transcendence in infinite
; 1 8 Reason and Exist enz

loneliness yet not be destroyed, but rather keeping my po-

tentialities ready. Man must be capable of being alone if he
is draw power and potentialities from the origins. On the
to
other hand if I withdraw from the difficulties of the world
in order to find escape in an impotent denial which is really
a non-willing, then I pass into a self-isolation without Tran-
scendence, I rotate about myself in the empirical existence of
my feelings and empty boredom.
In the clarification of Existenz, there are necessary modes
of expression which, in their paradox, touch indirectly the

only way upon the truth of Existenz. What we

possible
have just discussed
can then be expressed briefly:
I become bound to the depths of Being in its individual-
universal character, become existentially "historical," only
if I enter into and accept the restrictions of iny empirical
existence.
I am can be alone
only genuinely in communication if I

before Transcendence in my limits and bases.

are innumerable corresponding clarifications of
There
Existenz which can be crystallized in the following:
In action, I
truly accomplish something
out of po-
if I am
tential Existenz only consciously prepared to accept
its
shipwreck.
I am genuinely rational only if my whole reason factually
and for my knowing is grounded upon unreason.
I believe only through doubting whether I believe.

II. A. False logicizing: the perversion of existential assertions

shown in the examples given.

Such same time sources of misunder-

assertions are at the

standing and perversion. Their meaning would be destroyed,

for example, if I now willed the narrow restrictions of my

empirical existence, if I willed solitude, shipwreck, the non-

rational as such, or doubt.
Thus historicity is true only if, in its
acceptance and
thereby in the animation of one's own empirical existence,
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought 1 1$

the greatest range of openness for Transcendence is secured.

untrue no longer itself but mere empirical existence
It is

when its notion serves only to affirm the restrictions of

empirical existence, a life which is
precisely non-historical.
In this way it would submerge empirical existence into it-
self in a fruitless anxiety over itself and its value.
Further, if I should take the assertion, "Existenz
is
only
real incommunication," look at it, and treat it as some-
thing known, and now proceed to make communication
the condition of my Existenz, almost reproaching Being if
communication is lacking, then it is precisely that I can not
destroyed my own un-
enter into communication for I have
conditional readiness by such an inversion, and misused the
idea in such a way as to conceal my inability to be alone by a
pseudo-communication which is craved, begged for, and
forced.
That the whole of my rationality rests upon the basis of
non-reasonsuch a phrase does not assert that reason can
be denied out of some general right drawn from existential
philosophy. Nothing which lacks reason or which is con-
trary to reason can raise up argumentative claims out of
itself, for precisely in this process it enters into the medium
of rationality. Neither the positivity of mere
empirical
existence, nor that of the existential basis has a right with-
out reason. Every premise of justification enters into the
realm of the rational. The truth of the non-rational is
impossible unless reason is pushed to its limit.
Thus, the concepts of existential philosophy can become
a medium which confuses Existenz instead of
illuminating it.
Every direct usage of these concepts as contents of as-

sertions, instead of living under their appeal, is already on

this path.
For example, it can be almost the extreme of merciless
cruelty to demand freedom of others where it can never
be released from its bonds by such direct volition, but
only through the ripening prudence of a love which how-
120 Reason and Exist enz

ever unrelentingly demanding. It is as when love

is is

abstract de-
paralyzed and nothing is left but the deadly,
mands expressed in rationalistic existential concepts; it is per-

haps a
priest
who is acting,
prepared with the means of grace
of his church, trying to be of some help even in the extremi-
ties. Likewise it is an existentially disastrous refusal if this

love, become weak and self-satisfied, deceiving both the

other and the other in his empirical existence
itself, justifies
and shrinks back from the danger of entering into a
desperate situation. The misuse of existential concepts by
employing them to justify an empirical existence without
Existenz also helps this evasive attitude. If the true love
Is no longer active, a love which first becomes wholly
alive in that hard, almost icy, clarity which is open and

opening, and distant from all contempt or malice, then

a diversion into mere organic bonds in anxiety and feeling
is
promoted.
Thus the concepts of an existential philosophy can be-
come the means by which the existential is lost more than
ever in a delusive pretense. When I apply the concepts
v

abstractly, I speak of something which is only further re-

moved by my speech for I am
not really on its path. I
speak correctly, and at the same time I am, myself, wholly
false.
Perhaps abstractly I say something decisive, but I say it
in such a fashion that concretely it is not only irrelevant
but destroyed. The abstract application no longer speaks
in the situation.
The is that the truth of existential
reason thought never
lies incontent as such, but rather in what happens to me
its

in the thinking of it: either in a passion for possibilities

which prepares in advance and recalls, or in real communi-
cation where what was said comes forth as existentially
true in ever unique ways, unplanned out of the absolute
consciousness of love. There is always a misuse when what
is intended through philosophic contents is used as though
it were something known, to be applied and argued about
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought 121

in order to attain some end, Instead of producing by

such concepts in oneself and in communication something
which is man himself and not something meant by him.
Such existential thought is either true, and then it is indis-
solubly connected with the being of the thinker; or it is a
content to be known like any other, and then it is false. The
concepts of existential philosophy are such that I can not
think them without being in them; scientific contents on the
other hand are such that I can know them while I
myself
live in wholly different categories; what I am is irrelevant
to scientific knowledge.

B. General formulation.

which clarify Existenz

In general, the truth of assertions
is
always perverted either when their contents are made
into something directly known, or when some end is
derived from them for a purposing, planning will. It is then
that such assertions pass from a rational a-logic to a false

logicizing. For the contents of these assertions always con-

tain the residue of something determinate and literal, em-
pirical existence as
it were. Then, as a consequence of this
misunderstanding, existential concepts are applied so as to
subsume under them other men and myself, their conduct
and mine; existential clarification is applied like a psy-
chology. But philosophical expression which informs us
about Existenz can not comprehend it and communicate it
as though it were an empirically existent thing for conscious-
ness as such without falseness, perversion, and the destruc-
tion of Existenz itself.

In general then, for the clarification of Existenz, for

metaphysics, and for transcending philosophical ^orld-

orientation, for all regions of philosophy, the principle
holds that, whenever that which philosophically indicates,

appeals to, evokes, allows to be seen, renders present,

whenever it is handled as a known content in the mere forms
of the understanding, it loses precisely that content which
122 Reason and Exist enz

was Intended in the philosophy. At the same time it is

fraudulent to derive therefrom some fixed doctrine as

though it were valid for the understanding.

always something inverted, so that the
In speaking there is

fundamental ground of Being is touched rather by not

naming my apprehension of it. But again this is true
it in

only doifnot intentionally avoid itan artificial and

I

merely rhetorical and literary techniquebut experience

it as the absolutely unwilled.
I can only speak of that out of which I live and am,
insofar as I miss
saying it conceptually and therefore in-
directly reveal it.

C. A glance at the false rationalization of the irrational.

In such attempted logical clarifications we find an omi-

nous phenomenon of the human spirit; it has always been
there but has grown in the last century, and may be called
the rationalization of the irrational A
supposedly omniscient
Enlightenment sought the forms of the understanding even
in what was alien thereto in order to produce technically
what was desired. In its enthusiasm for irrational values and
its
attempt to deliberately produce what it wanted, there
arose however no increase in the true rationality of the
world but rather a further destruction of the non-rational by
falsifying genuine rationality.
The essential question about human action is: what can be
deliberately planned as an end and what not. Or, what can
be desired, and what disappears precisely because it is de-
sired.Or, what can be actually attained by planning and
what is made impossible precisely because it becomes the end
of a plan.
example one should propose as his end to become an
If for

independent and distinctive personality, one would become

an artificial construct of pure masks lacking in reality down
to the core, and thus, precisely no but
personality at all,
instead an anxiously cultivated appearance. Men become
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought 223

only by being concerned with affairs, only by

personalities
producing something in the world through deed and activity.
As with personality, so with all substantial values. One
it is

can will out of them, awaken them indirectly, form one's

empirical existence in conformity with their standards, but
one can not will them. If myth has passed away, it can not
be restored through will which can only create false sub-
stitutes. If one thinks a new religion is necessary, one can

not make one, and every attempt leads to an impotent sham.

If I do not love, I can not force myself, or arrange it, or

bring forth through preparations. If I do not believe, it is

it

hopeless to will to believe; thereby I can only produce false-

ness and confusion in me and my world.
In general, the result of these inversions can only be the

helplessness of the understanding itself, an understanding

which has isolated itself and thinks it can know and deliber-

ately produce everything.

D. Summary: Priority of thought confirmed*

What we have been explaining through examples should
show in what sense one must speak of the priority of

thought.
The nature of thought and knowledge is commonly taken
in too narrow a sense, that of an
understanding which ex-
hausts itself in mechanical thinking, distinguishing, defining,
and ordering. To experience such narrow, formalized, and
partial thought is to furnish from thinking the basis for con-
fusion out of which the impulse arises to reject thought as
destructive of life.
But even take thought in the wider sense of any ob-
if I

jective or objectified dialectical thought, intellectually I ex-

perience this: what I know, insofar as it is known, actually
becomes relativized for me since it changes into a possibility,
into something questionable. Thus it seems that I can not
both unconditionally be and, at the same time, know it.
Hence the question arises whether we can remain true to our
124 Reason and Existenz

fundamental basis if we extend our knowledge out endlessly.

we remain true to our fundamental basis and bound
In fact
to Being only if we dare the utmost in knowability, for only
then are the bases unfolded and Being revealed. But also, we
remain true to these bases only if we do not abandon our-
selves to the mere forms of speech and to the forms of the

superficially thinkable, when we do

not permit ourselves to
think without matter or content. This again demands a con-
tinuous restriction and control by thinking itself: we only
remain true, then, when we are really conscious of the modes
of knowing and their limits. There is no truth without some
kind of communicability, and what is communicable always
belongs on many levels to the various modes of the Encom-
passing in their interrelations, and always has its
meaning
within its
sphere, not outside of it.
Therefore, how I understand my knowing is a basic

question of philosophizing from its

inception on. It is the
self-consciousness of reason.
The detachment from the finite known by understand-
ing this knowing first
brings the determinate known
really near and, at the same time, frees Existenz from the
merely known in which Existenz is
always in danger of
losing itself as though in Being. The thoroughgoing pene-
tration of this knowing about knowing alone can open up
our consciousness of Being to the ever-present Transcend-
ence in a way which is not deceptive.

E. Two misunderstandings of the expression of this priority;

empty logic and absolute knowledge.
But the knowledge of knowledge from Aristotle up to the
transcendental thought of Kant runs into two
typical
errors. First of all it runs into the
vacuity of a logic which
is
empty because it has no relation to Being. Therewith it

becomes when it finds itself entering into the end-

terrified
lessness of a new determinate knowledge, an
infinity of
syllogistic forms, relations among signs, of arbitrary and, not
 The Priority and Limits of Rational Thought 125

only formal, but empty, operations. Then it is no longer a

knowing which penetrates through all
particular knowledge
with a consciousness of Being but a philosophically
itself,
indifferent knowledge of possible forms of expression, in-
tellectualities, verbalisms, mathematically graspable formal-
isms. The authentic knowing of knowing, although it

must alsogo along these paths in order to master these

not a determinate
materials, is
knowledge itself, but rather
a knowledge of the modalities of determinate knowledge.
Such a penetrating knowledge no longer exists when it is
abstracted from determinate knowledge, but is then hol-
lowed out and itself becomes simply a new kind of de-
terminate knowledge.
Secondly, this abstraction occurs through an opposite
kind of misunderstanding, in the "absolute
knowledge" of
idealism. The error of idealism consists in
changing a con-
which is illuminated by penetrating the
sciousness of Being,
whole of knowledge in all modes of the Encompassing, into
an isolated generation of what is in fact a determinate
knowledge of everything. Such a knowledge wanted to be
constructed independently and abstractly like some mathe-
matics, as though it could create its own contents by itself.

As such it was to have ended up in the completion of a

system in which everything real, the Godhead itself, was
to have become known.
Both misunderstandings are only an indication of a Sub-
stance whose misunderstanding first makes them possible.
Here is a source out of which all knowledge can be en-
livened into a consciousness of Being. Or, here is a spring
from which knowledge can, in the knower, acquire the
impulse to become more than the mere knowledge of some-
thing by becoming knowledge of the modes of knowledge.
What this is can only be enacted in thinking; it can not
in turn come to be known again as an individual. Thought
recalls it and pushes toward it.
Instead of there being a demand for universal and un-
126 Reason and Existenz

limited thinking which as such leads into emptiness and

is a demand to think out of reality, out of
infinity, there

Being itself, and by thought to advance on back into Being.

It is not be rational! but rather; be rational
sufficient to say:
out of Existenz, or better, out of all the modes of the Encom-
passing.
Again however this is not to be attained by deliberate

willing. Rather
one encounters in that inner act which is

genuine philosophizing something like this:

when in phi-
the is reached where
losophizing point everything stops,
where the before nothingness or the divinity,
self sees itself

then it is important for the movement of thought as far as it

can, not to sink through the vacuum into the absolutely
groundless, but rather to
hold the thinker open for the en-
counter with Being which only becomes perceptible to
each when he comes upon himself, does not leave himself
out, and, so to speak, is
given to himself.
Here at the most extreme limits, however, the under-
standing, as the will toward
the intuition of something

determinate, toward graspability,

toward the deliberate
willing of an end, has its own impulse. At this point where
everything has become empty, nothingness,
it substitutes

a particular real thing from the world of finite knowledge

for a transcendent, fulfilled historicity. That is, instead of

becoming aware of the growth of the authentic being of

Transcendence in a philosophical movement of Existenz,
rather it
psychologizes, sociologizes, naturalizes.
To protect itself against the absolutization
of limited,

empirical things in the world, the known and investigable,

to hold itself free for Transcendence, and to preserve itself
from the empty understanding and the endless formaliza-
tion of speech which no longer comprehends, thought in
its
priority must actually be achieved in the clarity of
un-
limited, and yet always determinate, knowledge of knowl-
edge; it must always reason in order to perceive that which
is more than reason.
 12*]

fifth lecture

POSSIBILITIES FOR CONTEMPORARY

PHILOSOPHIZING

Our situation through Kierkegaard and Nietzsche: the prob-

lem: not to philosophize as an exception but in the light
of the exception

In the first lecture we saw how Kierkegaard and Nie-

tzsche created the actual situation for philosophizing in
this epoch. Because of them the powers and necessities of

thought are in a new situation which has arisen in a manner

historically unique and incapable of being understood by
analogy with any other historical fact. To be sure, these
philosophers have been indignantly discarded from time to
time. But since they have not really been penetrated nor
seen in their true reality and thought, they keep returning,

greater and more impressive than before. Their ambiguous

influence has lasted through half a century, as stimulating
as it radically destructive.
is

Philosophically we had to protect ourselves against their

becoming misunderstood, against the nihilistic, sophistically
perverting manner of using their ideas and words, a manner
which misleads into endless reflection or mere suggestive
surprises, in order to experiencemore decisively the indis-

pensable demand which they left behind.

128 Reason and Existenz

We have seen in the past decades an impotent and fruit-

less restriction of truth to the so-called rational truth which

is
only speciously rational, and then we have seen
an equally
fruitless rejection of reason into which the reliance upon an
understood reason easily turns. But the phi-
insufficiently
1
in this
losophy which today is called Existenz-philosophy
is not on the side of the chaotic and irrational move-
light
ments, but rather should be seen as a counterblow to them;
and the chaotic and ruinous can just as easily appear in the
of rationality as in a frank irrationalism.
deceptive garments
In Existenz-philosophy, out of the decisiveness of our
fundamental bases, the clarity of a life related to Transcend-
ence should again become communicable in thought, as a

philosophizing with
which we actually live.
To ask again in the contemporary philosophic situation,
what philosophy? what will become of philosophy? means
is

that we think we are in fact at an end. Hegel was the end of

objective, confident, absolute

Western philosophy, of ra-
and recent philosophizing in the manner of
tionality,
Hegel contemporary knowledge about the totality
is a
of a past reality. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche exhausted
the possibilities of questioning, the questioning by ex-

ceptions in endless reflection standing outside communi-

cation, alone with God or nothingness. The study in their
of both sorts of termination has become the con-
principles
dition, not only of acquiring the intellectual means for phi-
losophizing, but also essentially of avoiding superficial
and
easy affirmations of nothingness, and of corning inwardly
in one's own experience to the point where one really knows
that here he can go no further. In fact we are not standing
nothingness, but rather, as always where men
before are

living, before our fundamental bases. From such experience

the new
philosophizing grows of whose potentialities
we
2
shall now sketch a picture.

Philosophy after Kierkegaard and Nietzsche can no

longer bring its thought into a single, complete system to be
 Possibilities for Contemporary Philosophizing 129

brought out as a presentation derived from its

principles.
It isa question of letting those principles themselves become
effective. The problem for us is to philosophize without

being exceptions, but with our eyes on the exception.

The truth in the exception for us is that it
poses a per-
petual question without which we would sink back into the
more or less crude platitudes of a self-satisfaction which is
no longer thinking radically. Through a knowledge of ex-
ceptions, our souls instead of incapsulating themselves in
narrowness can remain open to the possible truth and
reality which can speak even in despair, suicide, in the
passion toward Night, in every form of negative resolution.
To see rationally what is counter-rational shows us not
only the possibility of a positive side in the negative, but
also the ground on which we ourselves stand. An indis-
pensable approach to the truth would be lost without the
exceptions. Their earnestness and absoluteness overpower
us as standards although we do not follow them in their
content. That we owe something new to Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche the possibility of laying the deepest foundations
and yet that we do not follow them in their essential deci-
sions, makes up the difficulty of our philosophical situation.
The philosophizing which owes its
impulse to them will,
in opposition to their lack of communication, be a communi-
cative philosophizing (or it would be labor lost, since the
exception can not be repeated). Against the negative, un-
limited radicality of the exception, it will be bound in the

communicability of all modes of the Encompassing. Against

their risks of worldlessness,it will not
only be a weakening,
but issue forth from a will to connection in communication
as an historical task.
This attitude is shown in some preliminary, necessary
features of contemporary philosophizing:
i Since it is not to be a philosophy of the exception, but
.

of the universal, it will only regard itself as true if it can

be translated into reality by many, that is, if the possibility
1 30 Reason and Exist enz

of reason in its widest range is

methodically brought to
self-consciousness.
2.
Only in the light of the exception which did the

seemingly impossible can we find our way back without

deception to a universality in the history of philosophy,
which thereby once again becomes transformed.
In view of the exception whose thinking in fact is
3.
not only philosophizing, but almost turns into non-phi-
losophy (whether into a faith in revelation or into atheism),
philosophy must become aware of moving between these
two possibilities,
which both concern it and call it into

question.
4. Therewith must philosophy again ascertain the ground
of its own philosophic faith.
It is as
though we again
sought on these paths of phi-
losophizing the quietude of Kant and Spinoza, of Nicolas of
Cusa and Parmenides, turning away from the ultimate unrest
of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. But still these latter phi-

losophers remain as lighthouses still burning, perpetual in-

dicators of directions without which we would relapse into
the deception of supposing there were a teachable phil-

osophic doctrine or contents, which as such are without

power.

\. REASON AND PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC.

The great philosophical concern was always and has again
become reason. After the questioning of Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche, reason is no longer self-evident to us. The deepest
fathoming of reason philosophy of German idealism
in the
is no longer
persuasive, although it remains an unexhausted
source of a rationality without which we would not have
reached the level of genuine philosophical thought. 3
If, looking back at the actual philosophizing of the cen-

turies, we
ask whether philosophy can ground itself upon
reason, the answer must be no, since, in all the modes of the
Encompassing, through reason it grounds itself upon some
 Possibilities for Contemp orary Philosophizing 131

other, finally essentially upon Transcendence; and also yes,

since the way in which it does ground itself leads only
above reason. Philosophy does not live by reason alone, yet
it can take no
step without it.
Reason is not quite the substance out of which philosophy
arises. For philosophy must ground itself in potential Exist-
tenz, which, for its
part, can only unfold in rationality. I

am that which
capable of reason but which is not made
is

up of pure reason. If reason is not substantial, it is also

true that nothing else is substantial without reason as its

condition.
I can speak of Reason, personify it, and pay my respects
to it as the condition of all truth for me. But it is never a
permanent thing; rather it constitutes a continuous task in
is not an end in itself, but rather a medium. It is
time. It
that through which everything else preserves its nature, is
corroborated, and recognized. It is as though with-
clarified,
out reason everything were asleep like a seed.
I can produce nothing by reason alone. I must always en-
counter in it that other through which it itself is. This can
be shown in every action of reason. Nothing real can

merely be excogitated; and therefore Transcendence, for

example, can not be proven. But the pure thinking of reason
which is not valid as the determinate knowledge of anything
(which determinate
knowledge always depends upon
something else through its intuition or its mere givenness)
such reason is itself an act of Existenz in a particular form.
Existenz in a self-positing cognition of its own Tran-
scendence is a thinking which as such an experience of is

its own with

being: that which is unavoidably connected
the consciousness of my Existenz not thereby proven
is

for the understanding as such, but exists for this Existenz

which clarifying itself validly in reason. Reason works
is

a proof for the existence of God out of the factual presup-

position of divinity, a proof

which lacks any logically
i%2 Reason and Existenz

abstractable evidence indeed, but which nevertheless is

fulfilling and inspiring for

Existenz.
It is the nature of reason to be uncreative in itself, and pre-
cisely for this cause it can be universal, and through its

universality itcan bring the creative everywhere into act.

There is
nothing which can withdraw itself from contact
with reason, and nothing which does not authentically
emerge for the first time through either the positive or
negative conditions of reason.
The self-consciousness of this universal rationality is

as
formally developed philosophical logic.
We have attempted in the preceding lectures to sketch
three ideas in this field in order to clarify what looks like
a conflict between reason and Existenz in falsifying simpli-
fications:the broadening idea of the Encompassing; the

binding idea of truth as communicative; and the idea of the

pre-eminence of thought which shows the universal pres-
ence of reason, a reason which includes the counter-
and makes even falsehood possible. There is al-
rational

polarity which is
ways a polarity of reason and Existenz, a

only an abbreviated formula for a complex of interrelated

modes of the Encompassing as that which we are and in
which being is for us.
If we have
followed along these paths in philosophical
logic, then, in accordance with logical consciousness, it is
no longer possible to possess the truth in some point of
view, or in the form of mutually antithetical and exclusive
or resolved possibilities. Empirical existence is, so to
speak,
broken up so that there we have to struggle for truth in the
modes of the Encompassing, a truth which is always fighting
against itself, and on paths whose origin and final goal are
not known. Thus there can be no doctrine which is the
solution, which one can now accept as the truth, since such
a thing would directly
destroy the problem of men living in
time.
It is necessary to break through every form which tends
 Possibilities for Contemporary Philosophizing 133

to become a final validity, to master all thinkable points

of view in their relativity; and it is necessary to be present

consciously in all modes of the Encompassing, to complete

allmodes of communicability. In this fashion alone is that
space to be secured in which the fundamental basis of
Existenz can truly be a support.
The total problem of philosophical logic which has been
represented in the three lectures above as examples can now
be made clearer. This logic is no
longer to be limited to the
traditional formal logic or to methodology of investigation
and proof in the sciences; these partial fields remain intact in
their detail, though not in their total meaning. What Kant's
transcendental logic, taken in its widest sense, initiated is a
new, and ever since indispensable, basis. What Hegel devel-
oped in his metaphysical logic as a categoriology, even if in-
acceptable in principle and development, is nevertheless a
solution to a problem related to our contemporary one: the

problem of a logic of human thinking in every form of the

Encompassing.
The traditional school logic has not discriminately sur-

veyed the manifold of logical possibilities with an openness

to all modes of the Encompassing. It was throughout bound
to the rationally objective or its simple opposite. It unified
itself
by a narrow absolutization. Philosophical logic, on the
other hand, must let the knowledge of the modes of the En-

compassing in their and spheres effectively emerge

levels

against any leveling of thought (in kinship with the ancient

and ever-recurring doctrine of levels of Being) But it must .

also oppose the attempt to become organized itself as though

such a thing could ever be completed. It is indeed the only
analogue still summa, for it has a conscious-
possible to the
ness of the whole even only in the form of communica-
if

but it itself can never become a

bility; totality.

Philosophical logic owes this new possibility to Kierke-

gaard and Nietzsche. What these two did and partly became
aware of (Kierkegaard more than Nietzsche), and what
i$4 Reason and Exist enz

clarified in systematic rationality is still the unresolved

they
e
problem.
This new logic took its
impulse from Existenz
which
sought its own
clarity,
but which remained unsatisfied by
In contrast to Existenz-
every attempted rational solution.
into the possibilities of the self, it is
philosophy, which goes
a path to the self-awareness of reason in the universality of
concern to penetrate the
thought. That is, it is a rational
forms and methods which are always unconsciously gener-
ated in all modes of ontological investigation, in the sciences,
in philosophical world-orientation, in Existenz-philosophy,
and in metaphysics. 4
The meaning of this logic is negative insofar as it generates
no new contents, but positive insofar as it establishes space
for every possible content. It holds up clear delimitations

against the danger

of the loss of some sense of truth or some
a bewildering confusion of assertions, it
possible content. In
brings about clarity of consciousness.
And thereby, it pre-
vents the transformation of men into mere empirical exist-

ents influences, transpositions, and

where unclear impulses,
concealments extinguish the possibility of any substantial
self hood existents for which, in the end, psycho-
empirical
analysis
the correct theory. By its openness to the
would be
of knowable in the sense
exception it safeguards every kind
of its particular contents against mere rhetoric and false abso-
lutization. Thus philosophical logic can
be an objectively
powerless, unforced, and quiet operation through
which
truth in every one of its senses is enabled to grow out of its

origins. Consciousness
of the modes of knowing encourages
every mode to work itself out resolutely. Thus philosophical
logic is the form of honesty grown conscious.
to communi-
Philosophical logic further is of assistance
cation. Rational logic alone is still an instrument which
carries with it the most extreme danger of breaking off
communication. If truth is bound
to communicability, then,
first of all, a common clarity, continuously
renewed in the
 'Possibilities for Contemporary Philosophizing 135

logical and in general in every mode of the Encompassing,

isthe presupposition of methodical mutual communication.
But secondly, while in general speech all modes of meaning
speak through one another, it is precisely where the con-
tents no longer bind us together as obvious that the prob-
lem of logic becomes of increased importance. Filling the
conditions of logical insight as such is not yet sufficient for
communication; the conditions can be fulfilled,
existential
and yet the contents can divide us. Still, through logical
clarity we can always meaningfully speak with one an-
other; through it radically alien natures can still try to com-
municate fruitfully and with stimulation across the abyss.
For there lies in
rationality, when it is
grasped in its

radicality, multidimensionality, and in its connection with

Existenz, a trust in itself, as though it must always still be
possible. How far it
actually succeeds however is a matter
of experience. It becomes irrational when it tries to antici-

pate. Rather own, reason forbids

its from presupposing
it

itself
finally found no echo
unquestioningly. But even if it
in all the world, it still could not despair in itself. For it
alone can see both itself and its alternatives, can clarify
the ultimate shipwreck and the absolutely irrational in
their rationality, and thereby first let them emerge into
5
being.

2. THE APPROPRIATION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION.

The
rational will for the universal places under question
the knowledge about a supposedly absolute end which
came in, perhaps, with Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
Such a will turns back to its own fundamental origins and
therewith to its own history. Against the nihilism of total
rejection and ignorant recommencements, its origin and
in new ways. If Kierke-
history become problematic to it
gaard's and Nietzsche's ideas and Existenzen have revolu-
tionized us, to insights whose contents we can
we come
recognize retrospectively in the philosophizing of the past.
1 36 Reason and Exist enz

We want to understand authentically once again what had

already been done but which remained without final
methodical awareness. We
believe we can trace with greater
awareness the sources of eternal philosophizing, the fhilo-
sophia ferennis, and separate more clearly genuine philoso-
phizing from rational vacuities. A
new history of philoso-
phy which speaks existentially is arising for us which can
preserve the ancient philosophy more truly because more
inwardly than before.
The last few centuries were characterized by the fre-

quency with which philosophers thought they were begin-

ning totally de novo, so that there was always a new phi-
losopher arising to claim that with him scientific philosophy
began for the first time. We think and see the matter
otherwise. The
recurrent originality of philosophizing Is

nothing but an appropriation of the truth which is already

there, so to speak, although it is always in a communicative

process as an historical accomplishment. Indeed, the pres-

ervation of the tradition of our fathers is authentic only

through a comprehension of the contemporary situation,

not through an identical repetition of what they
said, nor

through an adherence to their words which ignores the

contemporary as though what were past could directly
be real and true today. But, even with total changes of the
human situation, something deeply hidden and inward
remains the same ever since man began to philosophize.
Demonstrations of what is new and not to be found in the
past concern, for the most
part, only forms of expression,
historically determined impulses, methods of approach,
historical contents
comings and goings which are the in-
dispensable contingent form and repository of the Uncon-
ditioned, but also the form of what is immediately worthy
of love. As God can not be a developing nature but yet
must come to himself, so, from the beginning, philosophiz-
ing is a union with the One through the searching thought
of existing men, an anchor which is thrown down and which
 Possibilities -for Contemporary Philosophizing 137

each throws as himself. Even the greatest men do not throw

it for others.

3. PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN REVEALED FAITH AND ATHEISM.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are distinguished from the

other great philosophers in that both consciously sub-
verted philosophy itself: one in favor of faith in absurd

paradox and martyrdom as the only true life, the other in

order to arrive at atheism. Together they make clear what
can befall philosophy because it is not the only possibility
open to men. The philosophizing Existenz is found in its
pure origins only insofar as it sees itself confronting another
reality which is not true for itself, but only for that other:
before revealed religion6 and before atheism. This alterna-
tive to philosophy on both its sides the obedient,
churchly
belief of cults, and atheism
is a
reality of world-dominat-
ing importance. Both attest to their truth through acts of
sacrifice and consuming passions even though, like philoso-

phy itself, among the masses they dissolve into comfortable

custom, untroubled indifference, and f ormalistic talk.
That the philosopher has lost his enclosed, self-sufficient
truth means, at the same time, an openness for what he is
not. In history only among philosophizing men do we find
that dissatisfaction, that readiness to hear, that courage of

thought which shrinks back before nothing, through which

also they are always transcending what they have found so
as to approach even closer to the truth and avoid masking it
with anticipations and finalities. Their attitude can look
like insecurity since they do not dogmatically claim pos-
session of the truth; but this unsureness is in fact the sign
of their power in unrelenting search, which alone can make
possible that true, unrestricted communication
which would
bind man together with man beyond all finite purposes,
natural sympathies, ideas, or insights.
Thus philosophical truth, as long as it does not go astray,
can. not be understood as a single and unique truth. It
/ 3% Reason and Exist enz

sees its own alternative outside itself, to which it is en-

duringly related, without either absolutely denying

it as

falsehood or appropriating it as its own truth.

The man finds the high standard where he
idealism in
seeks it. As long as we remain serious, we encounter the
seriousness of others as important to us. The unconditionally
atheistic closer to the truly faithful than is thoughtless
is

mediocrity. But the philosopher worries unceasingly about

these others; he is touched by both churchly religion and

by atheism. He searches them out in their highest forms.

It was not
always so in the consciousness of philosophy.
Medieval philosophy thought of itself as a praeambula fidei;
atheism was absolutely false, an enemy to be destroyed.
Descartes was a true servant of the church under whose
conditions alone he wished to philosophize. Spinoza was
without enmity to these alternatives, but also without rec-
ognition of their possible truth; believing himself in pos-
session of the truth, he was as though blessedly at rest,

moving out into the contemplation of God. Hegel trans-

lated everything into pure spirit, knew spirit in his own
sense down to the bottom, worked out his Logic as a form
of divine worship, and thought he was a believing Christian.
Today the question is posed more decisively, with avoid-
ance no longer possible. Philosophizing sees in a more honest
way that it is incapable of reaching the meaning of faith in
revelation and, against it, asserts its own way of seeking
God out of its own resources. It sees itself as imperiled
from within by a doubt whose real success would be
atheism but which philosophy rejects out of its own grounds.
To this correspond attitudes toward philosophy by these
others. Orthodox religion regards philosophy as atheistic,
while atheism regards it as a dishonest and impotent im-
povishment of religion out of whose secularization phi-
losophy rose as a moribund descendent.
Philosophizing however remains true only so long as
it
stays within its own independent and irreplaceable sources.
 Possibilities for Contemporary Philosophizing 139

Philosophy is never a sociological power like churchly

belief and atheism. Powerless, the spirit of philosophy
emerges out of its
ever-present source in the soul only to
awaken the soul and let it participate in a truth which has
no "purpose" and which neither serves nor opposes any
other truth. Only in its own inwardness does it lead to
an experience of the presence of the truth through the path
of thinking out of the whole nature of man. It is only com-

parable to the prayer of religion; but at the same time it

is less than
prayer since it does not have the definite answer
of a personal divinity, and also more than prayer since
it is the unrestricted
perception of all possibilities of the
Encompassing and of their always historically absolute
fulfillment in one's own Existenz. Only such is the achieve-
ment which is proper to philosophy.
Philosophical thinking however can seek its achievement
totally otherwise in priestly religion itself, and then it

sinks back into a praeambula fidei, imperceptibly preserving

its owngrounds for a long time in spite of that alien ful-
fillment which, in itself, would retroactively tend to dry
out philosophy into a mere conceptual schematism.
Or, philosophical thinking can seek its realization in
atheism which presents itself as the conclusion of a phi-

losophizing which opposes revealed religion; and then, ret-

roactively, philosophy as such tends to be annulled in favor
of its finiteknowledge of the world. Atheism however
applies philosophy, now robbed of its essence, as a dis-
integrating force against everything permanent or authorita-
tive, so long as this is not the authority affirmed by atheism
itself of dominance in empirical existence.

Philosophizing which remains faithful to its

origins can
not really understand either revealed religion or atheism.
Both, insofar as they are modes of thought, appear to de-
velop their ideas in conceptual terms which seem to
be
analogous to those of philosophy and even for the most
part borrowed from it. But in their inner activity, both
140 Reason and Exist enz

must work in a way essentially differentfrom this apparent

one. The philosopher is
perplexed by what is not under-

stood as though by something that decisively concerns him.

He does not understand it, since in order to understand one
must be it. The man who philosophizes can not know
whether one day he will not betray his path and sink to his
knees praying, or whether he will not surrender himself
to the world in the atheism of: nothing is true, everything
is
permitted. And this, although he must look upon both
alternatives as though they represented the suicide of his
nature as eternally bound to Transcendence. In its incom-

prehension or in its concern over mere accidentals, re-

vealed religion from the philosopher's standpoint has made
a salto mortale into an inaccessible region from which

philosophy itself must appear as something inessential. On

the other hand, atheism appears to him as productive of
adventurous claims about the course of the world, thought-
less
superstitions, uncomprehended substitutions
for re-
so that in its fanaticism it seems closer to the intol-
ligion,
erantly battling religions of the churches than to philosophy.
Philosophy remains continually confronting these two
other modes of belief into which it can change only by
giving up its own resources but which it can
ignore as in-
different or false only by losing its own life. Its life must
ever remain questionable in order to become authentically
certain of itself.
The philosopher himself achieves his fulfillment, not
by anything abstractly universal in his thought, nor by a
restriction to thought as such, but rather in his
historicity.
In this historicity he has a positive relation to his own
religious origins as well as to the universally penetrating
fluid of atheism. Looking at the fact of atheism, he sees
a decisive battle over the nature ofman which can not
help but change into something very different when God
becomes alien and dead. Philosophically, however, this
battle is not an external one against an appearance in the
 Possibilities for Contemporary Philosophizing 141

world but an inner conflict which brings forth those ideas

which speak from soul to soul in their union with divinity.

4. PHILOSOPHIC FAITH.

In face of both religion and atheism, philosophy lives

out of its own faith. As long as man philosophizes, he knows
he stands not in relation to the holy chain of "witnesses to
the Truth" (in which the believing Christ dared feel him-
self to be), nor to that of atheism which has
always been
effective in the world and spoken out; but rather he is re-
lated to the chain of private men who openly search in
freedom. The brilliant members of this chain are the few
great philosophers who desired no disciples, indeed, dis-

dained them, who were as much aware of their human

finitude as of the infinity in which they lived, and who
offered the torch to those who reached for it of themselves
and, in the end, carried it forth perhaps only as a glimmering
spark until the next should kindle it to brighter flame.
This belief which is in reason is more than reason. It is

not the -same if I base myself absolutely in the self-certitude

of reason as a cognizing act, and if I have confidence in this
medium as a potentiality of my own Existenz. The kind of

philosophizing which always seeks to ground itself in

mere reason must also always end in vacuity. In philosophy
it is how that which is not reason and
through which reason
first
gains its whole
scope is
present, which is decisive over

the substance of philosophy in its historicity.

What the distinctively philosophic faith is, then, is not
to be expressed literally and objectively, but only in an

ultimately indirect communication of the total philosophical

work. Only the ways in which it
appears can be clarified
directly by the following considerations. Philosophic faith
is the fundamental source of that work by which man makes
himself in an inner act as an individual before his Tran-
scendence, stimulated but without any ra-
by tradition,
to any particular form. For all
tionally definable bond
142 Reason and Exist enz

philosophizing is unique and unrepeatable, although it is

all rooted in one source
making every philosophy akin to
every other in its form.

If
philosophy is the continuous self-education of man as
an individual, this individual is not to be understood as a
singularity in the objective manifold of endless, distinct
empirical existents, but rather as the process of overcoming
empirical isolation which in itself leads to nothing but
capriciousness and obstinacy. The apparent closeness
among individual empirical existents is something destructive
to the philosophical Existenz, although if it is melted down
into the Encompassing of the one
Being, it can become its

historical body.
The individual, also, is not himself through differentia-
tion from all
others, through greater gifts, creativity,

beauty, or will; but the individual is that which every man

can be himself and which no one already is by nature. But
it is also not to be found in likeness to everyone else; for
likeness arises out of comparison. The individual when he is

himself, like every other selfhood, outside comparison,

is

and therefore, as such, is characterized through the fact that

he does not compare himself with
anything except with
Ideas, as standards which are above him, but are not empiri-
cal existents. The individual compares himself
only in those
aspects where he is not
properly himself. The individual
before his Transcendence, in which position alone man is
man, struggles against the evaporation of his own funda-
mental ground into something universal, but also
against
his own loss of himself
through defiant self-assertion and
the anxieties of his
empirical singularity.
If
philosophic faith has the inner act for its existential
axis,then the ideas of a philosophical clarification can
help
to consummate such faith.
This philosophizing will have much more force to the
degree that it can express its truth purely and formally.
Through this it
acquires an awakening power, since it re-
 Possibilities for Contemp orary Philosophizing 1
43

mains open for achievement by new men in their

historicity,
but not a bestowing power which rather would
only be
deception. As in the philosophizing of Kant and back
the great
philosophers, the pure form of thought
all
through
is what is
authentically transforming in him who can think
and achieve it.

believing and fulfilling philosophy

If a be
first comes to

through a real Existenz, so also is genuine contemplation an

act of Existenz.
Philosophical contemplation is the life of
Existenz as it ponders over
Being, as it reads the crypto-
grams of empirical existence and all modes of Being which
I encounter and which I am. It sinks out of
time, so to speak,
and sees time itself as a cipher in appearance.
The philosophical ideas, whose realization is the reality
of process and which become empty and mere expres-
this

sions if separated therefrom, are, so to

speak, the music
of speculation. In them it is as there had been an
though
inversion of the exploration of existential
possibilities into a
contact with the real, as films had fallen from our
though
eyes not about things in the world as such, but about the
itself in them and in all
Being possibilities an experience
which is not the cognition of anything in particular but
which brings an experience of Being through the very act
of thinking. It is like a working of
thought which trans-
forms the man but brings forth no object. It passes through
the ages like a secret which however is always open to
whoever would participate in it, a secret which in every
generation can lead again to what has been reported from
Parmenides to Anselm: a non-conceptual satisfaction in
ideas which to those who do not understand are mere
formal abstractions, empty follies.

Objections against this philosophizing

The picture of contemporary philosophizing, as it re-

veals itself under the determining influence of Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche, has been sketched in some of its basic
144 Reason and Exist enz

features. Against this philosophizing some typical objections

arise:

First of one can indicate other origins and subsume

all,

it under an historical type. Since thus it would have

occurred already and is nothing new, it becomes something
old, already refuted or settled in fact, something
which has
returned in disguise like a worn-out ghost. In this fashion,
but the
contemporary philosophy has been called nothing
old idealism, removed from reality, weak, and deceptive.
To which one may reply that wholesale judgments, if
can
they do not go into the details of the actual thinking,
only subsume schematically. The earnestness of thought
which is engaged in contemporary philosophizing is not ex-
pressed in such schematisms,
but rather the intellect of him
who is
thinking about it
externally. All genuine philosophy
becomes idealism from such a point of view. The objector
must say what he himself wants and believes: and it will be
either religious belief in revelation, or real atheism, or an
unphilosophical, positivistic, supposedly realistic,
and thor-
oughly trivial, immanence.
Or, one may object that this philosophy is an attempt to
fill
up the void to which philosophy as such leads with
borrowings from religion. It is a secularization of prot-
estant theology, as has often happened, or even a disguised

theology.
But such an objection supposes that the absolutely human
must be the distinctively Christian, that the historical
must be what is distinctively historical in Christian revela-
tion. It first makes the deceptive presupposition that the
human is null and void unless the determinate contents of
revelation and grace are effective therein. And then Chris-

tianity is falsely brought nearer to us and made easier by

supposedly theological thought through a clarification of the
human, which is essentially a philosophic, and not yet
Christian, faith. Perhaps in such a connection, philosophy
isthe better theology since it is more honest even if it is
 Possibilities for Contemporary Philosophizing 14$

negative. It shows how far theology lives from philosophi-

cal ideas, which, as itsown possession, philosophy will not
abandon.
Secondly, some logical objections are raised. The new
philosophizing does not want to be science, yet wants to
make universally valid assertions. It therefore contradicts
itself. And with this is connected its
thoroughgoing and
vexatious antinomical structure; it what it says-
takes back

gives and denies.

To which one may reply that this is a question of becoming
aware of the logic of philosophizing. In such a logic, certain
forms and levels of meaning in communication are dif-
ferentiated; there is a grasp of the contradiction which is
necessary in its place, and of a field distinctive of philosophy
which has the significance of something universally estab-
lished (in philosophical world-orientation, and in philosoph-
ical logic).

Further, the objections run to the effect that this phi-

losophizing is incomprehensible, since it wants to grasp
the non-objective, which is nonsense. It therefore expresses
itself contradictorily in objective terms about that which

can never become objective; but where there is nothing

objective, there is nothing at all. So this philosophizing is
an idle attempt to jump over its own shadow, or following
Miinchhausen, to lift itself by its own bootstraps. It is

nothing but an intellectual acrobatics, alien to life.

Such an objection, to be sure, describes correctly in part,
although crudely, a form of communication, but at the
same time misses its meaning. Through lack of understand-
ing, the evaluation has not touched upon what
is here ac-

For it is a matter of a mode of

complished. transcending,
which is indeed meaningless and simply crazy for the finite
understanding which would be nothing but finite. But be-
cause the finite understanding can not transcend finitude, we
can not conclude that such transcending is nothing for the
reason in Existenz,
146 Reason and Exist enz

Further, they present us with two alternatives: there is

either factual, rationally conceivable, impersonal knowledge
of the whole (systematic philosophy) with its meaningful
claim to validity for every understanding, or else there is
some sort of poetic, artistic work. But this philosophizing
is neither of these, and thus either it is
nothing at all, or
else it is a turbid and incompetent mixture of poetry and
rationality.
But the presupposition of this objection either art or
science questionable, for it stems from a division of
is

spheres of culture and mind which in no way can claim an

exclusive validity. It comes to this: the mode of thought in
a philosophy must be methodically grasped in its distinctive-

ness, seen in its own origins, not as a false intermediary

from some other point of view.
Thirdly, certain substantial objections are raised. In this
philosophizing all objective applicability and order, and
therefore all binding force is canceled. It is unscientific,
and therefore subjectivistic, and proceeds from nothing
but arbitrary caprice.
Against which it must be explained rather that philosophy
passionately seeks an abiding order which would be un-
deceptively permanent. recognizes the modes of order
It

and appropriates them, but holds its consciousness open

for the limits of every order and therefore open for the
ulitmate point of restwhich would alone be true and which
isnot to be anticipated. It is scientific in the sense of a dis-
ciplining form of rational communication; but not in the
sense of substituting a universally valid and relative scientific

validity for an unconditioned historical truth. Precisely this

philosophizing alone can preserve the mode of thinking of
genuine science, grasp it, and animate it, and therewith
extinguish what is unscientific in mere intellectual games,
absolutized science and deceptive
non-philosophy. It can
effect a real conquest over empty intellectualism
through
an understanding grounded in Existenz. Philosophy de-
 Possibilities -for Contemporary Philosophizing 147

mands of its hearers that they encounter it with themselves,

selves that can not give that, only God can dobut
it

which it can awaken. For it, human thinking, which is all

that it is, is
only an occasion for the other and not already his
fulfillment.

Further, there is the complaint that this philosophy is

individualistic.
But thisa radical error. Alternative categories, as
is

mutually exclusive, including those of the individualistic

and universalistic, are inapplicable to the level of phi-
losophy, for in this form both lead to error. Philosophy in
its formulations can be misused
individualistically just as
well as universalistically.

Finally, the general objection of subjectivism is expressed

in the following form: this philosophy recognizes even
the symbols of Transcendence only as subjectively created
structures and, therefore, actually misses the being of

divinity, just as it misses all objectivity.

In no case does this happen in genuine philosophy. Phi-

losophy in principle recognizes all phenomena as relevant to

it
only insofar as they can serve as symbols of the prior ac-
tuality of Transcendence. In its search, grasps symbols as
it

possible vestigia del, not God himself in his secrecy. The

ciphers mean something for it what
insofar as they point to
is hidden as the final authentic Being which they can not
unveil.

Against objections, philosophy can defend itself logically

only in the rare cases where the content of what is said is
capable of a cogent, universally valid establishment with-
out other substance being brought in. Otherwise, philosophy
can only proceed positively; it speaks and manifests itself
in its
unfolding. True philosophy is in principle unpolemi-
cal. It believes in that out of which it came and in that
toward which it moves; it waits for the source in every
man. It knows no security and relies only on the quiet
manifestation of that truth which is expressed in it.
NOTES
NOTES

FIRST LECTURE

[Those notes giving page references for the citations from

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in their German editions have
been omitted in this translation.]
a) For the understanding of both Kierkegaard and Nie-
tzsche it is of importance to study them together and to inter-

pret them mutually. What is common to both is the essential

thing: the return to the Existenz of men in this contemporary
Western situation.
b) For Kierkegaard, who was thirty years Nietzsche's senior,
no influence was possible since he was dead by 1855; for Nie-
tzsche there was no influence since he had not seen a line of the
German translation of Kierkegaard, which had already been
made by that time. It is interesting to see how Nietzsche, whose
attention had been called to Kierkegaard in 1888 by Brandes,

planned on his next trip to Germany "to work on the psycho-

logical problem of Kierkegaard." Nothing more ever came of
opportunity for Nietzsche to come to terms
this with his
relative.
unique
SECOND LECTURE

i) On schemata of the ego, cf. "Existenzerhellung," pp. 27 if.,

in my Philosophic (Berlin, Springer, 193 2; vol. I:

Philosophische
z p Reason and Exist enz

Weltorientierung; vol. II:

Existenzerhellung; vol. Ill: Meta-

physik).

THIRD LECTURE

E. Baurngarten has shown this in an interesting study on

1)
Franklin ("Benjamin Franklin und die Psychologic des ameri-
kanischen Alltags," in Neue Jahrbucher fur Wissemchaft und
Jugendbildung) February, 1933, pp. 251 ff.). He shows how
Franklin had developed principles for this type of communi-
cation which always went beyond merely factual communi-
cation. The sensitiveness of men in their stubbornness and
hidden from anyone who thinks he possesses
interests requires

the truth with certitude and knows what is now right an urbane

attitude, a willingness of both to listen to the other and to ques-

tion seriously what one has oneself thought out and planned.
All direct communications of the truth, instead of a question-

ing of destroy communication; the other does not really

it,

listen since he is no longer even questioned. Therefore the

principles
for communicating the truth are not less important
than the communicated truth itself. Genuine and effective

respect
does not mean that we both remain unchanged in our

opinions; perhaps
later the
opinion of the other will be more
adapted to change mine. Cooperation demands, further, that
one come to understand the defects of the matter. To wish to
set
up something finished and completed is to misunderstand
the potentialities which
concrete and, instead of per-
lie in the

fection, ends in confusion. Only by granting room for free

play can there be any union and, consequently, any percep-

tion of how the concrete matter is to be changed. So, it can
even be required that we pass ourselves by, suspend all our

opinions, in order to make an action possible which for the

moment seems necessary.
2) Cf. my Philosophic, vol. II, pp. 50-117,
on "Kommuni-
cation."

3) Cf. my Philosophic, vol.

Ill, pp. 102-116, on "Das Gesetz
des
Tages und die Leidenschaft zur Nacht."
 Notes

FIFTH LECTURE

1) The name
is
misleading if it appears to be restrictive.
Philosophy can never wish to be anything but simple, ancient,
eternal philosophy.
2 ) If we think about the perversions resulting from specious

knowledge, which were explained in the last chapterabout

the submersion of Existenz by its self-transformation into some-

thing knowable, by planned techniques for producing that out

of which, as a fundamental source, one can will but which is

destroyed when directly willed then precisely this awareness

of the possibilities lying in the nature of human thought has
the consequence that true philosophy can not be the result of
a
plan like some means to an end.Knowledge of this error can
protect one to a certain
degree from deceptions, but can not
enable one deliberately to work out anything positive. On
the grounds of the infinite possibilities which have become
visible, philosophizing is, more than ever before, an "experi-

ment," that is, an act which goes beyond all rational purposes,
beyond every goal. Out of answers from what I encounter,
from what I myself risk in thought, emerges in new questions an
awareness of something never ultimately there before me, but
nevertheless existentially present to me as authentic Being. The
criteria of truth lie in these existential standards, not merely in

logical mechanisms.
Such reflections limit the significance of our sketch of con-
temporary philosophizing to mere pointers.
3) The philosophizing of Kant is supported by a trust in
reason. The
presupposition and end of his thinking is that
reason in itself can not destroy, that contradictions can exist
neither in thought nor in being. His long concern over the
antinomies, those apparently irresolvable contradictions which
emerge in thinking about the world, led him toward insight
into the origins of reason out of which such illusion must

necessarily come. And there he found consolation and courage

for reason: "For what can you depend upon otherwise, if that
which alone is called upon to dispose of all error, itself were
corrupt and without hope of attaining peace and stable pos-
sessions?"
/ 54 Reason and Exist enz

But Kant's reason had a large scope. It included,

not only the
understanding, but also the faculty of Ideas by which no

object was cognized, and also the perception

of the beautiful.
This perception Kant explained as rationality in the mutual
interplay of the cognitive faculties, imagination
and the under-
and of freedom and law. Without cognition of an
standing,
object and without accomplishment of an act, this perception
of the beautiful permitted the whole nature of man in its total
rationality to become aware of both itself and of the super-
sensible substratum, but only in play.
And wider conception of reason enabled Kant to go
also, this
to the limits, where reason can no longer grasp; he was aware
of the "secret," the "riddle," the "abyss." In particular, reason
can not grasp how freedom is possible, that is, how the "revo-
lution in mode of thought" can occur by which I can become

positively free from the radical evil of my intelligible nature.

"Grace" is something for him which reason does not oppose,
but also something which reason can not "think in its maxims,
nor take into consideration in its actions" without falling into
fanaticism and the weakening of one's own moral responsi-
bilities.

"Reason figures this way: if there is

something more in the
inexplorable region of the supernatural than it can compre-
hend, then that too unknown to it would work to the advantage
of the good will."
Kant thus had a consciousness of the limits of reason which
was transparent to itself and rested upon itself, and in such a
way that what he was negatively aware of on these limits was
expressed in its decisive depths in his consciousness of God.
But the idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel dropped out
at the beginning all the limits to reason which Kant had seen,
and finally, in Hegel, built a tower of Babel where everything
was absorbed into a reason which now had a sense far beyond
that of Kant. This reason is
"mysticism for the understanding";
in its movementabsorbed the understanding without which
it

it could not take a step, but its philosophizing wanted to be the

absolute knowledge of an evolving rationality of all Being, the
unity of the rational and the irrational. Such a reason
recognized
its limits now
only in the indifferent, in bad infinity, in the
 Notes 155

impotence of nature to obey the concept, and as chance which

was without essence.
This most consistent idealism, which reconciles everything
with everything else, was already broken through by Fichte
when later he regarded all
empirical existence and the self-
hood which suffuses it (i.e., that which becomes clear to reason)
as a mere
image of divinity and when he restored the irrational
hiatus between freedom and God, between
empirical existence
and Being.
Schelling broke through idealism, which he retained how-
ever as his presupposition of a deductive presentation of pure
rationality and which he called negative philosophy (since the
path of this rational
philosophy really is the perpetual subversion
of every form of reason). He sketched out a positive philosophy
by which he wanted to penetrate to the ground of all
things,
a
ground however which was factual, not rational This ground
is historical and is to be understood as an event, but not grasped
as a necessity. We
can not go beyond it: "No one can lay any
other basis than that which was laid at the beginning."
Schelling and Fichte both sought factual Being in the ground
of all
rationality, but, true as their axioms were, they never
reached it either because they remained caught in the chains of
their own idealism, or because they lacked the possible fulfill-
ment of genuine experience.
4). In published work, Philosophic, I intended to make
my
a systematic study of the act of transcending: in philosophical
world-orientation in order to loosen any possible enchainment
toknown things in the world; in the clarification of Existenz in
order to recall and awaken to what man himself really is; in
metaphysics in order to experience final limits and give inti-
mations of Transcendence. The inner attitude of seeking com-
munication in this philosophy is one which has abandoned with
Kant the old objective metaphysics and, with Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche, any repose in the totality of developed Spirit. It
rejects that psychology which
thinks it can exhaustively com-

prehend man as a whole, as well as every other form of the

absolutization of scientific knowledge, which can only claim

validity in factual investigations

and for individual cases, in
order to teach one to pass resolutely beyond these methodi-
/ 5<f "Reason and Exist enz

is rooted in the
cally limited ways of knowing. It original desire
to know. For it alone can scientific knowledge of finite things

in a broken world be clearly worked out without alteration of

that knowledge (as I see it done in the investigations and ac-

complishment of Max Weber) for this philosophy alone is there

;

any decisive separation between the cognition of finite things

in experienceable existence and thinking in life through freedom
and reason (as I see it in Kant). A thinking unfolds itself which
is not
merely a knowledge about something else to which it is
related as to something alien, but a knowing which is an inner
act, illuminating, awakening, or working its transformation.
The
relation of such a philosophy to philosophical logic is
this: what is rationally done in philosophy is, in philosophical

logic, brought to methodical and formal awareness, along with

all other modes of rationality.
5) One might wonder about and "self-re-
"reflection"
flection," whose unlimited was one of the ac-
intensification

complishments of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche which led to our

new situation.
Reflection is nothing but those movements of thought which
occur in the Encompassing of consciousness as such and in
spirit,
in forms which a methodology of a philosophical logic
would handle. Infinite reflection arises through an unlimited
impulse of reason in a human risk without reservation, an
impulse which can stop itself only by hitting upon the Existenz
which is supporting reason itself.
Self-reflection means three things. As psychological intro-

spection, it establishes and interpets facts which now are what-

ever they are. As the clarification of Existenz, it sketches out

possibilities
for a multiplicity of meanings which let every-
thing thought of assume other meanings, a clarification through
which the freedom of inner activity of a substantial selfhood
standing before its Transcendence should be awakened. As
the self-consciousness of reason, it is a universal and
compre-
hensive possibility for clarity about the modes of which
Being
exist for me, and about the modes of
myself. It finds its explicit
development in philosophical logic, which in origin and goal
is
philosophy itself.
Self-reflection as a distinctive fact is the object and source of
 Notes 157

psychology. As a medium for the selfhood of Existenz, it is itself

the concrete philosophizing which illuminates Existenz, an inner
deed. As the Encompassing of reason which is conscious of
actualized as logical self-consciousness.
itself, it is

In order to bring these relations into the greatest possible

clarity,
the basic problem must be and
posed as to
developed
what thinking itself is and what the concept is. This goes be-
yond the scope of these lectures. But such a development would
probably hold that the presupposition that thought and con-
cepts are self-evident is incorrect; here we have a true abyss and,
for philosophical logic, a decisive beginning for developing
the origin of all possibilities of thought. Here we must ascend
to a level quite alien to ordinary modes of thought, similiar yet
alsowholly different from that by which we have tried to

apprehend the "Encompassing" in these lectures.

6) Cf. my Philosophic, vol. I, pp. 292 ff., for the relations of

philosophy to religion, science, and art.

 $
n
126973